Aric Vale
Thomas was gone.
They found his body an hour after dawn, half a mile from camp. Same wounds as the others. Four parallel cuts to the throat. The Mark of the Vale burned into his chest.
Still warm.
I stood over his body, hands bound behind my back now, two soldiers gripping my arms. Captain Lyons knelt beside Thomas, face pale with shock and rage.
"He was nineteen," Lyons said quietly. "He joined the Guard eight months ago. He wanted to make his mother proud."
"I'm sorry," I said. The words felt hollow, inadequate.
"Sorry?" Lyons stood, hand on his sword. "You murdered him. While we slept, while we trusted that the ropes would hold you…"
"The ropes did hold me," I interrupted. "Check them. They're still tied exactly as you left them. Still secured to the tree."
Garrett had already gone to check. He came back looking troubled. "He's right. The ropes are intact. The knots haven't been disturbed. He couldn't have gotten free and retired himself that perfectly."
"Then how?" Lyons demanded. "How did he…" He gestured at Thomas's body. "How did this happen?"
"The shadow," I said. "My shadow. I felt it separate from me during the night. I watched it walk away while I stayed bound. It went hunting while I slept."
Silence. The kind of silence that comes before someone decides you're insane.
"You expect us to believe," Lyons said slowly, "that your shadow came alive and killed Thomas while you slept innocently?"
"I don't expect you to believe anything. I'm telling you what I experienced."
"Convenient."
"Is it?" I pulled against the soldiers holding me. "If I wanted to lie, I'd make up something better. Say I don't remember, that I blacked out completely. But I'm telling you the truth, I felt myself split. I felt part of me stay while part of me left. I'm not in control of this anymore. Maybe I never was."
Garrett was examining Thomas's body more carefully. "The wounds are identical to the others. Same depth, same spacing, same technique. And the mark…" He touched near it, careful not to make contact. "Still radiating heat. Active magic."
"So?" Lyons said. "That just proves Aric did it. His mark, his magic."
"But how?" Garrett stood. "He was tied to a tree, thirty feet from where Thomas was standing watch. Thomas was armed, alert. He would have seen Aric approaching. Would have raised the alarm."
"Unless Aric moved too fast to see. Or used magic to cloud his mind."
"Or unless something else killed him," I said. "Something that looks like me. Moves like me. But isn't me."
"Your shadow," Garrett said. Not mockingly. Consider it seriously.
"The curse split my soul," I said. "That's what the court wizard sensed seven years ago. That's why I lose time, why I have gaps in memory. Part of me is walking around independently, acting without my conscious knowledge."
"That's insane," Lyons said.
"Is it?" Garrett asked. "We're hunting in the Wastes where reality bends wrong. Where time moves strangely and magic corrupts everything. We're dealing with a curse that's lasted seven years. Why is a split soul more insane than anything else we've seen?"
"Because it's convenient," Lyons spat. "Because it absolves him of responsibility. 'I didn't kill anyone, it was my evil shadow.' Do you hear yourself?"
"I'm not saying it absolves him," Garrett said patiently. "I'm saying it explains what we're seeing. Aric is bound and secured, yet murders are still happening. Victims killed with his exact technique, marked with his exact symbol. Witnesses describing someone who looks like him but moves wrong, speaks wrong. What if they're describing his shadow? The split-off part that remembers what happened seven years ago?"
"Then we're hunting for something unkillable," Lyons said. "How do you kill a shadow?"
No one had an answer for that.
We buried Thomas quickly, marking the grave with stones. I wanted to say something, wanted to of
We buried Thomas quickly, marking the grave with stones. I wanted to say something, wanted to offer words that might matter. But what could I say?
Sorry I killed you, even though I don't remember doing it? Sorry my curse turned me into a monster?
I said nothing. Sometimes silence was more honest.
We rode on, the atmosphere darker than before. Thomas's death had changed something fundamental. Before, the victims had been strangers, people I'd never met. Now it was one of our own. Someone who'd been riding beside us,
eating our food, standing watch.
Someone they'd known.
The remaining soldiers, just four now, including Garrett and Lyons, kept even more distance than before. They rode in a tight formation, me at the center, weapons constantly ready. Not even bothering to hide it anymore.
I was their prisoner now, not their guide.
Around midday, Garrett rode up beside me. He kept his sword loose in its sheath, ready.
"Tell me exactly what you remember from last night," he said.
