The storm didn't roll in so much as crash down, sudden and brutal.
One moment the night was quiet except for the creak of mooring ropes and the distant shuffle of a drunk's boots on cobblestone; the next, the sky tore open and sent water pelting hard enough to sting my skin.
It would've been smart to turn back. I didn't.
The letter in my pocket felt heavier with every step, the edges damp where my fingers had fidgeted with it all evening.
Black wax seal, crescent moon ringed with flames. No signature. Just one sentence inside, written in a hand that slanted like the writer had been in a hurry:
Come to the East Wharf before midnight. Bring no one.
I'd told myself I was only curious, that I could walk away any time I wanted. But I knew that wasn't true. The thing in my chest - that restless, gnawing thing that never let me stay still for long - it had already decided for me.
By the time the wharf came into view, the rain had soaked me through. Most sane people were inside, shutters closed tight, but there he was - a figure standing so still I thought for a moment he might be carved out of the piling itself.
Long coat. Gloves. Hood pulled low. Even at a distance something about him pressed on the air around him, like the moment before a match flares.
I took two cautious steps closer. "Are you..."
That's when everything shifted.
The lantern light behind me guttered, dimmed, and then snuffed out, the darkness swallowing the sound of the rain.
A ripple - faint, like heat on stone - moved through the space between us. And from that ripple, something slid into existence.
Tall, but wrong. It's shape kept unraveling and knotting back together. Tendrils moved like smoke, but heavier, slicker. And those eyes... molten gold, fixed on me as if it had been hunting me for years.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. It wasn't fear that pinned me rather it was possession, a sense that my body wasn't entirely mine anymore.
The whisper came like it was being poured directly into my bones:
"Shadowbinder."
The word struck something deep. I didn't know it, and yet... I did.
The world went soundless. Rain hung mid-fall, frozen like glass beads in the air.
The shadows around us lifted from the ground, curling like they'd been waiting for me to notice them. And in that suspended breath of the world, I understood they were mine.
My hand moved before my mind caught up.
The shadows surged forward, lashing into the creature with a force that cracked the air. It screamed, high and jagged, and shattered into smoke.
And then everything came rushing back... the hiss of rain, the cold, my own heartbeat like a hammer in my ears.
"You shouldn't have done that."
His voice pulled me around. He stepped into the weak glow of the next lantern, and heat rolled off him in soft, invisible waves.
His eyes weren't the monster's gold rather they were ember-red, banked fire that flickered when he blinked. The rain steamed on his coat before it could soak through.
"A soul-hunter." He said it like he'd just named the neighbor's dog. "You've been marked. Everyone of them will know where you are now."
"Marked?" My throat tightened. "I don't"
"Yes, you do." He took a slow step toward me. His shadow didn't move the way it should have; it stretched and trembled, like the air around it was too hot. "It called you by what you are. Shadowbinder. You felt it, the pull."
I couldn't look at the darkness at my feet. It still writhed faintly, like it didn't want to let go.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Damian Veyr. Oathkeeper of the Firelight."
The title meant nothing to me, but his tone carried a weight that made me believe it should.
"And what do you want from me?"
"Nothing... yet." His gaze lingered - too long, too steady. "But you should know this: I'm the only reason you're still breathing, and I'm the only one who can keep you that way."
I let out a short, sharp laugh. "That supposed to scare me or comfort me?"
Before he could answer, the air shifted again. The hair on my neck lifted.
"They're here," he murmured.
The warning hit me half a second before the shadows broke from the rain fast, jagged, and hungry. Damian moved. I didn't see the weapon until it already alight, a blade of pure fire cutting one of the creatures clean in two. The smell was wrong, burnt metal and something sweet, rotting.
We ran.
Boots pounding on wet stone, the night alive with inhuman screeches behind us.
Damian's heat at my side was the only thing anchoring me. We didn't stop until we ducked into a narrow alley, the walls pressing close. I leaned against the slick stone, lungs heaving.
"What was that?" I managed between breaths.
"The start," he said, watching the mouth of the alley. His eyes dimmed back to a smolder, but the air around him still hummed faintly with heat. "They'll keep coming. You've woken something, and now it won't stop until it's finished with you."
My stomach turned. "Why help me? You don't know me."
Something unreadable passed through his expression. "Because I swore an oath to protect the last Shadowbinder. And you" his gaze caught mine, holding it "are the last."
I wanted to tell him he was wrong. I wanted to walk away. But somewhere deep down, I knew that if I turned my back on him now, I'd never make it home.
"What if I don't want your help?" I asked, though my voice came out quieter than I meant.
He stepped closer, the heat of him seeping through the rain-chilled air. "Then you die," he said softly. "And so does the world you think you know."
For a moment, I forgot about the cold, the rain, the fear. All I could feel was the weight of his words - and the strange pull between us that neither of us seemed willing to name.
He broke it first. "Midnight tomorrow.
Ember Hall. If you want answers - and to live long enough to hear them - be there."
Then he turned and walked into the storm, his heat fading like candle snuffed out.
I stood there in the alley, shadows curling faintly at my feet, wondering when the night had stopped belonging to me.