Elias woke too quickly.
One moment he was half-dreaming of frost and flame, and the next—
the side of his bed simply wasn't where he expected it to be.
He rolled.
Once.
Twice.
And then—
he hit the stone floor.
Or rather…
He should have.
Instead, the floor dissolved beneath him with the soft, weightless sensation of stepping into a puddle deeper than it looked.
A quiet breath left him.
"…oh no."
And then he fell.
Not downward.
Not through.
In.
Shadows rose up like cool water, swallowing him in a single, fluid motion—no resistance, no hesitation, as if he had been a missing piece sliding back where he belonged.
He didn't fight.
He didn't even think.
Because the fall wasn't frightening.
It was familiar.
Natural.
Like something he had done a thousand times before and simply forgotten.
The darkness settled around him, not heavy, not suffocating—
waiting, weirdly cool and quiet too.
Elias opened his eyes.
Not literal sight—shadow-sight,or perhaps sensing would be more accurate a different kind of seeing. The space around him stretched like a room made of dim, shifting charcoal ink. Shapes rippled on the surface—echoes of the physical world above.
His heartbeat slowed instantly.
The shadows curled around him in slow spirals, like cats greeting their long-absent caretaker.
Elias exhaled.
"…I forgot about this, this was my goal after the hunter incident, and now.I just fell in like some bumbling hero from the storytellers stories meant to amuse children" he murmured equally vexed and amused. He was only mildly surprised he heard himself at all in here.
The shadows trembled in amusement—or so he thought.
He stepped forward, and the ground bent and reformed beneath his feet, smooth and soft like packed velvet. Everything responded to him with flawless synchrony.
Too flawless.
He frowned.
He lifted his hand.
A ribbon of shadow rose to meet it—perfectly timed.
"…Wait."
He lifted the other hand.
Another ribbon rose—perfectly mirroring the first.
He inhaled.
Deep.
Slow.
"No," he whispered. "You're not… reacting."
He said, realizing that he could feel and understand much better now that he himself fully emerged in shadows.
The shadows stilled.
They didn't recoil.
They didn't comfort.
They simply stopped.
Not because they felt anything.
Because he had stopped.
Elias's pulse hitched.
He though "Come closer."
And the shadows slid toward him.
He though "Move back."
They retreated.
He thought "Curl."
They curled.
He thought "Why aren't you answering me?"
They froze—motionless—because he was holding his breath.
A weight gathered in his chest.
A painful, sinking weight.
"…You're not alive," he whispered.
The shadows didn't respond—because shadows do not respond.
They only follow.
Elias's throat tightened.
"When I was a child… I thought you were talking to me."
The shadows shifted faintly.
Not in emotion.
In reflection.
When he was sad.
they drooped.
He felt fear.
So they trembled.
He suddenly realized something.
So they went utterly, perfectly still. As to mimic how his thoughts still and crystallize to ideas.
He whispered:
"…You're mirrors."
His own voice echoed through the layer.
Not answered.
Reflected.
He sank to his knees in the shadows, legs losing strength from the revelation.
"I wasn't speaking to you," he whispered.
"I was speaking… to myself."
All those years—
The comfort after nightmares.
The trembling when he was afraid.
The pulses when he felt proud.
The gentle swirls when he was lonely.
It had never been a creature responding.
It had been him.
His truth.
His longing.
His instincts.
His emotions.
The shadows weren't alive.
They were honest.
More honest than he had ever been with himself.
A quiet breath shuddered out of him.
"…I thought you were my friends."
The shadows dimmed in sympathy.
His sympathy.
He closed his eyes and pressed a palm to the shifting surface.
"It was me," he whispered. "It was always me."
What he couldn't show on his face he freely revealed through his shadows, every emotion, good, bad and the terrible,were always there. Perhaps that's how he first learned of emphatic talents of his, the ones he developed much further in last few weeks.
He stood slowly.
And that was when he saw it.
His silhouette.
Not dark.
Not subtle.
Not blending into shadow.
But glowing.
Not with light.
With presence, bright and undeniable, a sharp outline of identity blazing like a lantern inside ink.
He staggered.
"…Why am I—bright?"
He reached toward his own outline.
The glow pulsed, steady and inevitable.
He tried to dim.
He couldn't.
He tried to blend.
He couldn't.
He tried to hide.
And the shadows refused to swallow him.
Not because they rejected him.
Because they couldn't.
Because he was not shadow.
