Chapter 29
Casyl
His eyes adjusted. It was no longer pitch-black, but it was still dark. His fae vision could make out vague shapes in the distance, but there was no light.
The shrieking was getting louder. Whatever it was, it was getting closer to him, and he didn’t want to hang around to find out.
For a moment, he couldn’t move.
A shiver ran up his back. He’d been fearless in life, but this was death.
He quickly tried to remember what the priests had said in the holy lore. He’d never listened to them and was now regretting that.
His chest quivered as he breathed. He urged his body to move. It would take time to adjust to this new form. It looked the same, but it was different somehow. Empty.
Was this all that remained of him, a soul constrained in the shape of a body? Amelia had died believing she was saving them. And now here he was, dead anyway.
Amelia. His grief sank into the hollow where his heart should have been. She wouldn’t be here.
She couldn’t be dead, but everything pointed to the crushing truth that she was. He’d watched as she’d plunged the dagger into herself. If she had survived, then the rift would have remained open, and he would have been able to return to her. He’d tried before the creatures had descended on him.
The thought brought him to his knees. Was she really, truly gone? He hadn’t known what love felt like. After spending centuries alone in that desolate fortress, she’d been the only person he’d ever truly loved, and he’d realised it too late.
Something swirled around him; its presence smothered him. In the darkness, faint patches of blue glowed beneath his skin. The wailing increased, severing him from his thoughts, and instinctively he ran.
There was no light to guide him, but terror drove him forward. He ran as fast as he could into the unending darkness. There were no stars in the sky above him, no clouds, no moon. He could feel no wind on his skin. What was this place?
His feet pounded across the colourless sand.
He stopped when he was sure he’d outrun the creature, panting as his lungs burned. Its wails echoed in the distance.
Something moved in his peripheral vision. He froze, trying to quiet his breathing.
Shadows emerged, enveloping him.
Something caught his arm. He couldn’t see what it was, but its grip was firm, and he struggled to break it.
He pushed at it with his power, surprised to find that he still had it, even down here in the darkness.
He pushed aside any fear and took his stance, ready to face the darkness and its inhabitants.
The figure screamed and disappeared back into the shadows. A pale blue glow pulsed beneath his skin, tracing a web through his veins. He raised his arm, tracing the glowing lines with his fingers as they began to fade.
What was happening to him?
The wailing jolted him back to his reality. It echoed eerily in the distance as he moved in the opposite direction.
The black sky stretched endlessly above him as he travelled, searching for somewhere to rest. The creatures had stopped their pursuit, but their whispers haunted him, trailing behind.
At first, they had been little more than a hum, the gentle buzz of an insect’s wings.
They grew louder. Their words were unrecognisable, muffled, in hollow breaths.
The droning whispers passed through him like a gust of cold wind that sent shivers down his spine.
He was losing his mind.
He was alone, yet constantly aware of eyes watching him and creatures waiting in the shadows for him to stop. He would glimpse movement from the corner of his eye, only to turn and find nothing there.
Everywhere looked the same: barren and flat, with the occasional mound of rocks that he’d begun using as markers, only to discover he’d passed the same ones repeatedly.
Was this to be his existence? How long would he be here? Forever?
The faces of those he’d hurt, those he’d killed, came to him. Was it their whispers that taunted him?
Over centuries of fighting, he’d taken the lives of many men. Many of those deaths he was ashamed of. He was raised to fight and to follow orders without question, and he had done so. That was why he was here.
There were too many faces to remember, but the one that stuck in his mind the most was his father’s.
It hadn’t been a mistake; it had been the only way to stop him, to halt his bottomless cruelty.
He had accepted his control over the years, done everything he’d commanded, but his violation of his mind had been the ultimate betrayal.
Tiryn had treated him no better than the monstrous beast he kept as a pet.
To his father, Casyl had been nothing more than another creature to control.
He continued, the screeches urging him onward every time he stopped. There was no respite. No sleep in the Shadowlands.
His legs carried him onwards as he walked without end or any sense of direction. Time lost all meaning as his steps in the sand disappeared behind him. Days and nights were the same in the darkness.
The creatures persisted, becoming his constant shadow, keeping out of reach. At first, he’d thought there’d been many, but they’d faded into the darkness. One remained, tenaciously stalking his every move.
It was always watching, always waiting for him to stop. Sometimes he caught glimpses of it before it disappeared between the colourless dunes. He feared it. He hated it. It became an obsession.
It was hard to tell how long he’d been down there. The whispers had become background noise. They had unnerved him, but the constant, repetitive sound was now as familiar to him as the sounds of his own body.
Shrieks and howls continued to jar him.
One day, or what he assumed was day, he stopped. Exhaustion draped over his shoulders. The weight of it made his bones feel like lead, pulling him to the ground.
The sand cushioned his knees as he slumped forward, palms sinking into the fine granules.
Trembling washed over him, caressing his shoulders and travelling down his arms until it reached his hands.
The sand beneath him began to change. Its colourless grains blackened, spreading out like tentacles around him.
When he lifted his head, it was before him.
