POV: Raine
The girl was going to die in approximately three hours.
I knelt beside her unconscious body, studying the curse marks spreading across her skin like cracks in porcelain. Black veins pulsed with dark magic, consuming her from the inside out. Fascinating. Horrifying. And absolutely not my problem.
I should walk away. Right now.
"You're an idiot, Raine," I muttered to myself, checking her pulse. Weak and irregular. Her breathing was shallow. The curse had already invaded her major organs. "Just leave her. You don't save people anymore. Remember?"
But my hands were already moving, tilting her head back to check her airway. Old habits from my Wizard Guild days, back when I actually cared about helping people. Back before I learned that helping people only got you betrayed.
I sat back on my heels, running calculations in my head. Shadow Elf. I'd only read about them in ancient texts—magical beings that hadn't existed for a thousand years. The Guild had hunted them to extinction because they were "too dangerous." Translation: too powerful for the Guild to control.
And here was one dying in the dirt, probably the last of her kind.
"Not your concern," I told myself firmly. "Stand up. Walk away. Let nature take its course."
I stood up.
Took one step toward the trees.
Then I heard her whimper—a tiny, broken sound that stabbed straight through the walls I'd built around myself.
"Damn it." I turned back, glaring at her unconscious face. "This is a mistake. You know this is a mistake, right?"
She didn't answer. Obviously.
I checked her curse marks again, this time really looking. The pattern was unusual—not random corruption but structured, like the curse was rewriting her entire magical essence. Transforming her into something new.
That's when I noticed something that made my breath catch.
Where my fingers touched her wrist, my dark magic flickered and... stabilized?
I pulled my hand away quickly, staring at my palm. My magic was always unstable—wild and dangerous, eating away at my life force every time I used it. That's what dark magic did. It was powerful but came with a price.
But for just a second, when I touched her, my magic had calmed. Gone steady and strong instead of chaotic.
"Impossible," I whispered.
I touched her wrist again, deliberately this time. The same thing happened—my magic settled, like puzzle pieces clicking into place. Her cursed blood was somehow balancing my dark magic.
A wild, reckless idea formed in my mind.
"You're going to regret this," I told myself.
Then I bent down, scooped the girl into my arms, and was surprised by how light she was. She weighed almost nothing, all bones and dying curse magic.
I closed my eyes and reached for the shadows between the trees. Dark magic answered my call, and I felt the familiar pain as it drained my life force. But I was used to pain. Pain was the price of power.
The shadows opened like a doorway, and I stepped through.
Reality twisted and folded. For a heartbeat, we existed nowhere and everywhere at once. Then we emerged in the clearing behind my tower, and the portal snapped shut behind us.
The tower rose before us—three stories of dark stone, covered in ivy and protected by wards that made it invisible to anyone who didn't know exactly where to look. Home. Prison. Sanctuary. Depending on the day.
I kicked open the door and carried the girl inside. My workspace took up most of the first floor—shelves crammed with books, tables covered in magical ingredients, and a large workbench in the center where I conducted my experiments.
I laid her on the workbench, careful not to jar her too much. Up close, in the light of my magical lamps, I could see her face clearly for the first time.
Beautiful. Even dying, even cursed, she was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache. Silver—no, black now—hair spread across my workbench like spilled ink. Delicate elven features. Skin pale as starlight.
"Stop it," I snapped at myself. "Beauty doesn't matter if she's dead in three hours."
I moved quickly, gathering ingredients from my shelves. Shadowroot extract. Moonflower petals. Dragon's blood resin. A vial of my own blood from this morning's experiment. Each ingredient represented weeks of dangerous foraging, but I grabbed them without hesitation.
Why was I doing this? I didn't even know her name.
Because you're lonely, a voice whispered in my head. Because you've been alone for five years and you're tired of it.
"Shut up," I told the voice.
I mixed the ingredients in a silver bowl, speaking the old words that made them glow with power. The suppression ritual was dangerous—one of the most complex spells I knew. It wouldn't cure her curse, but it might slow it down enough to keep her alive.
Might. Maybe. Possibly.
Great odds.
I drew symbols in the air above her body—ancient runes that pulsed with dark magic. They hung there, glowing purple and black, waiting for the final step.
The dangerous part.
I placed both hands on her chest, right over her heart, and took a deep breath.
"If this kills us both, I'm going to be really annoyed," I muttered.
Then I released my dark magic.
Power poured from my hands into her body. I felt it flow through her veins, chasing the curse, trying to contain it. But her curse fought back, writhing and snapping like a living thing.
