The night didn't breathe.
It clawed.
Arianna ran, the hem of her cloak whipping against bramble and tombstone as she and Kaelith tore through the graveyard's shattered iron gate. Cold wind sliced at her face, tasting metallic, tasting wrong. Behind them, the earth still trembled from the thing that had risen—the twisted sentinel Solaryn had corrupted into a hunter.
Kaelith's grip locked around her wrist, pulling her forward faster than her lungs could keep pace. His movements were fluid despite the gash streaking across his side. She had seen it when his coat tore—blackened skin, seared by celestial fire.
He hadn't mentioned it. He hadn't slowed.
He hadn't made a sound.
"Keep your pace," he snapped, breath fogging into the freezing air. "Don't look back."
She looked back.
A mistake.
The sentinel—once a gravebound protector—scraped out of the burial mist like a thing peeling its way from nightmares. Its limbs were jagged stone knitted with corrupted astral threads, its eye sockets lit with sickly gold. Every step it took cracked frost and bone beneath feet that weren't meant to walk.
Arianna's throat tightened. "Kaelith—Kaelith, it's—"
"I know." His voice dipped lower, darker. "Focus on running."
But the world buckled around her. The night dimmed, the stars flickered. Her pulse rippled in strange patterns underneath her skin—like something inside her was trying to wake fully, to stretch, to break loose.
Her foot hit a root. She stumbled.
Kaelith yanked her upright mid-stumble without breaking stride, but the sentinel closed another ten paces behind them.
"It's fast," she whispered.
"It's corrupted," he growled. "They always are."
They burst out of the graveyard and into the skeletal forest beyond. Branches snapped as Kaelith dragged her through twisting paths she'd never have found on her own. Fog swirled thick and dark, like something alive. Somewhere ahead, a ravine groaned with the weight of rushing water.
The sentinel screeched.
No—called.
A sound like shattering metal and burning wind. The forest recoiled around it. Arianna felt the vibration ring through her bones, through her memories, through the part of her soul she didn't understand.
Kaelith stiffened. "It's marking us."
"What does that mean?"
"It means it won't stop until one of us is dead."
Branches blurred past her vision, her breath heavy in her ears, but the cold under her skin was spreading—the familiar strange cold that had been rising ever since she met him.
No, not since she met him.
Since she touched him.
Since he spoke her name with that fractured look, like he knew her from a life she didn't remember.
The ground trembled again. The sentinel was gaining.
Arianna's panic surged, warping the shadows around her into curling shapes. Her fingertips sparked. Her breath thickened into frost.
Kaelith noticed. "Arianna," he warned, voice razor-sharp, "don't use your power. Not here."
She didn't understand how to stop it.
"I'm not trying to!"
The shadows erupted anyway—wild, unformed, lashing out like whips. One sliced a branch clean off a tree. Another crackled against a stone and shattered upon impact.
Kaelith cursed under his breath. "You're destabilizing. Keep your breathing steady."
"I'm trying!"
The sentinel's golden eyes lit the trees behind them, burning through the fog. It hurdled forward, brute force crashing through trunks as if they were reeds.
Arianna felt her heart wrench—felt something inside her crack. A memory? A voice? A forgotten promise?
It slipped away before she could grasp it.
Kaelith suddenly stopped.
She collided into him, chest slamming against his back, breath knocked out of her. "What—"
"Step behind me," he said quietly.
His tone sent a shiver through her. Not anger.
Not fear.
Something far more dangerous.
She stepped back.
Kaelith planted his feet. The fog around him swirled, tightening. His shadow stretched and split at the edges, curling like wings made of smoke.
The sentinel burst into view, its jagged jaw opening in a scream that warped the air.
Kaelith exhaled once.
And the world went still.
Shadow magic radiated from him in spirals—controlled, disciplined, deliberate. It spread like an eclipse blooming outward. Arianna's breath caught at the sight. She felt it pulse against her skin, cold and old and overwhelming.
This was Kaelith unleashed—part Fallen King, part something he refused to name.
His voice came out low, ancient:
"Frail creature of corrupted light…
you reek of Solaryn's desperation."
The sentinel lunged, claws outstretched.
Kaelith moved faster.
Shadow surged from his palm in a blade-like arc, slicing through the creature's chest. Stone shattered. Light flickered. The sentinel staggered, keening like broken metal grinding.
But it wasn't enough to kill it.
Arianna gasped. "Kaelith—"
"It's not dying because Solaryn's bound it." A snarl edged his words. "He's using it as a conduit. He's watching us through it."
Her blood froze.
Solaryn was watching?
Through that thing?
Kaelith's jaw tightened, eyes narrowing with a fury she'd never seen in him. "I'm cutting the tether."
He darted forward, shadows slashing with precision. The sentinel struck back, claws raking across Kaelith's arm. He didn't flinch—didn't stop. Every blow he landed was aimed at the creature's glowing core.
Arianna felt her hands burn again with that eerie cold. She stepped forward involuntarily.
"Don't!" Kaelith barked. "Stay back!"
"But you're hurt!"
"This injury is inconsequential. Your activation is not."
She swallowed hard, fighting the urge to intervene. Her power crackled, wanting out. Wanting to join his.
The sentinel lunged one final time—straight at Kaelith's throat.
Arianna screamed his name.
Kaelith didn't even blink.
His hand plunged into the sentinel's chest, shadows spiraling around his arm like a vortex. The golden core flickered, then burst like a dying star. Solaryn's tether severed with a sharp, echoing crack that shook the treetops.
The sentinel collapsed, turning to ash.
Silence returned—heavy, trembling, cold.
Kaelith staggered.
Arianna reached him instantly, catching his arm. "You're— you're bleeding."
"Just a scratch."
He wiped his blood with the back of his hand, but the gash across his ribs seeped through his shirt. His breath faltered, and for the first time she saw strain shadow his eyes.
Not weakness.
Cost.
"You saved us," she whispered.
He turned away, gaze fixed on the darkness between the trees. "We're not safe. Solaryn knows the direction we ran. We need to move."
His voice shook—not with fear.
With something dangerously close to anger.
At Solaryn.
At himself.
At fate.
At her.
The branches rustled in the distance.
Another wrongness stirred in the forest.
"Kaelith?" Arianna whispered. "Is something else coming?"
He didn't answer.
He grabbed her hand again—gentler this time. "We're nearly at the boundary. Once we cross it, I can hide us."
"But he'll still track us," she said softly.
Kaelith met her gaze, eyes shadowed by fatigue and something heavier. "Not if I cloak you."
"Cloak me?"
"It conceals your presence from celestial detection."
His fingers tightened around hers.
"But it requires contact. Continuous contact."
Her heart jolted.
Before she could reply, the forest groaned behind them—trees bending as something massive moved in their wake.
Kaelith pulled her close.
"Stay with me," he said, voice low. "No matter what you feel. No matter what you remember. Don't let go."
Arianna swallowed hard. "I won't."
He inhaled once, closing his eyes.
The shadows around them rose like a tide.
Something roared in the distance.
Arianna's pulse echoed with hers, power prickling under her skin as the world darkened and they vanished into the shadow's.