Sunlight soaked into my skin, baking the lingering tension from my shoulders. I rested my forearms against the balcony's stone, an open book in my hands. I let the ambient life of Tirilla wash over me. Voices carried on the warm breeze, weaving with the trilling birdsong from the courtyard below. It was the comforting lull of a passing day. My finger brushed the rough parchment to flip the page.
The birdsong began to drift further and further away, until the world was swallowed by a deafening silence. It's too quiet. The hairs on my arms stood on end.
I lifted my head, my eyes locking onto the distant horizon. A unnatural coldness rushed in, snaking its way down my spine. The sun was gone, swallowed by a predatory darkness.
I stumbled backward, my book tumbling from my numb hands. From the creeping shadows in the lower city, unearthly shrieks erupted. My fingers dug into the cool stone of the balcony railing. Plumes of acrid smoke began to rise. Violent orange flames broke out, consuming building after building in a matter of heartbeats.
"Help!"
My gaze snapped to the street below. A shadowed figure lay motionless in the expanding gloom, a puddle of dark liquid pooling beneath them. I needed to move. I needed to—
Bang.
I spun on my heels, my heart hammering against my ribs. The oak of my chamber door splintered inward. My breath hitched. Two of my father's knights stepped over the ruined threshold. Their polished silver armor was smeared with fresh crimson. Yet, beneath their visors, their faces were hollow, devoid of human emotion.
Why are they here, when the city is burning below?
"What… what do you need?" I managed to stammer, shrinking back.
"Your father wishes to see you," the closest guard droned. His voice was flat, as he advanced into my room.
"Father? What for?"
Neither spoke. The knight lunged. His armored hand clamping down around my wrist. I threw my entire weight backward until my spine collided with the balcony railing. "Let me go!"
His grip was immovable. The second knight seized my free wrist, hauling me forward with effortless strength. My boots scraped against the polished floor, fighting for purchase that wasn't there.
They dragged me into the corridor, and I froze, the scream dying in my throat.
Just ahead, the lifeless body of a servant lay sprawled in the gloom. The stone walls around him were marred with deep gouges, as if clawed by some colossal beast. Down the connecting hall, a lone knight sprinted toward us.
An unnatural shadow slithered from the ceiling, dropping like a shroud. It engulfed the fleeing knight. He vanished into the dark, leaving behind nothing but the echo of his running footsteps.
"What… what is happening?" I whispered, my voice trembling.
The guards yanked my wrists. "Keep silent," the closer one snarled. For a fraction of a second, his eyes bulged with fear. "Or you will make us next."
Next for what? Before I could ask, a monstrous, inhuman shriek reverberated off the vaulted ceilings, shaking the dust from the chandeliers and swallowing my thoughts whole. My jaw clamped shut.
We rounded the final corner to the audience room. The grand oak doors hung wide open. As we stopped before the royal dais, a shove to my spine sent me plummeting. I struck the marble floor, the sharp impact of my knees shattering the silence of the vast chamber. Searing pain flooded my senses. A broken cry tore from my throat as my fingers scraped against the smooth stone, desperate for leverage to sit upright.
"Please… let me up." Tears blurred the edges of the grand room. The air thick in my lungs.
"Oh, Thalia," a voice drawled from the deep shadows of the dais.
My body shook uncontrollably. He discarded me years ago, a forgotten relic of a daughter. I staider at the pathetic reflection of my own face in the polished floor. "I… I'm sorry, Fath—"
"Sorry?" A bitter, echoing chuckle drifted down from the throne. "You have always been sorry. It is unbecoming of a princess."
Trembling, I lifted my gaze to meet his. He sat still. His glacial blue eyes pierced the gloom, burning almost white in the low light as they raked over me.
The sharp sound of heels on marble pulled my attention to the right. Blair. Father's chief adviser. Why is she here? A fresh wave of dread crashed over me, cold and heavy.
Father shifted his gaze to her. An unsettling smile pulled at the corner of his mouth before vanishing. "You may begin."
My head snapped toward Blair.
Begin what? I forced my battered body to move, fighting through the blinding pain in my knees to stagger to my feet. Run. I have to run.
But an unnatural weigh settled over me, anchoring my boots to the marble. Blair's dark brown eyes danced with feverish excitement. With one elegant flick of her wrist, the shadows in the room awoke. Tendrils of dark mana wept from her fingertips, slithering across the polished floor like veins of black rot.
They surged upward, winding around my legs and torso, tightening like a rusted vise around me. I clawed at the unnatural magic, but my fingers passed right through the smoke. A silent scream tore at my throat. The crushing pressure threatened to snap my ribs in two, squeezing the last remnants of air from my lungs. My vision blurred, my mind fracturing into panicked shards as I fought the suffocating darkness. The ruined throne room spun around me until the black mana forced me back to my knees.
Blair leaned in, her perfume a sickening mix of dried roses and copper. Her long, lacquered black fingernails dug deep into the tender flesh of my jaw, forcing my face upward. The tendrils loosened just a fraction—just enough to let me take a weeping breath. I tried to pull away, but her nails pierced my skin, pinning me in place.
"At least," she whispered, her painted lips brushing against my ear, "now you can be useful. You should be happy."
"Blair, that is enough," Father commanded, his voice devoid of a single ounce of paternal warmth.