Pain exploded through my skull. Blood dripped from my nose. This was why dark magic was forbidden—it didn't just use your power, it used your life.
"Come on," I gritted through clenched teeth. "Work, damn you."
My magic pushed deeper, and suddenly I felt it—her essence, the core of who she was. Not the curse. Not the corruption. Her.
She was terrified. Heartbroken. Alone.
But underneath all that pain, she was strong. Stronger than she knew.
Our magics touched, and the world exploded.
A surge of power slammed through both of us—not painful, but intense, overwhelming. I felt her curse wrapping around my dark magic, and instead of fighting, they... merged?
My unstable magic suddenly locked into place, steady and controlled. Her consuming curse stopped spreading, held in check by my power.
We were balancing each other.
"What the—" I gasped, my eyes flying open.
The symbols I'd drawn were glowing brighter than they should, pulsing in rhythm with our heartbeats. Her heartbeat and mine, synchronized.
Then I felt something else. Something that made my blood run cold.
A connection. A bond. Linking her magic to mine, my life to hers.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no. That wasn't supposed to happen."
But it had happened. I could feel her now, feel her life force intertwined with mine like threads woven together. We weren't just magically connected—we were bound.
I tried to pull away, to break the ritual, but it was too late. The magic had already set. The bond was formed.
"Stupid," I hissed at myself. "Reckless. Idiotic."
The girl's eyes moved beneath her closed lids. She was starting to wake up.
Panic hit me. What was I supposed to tell her? "Hi, welcome to my tower, by the way I accidentally bound our life forces together and now if one of us dies the other dies too"?
I stepped back from the workbench, wiping blood from my nose. My hands were shaking. When was the last time my hands shook?
The girl's breathing had stabilized. The black veins had stopped spreading—they were still there, still visible, but no longer consuming her. The ritual had worked.
At what cost, though?
I felt her consciousness rising toward wakefulness. Soon she'd open her eyes and see me, and I'd have to explain what I'd done. How I'd saved her life but trapped us both in the process.
"Should have walked away," I muttered, pacing across the room. "Should have left her in the forest. Should have—"
Her eyes opened.
Silver. Her eyes were still silver, untouched by the curse. They locked onto mine, confused and frightened and alive.
"Where—" she started to say, her voice hoarse.
Then she looked down at her hands, at the curse marks still visible on her skin. At the black veins that now pulsed in rhythm with my own heartbeat.
Her eyes widened in horror. "What did you do to me?"
Before I could answer, before I could explain, I felt it—a spike of pure terror shooting through our bond. Her fear was so intense it made my knees weak.
And underneath that fear, I felt something else. A presence. Dark and ancient and aware.
The curse wasn't just magic.
It was alive.
And it had been waiting for this moment.
The girl's eyes rolled back in her head. She started convulsing on the workbench, her body arching in pain. Black smoke poured from her mouth, and I heard a voice—not hers, but something speaking through her:
"Finally," it hissed. "A new host. And a bonus—two souls for the price of one."
Horror crashed over me as I realized what I'd done.
The curse wasn't consuming her.
It was waking up.
And now, thanks to our bond, it could consume us both.
The girl's hand shot out with inhuman speed, grabbing my wrist. Her grip was impossibly strong. When she opened her eyes again, they weren't silver anymore.
They were completely black.
"Hello, Raine Nightshade," the thing inside her said with her voice. "Thank you for the invitation. I've been trapped in that tree for so very long. But now..."
The girl's body sat up, moving in ways that weren't natural, joints bending wrong. The smile on her face was all wrong—too wide, too sharp.
"Now I have a Shadow Elf and a dark wizard bound together. Two powerful vessels. This is going to be fun."
My mind raced. I'd made a terrible mistake. The Shadowthorn Tree hadn't just cursed her—it had planted something inside her. Something ancient and evil that had been waiting for someone stupid enough to form a magical bond with her.
Someone like me.
The thing wearing the girl's face tilted her head, studying me. "Don't worry, wizard. I'll let you both live. I need your bodies functional, after all. But your minds? Your souls?" That terrible smile widened. "Those belong to me now."
Then the girl's eyes rolled back again, and she collapsed onto the workbench, unconscious.
The room fell silent except for our synchronized breathing.
I stood there, frozen, feeling the bond between us pulse with dark energy.
What had I done?
And more importantly—how was I going to fix it before that thing inside her woke up and devoured us both?