KAELEN'S POV
We crashed through dimensions like falling through broken glass.
Elara screamed, clinging to me as reality shattered and reformed around us. I wrapped shadows around us both, cushioning the impact as we landed hard on stone.
The Shadow Realm. My realm.
I'd brought us home.
Elara gasped for breath, eyes wide with terror. "What—where—"
"Safe," I managed before the curse flared viciously. Pain tore through my chest. I collapsed, vision going white.
Through the bond, she felt it. Her scream matched mine.
"Kaelen! What's happening?"
"Curse—" I coughed blood. "Using that much power—accelerated it—"
Her hands pressed against my chest, over the wound. Warmth flooded through the bond. Not healing, but... comfort. Concern.
She actually cared.
Foolish girl.
The pain slowly receded to its usual background agony. I opened my eyes to find her hovering over me, silver eyes bright with unshed tears.
"Don't do that again," she said fiercely. "Don't almost die. We have a deal, remember?"
Despite everything, I smiled. "Can't promise that, little forsaken one. Dying is kind of my specialty lately."
She hit my shoulder. Hard. "Not funny."
"Wasn't joking." I pushed myself up carefully. "But you're right. We have work to do. Days, not weeks. So training starts now."
"Now? You just collapsed!"
"And I'll collapse again if we waste time." I stood, ignoring the way the world tilted. "Get up. Lesson one begins immediately."
She stared at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had.
"You're insane," she muttered, but stood anyway.
Good. She was learning.
ELARA'S POV
Two hours later, I wanted to murder him.
"Again," Kaelen commanded from where he leaned against a pillar, looking infuriatingly calm while I was covered in bruises.
"I can't!" I gasped, sprawled on the ground for the hundredth time. "I don't understand what you want!"
"I want you to listen." He walked over, extending a hand to pull me up. "Shadow magic isn't about force. It's about connection. Shadows exist everywhere—you just have to hear them."
"Shadows don't talk!"
"They do to those who know how to listen." He positioned me again in the center of the training space. "Close your eyes. Feel the darkness around you. It's alive. Aware. Call to it."
I closed my eyes, frustrated tears burning behind my lids. I'd been trying for two hours. Nothing worked.
"I can't do this," I whispered.
"Yes, you can. You've done it before—when you shattered those chains. When you threw Ravenna across the cathedral." His voice softened slightly. "You just need to stop thinking and start feeling."
I tried again. Reached out with whatever instinct had worked before.
Nothing.
"Why isn't it working?" I demanded, opening my eyes. "Before, it was so easy—"
"Before, you were angry. Desperate. Raw emotion fueled your power." He circled me slowly. "Now you're thinking too much. Trying to control something that responds to instinct, not logic."
"So I have to be angry to use magic?"
"No. You have to be honest." He stopped in front of me. "Shadow magic feeds on truth. Your truth. Stop trying to be the good scholar who follows rules. Be the girl who summoned a Shadow King for revenge."
His words hit something deep inside. The part of me that was still angry. Still hurt. Still screaming.
I closed my eyes and stopped trying to be gentle.
The shadows answered immediately.
They wrapped around my arms like living things, responding to the rage I'd been suppressing. Power flooded through me, wild and chaotic.
"Good," Kaelen said. "Now direct it. Don't just let it explode—control it."
I focused on a training dummy across the room. Imagined the shadows grabbing it. Crushing it.
Shadow-tendrils shot forward and wrapped around the dummy. It cracked under the pressure.
"Excellent." Pride colored his voice. "Again. Faster this time."
We trained for hours. Until my body screamed for rest. Until I could barely stand.
Kaelen never let up. Never showed mercy.
And every time I fell, he caught me.
"Why do you call me that?" I asked during a brief water break, too exhausted to filter my words. "Little forsaken one."
He was quiet for a moment, studying me with those ancient eyes. "Because that's who you really are. Not the name your parents gave you. Not the role they forced you into." He sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "The name that holds your truth. Your pain."
"It's a terrible name."
"It's an honest one." His hand found mine, linking our fingers. "Selene was the bright mage. The beloved one. Everyone adored her. Protected her. She never knew what it meant to be invisible." His grip tightened. "But you do. You know what it's like when everyone looks through you like you don't exist. When the people who should love you treat you like a burden. When you scream and scream and no one hears."