He was something casting a shadow so powerful that the shadow realm couldn't erase it.
He whispered:
"…No wonder they saw me."
Winter feys even the child.
The forest.
The Hunter.
Everyone and everything that sensed him—
They weren't sensing shadow.
They were sensing him.
Bright.
Present.
Impossible to ignore.
His first rational thought cut through the realization:I need to dim this. I need something to dampen what I am.
His second thought:Cloth. Shadowwoven cloth. If shapes hold form… they can hold presence.
His third:I will have to learn to hide from myself before I can hide from anyone else.
He steadied his breath.
He lifted a hand.
The shadows rose in perfect obedience—not devotion.
Not companionship.
Reflection.
He whispered:
"…Thank you. But I won't ask you to carry my feelings anymore."
The shadows pulsed—
his acceptance of himself pulsing back.
Then he stepped upward—
and rose gently out of the floor, returning to his room.
Alone.
But for the first time since childhood—
honestly alone.
And somehow…
That felt like power.
———————————————————————
Elias stayed standing still beside his bed long after he rose from the shadow-layer.
Not moving.
Barely breathing.
He pressed both palms to his face and let himself feel—really feel—without suppression, without shadow-reflection numbing it before it reached him.
The truth sat heavy in his chest:
They were never alive.
They were never speaking to me.
I was talking to myself the whole time…
and believing I wasn't.
A strange, fragile sorrow pulled at his ribs.
Not heartbreak. Similar but not quite.
Not loss, he didn't lose anything.
But the ache of realizing a childhood safe place had never been real. Like finally waking up from a long dream and realizing that it was simply that. A dream
The shadows shifted around him, quiet and neutral—no comfort, no fear, no personalities pretending to support him. Just obedient contours following his posture as the truth of him settled.
Elias rested his forehead against his knees.
"…I named you," he whispered. He remembered his own childish voice whispering to the shadows, making it very serious that only HIS shadow had a name nobody else had one.
He remembered:
That night under the orphanage roof, terrified and alone—
the shadows had curled around him and he had whispered into them as if they were listening:
"Stay with me, Equanox" he had just learned the word, it was the most complex word he knew so he gave it to his friend as name.
He had believed they answered.
They hadn't.
He had answered himself.
A soft exhale left him.
"…Then I suppose I should grow up."
Not cruelly.
Not bitterly.
Just honestly.
The shadows curled tighter—not affection, but agreement.
Truth reflecting truth.
Elias wiped his face with the heel of his hand and sat upright. His chest still ached, but something inside him felt lighter. Not comforted—free.
"Alright," he murmured. "Then I walk forward. On my own feet."
A quiet, steady resolve settled into place—stronger than anything the shadows had ever mirrored.
He was done relying on illusions of companionship.
Done assuming safety where there was none.
Done mistaking reflection for response.
He would build real structures now.
Real control.
Real tools.
Real protection.
Starting with the ability to hide…
from everyone.
Even from Aster.
Even from himself, if need be.
He spaced, couple of times, then stopped in the center of the newly-expanded room.
His heartbeat slowed.
Clear.
Focused.
Steady.
"If I can slip fully into shadow," he whispered, "without trace, without sound—then I have something no operative should have."
The shadows rippled faintly.
"A last resort."
He exhaled.
"A way out."
He would not tell Aster. She was too much part of the council and the system.
He didn't trust Council, not to imprison him or worse to get his abilities to their own people.
This new ability wasn't a technique.
It was an escape hatch.
A wildcard.
A power,people would kill him for long before they understood it.
"No one must know," he murmured. "Not until I'm sure, I can fend for myself ."
The shadows echoed his stillness.
Not agreement—just reflection.
He pulled the half-finished shadow-fabric from his cot.
Held it up to the lantern-light.
Light touched it—
—and the fabric dimly absorbed the glow.
Not ideal.
He lowered it.
"Can you block light?" he asked softly.
The shadows around him thickened in response—a negative answer.
"No. You don't reflect. You swallow."
He hooked the cloth over a chair and pulled the lantern closer.
The effect was immediate:
The closer the light—
the thinner the cloth became.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Too transparent. I need something that behaves like cloth, not like dark glass."
He dimmed the lantern.
The cloth regained solidity.
He brightened it again.
The fabric flickered at the edges, thinning, dissolving, then re-knitting itself.
He muttered:
"So shadow-woven fabric fails under direct illumination unless the concept is reinforced."
He set the lantern aside and drew a deeper ribbon of shadow into his palm.
