The afternoon sun slanted through the vaulted windows of Grimoire Academy's Hall of Practical Applications, casting geometric patterns across the polished obsidian floor. Niko adjusted his stance, feeling the familiar thrum of spirit energy coursing through his veins like liquid lightning. His fingers traced the air, and cerulean light gathered around his palms, coalescing into the shape of a blade that hummed with barely restrained power.
Across the sparring circle, Ayesha grinned at him, her emerald braces catching the light. "Getting poetic with your manifestations again? Just because you can make your spirit blade glow prettier doesn't mean it'll hit any harder."
Niko couldn't suppress his own smile. Ayesha had that effect on people, turning even the most tedious combat drills into something approaching fun. "Aesthetics matter," he countered, shifting his weight. "Professor Thane says spirit manipulation reflects the wielder's intent. If my intent includes style points, who's to argue?"
"Professor Thane also says you overthink everything." She raised her hands, and the air around her seemed to crystallize, spirit energy bending to her will with such precision that even Niko, who'd trained alongside her for three years, felt a flicker of awe. Where his power was a vast ocean barely contained, hers was a surgeon's scalpel, every erg of energy exactly where she wanted it.
They moved simultaneously, closing the distance between them. Niko's blade met Ayesha's barrier with a sound like singing crystal, and for a moment they were locked in place, testing each other's control. He could feel the immensity of his spirit pool pushing against her defense, but she redirected the force with minimal effort, turning his strength aside rather than meeting it head-on.
"Nice redirection," he acknowledged, breaking off and circling. Around them, other students engaged in their own matches, the hall alive with the distinctive resonance of spirit energy being shaped and wielded.
"Nice of you to notice," Ayesha shot back. "Now are we going to actually spar, or are you going to keep analyzing everything until the bell rings?"
She had a point. Analysis paralysis, his mother called it. The curse of an introspective mind was that it sometimes got in its own way. Niko exhaled slowly, letting his thoughts quiet, and lunged forward with a burst of speed augmented by spirit energy channeled through his legs.
The exchange that followed would have been invisible to mundane eyes. Blade and barrier, force and finesse, his raw power complemented by three years of training to refine it, her natural talent honed to a razor's edge. They'd done this dance a hundred times before, each knowing the other's patterns, each constantly innovating to surprise the other.
That was when Marcus Chevalier started screaming.
The sound cut through the ambient noise of the training hall like a knife through silk. Every match stopped simultaneously, students and instructor alike turning toward the source. Marcus stood frozen in his sparring circle, staring down at his own shadow with an expression of abject horror.
The shadow was moving wrong.
Niko felt it before he fully understood what he was seeing, a wrongness that set his teeth on edge and made the spirit energy within him recoil instinctively. Shadows didn't writhe like living things. They didn't reach upward with grasping tendrils that seemed to defy the very laws of light and physics.
Professor Elaine Morse moved with the speed of someone who'd spent decades responding to supernatural threats. Her hands wove through a complex pattern, amber light flaring as she erected a barrier around Marcus's circle. "Everyone back! Maintain your distance!"
But the barrier might as well have been tissue paper. The shadow, if it could even be called that anymore, simply ignored it, continuing its impossible ascent up Marcus's body. He tried to run, stumbled, and the darkness surged upward to meet him.
Niko didn't remember deciding to move. One moment he was standing beside Ayesha, the next he was at the circle's edge, spirit blade extended, trying to find something solid to cut. His blade passed through the shadow-thing without resistance, and Marcus's screams reached a crescendo that would haunt Niko's dreams for weeks to come.
Then Marcus was gone.
Not dead, not unconscious, simply gone. His shadow lay flat and ordinary against the floor once more, as if nothing had happened. As if a living, breathing person hadn't just been swallowed by his own silhouette.
The training hall erupted into chaos. Students shouted questions, several sobbed, and Professor Morse was already speaking rapid-fire into a communication crystal, calling for backup and medical teams and administrators. Niko stood rooted to the spot, staring at that innocent-looking shadow, his analytical mind trying and failing to construct a rational framework for what he'd just witnessed.
A hand found his, fingers interlacing with his own. Ayesha stood beside him, her usual playfulness replaced by grim determination. "You felt that too, didn't you? That wrongness in the energy."
He nodded mutely. His spirit shard, the fragment of supernatural power embedded in his soul that granted him his abilities, had reacted to whatever that darkness was. Not with fear exactly, but with recognition. Like in some fundamental way that transcended ordinary understanding.
"Niko, Ayesha, step back." Professor Morse's voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. She approached Marcus's shadow cautiously, one hand extended, amber light playing across her fingertips. Where the light touched the shadow, it seemed to writhe, just for a moment, before settling back into normalcy.
The professor's jaw tightened. "Get to your dormitories. Now. All of you. This training session is over."
Nobody argued. The hall cleared in minutes, students filing out in stunned silence. Niko let himself be pulled along by the current of bodies, Ayesha's hand still firmly gripping his. His mind raced through possibilities, each more disturbing than the last.
They'd been trained for supernatural threats. The entire purpose of Grimoire Academy was to teach awakened humans like themselves how to master their abilities, to stand between the mundane world and the things that lurked in the spaces between. But this was different. This had happened inside the academy's walls, inside one of the most heavily warded locations in all of Velia County.
Once they reached the corridor outside, away from the press of panicking students, Ayesha pulled him into an alcove. Her grey eyes searched his face with an intensity that made his breath catch.
"Talk to me," she said quietly. "I know that look. You're trying to solve this all in your head instead of actually talking through it."
She knew him too well. "My shard reacted," he said finally. "When that shadow moved, I felt something. Like a frequency my spirit recognized. It wasn't natural, Ayesha. It wasn't even supernatural in the way we've been taught. It was something else entirely."
"Eldritch," she murmured, and he heard the weight behind the word. Eldritch horrors, the things that existed outside normal reality, that defied categorization and corrupted everything they touched. They'd studied them theoretically, learned the warning signs and historical accounts.
They'd never expected to encounter one at school.
"We need to tell someone," Ayesha continued. "Someone higher up than Professor Morse. If this is what we think it is—"
"They already know." Niko's voice was flat. "Did you see her face? She wasn't surprised. Horrified, yes, but not surprised. She recognized what that was."
Ayesha bit her lip, stressing the emerald brackets of her braces. "So what do we do?"
Niko looked back toward the training hall, where he could still hear Professor Morse coordinating with other faculty members. Marcus Chevalier had been their classmate for three years. Not a close friend, but part of their cohort nonetheless. A living, breathing person with dreams and fears and a terrible aptitude for spirit-based illusions.
Gone. Swallowed by his own shadow.
"We find out what happened," Niko said finally, feeling the weight of the decision settle over him even as he spoke. "And we find out how to get him back."
Ayesha's expression shifted through several emotions in rapid succession, surprise and concern and something that might have been pride, before settling on determination that matched his own. "Okay," she said simply. "Where do we start?"
That was when the emergency bells began to ring, their discordant clamor echoing through the academy's ancient halls. A voice, magically amplified, boomed through the corridors.
"All students return to your dormitories immediately. This is not a drill. The academy is now under lockdown protocols. I repeat, return to your dormitories immediately."
Niko met Ayesha's eyes, and in that moment, a silent communication passed between them. Lockdown meant something else had happened. Something beyond Marcus's disappearance.
This wasn't an isolated incident.
It was only the beginning.