"I tried to stay awake. Failed eventually, exhaustion won. When I closed my eyes, I felt, " I struggled for words. "Like something pulling at me. Trying to separate me from myself. I fought it for a while, but it was too strong."
"Then what?"
"Then I was in two places at once. Part of me stayed in my body, bound to the tree. But another part stood up. My shadow. It peeled away and stood independently."
"Did it speak?"
"Yes. It said…." I tried to remember exactly. "It said 'Soon we'll be whole again. Soon you'll understand everything.' Then it walked away. Past the watching soldiers like they couldn't see it."
"Could they?" Garrett asked. "Can other people see your shadow when it separates?"
"I don't know. The soldiers on watch didn't react. Didn't see it walk past them. But Thomas must have seen something. He had time to draw his sword, his blade was out when you found him."
"He fought," Garrett confirmed. "Defensive wounds on his hands. But he never screamed. Never raise an alarm."
"Because it happened too fast. My shadow moves faster than I do. Strikes before victims can react."
We rode in silence for a moment.
"If your theory is right," Garrett said finally, "if the curse really did split your soul in two, then one half of you has been awake and active this whole time. Seven years of consciousness, of memory, of purpose. While the other half, your half, was locked in Blackwatch Keep, unaware."
"The half that remembers is hunting everyone from that night," I said. "Eliminating witnesses to whatever happened when Dorian died."
"And now it's killed one of us. One of the people trying to stop it." Garrett's jaw tightened. "It's protecting itself. Protecting its mission."
"Or protecting the truth," I said. "That courier, the one I remember killing, she said 'You were there. You saw what she did.' What if my shadow half is hunting down conspirators? What if everyone it's killed was part of murdering Dorian?"
"That doesn't make it right," Garrett said. "Even if they were guilty, even if they deserved punishment, you don't get to be judge, jury, and executioner."
"I'm not," I pointed out. "My shadow is. I don't get a choice."
"You had a choice seven years ago," Captain Lyons called from ahead. He'd been listening. "When whatever happened to split your soul happened, you made choices then. Choices that led here."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say I didn't choose to be cursed, didn't choose to be split.
But he wasn't entirely wrong. I'd made choices that night. Had done something, or failed to do something, that resulted in this curse.
If I could just remember what.
We stopped for a brief rest around mid-afternoon. The soldiers huddled together, speaking in low voices. Making plans, I assumed. Plans about what to do with me.
I sat apart, as far as my tether allowed. Stared at my shadow on the ground.
It looked normal. Just a shadow, dark and still, matching my position exactly.
But I knew better now. Knew that it was more than a simple absence of light. Knew that consciousness lived in that darkness, watching and planning.
"What do you want?" I whispered to it. "What's your purpose?"
The shadow didn't answer. Didn't move independently.
But in my head, that presence stirred. And with it came a whisper:
Justice. Truth. Completion.
"Justice for who?"
For Dorian. For us. For everyone betrayed that night.
"Then help me remember. Tell me what happened."
Not yet. You're not ready. You still think like the half that forgot. The half that accepted blame and exile without fighting.
"Then when? When will I be ready?"
When you stop asking permission to be whole.
The conversation ended. The presence retreated. I was alone in my head again.
Garrett approached, water skin in hand. He tossed it to me carefully. I drank, grateful.
"We're going to reach the third murder site by nightfall," he said. "Lieutenant Reeves. One of your former patrol members."
"I know."
"After that, we're only two days from where the princess's trail leads. Deep Wastes territory. Time and reality break down completely there."
"Good," I said.
Garrett raised an eyebrow. "Good?"
"The Wastes are where the curse began. Where Dorian died, where I was split. If we're going to find answers, that's where they'll be."
"And if we find the princess there? What then?"
"Then we learn why she was taken. Why was her kidnapping the thing that brought me out of exile." I met his eyes. "Because I don't think she was taken by accident. I think she's connected to all of this. To the murders, to Dorian's death, to the curse. She's part of the pattern."
"You think she's behind it?"
"I think she knows something. Something important enough to kill seventeen people over." I paused. "Something my shadow wants to protect or expose. I'm not sure which."
Garrett studied me for a long moment. "For what it's worth, I believe you're trying. Trying to understand, trying to stop this."
"Trying isn't enough though, is it? Thomas is still dead."
"No," Garrett agreed quietly. "It's not enough. But it's something."
We mounted up again. Rode toward the third murder site as the sun descended.
Toward more evidence of what I'd done.
Toward answers I wasn't sure I wanted to find.