She shoved me backward. Her hand released my jaw as a slow, triumphant smirk twisted her face. The suffocating black tendrils slithered away, sinking back into the floor. But her cruel eyes no longer looked at me; they were fixed on something lurking in the dark behind my back.
The horrifying truth settled in my gut. They are going to kill me. But how—
A monstrous shriek tore through the grand hall, forcing me to curl in on myself, clamping my hands over my bleeding ears. I threw my head back, a horrified gasp catching in my throat.
Rising from the pooling darkness near the grand pillars was a massive entity of shifting shadows. It towered over my kneeling form. It possessed limbs that were mere suggestions of form, staggering in and out of reality, tipped with razor-sharp claws of solid darkness. I recognized the terror instantly, pulled from the forbidden pages of the royal library's ancient lore.
A Shadowveil.
Before I could even command my legs to twitch, appendages of freezing shadows whipped out from the creature's core. They lashed around my wrists and ankles, freezing my blood. Flooding my nose with the suffocating stench of rotting earth and ozone. The world pitched as my feet were yanked out from under me. My skull slammed against the polished marble. A choked gasp escaped my lips as my vision swam, the ornate ceiling dissolving into a chaotic blur.
I became dead weight, dragged backward across the smooth stone by the towering horror. The smooth glide of the marble gave way to the harsh, scraping resistance of dirt and grass. The methodical, unhurried footsteps of my father and Blair trailed behind my dragged body, a chilling, rhythmic counterpoint to the distant, rising screams of our dying people. Choking smoke poured into my lungs with every ragged breath.
Without warning, the dragging ceased. The Shadowveil's tendrils pulled my arms and legs wide, staking me to the earth.
A rhythmic, pulsing red light began to bleed through the gloom, illuminating the crushed grass beneath me. I forced my head to the side, my eyes catching on the intricate drawings gouged deep into the dirt all around me. A dark magic circle. Sensation slowly returned to my freezing extremities, and my fingers dug into the damp soil. Hot tears welled in my eyes, spilling over my temples into my hair.
Please, let me go, though the desperate plea was nothing more than a silent, trembling breath.
A young woman stepped out of the periphery and into the eerie crimson glow. She looked to be in her early twenties, her midnight hair starkly woven with streaks of silver that caught the pulsing red light. Her luminous blue eyes shone with unshed tears, which soon spilled over, carving shining paths down her pale cheeks as she stared down at my ruined state.
"I'm so sorry," she breathed, her voice breaking.
Then stop this, I begged her, my wide eyes screaming the words my paralyzed throat could not form.
She gave a slow, defeated shake of her head. "I… I—"
"Lyra, cease your sniveling and begin!" Blair's voice cut through the damp night air, echoing from the darkness just beyond the circle's glowing edge.
Lyra flinched. She squeezed her eyes shut, a sob escaping her lips. Her trembling hands descended, pressing flat against my sternum.
Something unnatural shifted deep within my chest. A volatile power my body had never possessed began to flood through my fragile veins. Is this… mana? It was being violently forced into my body. The brief, confusing illusion of warmth curdled into paralyzing agony. A burning inferno spread through the very architecture of my soul, igniting every nerve ending, every fiber of my being. It was an overwhelming, ruinous torrent of energy that crackled and swirled within me, seeking a way out. Lyra stumbled backward.
Cold sweat poured down my temples. Suddenly, a sharp pain lanced through my abdomen, tearing me open from the inside out. My throat constricted around a bloody scream that refused to surface. Instead, I gasped—a wet, bubbling choke that rattled deep in my chest. Warm, metallic liquid began to pool beneath my back, soaking into my dress, spreading outward and mingling with the sinister crimson light of the runes. As my life poured into the earth, the red glow of the magic circle pulsed faster, hungrier.
With a final hiss, the crimson light sputtered and died.
Impenetrable darkness enveloped me. I couldn't see the sky, couldn't move a single severed muscle, couldn't even feel the wet grass beneath my spine
A voice came slithering into the deepest, most secret recesses of my mind. It did not speak into my ears, but directly into my consciousness. It resonated with the crushing weight of millennia of malice, sending a final wave of soul-deep dread cascading through whatever was left of me.
"You are all mine now," it whispered, vibrating with a possessive hunger.
A high-pitched ringing shattered my hearing, drowning out the wind and the fire. Fighting to stay conscious was an agonizing, futile battle against a suffocating tidal wave of blackness dragging me under. My breath hitched in shallow, failing gasps that barely stirred the air in my collapsing lungs.
"No! You follow me, K'tthar!" my father's voice roared.
A chilling, resonant chuckle echoed through the void of my mind.
"That's... amusing." Suddenly, the night erupted. A fresh, deafening chorus of monstrous shrieks joined the screams of the dying town, creating a cacophony of the damned that vibrated in the bedrock of the earth itself.
This was the end. There was no coming back from the threshold I had just been dragged across. The world was ending, and I was bleeding out at its horrific epicenter.
My eyelids grew heavy. The frantic flutter of my pulse against the encroaching darkness beat one final time in my throat... twice... then stilled entirely.
The searing pain, the suffocating fear, the apocalyptic chaos—all of it receded into the distance, falling away into a vast nothingness.