Chapter 21
AMARIA
The chamber announced itself before I reached it—a pocket of cold that bit through my clothes, air so still it felt like holding your breath. A single torch crackled near the far wall, throwing shadows that seemed to move on their own.
Dreadscale didn't look up when I entered.
He stood at the chamber's center, arm extended, fingers releasing a throwing star in a single, fluid motion. Show-off. Though I suppose when you're that lethal, it stops being a performance. The blade spun through the dark—
A tendril of shadow followed.
Ink-black and alive, the darkness coiled around the star like a second skin. It guided the weapon, an extension of will made visible. The star struck the far wall with a soft thunk, and the shadow dissolved, leaving only a faint, shivering scorch mark.
I watched the mark fade. Watched the dragon tattoo on his spine flare ember-orange, scales shifting with a life of their own before settling back to a slow, rhythmic tide.
He wields his mark like a limb. I wield mine like a grenade with the pin half out.
Dreadscale drew another star in a single, fluid motion. Still no acknowledgment. Either he was testing me, or I was already being studied.
"Pain is the ink your shadow writes in, Scar-Bearer." His voice scraped like gravel over stone. He didn't turn. "Are you ready to bleed?"
I stepped into the firelight. Let him see my face.
"I'm ready," I said. I moved further into the light.
He turned then. Those dark, primal eyes found mine.
"You're ready to look upon what you refused before?"
The memory of my last attempt surged up unbidden—the flood of grief and shame, the way I'd run like a coward before he could crack me all the way open.
I held his gaze.
"I am." The words came out a vow. "I did five heartbeats during the first trial. I'll do eight by the end of today."
His eyes sharpened with assessment.
"You need thirty heartbeats to retrieve the Codex," he said. "And fifty to attempt the Veil ritual at least." He let that land. "You will do eight by the end of this session. Ten by tomorrow."
I swallowed. Nodded.
He led me toward the chamber's center, where the pyre had collapsed into a bed of smoldering embers. Heat radiated from it in waves, warring with the cold that pressed in from the stone walls. Nothing like training in a room that can't decide if it wants to freeze you or cook you. Very motivating.
"Fusing Shadow and Light doesn't start as harmony," he said. "It's a war. You'll train until one stops flinching."
"How do I stop flinching?"
He turned to face me, close enough that his presence pressed against my senses. "You have to stop denying what it shows you."
I felt him open his Mark. The Mirrorheart stretched and woke, sending a prickle across my skin as the air went thin.
"Breathe," he said. "Let it surface. What does it show you this time?"
Not again. Not like before.
Everything constricted. My lungs forgot how to work. I could feel the walls slamming up before I'd even consciously decided to build them.
"It doesn't matter," I snapped. "I'm not here to dissect my shadows. I'm here to command them."
A slow smirk spread across his face.
On anyone else, it might have been reassuring. On Dreadscale, it was terrifying.
"One does not command what one fears."
Holy hell. Something about the way he said it—patient, certain, completely unbothered by my deflection—made heat creep up the back of my neck. Focus. Focus.
"Again," he said. "I'll only hold the mirror for five seconds. One goal for the first step." He tapped my Marks. "When you feel that constricting in your chest? When you hold your breath? You're blocking success before you've begun. One step at a time."
I looked at the floor. Shame crawled up my throat—I was supposed to be the sundered soul, the key to healing the Veil, and here I was needing baby steps just to stop running from my own shadow.
His finger caught my chin. Lifted until I had no choice but to meet his eyes.
"One goal," he repeated. "Don't put up a wall for five seconds. That's success."
My throat locked. Every coherent thought had vacated my skull.
His smirk returned.
"Okay," I managed.
I stepped back. Put distance between us. Waited for my brain to start working again.
"Ready?"
I nodded before I could talk myself out of it.
The Mirrorheart reached for me. Soft this time—the lowest volume, like he'd turned down a dial I couldn't see. But even muted, it found its targets.
Pain first. Then heartache. Shame. Guilt. All of it crashing in at once, a wave that wanted to drag me under.
And there it was—the constriction. My lungs locked. The walls slammed up to protect me from myself.
Don't.
I forced my lungs to expand. Forced my shoulders to drop. It felt like free-falling off a cliff, nothing beneath me but dark and the certainty of impact.
But also—
Exhilarating.
I inhaled. Opened. Let the fear and hate and judgment just... sit there. Not fighting or drowning, just existing inside me like shadows that had always been there, waiting for me to stop running long enough to see them.
