The figure didn't move.
Cloaked in black, faceless in the dim glow of the street lantern, it stood as still as a statue across from the inn. My skin crawled. Even from here I felt it: the weight of recognition, the cold knowledge that whoever — whatever — this was, it had come for me.
Kaelen's hand was already on my arm, her whisper sharp. "Describe what you saw."
"Someone in the street. Watching." My throat was dry. "Stonekeepers."
She didn't waste time. She crossed the room in two strides, snapping the shutters closed with a crack. "Pack what you can. We're leaving."
"But—"
"No arguments, Darian." She pulled her sword free and checked its edge in the firelight. "If they've tracked you here, Ravelin isn't safe anymore."
My chest tightened. We had barely arrived. For one heartbeat, the thought of food and beds, of something almost like comfort, made me hesitate. But then I remembered the way the shadow had stood, utterly patient, like a predator watching its prey.
I shoved my few belongings into my satchel. "How do we get out?"
"Quietly."
We crept into the hall. The inn was dark now, most of the guests asleep, the fire downstairs burned down to embers. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like thunder in my ears.
Kaelen moved with lethal grace, steps light as falling dust. I tried to mimic her, but my boots seemed made of iron.
We reached the stairs. She raised a hand, signaling me to wait, and leaned just far enough to peer down. For a breath, silence. Then — a flicker of motion.
Someone stood in the common room below. Cloaked. Still. Waiting.
Kaelen drew back, her lips a thin line. "Two of them," she mouthed.
My pulse roared in my ears. "How—?"
"They knew you'd come here. They were watching from the moment we entered."
The realization made bile rise in my throat. How many eyes had followed us in the market today, unseen?
"Window," Kaelen whispered.
We slipped back into our room. Kaelen pushed open the shutters just enough to look. Her jaw clenched.
"Three outside," she muttered. "Waiting."
"They've surrounded us."
"Yes." Her voice was steel. "But they underestimated one thing."
"What?"
She swung one leg over the sill, her sword strapped across her back, her cloak drawn tight. "That I'm not afraid to cut through them."
I froze. The idea of facing them — the cloaked shadows that had haunted my nightmares — made every instinct scream to run. But Kaelen was already lowering herself onto the roof of the stable below, landing with barely a sound.
"Come," she hissed up at me.
I swallowed hard, clutched my satchel, and climbed out after her. The roof groaned under my weight, but held.
For one fragile moment, the night air was cool against my face, the stars sharp above. Then a voice rang out across the street:
"Darian of the Stone."
The sound rooted me where I stood. It was not loud, not a shout, yet it carried, as though whispered directly into my skull.
A figure stepped from the shadow of the inn's gate. Cloaked, hood drawn low. I could see no face. Only the glint of runes etched along the hem of their robe.
Kaelen's sword hissed free. "Run!"
The shadows moved.
Three of them emerged from the darkness below, slipping from alleys like smoke. Too fast. Too silent. My breath caught — they weren't walking, not truly, but gliding, their feet barely touching the ground.
Kaelen leapt down to meet them, blade flashing. The first hiss of steel rang in the night. Sparks scattered.
"Go!" she shouted. "Find the eastern gate!"
But my legs refused to move. The Stonekeeper nearest me raised a hand, and for the first time I saw what hid beneath the cloak: not flesh, but swirling black mist, shaped into the vague outline of a hand.
The air thickened. Something invisible pressed against my chest, shoving me back. I staggered, gasping.
"You cannot flee your fate," the voice whispered again, though the figure's hood never moved.
Panic surged. My hands fumbled for the knife at my belt. Pathetic compared to Kaelen's steel, but it was all I had.
The shadow reached for me.
And I did the only thing I could — I slashed wildly.
The blade cut through air. For one terrifying heartbeat, I thought it would do nothing. Then the shadow hissed, its form shuddering as though smoke had been scattered by wind.
"Move!" Kaelen's voice snapped me back. She had driven one Stonekeeper to the ground, her sword buried through its chest. But the thing was already dissolving into mist, reforming even as she ripped her blade free.
"We can't kill them," I choked.
"No," she said, shoving me toward the street, "but we can outlast them!"
We ran.
Ravelin's streets twisted like a maze, and every turn seemed to end in another figure cloaked in black. My lungs burned. Kaelen cut down anything that came too close, her sword glowing faintly now, as if drinking the moonlight itself.
Still they kept coming.
Every alley echoed with their whispers: Darian. Marked. Bound.
Something inside me broke. I wasn't going to outrun them. No matter where I went, they would follow. I was chained to them, to this fate, and running was only delaying the inevitable.
Unless—
We burst into the open square, lanterns swaying overhead. A fountain stood at its center, water glimmering in the starlight. And for one breath, the square was empty.
"Here!" Kaelen dragged me behind the fountain, chest heaving.
"They'll find us—"
"Let them." Her eyes blazed. "We make our stand here."
My mouth went dry. "We'll die."
"Maybe," she said. Then softer, fierce: "But you said you wanted to live. So prove it."
The words struck me harder than any blade.
The shadows closed in.
Three. Four. Six of them now, circling the square, their cloaks rippling though no wind stirred. The leader stepped forward, hood tilted just enough that I saw the faint glimmer of eyes like pale fire.
"Darian," the voice whispered. "You are not meant for life beyond twenty-five. Surrender, and we will end it swiftly."
Kaelen lifted her blade, firelight flickering across the steel. "You'll touch him only when I'm dead."
They moved as one.
Kaelen met them with a cry, steel clashing against smoke. Sparks erupted. She fought like a storm, blade spinning, striking, cutting. But for every shadow she struck down, another seemed to rise.
I pressed back against the fountain, knife trembling in my grip. My body screamed to flee, but Kaelen's words burned in my chest. Prove it.
I lunged at the nearest figure.
The blade sank deep. The shadow shrieked, its form scattering like torn paper. For a heartbeat, victory surged in me. Then the fragments whirled, re-forming, and its pale eyes blazed brighter.
Hopeless.
Unless—
The fountain.
The water glittered, moonlit. Pure. Flowing. I didn't know why I thought of it — only that some instinct screamed at me to try.
I kicked the shadow back and thrust my knife into the water.
Light exploded.
The fountain surged upward, water bursting like a wave, crashing over the square. The shadows shrieked, dissolving where the water touched them. The leader staggered, cloak unraveling in streams of smoke.
Kaelen froze, sword dripping. "Darian—what did you—?"
"I don't know!" My hands shook, still clutching the knife, its blade glowing faintly now, etched with rippling lines like ink in water.
The square was empty. The shadows were gone.
But their whispers lingered, fading into the night. You cannot change what is written…
Kaelen turned to me, chest heaving. For once, her hard expression cracked — not with fear, but something close to awe.
"You fought," she said.
I stared at my shaking hands. The knife still glowed faintly, like it had stolen some of the fountain's light. "I… I don't know what I did."
"You lived," she said. "That's enough."
Her gaze lifted to the stars, to the east. "We can't stay here. They'll be back. Stronger."
I swallowed hard, the fire in my chest burning even through the fear. "Then we go to Cindral."
Kaelen's eyes met mine. And this time, she didn't argue.
That night, as we left Ravelin under the fading moon, I knew one truth:
The Stonekeepers had come for me. And I had survived.
For the first time in my life, I believed survival might be more than a delay.
It might be a choice.