Shadeclaw's lungs burned, but it was a distant thing, like a memory of pain instead of pain itself.
What he felt now—what filled his veins, his bones, the spaces between his thoughts—was the cold, sharp edge of decision.
The shadows of the valley had gone quiet, waiting.
Umbrakrell stood in front of him, tall and composed, a ripple of darkness given the vague outline of a man. His crescent blade rested loosely in one hand, his other held casually behind his back as if this entire confrontation was an examination, not a fight.
Jade hung in the air behind the Lord of Shadows, wrapped in dozens of spears made of night, points hovering inches from his throat, heart, stomach. The slightest twitch of Umbrakrell's fingers and Jade would be shredded into pieces that would never touch light again.
"Choose," Umbrakrell said softly.
His voice wasn't mocking.
It was worse.
It was patient.
"Fight me alone," he continued, eyes glowing faint silver, "and he lives. Attempt to interfere, and he dies. Simple terms."
Shadeclaw's claws scraped the obsidian beneath his feet.
Every instinct in him screamed to attack, to lunge past Umbrakrell and tear those shadow-spears apart. His muscles coiled. His heart pounded a drumbeat of violence against his ribs.
But he could smell it.
The trap layered on the trap.
Umbrakrell had wrapped this entire valley in his element. The shadows here answered to him the way lesser wolves answered to a pack alpha. Every inch of darkness was his eye. Every spear, his finger.
If Shadeclaw made the wrong move, Jade would die before his feet left the ground.
Jade's jaw clenched. He gave Shadeclaw a look that was half a grin and half a dare.
"Don't you dare hold back for me," Jade called hoarsely. "If you've got a bigger form, now's the time to—"
A shadow spear shifted toward his throat.
He went quiet.
Umbrakrell watched Shadeclaw steadily.
"Well?" he asked. "Shadowchild. What kind of wolf are you?"
Shadeclaw's pulse roared in his ears.
He forced himself to breathe.
In.
Out.
In again.
His claws retracted a fraction. His shoulders settled, just enough to keep his muscles from exploding.
"Let him go," Shadeclaw said, voice low. "You have my word. I'll face you alone."
Umbrakrell studied him for a moment, like a hunter considering whether the prey in front of him was worth the chase.
Then, with a flick of his hand, the shadow spears retreated.
Jade fell to the ground with a grunt, rolling once before groaning and pushing himself up onto his elbows.
"Ugh… I'm gonna feel that in the morning," he muttered. "Shadeclaw, if you die, I'm going to kill you."
"Back," Shadeclaw said without looking at him. "Now."
Jade saw his eyes then.
They glowed brighter than before, not just with rage, but with something deeper. Something older.
"Yeah," Jade said quietly. "Okay."
He dragged himself back toward the dropship, clutching his side where a spear tip had grazed him. Blood seeped through his fingers, but he forced himself to stay conscious, to keep watching.
He didn't know if Shadeclaw would need help.
He did know Shadeclaw had never needed it more.
The valley fell into a hush so quiet even the wind seemed afraid to move.
Umbrakrell raised his blade.
"Then come," he said, voice soft. "Show me what your blood remembers."
Shadeclaw smiled. It was a hard, ugly thing.
"You asked for it."
He moved.
There was no warning, no coiling of muscles, no telegraph.
One heartbeat he stood several meters away.
The next he was in front of Umbrakrell, claws already descending.
Umbrakrell parried with his crescent blade. The impact sent a shockwave slamming outward, shattering stone outcroppings and forcing Jade to shield his face.
Shadeclaw's form blurred.
Claw. Slash. Bite. Twist. His attacks came in flurries, each angle more vicious than the last. Umbrakrell matched them with elegant motions, blade always exactly where it needed to be and never more.
"You were not trained like this," Umbrakrell observed between impacts.
Shadeclaw snarled, "Don't need training to kill you."
"You are wrong," Umbrakrell said.
He stepped inside Shadeclaw's guard with a motion so small it was nearly invisible. His palm struck Shadeclaw's chest.
The blow looked light.
It sent Shadeclaw crashing backward as if a mountain had punched him.
He slammed into a jagged spire hard enough to crack it, rock exploding outward.
Jade winced. "That looked… not ideal."
Shadeclaw slid down the shattered stone and hit the ground with a grunt. For a second his vision went black.
He staggered up again.
He got his feet underneath him.
He moved forward.
"Good," Umbrakrell said quietly. "Again."
They clashed.
And again.
And again.
Every time Shadeclaw closed the distance, every time he pushed harder, Umbrakrell adapted. He moved more quickly, parried more precisely, struck more ruthlessly. He never gloated. Never raised his voice.
He didn't need to.
He was winning.
