The Silver Heir
Chapter Two: Blood in the Soil
Pearl woke to silence.
Not the gentle quiet of dawn, when sparrows chatter and the wind stirs the wheat. This was a silence that suffocated, thick and unnatural. Her eyes flickered open to the charred ruins of the barn. Smoke clung to the morning air. The crops where Kaelith had stood were dead, reduced to blackened husks.
Her body ached. The memory of silver light seared behind her eyes. She had flown—if only for a heartbeat. And she had felt him. That voice, like rusted chains dragging across her bones.
Kaelith.
She shivered, though the morning was warm.
Her parents stood a few yards away, their voices low. They thought she still slept.
"He found her sooner than I feared," Mareth said, the usual steadiness of his voice replaced with cracks. "We should have left this place years ago."
Liora's answer was sharp, filled with grief disguised as anger. "And gone where? He would have found her anywhere. You know what he is. What he commands."
Mareth's silence was heavier than words.
Pearl sat up, the sound of rustling straw drawing their eyes. Her parents turned, their faces drawn with exhaustion and fear.
"You're awake," Liora said, though her tone made it less blessing than burden.
Pearl swallowed hard. "Why didn't you tell me? Why wait until… until he came?"
Her mother knelt beside her, smoothing soot from her cheek with trembling fingers. "Because once you knew, your life could never be ordinary again."
Pearl's throat tightened. "And now?"
Mareth stepped forward, his shadow long in the ruined barn. "Now you must learn to fight. Because Kaelith will come again. And next time, he will not vanish into smoke."
Training began before the ashes cooled.
At first, Pearl's body resisted. The strength that had surged through her when the moon flared felt like a stranger's gift, fleeting and distant in the daylight. But Mareth was relentless.
He set her to carrying stones twice her size, her muscles screaming under the strain. "Strength is not just in your arms, Pearl," he barked. "It's in your will. Endure."
When she collapsed, Liora lifted her, whispering mantras of Selunara. Words in a tongue Pearl had never heard but felt thrumming in her veins. Words that sparked faint glimmers of silver in her skin.
At night, they taught her to listen. To feel the rhythm of the moon inside her chest. She could sense it now—faint during the day, surging when darkness fell. A second heartbeat, vast and eternal.
And yet, every lesson carried fear. Because each use of her gift made the air feel colder, as if unseen eyes pressed against her skin.
The second attack came a week later.
It was twilight when the animals began to scream. Pearl rushed from the house, the training staff still in her hand. The goats clawed at their pens, eyes wild, while the horses foamed and kicked against their stalls.
Then the shadows bled across the field. Not Kaelith this time, but something born of his hand.
A creature dragged itself into view. Its body was a tangle of black tendrils, limbs too long, face twisted like melted wax. No eyes, yet it moved as though it saw everything. The soil withered where its feet touched.
Pearl's chest constricted with terror.
"Stay behind me!" Mareth roared, gripping his rusted axe.
But the creature moved too fast. It lunged—not for him, but for her.
Pearl's body reacted before thought. The staff snapped up, glowing faint silver. Wood met shadow with a crack that shook the air. The creature screeched, its form rippling.
For a heartbeat, Pearl saw something inside it. A flicker of faces, twisted in agony, mouths stretched in endless screams. Souls.
Her stomach heaved, but her grip held. She swung again, the silver light brighter this time. The creature shrieked as its body split apart, melting into a pool of black tar that steamed against the soil.
Silence.
Pearl fell to her knees, breath ragged, bile in her throat.
"What was that?" she whispered.
Liora's face was pale as bone. "Kaelith's shadowspawn. They are bound souls, devoured and twisted by his void. Every one of them was once alive."
Pearl's stomach turned. She had not struck a beast. She had struck what was left of people.
That night, she could not sleep.
Every time her eyes closed, she saw the screaming faces inside the shadowspawn. Were they pleading with her? Or cursing her?
She stepped outside, the moon high above, cold and pitiless. Her skin prickled with its pull, her veins humming. For the first time, she hated the light. Because it had made her a target. Because it had made her a killer.
"You can't hide from it."
The voice made her spin. Mareth leaned in the doorway, arms folded. His face was a mask, but his eyes betrayed the weight he carried.
"You hate what you did tonight," he said. "Good. You should. If you ever enjoy it, then you've lost yourself."
Pearl's hands shook. "They were people. And I destroyed them."
"They were gone long before your staff touched them. Kaelith feeds on souls. You freed them from his prison."
His words carried no comfort. They were meant to harden her, not soothe her.
Pearl looked up at the moon again, its silver light spilling across the burned fields. "What if I can't stop him?" she whispered.
Mareth's silence stretched too long. When he finally spoke, it was low and heavy. "Then the world will burn. And all of us with it."
The days bled into weeks. Training grew harsher. Liora taught her how to draw the moon's power into her hands, shaping it into blasts of light sharp enough to burn stone. Mareth honed her body until bruises mottled her arms, until she no longer dropped beneath the weight of stone or steel.
But Kaelith's shadowspawn grew bolder. Each night they pressed closer, leaving carcasses of animals, scorch marks across the crops, whispers that slithered into Pearl's dreams.
And in those dreams, Kaelith spoke.
Little heir, his voice coiled through her mind, thick as smoke. Your strength grows. Your light ripens. Do you not feel how sweet it will be, when I take it from you?
Pearl woke each time with sweat chilling her skin, the echo of his laughter still gnawing at her bones.
She began to fear sleep almost as much as she feared waking.
One night, while practicing alone in the fields, Pearl raised her hands toward the moon. Silver light poured down her arms, gathering in her palms. It should have filled her with warmth. Instead, a shadow rippled across the moon's face, darkening her light.
The air shifted. And Kaelith's voice whispered from the darkness itself.
"You cannot hide behind farmers forever."
Her chest tightened, rage and terror colliding. "Show yourself!" she shouted into the night.
Laughter answered her. Then silence.
When she lowered her hands, the crops around her were blackened to ash.
And she realized with horror—she had not burned the shadowspawn. She had burned her own fields.
Her power was growing. And slipping beyond her control.
When she returned to the house, her parents were waiting, faces grim.
Mareth spoke first, his tone sharp. "Pearl. Every time you call the moon's strength, he feels it. He wants you to grow strong enough to be worth breaking. And you are feeding him."
Liora's eyes brimmed with tears she did not shed. "If he takes you, he takes Selunara's last heir. And then nothing will remain to stop him."
Pearl stood in the doorway, the scent of charred soil clinging to her, her fists trembling. She thought of the souls trapped in Kaelith's creatures, of the blackened fields, of his voice in her dreams.
And for the first time, she wondered not if she could survive him—
—but if she could survive