Sonder realized something quickly.
Even if they defeated a few of the undead, which she didn't even want to do, but had to, to survive, they were still losing the fight.
The beastfolk were bleeding from too many wounds.
And soon, her barriers flickered, thinning. Every time she caught one of the dark bolts shot at them, it cost her a great deal of strength, and it drained her.
But the attack only grew fiercer.
One bolt struck the hyena square in the ribs. He roared, stumbled and fell, fur and armor sizzling where the darkness touched and he was out of the fight.
Sonder reached toward him, calling up a shield as the next attack was already forming in the black.
There was no rhythm to the darkness. No opening to strike back.
Even if Sonder wouldn't die, the beastfolk would. This would be their grave if Sonder didn't do something to help.
She tightened her grip on her sword. She didn't want to kill anyone, but that was what a sword was for. It was a weapon of death and war.
The blade flickered in response, its light weak and exhausted, but still there; a tiny ember.
And that gave her hope.
She pulled inward, drawing on her power, and forced it into the steel.
Light surged. At first a trembling glow… and then a blaze.
Her sword ignited like a star in the dark of a midnight sky and she held it high; a beacon.
The cavern exploded with brilliance.
Shadows evaporated with an agonized hisses. The darkness that had clung like tar peeled away, flaking into dust midair. The undead shrieked in high, brittle cries, and then collapsed. Bones and rot clattering into inert heaps.
The roots clawing toward them shriveled, curling into dry husks that crumbled under the beastfolk's paws. Every creeping tendril of corruption lit up and burned away.
The cave was no longer a pit of nightmares, it was just stone and dirt. Cold and wet but real.
At its heart stood a single man.
He looked smaller than the silhouette had promised. Bent. Rot had eaten away at his flesh; bones pressed sharply against his skin. His eyes, which once must have had the same cadence of a bright hunter's like the bloodhound woman, fluttered with fear and confusion beneath drooping lids.
In his shaking hands, he clutched a staff, and thrust at its top was a jagged piece of glass: his shard.
It pulsed a sickly darkness, a lone ember of dark, resisting the light still pouring from Sonder's blade.
The man flinched from her radiance, shrinking away as if the brightness were flaying him alive.
The beastfolk froze behind Sonder, squinting as they could barely see past the light. Their hearts hammered and their breaths came as snarls and wheezes.
The bloodhound stepped forward. "Brother!" she yelled.
Her brother, the monster they had fought, lifted his head toward her voice.
And now that the shadows were gone…
He wasn't a silhouette anymore.
Just a broken creature. Terrified of the light. Holding onto a shard that had hollowed him out from the inside.