My eyes snapped open.
Dreadscale was beaming.
He grasped my shoulder—warm, solid, the first real approval I'd seen from him. "Perfect."
We trained for four more hours.
The relentless cycle of release and absorption. Exercises I didn't have names for. Him holding the mirror while I learned to stand in front of it without shattering. My muscles screamed. Sweat plastered my hair to my temples. My mind scraped raw, every nerve exposed.
But by the end of it, the constriction in my chest was barely a whisper.
Eight heartbeats. I held the fusion for eight heartbeats, breath uneven, every nerve-ending screaming under a pressure I couldn’t sustain.
Dreadscale released his Mirrorheart. Stepped back and studied me.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We begin again."
I nodded. I didn't trust my voice.
Exhaustion weighed me down, but a new clarity took root. The door I'd spent years barricading was cracked open, and whatever lived on the other side hadn't killed me yet. Low bar. I'd take it.
I peeled my eyes open to find Serenya already gone, her bedroll neatly folded, a cup of broth left steaming by my head.
Root broth—the dark, silty kind the camp cook made from whatever he could boil down.
It smelled like earth and salt. That girl could weather a siege and still wake up in time to mother me.
I didn't deserve her. But I’d drink the broth anyway.
My body had opinions about movement. My hips had locked overnight, seized into the shape of however I'd collapsed, and my left shoulder screamed the moment I tried to push upright.
The skin across my knuckles had split where I'd gripped the stone floor during the worst of it. Dried blood in the creases.
Last night I'd made it back to our quarters on pure stubbornness. Collapsed onto my bedroll still wearing my training clothes. Dead to the world before my head hit the thin pillow.
Now I was awake. And Dreadscale was waiting.
I got my legs under me. Wrapped both hands around the cup and chugged the broth—gritty and too hot. It hit me like a fist and I held still until the nausea passed.
Then I walked back into the dark.
The air in his chamber cut deeper at dawn.
The stone walls swallowed what little warmth there was, leaving only chill.
My breath plumed in the torchlight as I entered.
Salt from yesterday's sweat had dried on my neck, tight and dry where my collar rubbed.
I rolled my shoulders and shook out the tightness.
Dreadscale stood with his back to me.
"Eight is forgotten." He didn't turn. "Tonight it's ten, or we start again."
Gods help me.
The pyre had burned lower since yesterday. The embers threw more heat than light, and the stone floor radiated cold up through my boots and into my shins.
He unleashed the Mirrorheart before I could brace.
This wasn't the gentle unfurling from yesterday—the lowest volume, the careful approach. This crashed into me like a wave breaking against rock, wrenching me open, tearing through defenses I hadn't even known I still had. I staggered backward, caught myself at the last second.
One heartbeat. Two.
Dreadscale drove deeper.
He dug past the surface wounds and into the wreckage I'd hidden—clawing at memories I’d spent years burying. I recoiled, shame thickening in my throat.
A younger Serenya, eyes wide with fear. Me, smearing soot over my Shadowmark. Hiding myself. Protecting her from the truth of what I was.
The memory hit like a blow to the face.
"Open to your shadow," Dreadscale growled. No mercy in it. Just demand.
I dove inward. My mind screamed at me to slam the doors shut, to run the way I'd run before. But I forced myself to stay. Forced myself to feel every unbearable heartbeat, every second that dragged like a knife across bone.
"Every time your light flares, your shadow recoils," he said. "You think they're opposites. They're not. They're reflections."
"Reflections of what?" I gasped through clenched teeth.
"You."
The truth landed harder than anything the Mirrorheart had shown me.
I closed my eyes. Sank past the familiar hum of my Luminar, past the racing of my heart, until I stood on the threshold of Shadow itself.
It rose to meet me. Black smoke, hungry and vast.
How am I supposed to heal the Veil if I can't survive ten heartbeats?
"Feel it," Dreadscale rasped. "Not the absence of light. The presence of shadow. It is a part of you. Embrace it."
I tried. Reached for it. Stuttered.
"A lie is holding you back."
I glared at him, choking back a snarl.
"Name the lie," he snapped.
My throat closed. Resisting. But the Mirrorheart's pressure intensified, relentless, giving me nowhere to hide.
"No." I dug my heels in. Clenched my teeth. I would not give this up. Not this. Not the one thing I'd kept locked away from everyone—