Chapter Four
The distant pound of boots on cobblestones cuts through the air—sharp, urgent, relentless. Orders are barked. Reinforcements.
They must’ve seen the light. My light.
Shit.
Kael doesn’t move. He leans against the cell like he has all the time in the world, smirk etched on his face.
Ronyn’s eyes stay fixed on me, wide and expectant. “Are we gonna discuss this, Isk?”
“Not now,” I snap, pacing the corridor like the motion might help me claw together a plan. “We need to get back across the bridge before they lock it down.”
Think. Think, damn it.
The footsteps are closing in. I can feel them pressing in on The Tannery from all sides, tightening like a noose.
“I have my bow and eight arrows,” Ronyn offers, but we both know it’s not enough. Not against what’s coming.
“It’s not enough,” I bite back, sharper than I mean to.
He drags both hands through his hair in frustration but doesn’t argue.
Then Kael clears his throat, utterly unbothered. “If you’ll follow me.” He gestures toward the exit like he’s inviting us over for tea.
Ronyn and I exchange a look—equal parts suspicion and desperation.
We follow.
“And where, exactly, are you leading us?” I ask, tone clipped.
“I’m a Shadowweave,” Kael says simply, as if that explains anything. “I’ll take care of it.”
I stop dead. I know next to nothing about Shadowweaves.
Though I’ve spent my entire life separated from the Starborn, I’m no stranger to their skills.
Especially Aetherstrides and Bloodbonds who guard, hunt and raid through the slums and The Barrier District.
But Shadowweaves—they remain an enigma. Rare, coveted, and the full range of their skills elusive. “A Shadowweave?”
“Magic of the Obsidian Serpent constellation,” he explains. “Sentient shadows, illusory strikes, cloaks of darkness. You know?”
I stare. “No, I don’t fucking know.”
He turns to face me, sighing like I’m the difficult one. “It means the guards won’t see us until it’s too late. A cloak to hide us. Phantoms to distract them. Sound simple enough?”
Not in the fucking slightest.
I glance at Ronyn. His face is tight with scepticism.
Kael’s calm is infuriating. His certainty even more so.
“This better work,” I mutter, stepping in behind him, anyway.
Kael isn’t wrong. We are blanketed in the cover of his magic, moving through The Tannery like wraiths. The first guards burst into the main space, their torches casting wild shadows against the walls. They look around us, their eyes scanning the room. No—they look through us.
“I can feel magic,” one guard snarls. “Strong magic,” he adds, crouching low as he moves across the space like a predator tracking prey. He has to be an Aetherstride.
“There!” Another guard shouts, pointing at a broad-shouldered man near the corridor. He charges, sword raised, and slices clean through thin air. The illusion flickers, its edges distorting like ripples on water before vanishing.
It’s not just illusions. It’s intentional misdirection—Kael’s playing puppet master while we slip by like ghosts.
Another projection takes shape behind them, then another, and another—each one more lifelike than the last, their faces twisted into cruel sneers.
The guards falter, disillusioned, their shouts turning frantic as their blades meet nothing but shadows.
The air thickens with confusion, chaos, and a building sense of terror.
The guards lose all sense of reality, unable to determine what is real and what is a trick of the eye. It’s unsettling. Horrifying. But right now, we need this. Or we’d be outnumbered, unprepared... and probably dead.
We don’t stick around to watch. Under the shroud of Kael’s magic, we sprint for the bridge, the sound of guards’ boots and panicked cries echoing behind us.
He moves like a piece of the night itself, eyes never catching on his shape.
My chest burns—not from the effort, but from the cold wrongness of his magic.
The shadows snake around me, alive and unnerving, their icy tendrils slithering across my skin.
I push the thought away.
We don’t have time for doubts.
Not now.
The blockade at the bridge is nearly set, torches flickering as guards bark orders and position themselves.
We’ve arrived at the perfect time—any later, and we’d be trapped.
The faint clink of armor and low murmurs drift from the guards stationed at both ends.