"You are anger and loyalty wrapped in bones and fur," he said, as if lecturing. "You confuse devotion for strength. It is why you will always be used."
Shadeclaw spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. "You talk too much."
He lunged again.
Umbrakrell pivoted aside, blade singing as it sliced across Shadeclaw's shoulder. Blood sprayed.
Shadeclaw barely felt it.
"Stop thinking," Umbrakrell advised. "Start remembering."
Shadeclaw's snarl cut off in his throat.
Start… remembering?
Something tugged at the back of his mind. Not words. Not images. A feeling.
Of running through a forest so dark the stars were rumors.
Of chasing things that should never be allowed to cross into the light.
Of standing at the doorway between worlds and refusing to let anything pass.
His claws flexed.
Umbrakrell's eyes glowed brighter.
"There," he murmured. "You feel it now. The echo of what your kind once were."
Shadeclaw hissed. "My kind?"
"The Shadowborn. Gate-guardians between realms. Hunters of what does not belong." Umbrakrell parried another strike, pushing Shadeclaw's arm aside with casual precision. "You were never meant to be tame."
Shadeclaw staggered, panting.
"You killed them," he managed. "All of them."
Umbrakrell tilted his head. "We culled what would not bend."
His voice didn't change.
The words did.
Shadeclaw saw red.
"I'll never bend," he snarled.
"Yes," Umbrakrell said simply. "And that is why you might live."
He shifted his weight.
The air tightened.
Shadeclaw felt it an instant before it hit—the sudden spike in pressure, the wrongness in the shadows themselves.
He moved to dodge.
He wasn't fast enough.
Umbrakrell's hand pressed against his chest—
—and the world inverted.
Every ounce of darkness in the valley surged toward Shadeclaw, collapsing inward like a black hole, slamming into his body with crushing force. He felt the shadows trying to bore into him, to replace him, to overwrite him.
He dropped to his knees, claws digging grooves into the stone.
His vision blurred into static.
Umbrakrell's voice drifted through the storm inside his head.
"This is what true shadow feels like," he said. "Not the trickle you've tasted. The tide."
Shadeclaw's back arched. A growl ripped from his throat, half-wolf, half-something else.
The shadows tried to rip him apart from the inside.
Jade saw him convulse, saw black veins crawling under his skin.
He pushed himself up, stumbling. "Shadeclaw!"
Umbrakrell snapped his fingers.
A wall of darkness slammed between Jade and Shadeclaw, forcing Jade back on his heels.
"You will not interfere again," Umbrakrell said without looking.
Jade slammed his fist into the wall.
It didn't budge.
Shadeclaw clawed at the ground as the shadows poured into him, as if the entire valley was trying to cram itself into his bones.
"Become what you are," Umbrakrell murmured. "Or break."
Shadeclaw's heartbeat hammered louder, louder, drowning everything out.
He thought of Mira.
Of Jade.
Of Danny's stupid, stubborn face.
Of Jake's reckless courage.
Of Swift's dry sarcasm that always hid something like care.
Of Jimmy's waffles and Soren's growls.
Of a promise he'd made, quietly, without words:
I will not lose them.
His claws tore bloody streaks in the rock as he roared against the pressure.
The roar cracked.
Changed.
The shadows didn't crush him.
They ignited.
His fur darkened from charcoal to pitch, soaking in the light until none escaped. His eyes blazed with twin points of silver fire. His teeth lengthened. His frame expanded, muscles coiling with new, terrifying strength.
Umbrakrell's brows lifted a fraction.
"There," he said. "The true form. The gate-wolf. A shadow that hunts shadow."
Shadeclaw rose onto all fours, then two legs, then something in between. His presence filled the valley, oppressive and wild and utterly untamed.
Jade stared through the thinning darkness, eyes wide.
"Oh… oh that's metal," he whispered.
Shadeclaw didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Words were far behind him now.
Umbrakrell exhaled slowly, shadow-blade forming longer in his hand.
"This," he said quietly, almost approving, "is the correct evolution."
He stepped forward.
Shadeclaw met him.
They collided.
Shadow against shadow, fang against blade, two predators so perfectly attuned to killing that the valley itself started pulling apart under the strain. Stones cracked. Ridges collapsed. The sky above them warped, darkening as if unwilling to witness what was happening below.
Jade had to crawl out of the way to avoid being swallowed by a sudden fissure.
"Okay, okay—I liked it better when the enemies were regular-size," he muttered, dragging himself up onto a ledge.
Their fight became a blur.
Shadeclaw struck faster than before, without wasted motion, guided by instincts older than his name. Umbrakrell answered every blow with his own, matching step for step, slash for slash. They weren't just fighting.
They were testing each other.
"You see it now," Umbrakrell said between clashes. "Your purpose. The doorway."
