The first time I heard the Shadow King's name, it was spoken as a curse.
Whispered at the hearth by my nursemaid, hissed on the battlefield by dying men, scratched into the walls of ruined keeps where his armies had passed. They said it the way some prayed, with reverence edged in terror, as though even uttering it might draw his gaze.
They called him Malicar, Lord of Night, Breaker of Dawn. Others simply called him Death.
But to me, he was prophecy.
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The night of my birth was ink-black, moonless, and swollen with storm. Lightning split the heavens as I entered the world, my mother's scream swallowed by thunder. The midwives swore that the chamber shook with each cry, and that shadows crawled along the walls though no lamp had guttered.
One fell to her knees and declared me marked.
A child of light, bound to darkness.
Of course, no one wanted to believe her. The king, my father, banished the midwife that very hour. But fear lingers in silence, in the stolen glances of servants, in the way a mother clutches her infant closer than necessary.
By the time I was old enough to walk, I knew I carried something unwanted. And by the time I was old enough to understand, I knew what it was.
The Shadow King would come for me.
.......
It began with dreams.
At first, they were small things.
A whisper in the dark, a chill in the air that made me draw my blankets closer. But as the years passed, they deepened. I dreamed of forests where the trees bled ink instead of sap. Of castles crowned in bone. Of eyes like coals, smoldering in endless night.
And always, always, the voice.
"You are mine."
No matter how I woke...trembling, sweating, gasping...the words clung like smoke.
I never told a soul. My mother would have wept. My father would have sent priests. And none of them could have stopped the inevitable.
Because in every dream, I was moving closer to him.
When I was sixteen, war came.
The Shadow King's armies spilled from the Blackened Vale, cloaked in perpetual dusk. They burned villages, slaughtered knights, and left whole provinces in ruin. The air itself grew heavy where they marched, sunlight dimming as though afraid.
Legends said Malicar had once been mortal, a prince who bartered his soul for eternal dominion. Whether truth or lie, he wielded power unlike any other. Blades shattered against his armor. Arrows dissolved into ash before touching him. Only one thing was certain: he sought a bride.
Not for love, but for conquest.
And the prophecies all whispered the same name.
Mine.
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I tried to run from it. Gods know I tried.
I trained with swords until my palms bled. I studied arcane wards, binding circles, even the forbidden texts my tutors feared. If I could not escape my fate, then I would twist it. The bond meant for destruction would become my weapon.
Still, every victory on the practice field felt hollow. Because in the dead of night, his presence thickened in my dreams. Sometimes I swore I felt his breath ghost against my ear.
"To bind is not to cage," he murmured once. "It is to belong."
I woke with my heart hammering, shame and fear knotted together.
But shame was dangerous. Fear was worse. For buried beneath them, something else stirred. Curiosity. Longing.
The night the Shadow King came for me, the castle torches sputtered out as though drowned.
I was standing on the balcony of my chamber, the air restless with storm. Below, the courtyards lay silent, guards gone, their posts abandoned. Not abandoned...erased. Shadows swallowed stone, creeping up the walls like vines.
And then he was there.
Malicar.
The man of every whispered tale, every nightmare, every prophecy carved into the marrow of my bones. He wore a crown of obsidian thorns, his cloak stitched from living shadow. His face was half-hidden, sharp angles carved in moonless night. But his eyes… gods, his eyes burned like twin suns gone black.
"You've kept me waiting," he said, voice low as a blade drawn from its sheath.
I should have screamed. I should have reached for the dagger strapped to my thigh. Instead, my lips parted, and words slipped out like betrayal.
"You came."
His smile was both cruel and tender, as though he found amusement in my ruin.
"Did you doubt I would?"
Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the distance between us.
Barely a step, though it felt like a chasm. My breath hitched, caught between terror and a pull I could not name.
"Why me?" I whispered.
The Shadow King reached out, fingers gloved in black steel, and brushed a strand of hair from my face. The touch was cold, yet heat rippled through me as though my body betrayed itself.
"Because only you can bind me," he said softly. "And only I can unmake you."
His words wrapped around me like chains. Invisible, unbreakable. And in that instant, the prophecy was no longer a story whispered by frightened midwives. It was here, alive, breathing against my skin.
The storm raged. The castle trembled. And in my chest, something ancient stirred awake.
Not fear. Not hatred.
Something far more dangerous.