The Space Between
Ardis — Shadow Mage
The forest should have swallowed him by now.
By all rights, the northern woods were his territory—the place where shadow moved most easily, where light broke in fractured shafts between the trees and left deep pockets of dark for him to slip through. He knew which hollows bent space just enough to confuse ward-sense, which ravines muffled sound, which stretches of frost reflected radiants back at their wielders.
He should have been gone.
Instead, he was circling.
The awareness of it irritated him almost as much as the warmth in his chest.
He moved quietly through the undergrowth, cloak whispering at his ankles. Shadows slid ahead of him in thin, searching trails, feeling the terrain the way fingertips felt cloth. The forest around him remained unnervingly still—no birds, no small creatures, not even a stray wind to stir the branches.
Only that… presence.
He could feel it behind him now.
Not close enough to see.
Far too close to ignore.
Heat brushed the edges of his senses in slow, steady pulses—controlled, disciplined, annoyingly polite for something that had no right to be near him at all. His own magic reacted as if someone had called his name down a long, dark hallway.
He hated that.
"I warned you," he muttered under his breath, more to the shadows than to the man following him.
The shadows rippled in a way that could almost be mistaken for a shrug.
Of course they didn't care about warnings. They cared about patterns—magic brushing magic in a way the world had never quite permitted.
The warmth pulsed again.
Closer this time.
Ardis stopped walking.
Frost creaked under his boots as his weight settled. A thin mist hung low to the ground, pooling around tree roots, catching what little light managed to slip past the branches. His breath curled pale in front of him and faded quickly into the stillness.
He listened.
No twig snapped. No armor rang. No voice called out.
But he could feel him.
The Flamebound.
Vaelor.
He hadn't meant to learn the man's name. It had slipped out of another soldier's mouth earlier—sharp with urgency, softened with habitual respect.
"Commander Vaelor—!"
The title had carried power in it. The name had carried weight.
Now, with the forest watching, that same weight pressed at the edges of his magic like a hand testing the shape of his shoulder.
He could keep running.
He should.
But all that would do was stretch this strange, unbearable thread between them thinner and thinner until it snapped—or tangled around something far worse.
Enough.
Ardis stepped sideways into a pocket of darkness where two trees leaned toward each other like conspirators. The shadows there thickened at once, curling around his shoulders and waist. He let them hold him, let them wrap him in their familiar coolness, and then whispered a single, silent intention:
Here.
The magic shifted.
Space thinned.
When he stepped out, he was standing in a small clearing he recognized from scouting hours before—a bare patch of earth ringed by frost-coated stones, branches arching overhead like the ribs of some great sleeping beast.
The air here felt different.
Taut.
Waiting.
"Fine," he murmured. "Let's end this."
He took his place at the far side of the clearing, back straight, cloak falling in clean black lines. Shadows pooled at his feet and rose in faint curls around his hands, not quite forming shapes, not quite dissolving either. Just… listening.
The warmth approached.
Step by step, its rhythm found him—the slow, deliberate tread of heavy boots on frozen ground, softened by training but not enough to hide from shadow. The fire beneath that step burned steady, deep in the chest of its wielder, tethered to a shard that felt as old and rigid as the Council's rules.
Ardis's pulse stumbled.
The last time he had felt another magic this clearly, he had been thirteen, standing in chains in the Council chamber with a bleeding boy on the floor and three Vowkeepers telling him his instincts were dangerous.
Your magic is not your ally.
It is your burden.
It is not meant to reach for anything.
And yet it reached now, unbidden, toward the approaching heat.
Resonance.
The word slid through him like a blade pulled out of an old wound. It hummed under his ribs in a pattern he knew too well and had never been allowed to name aloud again.
His shadows trembled.
The first glimpse of Thane came as a shadow against the trees—a tall silhouette threaded with faint metal gleam where armor caught stray light. For a heartbeat, he was nothing more than another soldier, another risk, another reason to vanish.
Then he stepped fully into the clearing.
And Ardis's carefully constructed expectations did not so much shatter as grind, stubbornly, against reality.
The Council's stories had painted Flamebound commanders in broad, uncompromising strokes: brutal, blazing, eyes full of hungry fire. Weapons given legs. Hands that burned everything they touched.
This man was not that.
He bore all the pieces of the myth—armor, sigils, the faint shimmering pulse of contained flame under his skin—but nothing about him was monstrous. His face was sharply cut, yes, but not harsh. Dark hair, gone slightly wild from frost and wind, clung in damp strands to his temple. A faint scar bisected one eyebrow, drawing the eye there before letting it fall to the line of his mouth—pressed tight, like a man too used to holding his words back until they tasted of blood.
