The boy awoke to a morning that felt unusually still. Even the faint shadow in the corner of his room lingered silently, as if it too were listening. The air smelled faintly of stone and wax, a smell he had grown used to but never found comforting. He rose and moved to the window, peering out at the city. From this height, the streets seemed calm, orderly. Children ran along narrow alleys, merchants called out their wares, and shadows clung to every corner, some twitching nervously, others spreading wide, their edges sharp.
He did not notice them until he stepped outside.
The Chancellor awaited him at the foot of the palace stairs. Her expression was unreadable. In her presence, even the city felt tempered, as though the world itself had learned caution.
"Today," she said, "you will see what happens when lies are not tended."
He followed her down into the lower districts, past the marketplace where traders had begun the morning rush. The farther they went, the denser the shadows became. They no longer lay obediently along walls or beneath feet. They writhed, collided, and sometimes detached themselves entirely from the source that had produced them. Some were small, like ink spills on stone; others were massive, twisting masses that reached toward the sky. The boy could feel their hunger before he saw it. It pressed on his chest, tugged at the rhythm of his breath, a subtle but insistent weight.
"This area was once prosperous," the Chancellor said. "Orderly. Controlled."
He looked around. The remnants of buildings leaned, roofs sagged, stones cracked and uneven. The air smelled of smoke and decay. Shadows of all sizes crowded the narrow streets, many moving as though alive, some feeding on the fear of those who dared pass among them. A few children peeked from doorways, watching cautiously, while adults hurried by, avoiding the areas where the shadows were densest.
"What happened here?" the boy asked.
The Chancellor paused. "Neglect. Complacency. Lies left unchecked. Even a single falsehood, left to fester, can grow into something that no amount of management can contain."
He watched a shadow stretch across a street and devour the small stack of baskets left by a vendor. The baskets vanished in the dark tendrils. The boy felt a shiver run through him. He wanted to speak, but he remembered the rules: intervention required guidance. Action without instruction could produce more harm than good.
A man stumbled out from an alley, tripping over a loose stone. He looked at the shadows with panic in his eyes. The boy noticed that even small lies had followed him: a shadow clung to the man's cloak, twisting and growing as he stumbled. The man fell to his knees and screamed, a sound swallowed immediately by the shifting darkness. The Chancellor's face remained impassive, but the boy could see the tension in her jaw. She made no move to intervene, yet her presence seemed to command some order among the shadows. They did not consume him immediately, but they waited, coiled, hungry, patient.
The boy's chest tightened. He could feel the pull of truth, sharp and insistent. He understood that if he spoke freely, if he allowed the unfiltered truth to escape, the shadows would react violently. And yet he also recognized that remaining silent permitted this chaos to continue.
They continued down the alleyways, moving through the district like observers. Some shadows recoiled at the Chancellor's presence, but others did not. One massive shape, darker and more substantial than the rest, shifted as they approached. Its surface rippled, forming impressions of faces twisted in fear, anger, and confusion. The boy realized immediately: it was the product of many intertwined lies, grown over months, perhaps years. A nightmare in waiting.
"This one is dangerous," the Chancellor said. "It has survived multiple interventions. Its hunger has become adaptive. Only a direct and guided acknowledgment of the truth will allow us to contain it."
"How do you contain something like that?" he asked.
"You do not fight it directly," she said. "You guide it. You give it direction. You do not attempt to erase it. You cannot. That is why we use controlled truth, carefully measured lies, and constant management. When left alone, shadows feed. They grow. They learn."
They stopped before a collapsed building. Its walls were scorched, blackened from some prior conflagration. A crowd had gathered at a safe distance, watching as a group of handlers moved cautiously through the debris, extracting shadows and tethering them with runes. The boy could see the strain on their faces. Even trained handlers were limited in what they could manage at once. Each shadow required attention, guidance, and containment. If even one escaped, the consequences could be fatal.
A young girl stepped forward, crying out that her family's home had been destroyed by the shadows overnight. She trembled, her small hands pressed to her chest. The boy felt the truth in her voice, raw and unfiltered. Her fear fed the shadows immediately, and he could feel the pressure of that truth pressing outward, destabilizing the surrounding dark forms. The Chancellor placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do not act," she whispered. "Observe."
He watched as handlers worked quickly, chanting under their breath, etching runes into the ground, using controlled speech to shape the movement of shadows. Gradually, the chaos diminished. Smaller shadows withdrew. Larger ones hesitated, guided into containment circles. The girl's sobs softened as her own shadow, the one born from fear and anger, was bound carefully. She looked at the boy with gratitude, unaware of his role as observer.
"Why me?" the boy asked when the Chancellor finally led him away from the chaos. "Why show me this?"
"Because," she said, "you are the only one who perceives the truth in its entirety. Others see fragments. You see the whole. That is both a gift and a danger. If you do not learn how to observe, how to measure, how to guide…you may either destroy everything or be destroyed by it."
The boy's mind absorbed her words as they returned to the palace. Every corner of the lower district, every collapsed roof, every frightened child and surviving family left its impression on him. The hunger of shadows was not just literal. It was symbolic. Neglected lies had consequences. The failure to measure truth carefully produced chaos. And the smallest acknowledgment, even a whisper of unfiltered honesty, could unbalance everything.
That night, he sat in the room without shadows. He thought of the collapsed buildings, of the hunger in the alleyways, of the girl who had cried for her home. The faint shadow on the wall had grown slightly, thicker than the day before. It seemed less tentative, more purposeful. He realized it was no longer simply waiting. It was learning.
Far beneath the palace, in the lower vaults where the great sleeper stirred, something shifted. Awareness deepened. The nightmares below were not just reacting, they were beginning to strategize. Patterns emerged in their movement. Hunger was no longer blind. It was patient, deliberate, and adaptive.
The boy understood what the Chancellor had meant: the kingdom depended not on the absence of truth but on its careful management. And yet, the truth remained, pulsing and insistent, a force that could not be fully contained.
He pressed his hands to his knees and stared at the shadow on the wall. It had learned something from the day's events. Its edges were sharper, more defined. It held itself steady, watching, waiting.
Tomorrow, he knew, would require more observation. The hunger of shadows would not abate, and the lessons of today would not be forgotten.
The boy closed his eyes, listening to the quiet. The city above slept fitfully, the lower districts whispered in unrest, and the deep places of the palace dreamed with growing awareness.