Asher's Point of View
The mirror burst into a thousand pieces.
I stared at my bloody hand, watching the cuts heal instantly. The broken glass shone on the floor like stars, each piece showing a different part of my face. Monster eyes. Monster teeth. Monster everything.
"One hundred years," I whispered to the empty room. "One hundred years of looking at that thing."
But I wasn't talking about the mirror. I was talking about myself.
The rain outside was getting worse, shaking the old castle walls. I liked storms. They were loud and angry and damaging, just like me. They made me feel less alone in my darkness.
I walked to the window and looked down at the town below. Moonhaven. Such a pretty name for a place I could never visit. The lights looked warm and friendly from up here, like tiny suns spread across the valley.
People lived in those lights. Families. Children. Normal people who didn't destroy everything they touched.
My hands started to shake, and I pressed them against the cold stone wall. The memories were coming back. They always came back when I looked at the town.
Fire. Screaming. A little girl with pigtails running from the fire I couldn't control.
"Stop it," I said out loud, but my voice cracked like I was still the young man I'd been a century ago. "Just stop."
But the memories kept coming, playing in my head like a terrible movie I couldn't turn off.
I had been different then. Younger. Stupider. I thought I could handle my shadow powers, thought I could be a hero. The village had been attacked by thieves, and I'd tried to help.
Instead, I'd killed everyone.
The shadows had poured out of me like black water, swallowing the entire town. The thieves died. The people died. Even the animals died. Everything I'd tried to protect was gone because of me.
I sank down onto the floor, pulling my knees to my chest like a scared child. The cuts on my hand had healed, but the pain in my chest never did. It had been burning there for a hundred years, getting worse every day.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the empty air. "I'm so sorry."
I said it every day. Every night. Sometimes I screamed it. Sometimes I whispered it. It never helped.
Thunder crashed outside, and suddenly I felt something I hadn't felt in decades.
A pull.
It started in my chest, right where the pain lived. Like someone was tugging on my heart with an unseen rope. The pull was coming from the town below, from somewhere in all those warm lights.
I jumped to my feet, my heart racing. What was that? Nothing had ever called to me before. Nothing had ever made me want to leave this castle.
The pull got stronger, and I found myself walking toward the door. My feet moved without my permission, taking me down the dark hallway toward the outside world.
"No," I said, grabbing the doorframe. "I can't leave. I'm too dangerous."
But the pull was like a magnet, and I was made of metal. It was stronger than my fear, stronger than my guilt, stronger than everything that had kept me hidden for a century.
I tried to fight it, but my shadow skills were responding to whatever was calling me. Dark tendrils whirled around my feet, pushing me forward. Even they wanted to go toward that pull.
"This is insane," I muttered, but I was already opening the door.
The storm hit me like a slap in the face. Rain soaked through my clothes in seconds, and the wind tried to push me back inside. But the pull was stronger than the storm.
I stepped outside for the first time in twenty years.
The world looked different. Brighter. More alive. Even in the dark storm, I could see colors I'd forgotten existed. The trees were dancing in the wind, and the rain tasted like... hope.
Hope. When was the last time I'd felt hope?
I started walking down the mountain road, my feet finding their way even though I could barely see. The pull was getting stronger with every step, leading me toward something important. Something that might change everything.
But what if I hurt someone again? What if my powers went crazy like they had in the village?
I stopped walking and stood in the rain, torn between the pull that wanted me to go forward and the fear that told me to go back.
That's when I felt it. Not just the pull, but something else. Someone else.
There was a person down there. A person who was somehow connected to the magic calling to me. I couldn't see them, but I could feel their feelings like they were my own.
Fear. Confusion. Wonder. And underneath it all, something that made my chest tight.
Kindness.
This person, whoever they were, had a kind heart. I could feel it from here, warm and bright like a light in the darkness. When was the last time I'd felt kindness? When was the last time anyone had been kind to me?
Never. In a hundred years of hiding, no one had ever been kind to the monster in the castle.
The pull got stronger, and I realized it wasn't just magic calling me. It was this person. This kind person who somehow needed me as much as I needed them.
My shadows started moving faster, excited. They wanted to meet this person too. For the first time in a century, my powers felt happy instead of angry.
But what if I destroyed this person like I'd ruined everyone else? What if my kindness-starved heart made me do something terrible?
I took another step toward town, then another. The pull was so strong now I couldn't have stopped if I'd wanted to. My feet took me faster and faster down the mountain, toward the warm lights and the kind heart that was calling to me.
The rain was washing away years of dust and sadness. The storm was singing in my ears. And for the first time in a hundred years, I felt alive.
That's when I saw the building. Old stone walls, tall windows, and a sign that said "Public Library." The pull was coming from there. The kind person was in there.
I could feel them so clearly now. A young woman, scared but brave. Holding something powerful. Something that belonged to me.
My heart stopped.
She had found the book. The one book in the world that could either save me or destroy me totally. The book I'd been looking for since the day I'd become a monster.
And she was reading it.
I ran toward the library, my shadows moving behind me like wings. After a hundred years of being alone, I was finally going to meet someone who might understand what I'd been through.
But as I got closer, I noticed something that made my blood turn to ice.
The book wasn't just talking to me. It was calling to others too. Dark others. Dangerous others who would do anything to get their hands on that much power.
They were coming for her. Coming for the kind person who had no idea what she'd just woken.
And I was the only one who could protect her.
Even if it meant becoming the monster I'd spent a century trying not to be.