His eyes flicked over Ardis's face and snagged, widening just slightly—more startled than disgusted. Like a man trying to reconcile a storybook monster with something inconveniently… ordinary.
Ardis hated the way his stomach twisted at that.
The man stopped halfway across the clearing.
They stared at each other across the remaining stretch of frost.
The resonance struck like a sudden breath of winter on bare skin.
Heat and shadow collided—not violently, not explosively, just… completely. Ardis felt it as a jolt under his sternum, as if someone had shoved him, hard, from the inside. His magic surged to meet it before he could stop it, curling outward in instinctive, hostile curiosity.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The forest did not, either.
It felt obscenely intimate, standing there in silence, their magic touching in ways their bodies never had and never should.
Ardis was the first to find his voice.
"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
His words came out flatter than he felt, shaped by years of practice, worn smooth by necessity.
Commander Vaelor blinked, as if surprised he'd spoken first. His gaze swept over Ardis in one quick, thorough pass—cataloguing the black cloak, the silver eyes, the shadows rising and falling at his boots like slow tide. His jaw tightened a fraction, as though each detail confirmed a list of problems.
"You're a Shadow Mage," he said.
It should have been accusation. It almost was. The uncertainty in it kept catching.
Ardis lifted his chin a fraction. "And you're loud."
The commander's mouth twitched at the edge, caught between a frown and something else. "I haven't said anything."
"Your magic has," Ardis replied. "It's practically shouting. Whatever trick this is, you can stop it any time."
A quick flash of irritation crossed the man's face. "I thought this was your trick."
Ardis's fingers tightened at his sides. The shadows at his feet thickened, restless.
"Trust a Flamebound to set fire to the air and then blame the nearest dark thing," he said. "How very on-brand."
"Trust a Shadow Mage to twist what's happening and call it my fault," Thane shot back, the title of commander sitting sharp behind his words whether he used it or not. "My shard doesn't do this."
"Of course not," Ardis said. "The Council would never give you anything they couldn't control."
The heat between them steadied, no longer spiking in confused bursts but settling into a strange, unwanted balance. Every time the shard under Thane's sternum pulsed, Ardis's magic twitched, gnawing at its leash.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Opposing magics repelled. They grated. They clashed.
They did not… align.
Thane's gaze dropped, just briefly, to the shadows winding around Ardis's hands—as if checking they weren't forming blades.
"Is it always like this for you?" he asked, voice low. "When you're near flame?"
Ardis almost laughed.
"Near flame?" he repeated. "No. Flame hates us. It burns us when it can. Or so I've been told since I was old enough to understand."
"And yet," Thane said quietly, "you're not on fire."
"Not for lack of trying on your Council's part," Ardis muttered.
The flicker of humor vanished from the commander's eyes, replaced by something sharp and guarded. His shoulders stiffened, like he'd been hit in a familiar bruise.
He took a slow step closer.
The resonance flared in protest and delight all at once, a painful combination that made Ardis's fingers curl. Shadow surged reflexively, folding around his legs as if to hold him in place.
"Stay where you are," Ardis said.
Thane stopped immediately.
Obedient—just like that.
It did not make Ardis feel safer.
The Council never stopped when Umbramancers said no. They pushed. They prodded. They tested for weakness like children pressing a bruise to see how much it hurt.
This flamebound soldier, though, simply… listened.
It unsettled Ardis more than any aggression could have. It felt like a trick he hadn't seen before.
The commander studied him openly now, that sharp, focused gaze tracing the lines of his face in a way that made the shadows at Ardis's shoulders creep higher, trying to hide him.
"Who are you?" he asked at last.
Ardis gave him a long, suffering look, one that said, I am definitely not telling you that.
The man's jaw flexed, but he didn't look away.
"I'm Commander Vaelor," he said after a beat, as if offering a name would force Ardis to match it. "Flamebound. Third Legion."
"Yes, thank you, I noticed," Ardis said. "You bring an entire battalion's worth of noise with you."
A muscle in Thane's cheek twitched. "You're not what I was told."
Ardis's lips thinned. "Let me guess. You were promised void-eyed fiends and got an exhausted bureaucrat with a curse instead."
Some of the tension in Thane's jaw eased, but only barely. "I was told Shadow Mages were cruel. Twisted by their magic. Not…" He hesitated, as if catching himself mid-thought and deciding not to share the rest. "Not like this."
"Messy?" Ardis said drily, glancing down at the dirt and torn edges of his cloak. "Running for my life does tend to ruin the look."
Color rose, faint but undeniable, along Thane's cheekbones. His flame flared in sharp response, sending a brief wash of heat through the clearing as if his shard itself had opinions.
