The mist along Duskmire's outskirts always clung thicker than in the city center. The lanterns here sputtered, their glyph-flames weaker, as if afraid to look too far into the Shrouded Expanse just beyond the walls.
Elarion followed in silence, his boots crunching against damp cobblestones. Vaelreth walked ahead, hands buried in his coat pockets, expression unreadable as always.
They weren't supposed to be outside the gates after dusk. Academy rules were clear: Wanderers in training do not leave without a warden. But rules bent easily when Vaelreth decided to break them.
Elarion finally asked, his voice hushed, "Why here?"
Vaelreth stopped in the middle of the road, pale violet eyes glinting in the lantern light. He tilted his head as if listening for something in the mist. Then, quietly, he said:
"Because this is where they hunt. And you should see what waits for us beyond lectures."
Before Elarion could reply, a sound crawled through the fog. Not footsteps. Not breathing. A rasp—dry, desperate—as though a throat too long without a tongue tried to remember words.
Elarion's chest tightened. His right eye throbbed faintly.
From the haze emerged a shape. At first, it looked like a man. Then the light struck it, and he realized it had once been. Its spine arched grotesquely, limbs too long, jaw split along one side as if someone had tried to carve another mouth into its face. The thing's eyes were pits, hollow and wet.
A Nightwoomb.
Low-tier, but still enough to kill untrained Wanderers.
Elarion froze, every instinct screaming to run.
Vaelreth didn't move. His voice was calm, colder than the fog.
"Stay behind me."
The chains came first as a whisper. A faint rattle, then a sudden lunge of black iron streaking from the shadows at his feet. Runes pulsed along their length—violet, ghostly—and in the space of a breath they coiled around the Nightwoomb's limbs.
The creature shrieked, thrashing, the sound cutting through the mist like glass against bone.
Elarion flinched, but Vaelreth only pulled one hand free from his coat, fingers flexing slightly. The chains obeyed. They constricted, grinding into the thing's warped flesh, pinning it to the stones.
The Nightwoomb's jaw clattered like broken teeth. A thin, wet voice hissed through its torn throat:
"…name… name…"
Elarion's heart lurched. The word scraped at him, a reminder of Halden's lecture, of the boy who had failed.
"Don't listen," Vaelreth muttered, eyes sharp. "It remembers pieces. Echoes. That's all."
The chains tightened again, wrapping around its neck until the thing could only rasp soundlessly. Slowly, inevitably, it sagged, pinned like a broken insect.
Vaelreth released a long, controlled breath, then snapped his fingers. The chains dissolved into shadow. The Nightwoomb's carcass slumped, twitching once before lying still.
The mist closed over the silence.
Elarion stared. "You… you killed it."
Vaelreth shook his head. "No. I silenced it. There's a difference."
He crouched beside the fallen form, studying it with the indifference of someone who had seen too many. His voice dropped lower, almost as if speaking to himself.
"This was a boy, once. Like the one you saw today. Maybe sixteen. Maybe seventeen. He wanted power more than he wanted patience. The world gave him neither."
Elarion's throat went dry. The memory of the lecture hall pressed against him like stone.
Finally, he asked the question he had been holding since they first met: "Why do you protect me?"
Vaelreth didn't look up immediately. When he did, his silver-violet eyes gleamed—not cruel, not kind, but carrying something far heavier.
"I had a brother," he said. "Not by blood. By choice. We both awakened together. He wanted to be more than the city would let him. He… rushed."
Elarion didn't breathe.
Vaelreth's gaze flicked back to the Nightwoomb. His jaw tightened.
"I chained him down myself when he turned. My chains held, but they held too late. He was gone. I wasn't fast enough to save him. Just fast enough to kill what was left."
The words landed like stones in Elarion's stomach. He couldn't speak.
Vaelreth rose, dusting his coat sleeve as if to shake off the memory. "Since then, I swore: anyone I see walking the same path—alone, abandoned, marked as nothing—I'll stand with them. Even if the rest of the world spits in their face."
His chains flickered faintly at his heels, restless serpents eager for command.
He looked at Elarion, eyes narrowing slightly. "That's why. Because if you fall, I'll be the one forced to end you. And I'd rather not add another weight to these chains."
The mist swirled around them, heavy with silence.
