Chapter 3 Elena #2
When I opened my eyes, I felt steady. Heavy with fire. My fear was still there, coiled deep, but it was tempered now—hardened into resolve.
I rose, brushing soil from my knees.
The Paladins bowed their heads as I returned to them, though none dared ask what I had done. They felt it in the air, in the faint ripple of heat that clung to me now, in the way their torches flared brighter as I passed.
“Forward,” I commanded.
And together, we crossed into the Forest of Night’s Bane.
~
The air changed the moment we stepped beneath the trees.
It was not simply darker, though the light of the sun faltered as if it had struck an invisible barrier.
No, the very atmosphere thickened, pressed down on my lungs, seeped into my skin with clammy insistence.
The torch flames sputtered, reluctant to burn.
Even the glow I summoned in my palm dimmed, its brilliance eaten at the edges as though the shadows themselves were starving.
A cold wind whistled through the branches.
We moved deeper, our boots sinking into soft soil slick with decay.
Roots twisted across the path like the bones of some long-buried giant.
Every tree stood warped, blackened bark curving inward, their branches arching above us to knit an oppressive canopy.
I could hear the Paladins’ armor creak as they adjusted their stance, their breaths coming quicker than discipline should have allowed.
“Hold steady,” Leonidas murmured, his voice low, though even he sounded strained. “Remember your training.”
Training. I almost smiled, bitterly. Nothing in their drills could prepare them for this place. The forest was not simply hostile; it was alive, aware, responding to our intrusion with silent, malignant intent.
I tightened my grip on my staff, and the golden light at its head flared, illuminating the twisted trunks nearest us. For a heartbeat, the shadows retreated. Yet even as they fled, I felt them coil tighter just beyond reach, pressing in with patient hunger.
The deeper we walked, the louder the silence grew. Not a single birdcall. Not the rustle of nocturnal beasts. Only the sound of our breaths and the crunch of roots underfoot.
And beneath it all—a pulse.
I felt it through the soles of my boots, through the marrow of my bones. A rhythm, faint yet insistent, like the heartbeat of the forest itself. Except it was not the forest.
It was him.
The Shadow King.
His presence thrummed in the earth, in the trunks of the trees, in the very shadows choking the air.
It pressed against my senses until I almost staggered beneath the weight.
And yet, it was not the blind, mindless malice I had expected.
It was colder, stranger—measured. A will testing the edges of my light, circling, waiting.
I frowned, my steps slowing. The stories we had heard, the legends of this creature, had painted him as a monster—a being of pure darkness and malevolence.
But now, standing in his domain, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to him than the tales suggested.
The forest was dark, yes, and filled with a strange magic, but there was no sense of the mindless evil I had expected.
“High Priestess,” Leonidas said, snapping me from my thoughts. His voice was tight, his knuckles white on his sword hilt. “Do you sense him?”
I nodded, though my unease deepened. “The Shadow King is near.”
As if my words had summoned him, a sharp crack split the air.
The ground heaved. Shadows burst upward, thick and oily, coiling around one of the Paladins before he could even cry out. He crashed to the ground with a strangled shout, his sword clattering from his grip as the tendrils dragged him down.
The others reacted instantly, swords drawn, the light of the Sun flaring from their blades as they hacked at the dark tendrils.
“Stay together!” Leonidas barked, raising his sword high, its blade glowing with golden light. “Form a defensive line!”
The Paladins moved fast, shields locking, swords blazing with solar fire. Their discipline was flawless, but the forest did not care. More shadows erupted, snaking between their legs, lashing around their throats, slamming them back against the blackened trunks with terrifying speed.
I raised my staff, calling on the power of the Sun, and a blast of golden fire erupted from my hands, searing through the darkness. The tendrils shrieked as they burned, recoiling into the soil. For a moment the Paladins staggered free, gasping, blades flashing.
But the relief was short-lived.
The darkness surged back twice as strong, rising not just from the ground but dripping from the branches above like tar come to life. They fell in curtains across our formation, splitting the line, disorienting the Paladins.
“Keep formation!” Leonidas roared.
They tried. Gods, they tried. But the forest itself betrayed them.
I watched in horror as Marcellus, his copper colored hair shining like a beacon in the dark, swung his sword in a clean arc, severing a tendril in two. His blade flared bright…and then sputtered. His eyes widened as the golden light guttered like a dying candle.
“No,” he rasped, clutching the hilt tighter, willing it to ignite. But the shadows had wound around his arms, his throat. They yanked him upward, slamming him into the tree canopy. His scream ended in a choking gurgle before the dark swallowed him whole.
“Marcellus!” Leonidas surged forward, but another Paladin, Sera, blocked him with her shield, saving him from a tendril that would have pierced his chest. She pivoted, her blade carving brilliant arcs — until the ground beneath her feet turned to quicksand-black.
She sank with a gasp, shadows climbing her legs, her waist.
“High Priestess!” she cried, her face pale with terror.
I hurled a bolt of fire. It struck, searing the tendrils back long enough for her to wrench free. But even as she staggered toward us, something shifted in the air.
The forest… laughed.
It was not sound exactly, but the rustle of leaves, the groan of trees bending where no wind stirred. Mockery, alive and suffocating.
Another Paladin fell then—I did not see how, only his cry cut short as shadows enfolded him. And another. Each loss struck me like a hammer blow to the chest.
“Stay with me!” I commanded, steeling my voice. I thrust the staff skyward, unleashing a dome of light. Golden fire radiated outward, pushing the shadows back, illuminating a circle of blessed ground around us.
The Paladins gasped, their faces drawn but eyes blazing anew with hope. They regrouped, shields raised. For a moment, I thought we might hold.
But the forest was endless.
The light pressed the shadows back only so far. Beyond the dome, the dark grew thicker, denser, watching. And then—as one, it struck.
From every side, from the ground, from the canopy, from the very air.
I saw Darius, a young Paladin with hair still cropped like the boy he had been, swallowed by a wall of shadow that closed over him like a black wave. His scream echoed once, then silence.
I saw Sera again, standing her ground, blade blazing, cutting down tendril after tendril.
Until her own shadow betrayed her. It rose from beneath her boots, coiled up her spine, clamped over her mouth, dragging her backward into the roots.
Her eyes met mine, wide with pleading, before the forest devoured her.
Leonidas fought like ten men, his sword a beacon, his shield glowing with the Sun God’s blessing. He roared as he struck, his defiance a clarion call.
But even he—broad-shouldered, unshakable Leonidas—staggered as shadows lashed his legs, his arms. He looked at me, and I saw the truth in his eyes: we could not win.
“High Priestess!” His voice was raw. “Go! You must—”
The ground split beneath me.
A force unlike any other seized me, ripping the breath from my lungs. It was not tendrils, not mere shadow—but a pull, deep and inexorable, as though the forest itself had chosen me. My staff flared, the light guttering against the weight of it.
“No!” I tried to brace, to anchor myself in fire, but the pull wrenched harder. My Paladins’ cries blurred in my ears. Leonidas reached for me, his hand outstretched—but the distance between us stretched into eternity.
The shadows closed in, swallowing his face, his voice, the glimmer of his blade.
“High Priestess!” he bellowed one last time, before the dark claimed us both.
Then silence.
I stumbled, weightless, dragged deeper, deeper. The light in my palm flickered, waned. My chest tightened as though the darkness pressed fingers around my heart. I reached out blindly, but there was no hand to grasp, no path to follow.
Only shadows.
And in them, something waiting.