Chapter 51
Alora
Training with Calla was brutal. Precise and efficient. The demoness wasted no time on sentiment or softness, but she never pushed Alora past the edge. Not truly. There was always a buffer, a wordless awareness when she had reached her limit.
Because Calla sensed what Alora couldn’t say aloud. She was afraid of her Primordial magic. It hummed there in her veins, eager to be used. There was no mistaking the darkness in it, and the destruction it bore.
And maybe that’s what frustrated her most.
Because Rune was not there to guide her. Not once.
His absence haunted her.
Shadows still clung to the corners of her room, curling beneath the furniture, darkening the candlelight even when she tried to banish them. They never moved. Never touched her.
But she knew they watched.
Alora spoke to them sometimes, angrily and quietly at night. “Tell him I hate this … sometimes it makes me hate him, too.”
Then in the morning, a briar rose appeared in the vase beside her bed, pink blooms not found near the mountain. Delicate, beautiful things with sun-warmed petals.
A sweet apology.
But if he cared, why wasn’t he here?
Why hadn’t he come since that day?
Why touch her like she was oxygen in a sealed tomb and then vanish? She hadn’t expected him to leave her this long.
In two weeks, her hands had blistered, her strange dreams had resurfaced, and the softness of her body was fading.
She hadn’t expected Rune to truly stay away. Not this long.
Laughter drifted to the clearing.
Alora glanced over her shoulder at where Theia and Zuma had taken to sitting near the pond when she trained. An unspoken show of support, or maybe so they weren’t left alone in the cottage.
Theia perched on a log, writing in a journal he had purchased for her in town. Zuma sat nearby, sharpening an axe that didn’t need sharpening. Their gazes would fall on the other when neither was looking.
The evening sky was a perfect backdrop to the scene they made.
None had made any advances, perhaps because they knew they shouldn’t, but that didn’t stop them from lingering together.
And it made Alora’s chest ache.
“Focus,” Calla barked, calling back her attention.
Alora inhaled sharply and got into position again. She stood barefoot in the clearing, sweat dripping from her brow, her hands glowing with threads of crimson light. Calla circled her like a predator, hurling bolts of shadow for Alora to block, dodge, or redirect.
“Summon armor.”
Alora tried to see it in her mind, tried to call it forth. But feeble smoke puffed at her fingertips.
Calla shook her head. “Dark magic is not for the weak. It is intentional, precise, and brutal. For the world of demons is violent. Do not hesitate. Magic doesn’t wait for permission.”
“I’m trying—” Alora twisted to waylay another hit, breath ragged. Her fingertips sparked, the air warping around them. “I can’t always tell where it’s going.”
“You don’t tell it,” Calla snapped. “You wield it. The instinct is already inside of you. Did you not create the Elder Tree portals? Did you not make a god yield?”
She sighed. “I did that with light magic.”
“And you can do so with dark magic. You are not half one thing and half another. You are both. A Primordial Goddess born of chaos, fused by light and dark. Imagine what you can do when you yield to both sides and accept who you are.”
But Alora had yet to reclaim her light magic. It still sat in a jar, glowing in her bedroom like a beacon, waiting.
“Alora.”
“I tire of this,” she snapped at Calla. “I tire of you pushing me.”
“I will keep pushing you until you fight back. A person’s true nature comes to light whenever they are cornered. Either for the better or for the worse.”
But Alora had already considered the worse. What if surrendering to her magic meant becoming something she would not recognize once the fight was done?
“Do you understand what Vaelith Nocthra va’thal truly means?” Calla asked quietly.
Alora sighed heavily.
“It does not simply mean the Shadow Queen has come,” Calla continued. “Vael is queen, yes—but ith alters the meaning.”
She held Alora’s gaze.
“Vaelith means sovereign. By right. By blood. The mountain did not name you queen by marriage, Alora. It recognized your rightful claim to the shadow throne.”
The declaration lodged in her chest like a stone.
Sovereign. By blood.
Alora’s fists clenched, her heart thudding hard in her ears. The dark coiled at her fingertips, restless, waiting, and she hated how easily it responded to the thought. She hadn’t asked for this. Hadn’t wanted a throne carved from shadow or a birthright steeped in blood.
She had spent her life being sent away. Hidden. Bound. Told what she must never become.
And now the mountain itself had named her.
Calla circled her, boots crunching against the stone. “Vorak is not a king you can outthink or outmaneuver,” she said flatly. “He is a storm. He does not negotiate. He does not hesitate.”