My muscles coil with the instinct to run, but I force myself to stay silent, each step deliberate as we weave through unseen.
When my boots finally meet the familiar dirt of the slums, I exhale a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. The tension in my chest doesn’t fully leave, though. Not until we follow Kael’s lead to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of The Black Stream markets.
Inside, the moment his magic lifts, it’s like something slithers off my skin. Like stepping out of an oppressive cloak I didn’t ask to wear.
“Did you just remove the cloak?” I ask, my voice sharper than intended.
“Yes. Now you’ll have to go back to moving through the shadows like before,” he replies, amusement coating his tone.
I narrow my eyes. “How do you know how I moved before?”
Kael turns, the muscles in his jaw tight. He closes the space between us in a few strides, “I was born in the shadows, darling,” his voice comes out a low rumble. “I’ve made a home in them, and they’ve welcomed me.” His voice is heavy with unspoken meaning, as if daring me to dig deeper.
“Were you following me? Why?” The accusation in my tone is impossible to miss.
“When I saw you moving through The Underbelly, setting voidroot wagons ablaze, I was... intrigued,” he says with a note of sincerity.
My jaw tightens, and I ball my hands into fists. “Intrigued? I’m not some puzzle for you to solve, Shadow Boy.”
“Shadow Boy?” He chuckles, low and unhurried. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to wound me, Lightborne.”
The way the name rolls off his tongue—Lightborne—sends a prickle down my spine. I grip the hilt of my dagger, though I know it would do little against a man who can bend shadows to his will.
“Whatever your game is, I’m not playing.”
Kael steps closer, his gaze fixed on mine. “That’s where you’re wrong, Iskara—if that really is your name. You’re already playing. You just don’t know the rules yet.”
“Enlighten me then,” an invitation I’m not entirely sure I’d like him to fulfill.
“Look at your chest, Lightborne.”
I look down to see a faint imprint poking out above my threadbare tunic. A shimmering imprint of a constellation that spans my entire chest, the Stars reaching out to the tips of my collarbones.
It’s the Eye of Lireal.
I’d know it anywhere.
The constellation of the Lightborne. My constellation.
The threads shimmer like starlight beneath my skin—threads of silver fire etched across bone. Not ink. Not scars. Light.
It pulses under my gaze—like it knows I’m looking.
“What in the Stars...” Ronyn gasps, eyes wide. “And can we come back to the voidroot—”
“You are the Lightborne from the prophecy, whether you’re ready to admit that or not. ‘Her skin shall glow with threads of light’—I know you’ve heard that before,” Kael looks at me with an intensity that unsettles me.
I have heard it. Of course I’ve heard it. It’s been my mantra for twenty summers.
“Isk... is what he’s saying true? Are you... her?” He steps forward, softer. “Hey. Breathe. It’s still you in there, yeah?”
Still me. But everything feels too tight. Like my skin doesn’t fit anymore. Like I’m standing in someone else’s reality. Like I’m watching my own nightmares take form.
The weight of it slams into me. Prophecy. Destiny. Skin that glows like the fucking Stars. My breath comes too fast, too sharp. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
“I can’t do this right now! I need to go home.
I need to see my little sister. Leave me alone!
” I snarl the last words, thick with venom, the kind that leaves your throat raw.
My chest flares with light, and I clutch at my skin, beating my fist across my chest, urging it to go away. To beat it into submission.
I must look crazed, because both men remain silent. Ronyn watches me with trepidation, but Kael takes a step closer, as if moving to touch me. I recoil, before regaining my composure and turning on my heel.
“If you’d like more answers, I’ll be at the old outpost at the edge of the Frael Forest at daybreak,” Kael calls to me. “Bring your weapons. Your questions. I’ll be there.” All signs of the arrogant Shadowweave from earlier are gone, and I feel the spark of something genuine. Something real.
“You’re wrong—I’m no one.”
But even as I say it, something in me knows—this is only the beginning.