Ardis's shadows shivered, annoyed.
Thane cleared his throat, scowling at nothing. "Different," he corrected, with the stubborn dignity of a man refusing to be flustered in front of an enemy. "Human."
Ardis looked away.
That word always hurt more than "monster" when it came from Council mouths. It usually meant I didn't expect you to be.
"Don't sound so surprised," he said. "The Council has been wrong before. Frequently. Loudly."
Thane huffed a quiet breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn't sounded so tired. "You say that like you've taken notes."
"I work for them," Ardis replied.
Thane went very still. "You're Arcanum."
"Unfortunately."
"That makes this worse," Thane muttered.
Ardis's head snapped back toward him. "For you. For me, it started bad and spiraled."
The heat between them steadied again, digging its hooks in. Every time Thane shifted his weight, the shard under his sternum pulsed. Every time it did, Ardis's magic listened, whether he wanted it to or not.
The silence stretched.
He should leave. He knew this with a certainty that lived deeper than fear. Every second he stood here increased the chance that a ward-flare or a stray patrol would catch them in the open and report back.
The Council would not be amused by a Shadow Mage and a Flamebound commander standing in a clearing without one of them bleeding.
Ardis flexed his fingers, shadows curling tighter around his wrist like a living cuff. "We can't be here."
"No," Thane agreed quietly. "We can't."
He didn't move.
Ardis narrowed his eyes. "Do Flamebound understand what can't means?"
"Do Shadow Mages?" Thane countered. "You didn't run."
"That was a lapse in judgment."
"Is that what this is?" Thane asked. "A lapse?"
The question hit harder than it should have. As if what they were doing now—standing still instead of fleeing, looking instead of striking—was already being measured in terms of sin and weakness.
Ardis swallowed. "Call it whatever helps you walk away. Temporary insanity. Shared hallucination. An unfortunate side effect of you existing too close to me."
Thane's gaze drifted briefly to the edge of the clearing, where the trees loomed like the bars of a cage. "Is that what you want?"
Yes, Ardis thought.
He imagined saying it aloud, watching Thane nod once, turn, and vanish into the frost. He imagined the thread between them stretching, thinning, snapping. He imagined the silence after, blessed and complete.
His magic didn't believe a word of it.
The resonance hummed, soft but insistent, in a place no language could reach. He had the absurd sense that if he lied too boldly, the magic itself would protest.
He settled on the closest truth he had left.
"It's what we both need," he said.
Thane's jaw tightened. "Needs are simple. This is not simple."
"This isn't want," Ardis snapped.
"What is it, then?" Thane asked.
Ardis inhaled sharply. The shadows at his shoulders trembled.
He thought of the boy in the Council chamber, his dormant flame reaching for Ardis's shadow like a drowning hand. He thought of the courier staggering through the Citadel gates, shard resonating like a struck bell in the chest of a child who didn't yet know why it hurt.
He thought of all the times his magic had pricked at him since then, restless, unsatisfied, listening for something it could never find.
Until now.
"It's resonance," he said, the word tasting like something he wasn't supposed to own. "Your shard. My shadow. They're… responding."
Thane's eyes narrowed. "That's not a term I've heard."
"Of course you haven't," Ardis said. "Your Council doesn't like concepts it can't put in chains and label harmless."
"So this is your people's word," Thane said. "Convenient."
Ardis let out a humorless breath. "Believe me, there is nothing convenient about this."
"For who?" Thane asked.
"For both of us," Ardis said.
The word lingered in the cold air, heavier than it should have been.
Thane didn't argue—but he didn't look convinced either. Suspicion sat in the tight line of his shoulders.
"If you knew this could happen," he said slowly, "did you cause it?"
Ardis stared at him. "Yes, Commander, in between running for my life and dodging your patrols, I took time to curse myself into being magnetically allergic to your existence."
"So you're saying this is an accident," Thane replied. "Just… a thing that happens."
"No," Ardis said. "I'm saying it's a thing that shouldn't happen, and yet here we are. Which means it will get us both killed if we let anyone else notice."
Thane's mouth pressed thin.
"They would bury this," Ardis continued. "They wouldn't study it or nurture it or let us figure out what it means. They'd put us in separate cells and call it containment. If we're lucky."
"And if we're not?" Thane asked.
Ardis looked at him, really looked at him, past the armor and the rank and the shard glow under his skin.
"If we're not," he said quietly, "they'll decide one of us is the problem and remove it."
Thane flinched.
He still didn't fully trust Ardis—Ardis could see that plainly—but he trusted the Council enough to believe they were capable of the worst option. That, at least, they had in common.
The clearing felt smaller now, crowded with all the decisions they hadn't made yet.
