Dawn in the Shadowfell was not a sunrise, but a shift in the quality of darkness. The permanent twilight deepened from indigo to a soft, pearlescent grey, and the false stars above the keep winked out one by one. In the main courtyard, a different kind of starlight gathered.
The party was small, handpicked for speed and discretion. A dozen of Kaelen's personal guard, the Shade-Walkers, sat astride their shadow-steeds—beings that looked less like horses and more like fragments of animated night, their eyes glowing embers of cobalt blue. Their captain, a severe Fae woman named Nylas with a scar cutting through the silver tattoos on her cheek, gave Elara a single, assessing nod. There was no warmth in it, only professional evaluation.
Lord Vorian was there, looking both honored and deeply anxious, his own modest escort of two retainers seeming frail beside the king's elite.
And then there was Kaelen and Elara.
He was the picture of a warrior-king in traveling gear: dark, reinforced leathers, a cloak the color of a starless sky, his silver circlet the only mark of rank. He moved with a lethal, efficient grace as he checked saddle straps and spoke in low tones with Nylas.
Elara, in the clothes he'd provided, felt like an echo of him. The fabric was supple and silent, the dark grey and green camouflage in the twilight forest. The null-silk threads woven into the sleeves and bodice hummed against her skin, a constant, subtle aid to the shield she held around herself—a tight, controlled void that made the world's magic feel slightly muffled, as if she were hearing it from underwater.
He helped her mount a shadow-steed assigned to her. It was smaller than his, a sleek, mare-like creature that shifted under her weight like flowing ink. Its skin was cool to the touch, and its presence in her senses was a quiet, deep pool of potential energy. As she settled into the saddle, she felt Kaelen's hand linger for a moment on her boot, a brief, grounding pressure.
"Keep your shield tight," he murmured, his eyes scanning the courtyard gates. "The moment we pass the wards of the keep, the magic of the wilds will test it. Do not engage. Just hold."
She nodded, her throat tight.
With a signal from Nylas, the gates—massive things of black iron and living crystal—swung open. The party moved out at a brisk, ground-eating trot that felt faster than any horse she'd ever ridden. The shadow-steeds' hooves made no sound on the pearl-dust road.
The world beyond the keep was a breathtaking expanse of unnatural beauty. The Obsidian Forest lived up to its name—trees like pillars of polished black glass, their leaves shimmering with faint internal light in shades of violet and deep blue. Bioluminescent fungi glowed in cascades from branches, and the air was thick with the scent of ozone and cool, damp earth. Magic was a physical presence here, a thrumming vitality that made her shield vibrate. It was clean, wild, and immense. The hunger inside her, cowed by her discipline and the null-silk, watched it all with a distant, aching want.
They rode for hours, the forest shifting around them. Kaelen pointed out landmarks in a low voice—a river of liquid silver where memory-spirits flickered, a grove of trees that sang harmonies when the wind passed through crystal leaves, the mossy ruins of a fortress that predated his reign, claimed by the forest.
It was a lesson in the scope of his kingdom, and it made her feel infinitesimally small.
As the false day reached its dim peak, the change began.
First, the colors leached away. The vibrant blues and violets of the forest faded to greys and sickly greens. The bioluminescence of the fungi guttered and died. The air, once rich with magic, grew thin and metallic-tasting. The shadow-steeds grew restless, their ember-eyes flickering.
Vorian urged his steed forward to ride beside Kaelen. "We approach the border of my holdings, Your Majesty. The Wither begins here."
The Wither. The name was apt.
The towering black-glass trees gave way to stunted, twisted things with bark the color of ash. The ground underfoot became brittle and crackled with a frost that wasn't cold. Silence descended, a thick, muffling blanket broken only by the uneasy snorts of the steeds and the crunch of their hooves on dead foliage. The magic here didn't just feel weak; it felt wounded. It was a dull, throbbing ache in Elara's newly sensitive perceptions.
And her shield was being tested.
Stray tendrils of the starving, sick magic brushed against the bubble of her void. They weren't attacks; they were probes of desperate curiosity, like cold fingers seeking warmth. Each contact sent a shiver through her concentration. She held firm, visualizing a sphere of perfect, smooth obsidian around herself.
Kaelen glanced back at her, a question in his eyes. She gave a slight, tight nod. Holding.