The Ever-Frost shimmered faintly within the weave.
"…Winter gives cohesion," he murmured. "But Winter is stillness. Too much of it… and light will always weaken the form."
He thought of fire.
Of the single candle's flame he'd absorbed.
Fire was motion.
Fire resisted light because it was light.
He summoned a tiny filament of shadow containing the fire-concept and stitched it into the cloth.
The fabric changed—barely.
When he lifted it toward the lantern again, the cloth held longer.
Not perfectly.
Not wholly.
But it resisted.
He nodded.
"Fire for resistance. Frost for structure. Shadow for truth."
He lowered the lantern.
It flickered.
And the fabric remained intact.
Still imperfect.
Still dissolving at the edges.
But undeniably stronger.
He sat back, a tired smile tugging at his mouth.
"A cloak, then," he whispered. "One that dims my presence. One that holds form. One that bends light just enough."
He imagined it.
Shadow-woven.
Fire-tempered.
Winter-stabilized.
Not magical.
Not enchanted.
Just willed to be.
A tool the world had never seen.
A tool only he could make.
He folded the fabric square once.
Twice.
It didn't dissolve.
The shadows curled around him, this time reflecting something new:
Satisfaction.
Elias whispered:
"We're not done. Not nearly. But this… this is a beginning."
———————————————————————
Couple of days after his revelations,Aster found him in the lower hall after drills, as if she'd been waiting for him specifically.
She always moved like a thought given purpose — quiet, precise, impossible to avoid.
"Elias," she said.
He stopped.
Aster's head tilted. Not suspicious. Not angry.
Evaluating.
Her gaze dropped to the floor.
To his feet.
To the shadows.
A slow, unsettling silence stretched between them.
Finally she said, very carefully:
"…Your shadows are quiet today."
Elias froze.
Aster stepped closer. A single step — but one that made the shadows behind him recoil as if the air had sharpened.
"Not quiet," she corrected. "Contained."
Another step.
"Not contained," she murmured. "Concealed."
She studied him — truly studied him — mask unreadable but intent sharp enough to pry truth out of bone.
"Elias," she said softly, "shadows do not behave like this unless something has changed in you."
His throat tightened.
Not good.
Not good at all.
Aster lifted a gloved hand and held it a hair's breadth from his sleeve — not touching, just sensing.
Even that small gesture made the shadows ripple in a way they never had before: smooth, controlled, cooperative.
Aster inhaled.
"You have always practically leaked shadows" she said. "Bleeding through your posture, your emotions, your breath. But now…"
She circled him slowly.
"…you hold it."
A dangerous quietness entered her tone.
"You hide it."
She stopped in front of him again.
"What did you do?"
The question struck like a blade.
Not cruel.
Exact.
And Elias knew, instantly, that his answer mattered.
For his future.
For Aster's trust.
For the Council's paranoia.
For the secret he now carried.
Aster waited. Her mask gleaming, as if light wandered its contours for an effect.
Still as a blade resting on silk.
Elias spoke calmly:
"I learned to keep them from drifting."
Aster's head tilted a fraction. "How?"
"Discipline," he said simply. "You told me to restrain them. To anchor them. So I did."
Aster did not move.
Not for several heartbeats.
Then:
"…They obey you perfectly."
Elias gave the faintest shrug.
"Mostly, it's not perfect, but as you can see good enough"
Aster stepped closer again — too close — forcing the shadows at his feet to flatten even more tightly, as if afraid to misbehave under her scrutiny.
"I have trained hundreds of Shadow Path initiates," she murmured. "None of them learned containment in four weeks"
"I'm not like the others," Elias said.
"Exactly," Aster replied softly. "Which is why your secrets matter."
Elias kept his breathing even.
Aster studied him one more moment, then finally stepped back.
"Very well. Keep them contained," she said. "But understand this—"
Her voice dropped to a razor-thin whisper.
" We can't let you outside until you've mastered hiding yourself better, it should be your highest priority for now. This is a good development keep it up"
Elias bowed his head.
"Understood."
Aster left.
And only then did the shadows relax again.
He had lied.
Not fully.
But enough.
And the secret of slipping fully into shadow —
He would guard that with his life.
When Aster's footsteps faded, Elias let out a breath he didn't remember holding.
The shadows crawled slowly up the wall behind him—reflective again, mirroring the tension he'd buried inside.
He whispered:
"Some truths stay mine."
The shadows agreed only because he did.
