POV: Elara Ashwyn
Three months.
I've survived three months in the Shadowlands by learning one simple rule: don't trust anyone.
The masked figure—the Obsidian King—visited me twice in that cave. He brought medicine for my wounds. Food. Fresh water. He taught me shadow magic that flows through my veins like liquid night. But he never touched me. Never demanded anything. Just watched me with those glowing eyes while I healed, while my belly grew larger, while the voice inside my head grew stronger.
That voice. The one that whispers ancient secrets and promises of power. It's part of me now. Or maybe I'm part of it.
Either way, I've stopped fighting it.
Today, the King doesn't show.
Instead, five rogues corner me at a ravine's edge.
"Well, well," the largest one growls, his scarred face splitting into a grin. "A lone female. Six months heavy with child. Easy prey."
I pull out the broken knife the King gave me—the blade barely longer than my hand, the edge jagged and imperfect. It's not a real weapon. It's a joke. But it's all I have.
"Come on then," I say, and my voice surprises me. It's steady. Cold. Dangerous.
The rogues laugh.
One lunges first—fast, powerful, everything I'm not. I sidestep using the King's teachings, drive the broken blade up toward his throat. He swats it away, but not before the blade leaves a red line across his forearm. He hisses in pain and rage.
"You dare—"
The other four attack simultaneously.
I'm fast now—faster than I should be. Pregnancy makes humans clumsy, but it's made me sharper. Every movement is precise. Every dodge calculated. The King trained me too well. But there are five of them, and one of me. One of me with a broken blade and a baby that needs me to survive.
One of them gets close enough to grab my hair. I scream—not from fear, but from rage—and that scream echoes across the ravine with an inhuman quality that makes him hesitate just long enough.
His hesitation is his death sentence.
The shadows explode.
It's not a gradual thing. One moment, the sun is shining, and the next, darkness consumes everything. Not natural darkness. Living darkness. Shadows that move with purpose, that scream with fury, that tear through flesh and bone like paper.
The rogues don't even have time to transform.
The largest one tries to shift into his wolf form, but the shadows wrap around him mid-transformation, contorting his body in ways that anatomy shouldn't allow. His scream is the worst sound I've ever heard—and I've heard a lot of terrible sounds in the last three months.
Another rogue tries to run. The shadows chase him, dragging him back, pulling him apart with methodical precision. His blood doesn't spray—it's consumed by the darkness, absorbed into it like the shadows are drinking him.
I should look away. I should cover my eyes. Instead, I watch with something close to satisfaction.
They tried to hurt my baby.
They deserve this.
When it's over, there's nothing left. No bodies. No blood. Just empty ground and the lingering smell of burnt flesh. The shadows recede like a tide going out, pulling back, revealing the figure who commands them.
The Obsidian King steps from behind the darkness like he's been standing there the entire time, waiting.
His mask catches the sunlight—or what little of it penetrates this cursed place. His cloak moves without wind, like it's made of shadow itself.
"You're magnificent when you're angry," he says, and there's something almost tender in his voice. "Six months pregnant and you still fight like a warrior."
"I fight because I have to," I gasp, my chest heaving. "Because they wanted to take my child."
"I know." He steps closer, and I don't back away. I've stopped being afraid of him somewhere between the second visit and the third. "I've watched you survive these three months. Watched you grow stronger. Watched the power inside you begin to wake."
He extends that hand again—the one that saved me in the cave.
"It's time, Elara Ashwyn. Time to stop hiding in the margins of this world. Time to become what you were always meant to be."
"What do you want from me?" My voice shakes, not from fear, but from the weight of what's coming. I can feel it. Something massive. Something that will change everything.
"Everything," he says simply. "Your trust. Your loyalty. Your power when it fully awakens. In exchange, I will give you the world."
He gestures, and shadows part like curtains, revealing—
A palace.
Not a small fortress. Not a hidden shelter. A palace. Black stone that seems to absorb light, towers that pierce the sky, walls that stretch across the entire horizon. It's vast, impossible, like something from a fever dream.
"The Obsidian Throne," the King says. "The eighth kingdom that the Moon Court claims never existed. A sanctuary for the broken, the exiled, the cursed. I built it from shadow and sorrow and the blood of those who refused to accept their fate."
He looks at me directly.
"Become my Luna Queen, Elara Ashwyn. Not because of a fated bond. Not because destiny demands it. But because we choose each other. Because together, we can burn away the corruption that's poisoned this world."
The baby inside me kicks—hard, insistent, like agreement.
"Your child will be a princess," he continues. "Safe. Protected. Loved. And when you're ready, when your power fully awakens, we will return to Silvercrest, and everyone who hurt you will understand the cost of their betrayal."
I look at that outstretched hand. At the palace beyond. At the impossible man offering me everything.
"If you betray me," I say, "I will destroy you."
He laughs—a sound like thunder and joy mixed together.
"I expect nothing less, my queen."
I take his hand.
The moment our skin touches, the shadows explode outward—not violent this time, but wrapping around us both like we're being pulled through a doorway between worlds. The rogue corpses disappear. The ravine disappears. Everything disappears.
All I feel is his hand holding mine as we fall through absolute darkness.
And then—
A voice, ancient and vast, echoes through the shadows. Not the small voice that's been living in my head. Something bigger. Something that's been waiting in the darkness for a thousand years.
Finally, it whispers. Finally, she's found her way home.