Chapter 9: Night
I drift between worlds of consciousness beneath the warded ceiling, its faint runes pulsing in time with my breathing. The orb-crystals on my bedside altar glow pale gold, as if sighing into slumber. My limbs feel leaden, yet my mind hums with the residue of adrenaline from last night's Relay and questionable celebrations. Outside, the academy's lanterns have dimmed, and only the echo of distant footsteps fades into the hush.
My eyelids flutter closed. A last conscious thought lingers on Rowan's hopeful question—tomorrow afternoon, at the tide-kissed beach—and the steady certainty in my own reply. Then darkness curves around me like a cloak, and I slip into sleep.
My eyes snap open before I fully rouse. Darkness blankets the room but for the bedside crystals' soft glow. My body should shift, adjust to wakefulness—but it does not. I try to raise an arm; every muscle obeys neither command nor desire. My breath sticks in my throat. Heart pounding, I will my legs to move, to even twitch a toe—but nothing.
Panic ripples through me. I swallow twice; my tongue feels swollen against my teeth. In the deep hush, I hear my pulse—a drumbeat in my ears. My mind races: the wards must not fail. I fought tooth and nail to secure these runes; they should keep me safe. So why does this room feel suddenly too vast, too empty, like a stage set for some cruel performance?
Minutes stretch impossibly. Each exhalation tastes of dust and ash. I try to recall the ritual that banishes paralysis—press palms to my temples, trace the Circle of Release, whisper the binding word. But my arms will not raise. My voice is dull in my skull. I fight for breath, heart bounding, as if chest and windpipe have turned traitor.
A low hiss—or is it a sigh?—shivers through the dark. Then words coil around my mind, half-heard, as if carried on the faint draft under my door. They sound like me… and not like me.
"Too harsh."
The whisper is my own voice, tinged with regret. I remember the day I exploded at a first-year in the practice gardens, when her wards collapsed under my critique. She knelt in the sand, tears carving narrow rivers through the ash on her cheeks. In my frustration, I yelled until voices echoed, "Do better!" I turned away, convinced she'd learn. But I left her wounded, humiliated. Her sobs haunt me still.
"Why can't you hold?"
That whisper twists in my skull. The first-year's voice, accusing. I jerk my head—only to feel the heaviness densify. Shadows thicken at the corners of the ceiling runes.
Another whisper, pained and distant:
"They died…"
My breath stutters. The memory intrudes unbidden: the Siege of Elmfall, two weeks into my training year. I'd cast a flawed barrier ward, convinced its copper runes would hold. They held… until they didn't. The villagers poured out of crumbling homes, wounded by falling debris. I tried to heal them, weaving compassion folds into water-infused chains. But not all survived. One child slipped from his mother's arms, his small body broken before I could untangle the grief woven in his blood. I remember her scream—half prayer, half curse.
"It's your fault."
I taste bile. The child's mother's voice, accusing. That night I fled to the beach, stamping wards into the sand until dawn. Fear drove me then; remorse haunts me now.
Another sigh drifts through the paralysis:
"Betray."
Hands I cannot see brush against my cheek. Not my ghost, but someone else's. I sense heat, then chill. I recall the time I ripped a ward from another student's core when he refused help, believing he could manage alone. I had tried to guide him through a lab-run riot summon. When his lattice cracked and he fell bleeding, I slapped his wardstone aside in anger. He stared up at me, hurt and betrayal lining his face. He trusted me, and I responded with frustration… and he nearly bled out.
"I needed you."
Rowan's voice flashes in my mind—his quiet plea the night before. I swallow, lips parting in a silent gasp. My body remains still. I itch to reach out, to steady myself, but my arms will not budge.
The darkness thickens. Each crystal's glow seems dimmer, as though choked by dust. The whispers return in shallow breaths:
"Suffocate."
I recall the tide-ward exercise that nearly claimed me: the morning I overran the water element, lost control, and swallowed half the inlet tide. I coughed saltwater onto jagged rock, ward-magic sputtering as I fought drowning fear. Frostbite nipped at my fingertips, and for a moment, I believed ice would freeze both bone and heart. I survived, but the memory still burns like brine in my lungs.
"Drown."
The whisper slides along my neck. I grit my teeth. A tremor ripples through my chest, each breath a jagged shard of glass. The silence after the word is worse—
A pinprick of movement at the edge of perception. I try to follow it but can only flick my eyes. A silhouette scuttles along the far wall, elongated limbs bending through the darkness. It looks impossibly tall, its shoulders humped. I know that shape.