She stopped in front of Alora, dark eyes sharp. “If you stand in his path afraid of what you are, you will be torn apart. Not because you are weak—but because you refuse to acknowledge what is already inside of you.”
Her voice dropped, quieter but no kinder. “Trust yourself, or you will be nothing more than a leaf caught in his wake … exactly like your mother.”
Alora hissed, fangs bared.
Calla smirked and backed away. “Oh? Did that anger you? Good. Now summon armor and strike me.”
Shutting her eyes, Alora inhaled a deep breath. Smoke curled over her skin, reforming itself into armor. Not as elegant as the Harbinger’s, but it was a start.
Calla nodded, “Now, a weapon. Anything you imagine will be, your magic is an extension of yourself.” She demonstrated by conjuring twin chakram, the edges glowing with purple magic.
But Alora had struggled with that spell.
Calla’s weapon cracked against Alora’s bracers, sending a sharp jolt through her arms. She staggered, barely regaining her footing before the next blow came.
“Distraction can mean death on the battlefield,” Calla snapped. “What is occupying your mind?”
“Nothing,” Alora grumbled, sweat clinging to her back.
“Then summon your weapon or my next strike might hit flesh,” the demoness growled. “Emotions can be a weapon. Use them or fall with them.”
Alora gritted her teeth and charged. Shadows surged behind her, sluggish and clumsy, reflecting her fractured focus. Calla easily swiped through them and hit her with a spinning kick. Alora hit the moss with a heavy thud.
Fingers digging into the grass, Alora’s throat caught. “I can’t do this—”
Laughter drifted from the pond again. The last of twilight caught the gold in Theia’s eyes. She was smiling gently at Zuma and he took her hand.
It twisted something in Alora’s chest. Longing. Grief. Jealousy.
She clenched her fists, teeth grinding. Guilt shadowed the feelings. She wasn’t cross with Theia but with herself. She couldn’t go to Rune without her light magic, and she couldn’t summon a damned portal with her shadows.
How would she ever fight Vorak?
Clenching her teeth, Alora looked up when Calla’s blade lashed down and she snarled. Letting her rage and frustration crest over her.
The chakram froze above her head, caught in a wall of darkness that flared upward from Alora’s feet, sizzling with crimson light. It knocked Calla back a full pace.
The clearing went still as Alora stood.
The shadows quivered, then gathered into her hand, curling and writhing until they formed into a weapon. A black glaive, Nightstone-sharp, glyphs glowing along its edge in flickering red. A weapon born to maim.
And her armor had also elevated.
The leather had been replaced with beautiful black chest plate veined in crimson. Gilded in engraved thorns and tiny scarlet flowers. Matching gauntlets and greaves fitted seamlessly to her arms and legs.
The armor she had been gifted during Samhain.
A cold sensation crawled up Alora’s spine. Fear. Not of the power—but of how right it felt. Once her will decided, the dark answered without hesitation. As if it had always been waiting for her to stop pretending that she didn’t already belong to it.
Calla’s eyes glowed with pride and cold satisfaction. “There she is. You’re finally listening.”
Alora stared at the glaive, a dark current humming through the shaft. Warm and alive.
“Theia, wait!” Zuma’s voice rang out—
Something grabbed her arm.
Alora spun too fast and the weapon responded. Shadows slashed outward in a reflexive arc.
Theia screamed and the sound made Alora’s heart stop.
Her friend collapsed in the grass, clutching her shoulder. Blood gushed from beneath her fingers and she swayed, eyes rolling. Her body convulsed with residual magic. Her skin shimmered faintly with red light
“No—no, no, no—” Alora shook, her magic fading away. “I didn’t mean—Theia—”
Lord Zuma caught her as she fell back. “She is losing too much blood!”
“Inside,” Calla ordered. “Now.”
He lifted her in his arms and quickly carried her back to the cottage. Zuma lay her on the couch while Calla shoved furniture aside to clear space.
“Can you heal her?” Alora asked, trembling.
Calla turned, eyes hard. “You can.”
“I don’t know how!”
“You can,” she said more softly, stepping aside. “You must take hold of your power one way or another, Alora. Find the means or she will die.”
Then Calla stepped back outside. Leaving her to fail or to learn.
Alora knelt beside Theia, her hands shaking. The power inside her was unruly and untrained—but she reached for it anyway because she couldn’t allow it to only serve violence. Fear pitched in her chest, warning she might make it.
But when she had been on the brink of death, Rune healed her with his power, and it had been gentle. You don’t have to be made of light all the time, Alora. You can rest in the dark, too.