"Then we stay apart," Thane said.
"Congratulations," Ardis replied. "You've reached the same conclusion I started with."
"Yes," Thane said. "But now I know why."
"Good for you," Ardis said. "I'm delighted this horrifying experience has been educational."
He was not delighted. His hands were shaking inside his sleeves.
Silence settled again, thicker this time, heavy with the shape of a choice they were both circling and pretending wasn't one.
Ardis dragged in a slow breath. The air tasted like frost and smoke and the faintest hint of iron from Thane's armor.
"We're going to walk away," he said. "Right now. You'll tell your men it was a false alarm. I'll tell my Council there was nothing worth reporting. They'll believe you more than they'll believe me, so try not to improvise."
Thane's brow knit. "You think I would make sport of this?"
"I think you've had, what, half an hour to live with this feeling?" Ardis said. "I've had half a lifetime knowing what happens if the wrong people see it. Forgive me if I don't assume you're immediately competent at survival."
Thane's gaze didn't leave Ardis's.
The steadiness of it unnerved him. There was wariness there, yes, but also a stubborn refusal to look away—as if breaking eye contact would somehow make this worse.
"You have a name?" Thane asked after a beat.
Ardis blinked. "Excuse me?"
"A name," Thane repeated. "I'd prefer not to keep referring to you as 'the Shadow' when I'm trying to figure out what curse you dropped on me."
Ardis stared at him.
Shadow Mages didn't hand their names to Flamebound. Names had power. Names were handles the world could use to drag you places you didn't want to go.
But Thane had already been dragged into this with him, whether either of them liked it or not. And there was something profoundly dehumanizing about being thought of only as a category when the magic between them insisted on treating him as… specific.
He should lie. Pick some meaningless alias and toss it like scrap.
Instead, he heard himself say, "Ardis."
Thane's mouth moved around the name once, soundless, as if testing the weight of it, then again aloud.
"Ardis."
Hearing it in a Flamebound voice made the shadows at Ardis's shoulders curl inward, annoyed with him.
"And you?" Ardis asked before he could talk himself out of it. "Commander Vaelor seems a mouthful to think every time you're being infuriating."
Thane's lips twitched. "Thane."
Ardis nodded once. "Of course you're a one-syllable man. Efficient. Difficult to get rid of."
"In what way?" Thane asked, frowning.
"In the way that you're still here," Ardis said.
He hadn't meant for the words to come out sounding like an accusation and something else.
Thane's answering exhale looked suspiciously like he was biting back another retort.
It shouldn't be like this, Ardis thought. It shouldn't be this easy to fall into a rhythm with someone whose entire existence should repel him. It shouldn't be this hard to hate him properly.
The resonance pulsed once more, stubborn and insistent.
He took a step back.
Instantly, the shadows thickened behind him, eager.
"This is the part," he said quietly, "where we leave."
Thane's expression shuttered. Whatever had softened in his eyes slammed back behind rank and training.
"Gladly," he said.
The word stung more than it should have. Good. He deserved that. This was better. Cleaner.
Ardis let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The shadows at his feet stirred eagerly as his resolve finally aligned with what they'd been urging since Thane stepped into the clearing.
He lifted a hand, just slightly.
Darkness responded at once.
It rose around him like a wave, curling over his shoulders and hair, softening the edges of his form until he was little more than a silhouette threaded with faint silver at the eyes. The world dimmed; the sounds of the forest pulled away; even the scent of frost seemed to thin.
For a heartbeat, he remained visible within the swirl—eyes on Thane, resonance humming like a taut, unwanted string between them.
"Forget this," he said. "Forget me. It'll keep you alive."
Thane's flame flared violently in protest—whether at the order or the idea, Ardis couldn't tell.
"Believe me," Thane said, "I would very much like to."
Then the shadows folded fully, dragging Ardis sideways out of the clearing in a smooth, practiced motion. Cold slid over his skin. Space bent.
When he stepped out again, he was alone amid the trees, the clearing now a dim shape through trunks behind him.
He leaned a hand against the nearest bark, breathing hard.
The resonance was quieter here, but not gone. He could still feel Thane's presence like a distant echo—warm, steady, refusing to fade, no matter how firmly he told himself it would.
He pressed his forehead against the tree.
"Stupid," he whispered. "Dangerous. Irrational. Exactly what I don't need."
His shadows wrapped gently around his ankles, unconvinced.
After a long moment, he straightened.
He had miles to walk and reports to falsify and a Council to mislead. He had a lifetime of habits telling him that he could still bury this, still smother it under obedience and fear and paperwork.
He started forward.
Behind him, the clearing sat empty under the listening trees.