The towering shape of smoke loomed over him; its trailing wisps swirled and disappeared into nothingness. The creature had finally come for him.
Slowly, he rose to face it, exhaustion replacing his fear. He would run no more.
As it moved towards him, its black shroud of smoke swayed in the windless sky, revealing what lay beneath. Its true form. Skin hung from its bones, trailing like a torn sheet. His own skin crawled at the sight.
Then he saw its eyes. Cold, like shards of ice, they pierced him.
Casyl froze.
No, it couldn’t be.
Its eyes narrowed through the swirling smoke. An expression he knew better than his own.
“Father.” The word escaped before he could stop it.
He’d never thought he’d see him again. Even in death, he could not escape him.
It shrieked, sending him back a step. It had no words, but its meaning was clear.
The creature lunged, pouring agony through every part of his body.
Casyl roared, the primal, guttural sound tearing from his chest. He reached out for the pain instinctively. It was what he had always done, but this pain did not belong to flesh. It lived within the shadow itself, shaped by rage and suffering.
They collided. Darkness erupted around them.
He had spent his whole life under his father’s control. He would not spend his death the same way.
The fragments of Lifesource buried beneath Casyl’s skin ignited. Blue light spread through his veins, hotter and brighter than his power had ever burned in life.
His power exploded, illuminating the shadows. The creature screamed, falling back from his touch, its dark smoke thinning around it.
The unified shrieks signalled the arrival of the other creatures. They surged, as if summoned to the blue light that emanated from Casyl like lightning.
He froze.
Hundreds of them covered the desolate land like a blanket of darkness. They came closer, drifting towards him. Beneath their rage, he sensed their endless suffering. He reached out, drawing some of their pain into himself. One by one, the creatures became still.
Understanding crashed into him. These weren’t merely monsters; they belonged here, beings of this realm, and his power could reach the agony that formed them.
He glanced at the creature that had been his father, and the monsters followed his gaze, waiting.
The iridescent glow beneath his skin brightened, stronger than it had appeared when he’d first arrived in this place. It pulsed as his power shook within him, rattling his bones.
Take him.
They swept around the old king, obeying, their shadows consuming him until he’d dissipated into the black of the sky.
Casyl sank back into the sand. He was relieved, and then he was numb. The fear and exhaustion had gone, as had his father, replaced by the same emptiness as this realm.
Were these creatures the spirits of those who had been judged and had descended, trapped forever in this vast sea of nothingness? Would he turn into one of them?
They disappeared back into the darkness, but he knew they’d be there, following him in the background.
With no other option, he continued to walk through this desolate realm, tortured by the thought of Amelia. He missed her, missed the intensity in her eyes, the taste of her lips. He missed a lot of things, trapped here with his own thoughts.
Something stood out in the distance, high on the horizon. It was the first thing he’d seen that didn’t just look like rocks.
His feet dragged through the sand as he hurried towards it despite his weariness. It looked like ruins. The fragmented ruins were stark against their bare surroundings. The crumbling stones were scattered by time, sinking into the sandy ground.
As he crested the slope, more came into view in the valley below. What had this place been? He glanced over his shoulder at the shadows that were now always behind him.
He skidded down towards the bottom of the valley and walked through the ancient structures. Even with his vision, it was hard to make out what they had been.
Circles of stone marked the foundations of great towers that had fallen to time. Their rubble littered the land before him.
As he wove through the ruins, they began to thin.
They were completely out of sight as he approached a crevice.
It was like a scar in the ground, sand sinking into its dark depths.
A faint blue glow pulsed far below. He recognised it as Lifesource, bleeding through a wound between realms. The mine blast had torn the weakened veil open all the way to the Shadowlands.
The crevice widened ahead of him until it swallowed the landscape for miles. He could either follow it down or turn around and go back. But what was there to go back to?
With each step, he descended deeper until the dark sky disappeared, leaving only rock veined with a luminescent glow. The tunnels were endless. The whispers echoed louder within them. Where would they lead?
The smell of decay grew stronger the further he went. There had been no smell from this realm until now. He couldn’t stop himself from following it.
His foot slipped, throwing him against the rocks. He tumbled down through the narrowing passage until he struck the ground below. Breathing heavily, he came to a stop. The passages had opened into a cavern of jagged rock, filled with remains. The bones of thousands surrounded him.
His head swam; the whispers became louder until they were all he could think of. Their moans threatened to overwhelm him.
“Casyl.”
It was gentle, barely more than a breath.
His head snapped up, but the voice had disappeared. Was he going mad? Was he hearing things?
Then it returned, like an echo or a memory. It brought him to his knees. His vision blurred. The blue light beneath his skin flared.
“Amelia,” he whispered.
Was she here in this dark realm? She couldn’t be. He looked at the bones and his stomach lurched.
The feeling came as a wave of certainty. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew, the same way he knew the shadows obeyed him, that she was alive.
“I need to find a way out of here. I need to find her,” he breathed.
The shadows stirred eagerly around him, as if pulling him away from the sight of the tomb.
And for the first time since entering the Shadowlands, Casyl felt something more than fear.
Hope.