The beach. The soft rush of water. I recall the night I trained alone at low tide after the Elmfall failure. A figure watched me from the dunes—blacker than moonless sky. No limbs, just a shape. I saw nothing solid… until yesterday's Relay, when it stood half-hidden in the sand, limbs twitching beyond the confetti and crowd.
It was the same.
A chill hammers through me. Something crawls along the wall: slow, deliberate, each joint crackling at angles unnatural for bone. Its head turns in my direction. I can't move, but I feel its gaze, as if nails pierce my skull.
The whispers return, now overlapping:
"Close."
"Fear."
"Begin."
I need to push them away, but they seep into my thoughts, fleshing out nightmares:
"Your wards will break."
"Your heart will shatter."
"They will die because of you."
My mind flickers on the memory of the Relay. Caelen and Rowan at my side, each step toward the gates. Tension thrummed through the audience. I remember the figure's sudden appearance at the archway.
In the dark, that memory is no longer distant. The silhouette crawls down from the wall and across the ceiling runes, black against pale gold. It scrapes its claws along the ward-lattice overhead, tearing at the runes I thought secure. Each scratch gouges a spark of ward-light, extinguishes a runic thread.
I try to shout—my throat convicts a dry croak. My chest lifts and falls, lungs screaming for air. The creature descends the wall, each inch slow, deliberate, and I feel as though each thud of its limb-stump echoes in my spine.
With a final hiss of scraped runes, it perches at the foot of my bed. Its form dwarfs me—eight-foot limbs bent at angles no human could endure. It tilts its head, silhouette framed by the lights outside.
Then it steps onto the mattress, slow and silent where the wood-and-linen should creak. My eyes track its limbs as they bend with uncanny joint rotations. I want to scream, but no sound escapes.
From somewhere in the tangle of night comes a whisper—its whisper, cold as stone:
"Fear."
The word reverberates in my ribcage. True fear, unfiltered and raw, roars through me like wildfire. I remember nights I told myself I was fearless, that fear was a tool, a warning. This is not warning. This is a predator's exultation.
It crawls along my side, closer than any student's worst breach of my five-foot rule. I cannot move away. My pulse drums in my temples. Each breath is a lungful of dread.
Its head hovers above my chest. The crystals flicker. The air tastes of burnt lime. Then it speaks—low, hushed, as though tasting the word:
"…Ashrene."
My heart seizes. Ashrene. The creature speaks it as though pampering a cherished piece of knowledge, as though it holds a key to me. I taste bile in my mouth.
A steel-cold dread wraps around my mind. I realize, suddenly: this creature has followed me, learned me, tasted my secrets.
It leans forward, elongated fingers unfurling like arthritic spines. The claws extend. I stare, unblinking, at those black talons dripping… something dark and viscous. It reaches to my arm.
My skin crawls. Metal shards of terror spark up my arm. I feel a slash—sharp pain, white-hot, as its claw rakes across my forearm. I see the wound open: red line jagged through skin. I taste salt.
The creature pauses, head cocked, as though savoring my shock. It breathes a hissless inhale, and then—
It vanishes.
No sound of departure. No gust of wind. One moment its weight pressed into the mattress; the next, an empty sheet.
I gasp and jerk upright—finally free of paralytic chains. Sheets tangle around my legs. My shirt is damp with sweat. My chest heaves. I clutch at the blankets, heart pounding like a hammer against bone.
I fling the covers from my body and stagger out of bed, hands finding the basin's edge. My knees buckle; the cool ceramic is an anchor. Water splashes over my hands as I plunge my face in, the cold shocking sense into every nerve.
In the mirror's silvered surface, I see fever-bright eyes, hollowed with terror, pupils dilated. My hair fans around my face, damp strands clinging at my temples. My cheeks burn, flushed with panic and wakefulness.
Then I look down at my wrist. My hand shakes as I turn it toward the mirror. A deep crimson gash snakes along my forearm, raised and glistening in the basin's light. The edges are raw and slightly swollen. I press a fingertip to it, tasting metal on my tongue.
It is real.
Blood wells between my fingers. Brushwood-red in the pale lamp glow. I stare at that scratch and remember the creature's black claws. A cold dread seeps through me. The threshold between reality and nightmare feels forever shattered.
I drop my hand and step back, leaving a smear of blood on the basin's rim. My reflection watches, eyes wide as the reality of what invaded me sinks in. Tomorrow, I will seal the wounds, reinforce every rune, and face that shadow again.
But tonight—tonight I tremble beneath the cold glow of ward-crystals, listening to the echo of a whispered name, and burying fear where I cannot see it.
Tomorrow will break—but I will not be unprepared.