The silence in Velthra's chamber was a living thing, thick with the scent of dried nightshade and old parchment. It settled over Elias like a shroud as he leaned closer to the desk, the candle's flame dancing in his wide eyes. Velthra slept, or pretended to, her form a still shadow upon the silk sheets of her bed, her breathing a slow, metronomic rhythm that did nothing to soothe the frantic beat of his own heart.
He held the page. The script was ancient, a forgotten dialect of the First Tongue. It was a map, not of a place, but of a ritual. A dangerous one.
A fool's errand, coming here. A bard's curiosity, he'd told himself, a thirst for a lost song. But this was no song. This was a shackle, a key to something that should have remained locked away. He had seen enough. With painstaking care, he moved to slide the page back into his pouch.
The whisper of parchment crinkling was the only sound.
Until it wasn't.
"Curious men often die too young."
Her eyes snapped open, twin shards of ruby in the gloom. There was no trace of sleep in them, only a cold, ancient clarity. She hadn't been sleeping at all. She had been waiting. A predator, allowing the prey to wander deeper into the trap.
Her voice, low and icy, was a spell in itself. Before Elias could stammer a reply, she lashed out. She didn't move from the bed, but the shadows in the room did. They peeled away from the corners, from beneath the heavy furniture, coalescing into a whip of tangible cold that struck the air where he'd been standing. The impact was a dull, guttural thud, and the force of it alone sent him stumbling back, knocking a silver ewer from its stand with a discordant clang.
There was no negotiation in her eyes, no room for explanation. There was only the sentence, already passed.
Elias bolted. He burst from her chamber into the long, vaulted hall of the Lord's manor. The air, once still, now thrummed with a summoning. Velthra's magic pulsed through the stone like a malevolent heartbeat, a silent alarm that needed no bells. Ahead, torches flared to life in their sconces, casting flickering, distorted shadows that seemed to claw at him as he ran.
Heavy footfalls pounded against the flagstones behind him. Shouts echoed. "There! The thief!"
The household guards, loyal to their Lord's arcane consultant, were awake and armed. The points of their spears glittered in the torchlight, hungry for his blood. Elias was a bard, not a soldier, but his life had taught him that the quickest feet often belonged to those with the quickest wits.
He dodged into the grand dining hall, a cavernous room set for a feast that would never happen. Two guards burst in after him, their path direct. Elias didn't try to outrun them; he used their momentum against them. He planted his hands on the polished surface of the great oak table and slid, a smooth, practiced motion that sent silver goblets and porcelain plates scattering. He landed gracefully on the other side as the guards, unable to stop, crashed into the table with a grunt of pain and a clatter of armor.
Another pair entered from the far door, cutting off his exit. Elias grabbed the back of a heavy, high-backed chair and, with a desperate heave, spun and tossed it. It slammed into the doorway, wedging itself perfectly, a makeshift barricade that would buy him seconds.
It was then he felt a familiar, gentle warmth on his shoulder. Olaf manifested beside him, a faint, shimmering outline of an old, bearded sphere, his form woven from pale blue light. He was more a memory than a ghost, a spiritual echo bound to Elias's music. Olaf raised a glowing hand, and a barrier of soft light flickered into existence before the remaining guards.
But Velthra's presence was everywhere. The shadows in the hall writhed, recoiling from Olaf's gentle luminescence as if splashed with acid. A tendril of darkness shot from the ceiling, striking the spirit. Olaf didn't scream, but his form dissolved with a silent, agonizing shimmer, the light sucked out of him until he was gone. Elias felt the spirit's pained retreat in his own soul, a cold hollowness that spurred him onward.
He burst into the central courtyard. The moon, three-quarters full, was a merciless beacon in the sky, cutting sharp lines of silver and black across the cobblestones. He was exposed. The main gate was just ahead, a promise of freedom a mere fifty paces away. He could almost taste the clean night air of the forest beyond.
Velthra's laughter, devoid of all humor, slithered from the halls behind him, echoing from the stone walls as if the manor itself was mocking him. It was a sound that promised slow, inventive pain.
He ran, his lungs burning, his muscles screaming. Ten paces from the gate. Five. The iron portcullis loomed, a grid of salvation.
A sudden chill stole the air. Directly in his path, a plume of black smoke erupted, shot through with veins of midnight-blue fire. From it, she emerged, not walking, but coalescing, the smoke shaping itself into her silken robes, her pale skin, her flowing dark hair. A storm of black feathers swirled around her before dissolving into nothing.
She raised one elegant hand, fingers spread. All at once, every torch in the courtyard was snuffed out. The warm, dancing light vanished, plunging the world into the stark, unforgiving contrast of moonlight and abyssal shadow.
Her whisper carried on the sudden wind, a sibilant curse that coiled around his heart. "The night does not forgive."
She lowered her hand toward the ground, and a wave of shadow pulsed from her feet. It spread across the cobblestones like liquid night, a viscous, living tide that consumed the moonlight. It reached Elias's boots and stopped him dead. It wasn't a physical barrier; it was a fundamental binding, as if his own shadow had been nailed to the very firmament of the world. He was rooted in place.
Before he could struggle, the darkness coiled up his legs, wrapping around his arms like chains of pure cold. The touch burned, a glacial fire that sapped his strength and leached the warmth from his bones. The immense weight of it dragged him down to his knees.
Defiance, desperate and pure, was all he had left. Elias closed his eyes, summoning the last vestiges of his power. A faint, light flickered in his hands, taking the shape of a lute woven from starlight and memory. He strummed a single, defiant chord—a note of pure courage, of open roads and sunlit mornings. The sound, clear and bright, sang in the oppressive silence.
For a fleeting moment, it held the darkness at bay.
Velthra smirked, a cruel, beautiful curve of her lips. Her violet eyes glowed with faint, inner light. "You think a song can rival eternal night?"
The shadows surged. They swarmed his spectral lute, smothering the sound not with a clash, but with an absolute, suffocating negation. The music died in his hands, the light of the instrument choked and extinguished, leaving his fingers grasping at empty, cold air.
With a final, dismissive wave of her hand, the shadows binding him solidified. Chains of black fire, silent and cold, shackled his wrists and ankles. He was utterly powerless.
The guards, no longer needing to rush, seized him by the arms, their gauntlets rough against his skin. They hauled him, bruised and defeated, back toward the manor, their destination not the grand halls, but the dungeons that festered beneath.
As they dragged him through a dark archway, Elias glanced up. In the high rafters, he saw it—a tiny, faint flicker of light. Olaf, watching, helpless. Then, as if feeling Velthra's gaze upon it, the light vanished completely.
The descent was swift. The air grew thick with the smell of damp earth and despair. The iron-barred door to a cell screeched open, and they threw him inside. He landed hard on the wet stone floor, the impact jarring his bones. The door slammed shut, the sound of the bolt sliding home a note of absolute finality.
In the crushing dark, the faint, shimmering outlines of his other spirit-instruments—a flute, a drum, a lyre—faded one by one, their light consumed by the ambient despair of the place. He was left in a silence that was profound and terrifying, a void where his music used to be.
Elias pushed himself into a sitting position, his back against the cold, weeping stone wall. A sliver of moonlight from a high, grated window cut a path across the floor. In that pale light, he watched the shadows in the corners of his cell. They weren't still. They crept and shifted along the walls, twisting in ways that defied the light source. They moved with a slow, hungry intelligence, as if listening, waiting. And in their depths, Elias sensed a presence far older and more terrible than Velthra. She was not the master of this darkness. She was merely its priestess. And he had just read her scripture.