Tears slid down my cheeks. "How do you know?"
"Because I was forsaken too." His voice went rough. "Cast into a void prison where no one could hear my screams. Six hundred years of isolation. Of being forgotten by everyone except those who wanted me dead." He looked at me. "We're the same, you and I. Forsaken by those who should have protected us. Invisible until we became too dangerous to ignore."
Something cracked open in my chest. For the first time since this nightmare started, someone understood.
"I hate them," I whispered. "My mother. Damien. Marcus. All of them."
"Good. Use that." He stood, pulling me up with him. "Channel that hate into your magic. Make them regret ever underestimating you."
We trained until I couldn't move anymore. Until the shadows responded to my slightest thought.
Until I fell and he caught me, like always.
"Enough," he said finally, lowering me to the ground. "You need rest."
"We don't have time—"
"We have enough time for you to sleep." His hand brushed hair from my face, the gesture surprisingly gentle. "A few hours. Then we continue."
I nodded, too exhausted to argue.
As consciousness faded, I felt him settle beside me. Keeping watch.
Protecting me.
The monster everyone feared, treating me with more care than my own family ever had.
I woke to screaming.
Not mine. Kaelen's.
He thrashed beside me, trapped in a nightmare. Through the bond, I felt his terror. His pain. Memories of the void prison flooding through.
Six hundred years of torture. Loneliness. Madness.
"Kaelen!" I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "Wake up!"
His eyes snapped open—but they weren't amber anymore.
They were pure black. Endless. Void-touched.
"Kaelen?"
He stared through me, seeing something else entirely. His hand shot out, wrapping around my throat.
Not squeezing. Not yet. But the threat was clear.
"Who are you?" His voice echoed wrong, layered with something ancient and broken. "Another trick? Another torment?"
"It's me. Elara." I kept my voice calm even though my heart hammered. "You're having a nightmare. You're safe now. You're—"
"Safe?" He laughed, and it sounded like glass breaking. "There is no safe. The void never ends. The pain never stops. You're just another illusion they're using to break me—"
His grip tightened.
Through the bond, I felt him—lost in memory, unable to distinguish past from present.
The curse had damaged more than his body. It had fractured his mind.
"Kaelen," I whispered, placing my hand over his heart. Over the mark that bound us. "Feel the bond. I'm real. I'm here. You escaped. You're free."
For a heartbeat, nothing changed.
Then recognition flickered in those black eyes. Amber bled back in. His hand loosened, pulling away like I'd burned him.
"Elara?" His voice cracked. "Did I—"
"I'm fine. You didn't hurt me."
He scrambled backward, horror replacing the void-madness. "I could have killed you. I nearly—"
"But you didn't." I crawled toward him. "You came back."
"This time." He wouldn't look at me. "The nightmares are getting worse. The curse is eating my sanity along with my power. Soon I won't be able to tell reality from memory. I'll become a monster who can't control himself."
"Then we complete the bond faster. Break the curse before—"
"Before I kill you in my sleep?" Bitter laugh. "Excellent plan."
A sound echoed through the realm. Distant but growing closer.
Hunting horns.
Kaelen's head snapped up. "No. They can't have tracked us here. The Shadow Realm should be hidden from—"
Light exploded through the darkness.
Seraphim poured through a tear in reality, led by Aurelia.
But worse—they'd brought my mother.
Cassandra held a glowing compass, its needle pointing directly at me.
"Blood magic," Kaelen breathed. "She's using your blood to track you across dimensions."
Aurelia smiled triumphantly. "Did you really think the Shadow Realm could hide you forever, Kaelen? We've been planning this raid for weeks. We just needed the perfect bait." Her eyes found me. "Thank you, Elara, for leading us straight to him."
I felt like I'd been punched.
"I didn't—I would never—"
"Your blood did," Mother said coldly, holding up a vial filled with dark red liquid. "Every drop I collected from you as a child. Creating a permanent tracking link." She looked at Kaelen. "You've made this too easy."
Dozens more Seraphim flooded through the portal.
Kaelen could barely stand, still weak from the nightmare.
We were trapped in his own realm.
And my mo
ther had just handed him to his executioners.
Aurelia raised her starlight blade.
"Any last words, Shadow King?"