Tomorrow, he would begin work on the cloak.
Tonight, he would try not to fall through his own floor again.
———————————————————————
Elias waited until mid-morning, when Aster was buried under paperwork and Rellin was busy recovering from "light exercise," which in Rellin's vocabulary meant "nearly dying at least twice."
Perfect.
He closed his shutters, darkened the room, and drew out a bundle of shadow-thread — the clean, cold, perfectly stable material he had spent the last two nights perfecting.
Time for a cloak.
He shaped the shadows carefully, weaving concept into concept the way Aster had forced him to learn:
Silence for subtlety
Frost-cohesion for stability
Storm-precision for edge clarity
Ash-endurance for tear resistance
Spatial-depth so it could blend into corners without tearing holes in reality
Thread by thread, the cloak formed — not heavy, not light, neither fabric nor illusion.
A soft, perfectly matte shimmer rolled across it like moonlight on cold stone.
Elias held it up.
"…It should work."
The shadows purred.
He placed the cloak over his shoulders.
It settled beautifully, sleek as ink, quiet as breath.
He stepped toward the door, heart beating fast with the satisfaction of someone about to prove himself clever and competent and—
He opened the door.
Sunlight touched the cloak.
And it exploded.
Not violently
But in the catastrophic, humiliating sense of a masterpiece dissolving into a poof of embarrassed darkness.
The shadow-cloth unraveled instantly into a cloud of startled night, scattered like ash caught in wind, evaporating so fast Elias barely registered the sensation.
One heartbeat: he wore a cloak.
Next heartbeat: he was standing in the doorway completely unharmed and completely uncloaked, covered in a faint dusting of dead shadow-concepts drifting down like the world's saddest snow.
Aster, somewhere far down the hall, shouted:
"WHAT WAS THAT?!"
Elias shut the door immediately.
Silence.
He stared at the single remaining thread of shadow drifting downward.
He caught it between his fingers.
It flickered once, pathetically, and died.
A long beat passed.
"…Right," he whispered to himself. "Light."
Shadows obeyed concepts, and the concept of light was: no thank you.
He rubbed his face.
Then paused.
Then froze.
Then said aloud, with the dawning clarity of a man discovering fire after trying to rub rocks together upside-down for three days:
"…Why am I trying to build a cloak out of nothing?"
He looked at his room.
At the shadows.
At his bare hands.
Then at the mundane cloak folded neatly on his chair — a simple operative's cloak, slightly worn at the edges, fabric soft but sturdy.
He walked over.
Touched it.
The fabric accepted his shadow-thread immediately, pulling it in like a wick draws oil.
Elias inhaled sharply.
"Of course."
Real fabric already understood how to be a cloak.
It had weight, texture, boundary.
Shadows just needed an anchor.
He lifted the cloak again.
Darkened the room.
Summoned a thin ribbon of shadow and gently threaded it into the seams.
The cloak darkened.
Deepened.
in color and presence.
The fabric drank in the shadow-concepts willingly, like a cup filling with water it didn't know it had been thirsty for.
Elias stepped back.
"…So much easier."
He tried it on.
It fit perfectly.
He pulled up the hood.
He exhaled.
Now for the test—
He cracked the shutters open.
A single beam of sunlight touched the cloak.
The cloak remained intact.
He didn't explode.
It didn't explode.
Success.
Elias let out a slow, satisfied breath.
Then—
A soft knock sounded at his door.
"Elias?" Rellin called faintly. "Did something… burst? I heard Aster shout something that sounded like 'For the Magician's sake, not again' which is never good."
Elias opened the door.
Rellin stood there, blinking at him.
His eyes widened.
"…That cloak is darker than the last one."
Elias blinked. "You saw that huh?"
"No," Rellin said deadpan "I was standing,few steps away from your door, when you opened it with cloak that then proceeded to loudly die, and completely missed it"
He squinted. "Is this one going to explode too?"
"No," Elias said confidently.
Rellin poked it.
It did not melt.
He stared at Elias with awe and dread in equal measure.
"So very cool," he whispered.
Aster stormed down the corridor.
"ELIAS MARLOW!"
Elias instantly hid behind Rellin.
Rellin screamed.
The cloak did not dissolve.
Small victories.
———————————————————————
Aster arrived like an omen — too quiet, too fast, too sharp.
Elias barely had time to pull Rellin out of his hiding position before she stepped into his doorway, mask angled like she was preparing to interrogate a war criminal.
