"There's no such thing as shadow magic."
Arthur fired anyway.
The hellshade crossed the alley and the wall of fire came up to meet it and this time the fire was blue.
The heat hit him from five meters away. His sweat dried before it finished forming. The blue was hotter than the red by a margin that wasn't small and the hooded man had switched mid‑fight which meant he'd stopped treating this like cleanup and started treating it like a problem.
The hellshade hit the blue wall.
It went out.
Just stopped. The shadow spreading through the fire the way it always did and then the blue eating it back and the hellshade dying in the middle of the exchange and the darkness scattering across the alley stones like it had given up.
Arthur's stomach dropped.
'Three balls incoming. Left—'
He moved.
Two passed him. The third clipped his shoulder and the burn arrived before he finished moving and he hissed and kept going because stopping was worse.
The hooded man was already launching. Four more balls circling him like satellites, each one trailing blue, the heat warping the air around his silhouette.
Too many.
'Right then duck—'
Right. Duck.
He did both. Two balls swung past. He came up and the fourth one was already there, point blank, no time, and his body was mid‑correction and couldn't finish it.
It hit his chest.
The world went sideways.
He left the ground. The invisible wall of the severance field caught him from behind and the impact came from both directions at once and he hit the stone and stayed there.
The burning was immediate and specific. His chest. His uniform gone at the center. The skin underneath doing something he couldn't look at directly.
He turned his head.
Roz was at the edge of the alley.
Standing completely still.
Not moving. Not raised. Just watching with those red eyes and doing nothing and Arthur opened his mouth and closed it because he didn't have the air for the question.
Why.
Why aren't you helpi—
A hand closed around his throat and yanked him vertical.
The hooded man's face was inches from his. Under the hood the eyes were wild in a way they hadn't been at the start. The shadow had spread from his forearm up across his collarbone and was moving toward his neck, slow, patient, indifferent to everything he'd tried to do about it.
His fist connected with Arthur's jaw.
The world split into pieces.
Blood hit the stones before Arthur finished processing the impact.
"YOU BASTARD." The voice was past sharp. It had crossed into something ragged. "Look what you've done. LOOK AT IT." His grip on Arthur's collar tightened. "Tell me how to stop this magic. Tell me right now or I will make what comes next last a very long time."
Arthur's vision had black at the edges.
He looked at the shadow on the hooded man's neck.
Creeping upward. Slow and patient.
He looked at Roz.
Still not moving.
The fist came again.
His head snapped back and his nose went and the blood came fast and he tasted it and his knees were doing something unreliable and the only thing keeping him vertical was the hand at his collar.
A kick landed in his ribs.
He left the ground again and hit the stones and didn't move for a second.
His chest was on fire. His left hand was bleeding around the blade hole. His ribs had an opinion about breathing that he was being forced to listen to.
He lay on the alley stones and looked at the strip of sky above.
How did this happen.
He was just reading.
That was all he was doing. Sitting at a desk with cold coffee and a chair that made a noise on left turns. Leaving comments on a webnovel nobody asked him to read. Sharing thoughts about a story he couldn't let go of.
How did that turn into this.
He pressed his fist against the stone.
Blood from his palm spread across the pavement in a dark thin line.
I'm scared.
He stared at the sky.
I want to live.
His fist stopped spreading blood.
He looked at it.
The shadow under his hand had darkened where the blood touched it. A slight shift. Not random. It moved toward the blood like something drawn to it.
His shadow.
His anchor.
He moved his eyes across the alley floor.
The stones were dark with it. Every place the hellshade had spread. Every place the shadow had scattered when the fire went out. Every surface the darkness had touched when he'd fired and missed and been beaten across the pavement.
His anchors.
All of them.
He looked at the hooded man's neck.
The shadow he'd left on his forearm in the first exchange. Spreading upward since then. Slow and patient and going exactly where shadows went when the light source shifted.
Every surface his shadow touched became an anchor.
Including skin.
Oh.
The hooded man crossed the alley and crouched down and grabbed his collar again.
"Last chance." The voice had dropped. Quieter than the yelling, which was worse. "Fix it. Right now. Painless death. That's what I'm offering."
Arthur's one working eye found him.
His lips moved.
"The size and sharpness of a shadow," Arthur said. His voice came out wrong. Wet. Slow. "Depends on the object's proximity to the light source."
The hooded man went still.
"What."
"The closer to the light." Arthur's hand moved. The left one. The one with the blade hole through the palm, the one that had been bleeding since the fight started, the one Vexis had told him not to touch. "The sharper the shadow."
He drove his arm sideways.
The blade still lodged through his palm caught the hooded man across the ribs before he finished processing the sentence.
"Ah—"
The grip on Arthur's collar disappeared.
Arthur hit the stones. The dagger yanked free from both directions at once and his palm tore the rest of the way open and he made a sound he hadn't planned and the blood came fast.
He got up anyway.
The hooded man had the blade out of his ribs. His hand was pressed to the wound. The shadow on his torso had reached his jawline.
Arthur raised both hands.
His left was bleeding onto the stones in a steady drip.
He didn't look at it.
He looked at the alley floor. At the shadows spread across every inch of stone between them. At the darkness on the hooded man's skin. At every anchor point he'd left across the last ten minutes without knowing he was leaving them.
He pulled.
Every anchor answered.
The shadows on the stones moved. Not drifting. Not spreading. Moving, with direction, converging toward the hooded man from every angle at once, the darkness sliding across the pavement like water finding a drain.
"Hey." The hooded man stepped back. "What are you—"
"Retract."
The shadows climbed.
Fire burst from both his palms. Blue and immediate. It hit the shadow and went out. The darkness just absorbed it, the same way it had absorbed the wall in the first exchange, patient and total.
"WHAT— HOW—"
"Rebound."
The shadows reversed. Every anchor point he'd left on skin and stone and cloth compressed inward simultaneously and the hooded man's body locked.
He went down.
Both knees. Then hands. The stone caught him and he pushed against it and nothing moved.
"What is this. What is this. WHAT IS THIS." His voice was fraying at the edges. The fire at his hands sputtered and died. "This is black magic. This is illegal. You can't—"
Arthur walked toward him.
One step. Then another.
His left hand was dripping. His chest was open and burned. His ribs were making the breathing calculation very complicated. His aetheric blood was at the bottom of whatever the bottom was, the density behind his sternum scraped thin and flat, and he could feel the Aetherthin state sitting right at the edge of his next breath.
One shot.
He had one shot left.
He stopped in front of the hooded man on the ground.
Raised his right hand.
Drew his fingers.
The shadow gathered at his fingertip. Small. Coin‑sized. What was left of his aetheric blood moving into it in one slow compression, everything he had, the last of it, the reserve scraping empty as it built.
It glowed faint red at the center.
The hooded man looked up at him.
Something in the eyes that hadn't been there at the start.
Arthur looked back.
"Hellshade."
He fired.
The alley went red.