Elarion swallowed hard. His heart hammered against his ribs, not with fear but with something stranger—an understanding of the bond between them, sharper and heavier than words.
"…Vaelreth," he whispered. "I—"
The chains rattled faintly, interrupting him. Vaelreth turned back toward the fog, his expression hardening.
"There are more tonight. Low-tiers, drawn close to the city by failed rites. We should go."
He started walking.
Elarion lingered a moment longer, staring at the husk of the Nightwoomb, its broken body already being swallowed by the mist.
Halden's words returned to him: Better a Blank than a failed Wanderer.
But as he followed Vaelreth into the fog, clutching his notebook with the single drawn line, Elarion realized the truth was heavier than that.
Better a Blank, perhaps. But being nothing didn't mean he could stay nothing forever.
The Eye pulsed faintly in the back of his thoughts.
And in the quiet between heartbeats, he swore to himself: He would not fall. Not like them. Not like Vaelreth's brother.
The fog pressed heavier as they walked, swallowing sound, swallowing thought. Elarion kept his head low, trying not to look at the husk of the Nightwoomb they had left behind. The silence felt unnatural—like even the city itself was holding its breath.
Vaelreth broke it first. His tone was quiet, but there was no softness in it.
"These dreams of yours."
Elarion blinked, startled. "…What about them?"
Vaelreth's eyes didn't leave the mist ahead. "They're not just dreams."
Elarion's chest tightened. He wanted to laugh it off, make some remark about sleepless nights and bad soup, but the words stuck like shards in his throat.
"What makes you say that?" he muttered instead.
The rattle of chains answered before Vaelreth's voice did. The links stirred faintly around his boots, reacting to something unsaid.
"I've seen Wanderers dream of their Purposes before," Vaelreth said. "Fragments, symbols, whispers of what path they might take. But what you describe?" His gaze flicked sideways, pinning Elarion in place. "Eyes in the void. Chains binding stars. A stroke that devours sound. That's not what ordinary dreams give."
Elarion's grip on his notebook tightened. The memory of the moving ink haunted him. "You think I'm lying?"
Vaelreth shook his head. "No. I think you're remembering something you shouldn't."
The words struck deeper than he expected. Elarion's right eye throbbed again, a dull ache beneath the bone. He turned away, staring into the mist as if it might give him an excuse.
"I told you—it's just fragments. They don't mean anything."
But even as he said it, he heard the falseness in his own voice.
Vaelreth didn't push. He only hummed, low in his throat, and let the silence return. Yet the air between them shifted—thicker, heavier—like an unspoken chain had looped itself around them both.
Finally, Vaelreth spoke again. His words were quiet enough that Elarion almost thought he imagined them.
"If those dreams become more than fragments… if they start looking back at you… tell me. Don't try to carry it alone."
Elarion opened his mouth to reply, but the mist stirred. Somewhere distant, a shriek split the night—the hollow cry of another Nightwoomb.
Vaelreth's chains hissed eagerly, ready to be called.
Elarion swallowed his words, shoving them down deep where even he couldn't reach them. He followed in silence, notebook pressing against his ribs, its single line burning in his thoughts.
He told himself it was only a dream.
But in the hollow spaces of his mind, he knew better.
And Vaelreth did too.
The shriek died into silence, but its echo lingered like a splinter in Elarion's skull. His right eye burned, faint light swimming at the edges of his vision. He pressed a palm against it, fingers trembling despite his effort to still them.
The mist around them seemed thicker now, heavy enough to muffle even the sound of their steps. It pressed against his skin, damp and cold, like unseen hands trying to drag him back.
Vaelreth didn't look over his shoulder, but his chains stirred restlessly, links rattling in rhythms too precise to be chance. They coiled like serpents tasting the air.
"Don't fall behind," he said, voice low and sharp.
Elarion swallowed and forced his legs to move faster, though the weight in his chest only grew. The line he had drawn on paper earlier—the impossible motion that made the ink ripple—flashed again in his mind. For a moment, he almost felt it humming beneath his skin, waiting to be traced in the air itself.
He shook his head, banishing the thought. Not here. Not now.
Still, the question festered: What if these weren't dreams? What if they were fragments of something buried inside him?
And worse—what if Vaelreth was right?