"Elias," she said, each syllable a professionally sharpened blade, "what anomaly just occurred in this room?"
Elias opened his mouth.
Rellin opened his mouth.
Elias kicked Rellin and he shut his mouth again.
"It was just a… prototype," Elias said evenly.
Aster's head snapped toward the cloak.
She froze.
Completely.
Her posture went from alert to calculating so fast even the shadows recoiled from her boots.
"…Explain," she said.
She didn't move.
She didn't breathe.
Elias cleared his throat. "Cloak prototype. For the Shadow Path. I've been experimenting with shadow-woven fabrics as field tools. You said operatives need better ways to blend into unlit environments, so—"
"I said," Aster replied slowly, "that you could study shadow-cloth theory. I did not say you could circumvent three centuries of failed research in a single week."
"He made one explode earlier." Rellin pointed out helpfully
Aster ignored him.
She stepped forward and lifted the cloak with the same caution usually reserved for cursed artifacts.
Her gloved fingers traced the seams.
Then the folds.
Then the weight.
Then the place where material stopped behaving like fabric and started behaving like something else entirely.
Elias braced.
Aster said nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
For several seconds.
Then—
"…Elias."
"Yes, Prime-Three?"
"Why," she asked gently — too gently — "does the shadow density remain stable in active light?"
"Oh, I anchored it," Elias said casually.
Aster's mask tilted.
"You anchored it," she repeated.
"Yes. To real fabric. Shadows prefer a structure to wrap around."
Aster inhaled sharply.
"Prefer," she echoed faintly. "Prefer. Shadows do not prefer, Elias. They do not make aesthetic choices. They are not assistants at a tailor's—"
She stopped mid-rant, pressed both hands flat against her mask, and exhaled through the nose vents like a kettle trying not to scream.
Elias continued, calm and helpful:
"I realized constructing an entire cloak from shadow alone creates instability when exposed to strong illumination. Attaching the concept of the cloak to an existing physical textile—"
"—eliminates conceptual drift," Aster finished hollowly.
She was staring at him like he had just rewritten a textbook by accident.
"Correct," Elias said.
Aster stared at him.
She stared at the cloak.
She stared at the wall behind him.
Then back to the cloak.
"…Elias," she said slowly, "you are not supposed to innovate this fast."
"I'm not trying to."
"That," she whispered sharply, "is the worst part."
She turned the cloak over again, hands trembling ever so slightly.
"The Council will want to see this," she murmured.
"No," Elias said immediately.
Aster paused. "No?"
"This is early-stage," he said. "Unstable. And I don't want it associated with my evaluations yet."
Aster studied him.
A long moment passed.
Then she nodded — just once.
"…Good," she said. "Correct decision. They must never see your work before I understand it first."
Elias blinked. "Is it that dangerous?"
"Elias," Aster said gently, "if you submitted this cloak to the Council, they would either promote you immediately… or launch ten separate investigations to determine whether you are a disguised Fey emissary."
"Both seem inconvenient," Elias offered.
Aster made a sound that was not quite a sigh and not quite a groan.
"Profoundly."
She draped the cloak over his arm.
"Continue refining it. Quietly. Slowly. And Elias?"
"Yes, Prime-Three?"
Her voice softened into something that felt like the shadow of concern:
"If this cloak is only your first prototype…
then I need you to understand something."
Elias tilted his head.
Aster leaned in, mask inches from his face.
"You are no longer allowed to have unsupervised free time."
"…What?"
"I'm assigning you extra rotational duties."
"Why?"
"To slow you down."
"That seems counterproductive."
Aster whispered:
"It is not for your benefit, Elias. It is for mine. If you break another branch of magical theory this week, I will have to eat a scribe."
Rellin muttered, "Should I hide?"
"Yes," Aster and Elias said simultaneously.
Aster straightened.
"One last question," she said.
Elias waited.
"Why is the cloak's shadow presence so… quiet? Your earlier work always fluttered around you."
Elias considered.
Thought carefully.
And lied with perfect calm:
"I learned to keep them still."
Aster studied him a long time.
Finally, she nodded.
"Good. Continue doing so."
She turned to leave, cloak rustling.
At the door she paused.
"Elias."
"Yes?"
"If you ever… ever… create a cloak that makes you vanish entirely—"
Elias froze.
Rellin froze.
Aster finished, voice low:
"—tell me before you use it."
She stepped out.
The door shut behind her.
Elias exhaled.