They crested a low, barren ridge, and the full scope of the Wither lay before them.
It was a valley, or what was left of one. The land was a monochrome wash of grey and silver-blue. Leafless trees stood like skeletal hands clawing at the bleak sky. A river, once likely sparkling, now oozed a viscous, phosphorescent slime. In the distance, she could see the outlines of a Fae settlement—elegant spires now crumbling, wrapped in creeping veins of the same sickly light that had pulsed in the containment chamber.
The air hummed with a low, painful frequency. The blight wasn't just on the land; it was the land here.
"Gods below," one of the Shade-Walkers muttered, a prayer or a curse.
Kaelen's expression was granite. "Vorian. Take us to the strongest point of contamination. The heart of the sickness."
The lord paled but obeyed, leading them down the ridge onto the blighted plain.
The closer they got, the more the hunger inside Elara stirred. Not with its usual ravenous desire, but with a strange, sympathetic resonance. This place was being consumed, hollowed out. It was a mirror of her own inner void, but forced, corrupted, and screaming.
They dismounted at the edge of the dying settlement. Kaelen ordered the guards to establish a perimeter. "Nylas, you're with us. Vorian, lead on."
The streets were empty, haunted. Doors hung askew. Windows were dark. The creeping silver-blue veins were everywhere, pulsing with a slow, malevolent rhythm. The source of the hum was ahead, in what had likely been the village square.
In the center of the square, there was no statue or fountain. There was a hole. Not in the ground, but in reality itself. A wound in the air, about the size of a cartwheel, ragged and weeping strands of corrupt magic. From it, the blight-vines spread out like radial cracks in glass. This was no feeding ground. This was an open artery.
"The breach," Vorian whispered, his voice trembling. "It appeared three moons ago. We cannot seal it. Anything we cast into it is… consumed."
Kaelen approached the wound cautiously, Nylas a protective half-step behind him, her hand on the hilt of her shadow-forged blade. He extended a hand, not touching it, feeling the flow of energy.
Elara didn't need to extend her hand. Her Siphon nature screamed at the proximity. The void within her didn't just resonate with the hollow land; it violently recognized the hole. This was a Siphon-wound, but twisted, mechanized. A tear in the fabric of magic, artificially sustained to bleed the land dry.
The pull was immense. Not just on the land, but on her. Her shield strained, the hungry vacuum of the breach tugging at the edges of her own emptiness. It was like standing at the edge of a whirlpool.
"Elara," Kaelen said, his voice sharp. "Can you feel it? The direction of the drain?"
Gritting her teeth against the dragging sensation, she pushed her senses past the scream of the wound, into the current of stolen energy flowing out of it. It was a torrent of lifeless, processed power, stripped of its character and vibrancy, streaming away in a single, focused direction.
"East-southeast," she gasped, the effort of holding her shield and tracing the flow making her vision swim. "It's flowing… like a river. To a specific point. It's not dissipating. It's being collected."
Kaelen's eyes blazed with fierce triumph. A trail. A destination.
At that moment, a crackle of energy shot from the wound, a lashing tendril of pure hunger. It bypassed Kaelen and Nylas, arrowed straight for Elara—for the rival void that was her.
Her shield buckled. The null-silk in her clothes flared hot. She stumbled back, but the tendril wrapped around her wrist, not burning, but draining. An icy numbness shot up her arm as the breach-tendril tried to siphon her.
Panic flashed, cold and pure. Then training took over.
Instead of fighting the pull, she did what Kaelen had taught her. She became the empty cup. But she turned the cup upside down. She focused the void within her, not as a passive space, but as a pressurized vortex, and she shoved it down the connection the tendril had created.
There was a silent, psychic shriek. The corrupt tendril, used to consuming weak, wild magic, met a disciplined, bottomless hunger of a different order. For a fraction of a second, the flow reversed. A surge of cold, toxic energy—the concentrated essence of the blight—flooded into Elara.
It was a thousand times worse than the sample. It was the heart of the disease.
The world whited out in agony and cold fire. She heard Kaelen shout her name, felt hands grab her as her legs gave way. The last thing she knew was the taste of poison and the terrifying, exhilarating knowledge that she had just taken a bite from the mouth of the beast.
And it had tasted her back.