Shadeclaw's reply was a sweeping strike that carved half a hill in two.
He didn't care about purpose.
He cared about her.
Umbrakrell drove a knee into his ribs. Shadeclaw snapped at his throat. The Lord of Shadows twisted away, leaving a trail of dark mist. The wolf tore through it, inhaling power he should not have been able to touch.
Umbrakrell's eyes narrowed.
"You're adapting," he said.
Shadeclaw slammed both hands into the ground.
A wave of shadow surged outward, devouring the light for hundreds of meters. For the first time, Umbrakrell was forced to jump, his form momentarily unstable as Shadeclaw's darkness met his own.
Jade grabbed onto a rock as the shockwave rushed past. "HEY! Give a guy a warning next time!"
The wave dissipated.
Umbrakrell landed lightly on a jagged spire, cloak of shadow fluttering.
He was smiling now.
Not smugly.
Genuinely.
"You might actually become interesting," he said softly.
Shadeclaw's chest heaved. He was shaking. Not from fear.
From the effort of holding on to himself.
Because under all the power, under the adrenaline, something in him trembled with the knowledge that if he slipped even a little further, there might not be a way back.
Umbrakrell could see it.
He stepped down off the spire, blade lowering.
"One more step," he said. "Past the edge. Become what I know you can be… and I will take you to her."
Shadeclaw's growl rumbled like a fault line ready to break.
"You want me to lose myself."
"Yes," Umbrakrell said simply. "Because the version of you that clings to his old self? That wolf dies. The one who lets go? That one might live."
From his ledge, Jade forced air into his lungs.
"Shadeclaw," he rasped. "Don't listen to him. You're more than his damn test."
Shadeclaw didn't look at him.
His eyes were locked on Umbrakrell.
"Become what you are," Umbrakrell repeated. "Or lose everything."
The words dug into Shadeclaw like hooks.
Mira.
The team.
The life he'd started to build.
He could feel something inside him tipping, some inner lock grinding in its frame.
If he let it fall…
He wasn't sure there would be anything left of "Shadeclaw" afterward.
The shadows pressed around him.
And then—
something else cut through.
Not a shadow.
Not a word.
Not a thought.
A roar.
It trembled through the valley like a shockwave from another world.
Deep.
Golden.
Unmistakable.
Danny.
Shadeclaw's head snapped up, instinctively, as if he could see through the sky. His heart jolted painfully in his chest. The sound wasn't close, wasn't loud, but it was there, threading through shadow and stone.
He heard the dragon.
He remembered the dragon.
The one who had thrown himself into death-light to protect them, who kept promising he'd get stronger even when he didn't understand what that meant.
Danny's roar faded into echoes.
Shadeclaw's breathing slowed.
The shadows around him quivered, less like a tide trying to drown him and more like something waiting for direction.
"You hear him," Umbrakrell said quietly. "Good. Remember what that costs you."
Shadeclaw looked at him.
And for the first time since the shadows exploded around him, there was clarity in his gaze.
Not human.
Not tame.
But clear.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
The valley held its breath.
He opened his jaws.
And roared.
It wasn't like before.
This wasn't a sound ripped from a breaking mind.
It was controlled.
Centered.
A declaration that he was still here.
That he could be the monster and still choose where his teeth went.
The roar tore up through the valley, shredding the clouds, sending cracks racing across the stones.
Jade flinched, then grinned weakly. "Yeah. That's the guy."
Umbrakrell's eyes narrowed, studying him anew.
Shadeclaw's chest heaved. His shadow-wolf form still raged along his limbs, power still burning cold and wild—but at the center of it all, there was a small, stubborn core of himself that refused to yield.
"I become myself," he growled. "Not what you want me to be."
Umbrakrell's expression shifted—just a hair.
Not annoyance.
Consideration.
Before either of them could move again—
another sound rolled across the valley.
A second roar.
Not dragon.
Wolf.
Distant, but vast.
Older.
Heavier.
Carrying the weight of command and crown.
It answered Shadeclaw's cry like a king answering a soldier's call.
The sound washed over the battlefield, over Umbrakrell, over Jade, over the splintered stone itself.
Shadeclaw froze.
His eyes widened.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
Because he knew that voice.
His heart slammed once, hard enough to hurt.
"…No," he whispered.
But the echo of the roar rolled on, filled with promise and power.
An ally.
A king.
Somewhere out there.
Coming.
Umbrakrell's gaze flicked toward the horizon, then back to Shadeclaw.
"Well," the shadow-lord murmured, eyes gleaming. "It seems the game has become more… complicated."
Shadeclaw's claws tightened.
For the first time, the shadows around him didn't feel like a prison.
They felt like a path.
And he was not the only predator on it anymore.
The wolf-king's roar faded into the dark.
The valley trembled with what was coming.