The city of Varlin had never slept — not when I was mortal, and certainly not now. Its streets were arteries of smoke and song, its people bleeding life like lantern oil, burning bright because they knew the dark would always come.
I walked among them in borrowed skin.
A hood. A face blurred by shadow. A pulse slowed enough to mimic theirs. I had learned long ago that the easiest way to hide was not to vanish, but to blend — to let the crowd's noise drown the truth of you.
But tonight, even among the living, I felt watched.
Rumors followed me wherever I went. The Shadow Saint. The Black Heir. The Witch Who Burned the Sun. They didn't know what I was — savior, monster, or myth — but they told my story like prayer and warning both.
And perhaps that was fitting.
Because even now, as I sat in a corner booth of a dim-lit tavern, tracing the rim of a half-empty glass, I could feel him — Liam — somewhere out there, burning. The faintest pulse of fire through the tether that should not exist.
Each time it came, it seared me.
And each time, I told myself I deserved it.
...
It was near midnight when he appeared.
He moved through the tavern like a man who'd forgotten what it meant to be alive — no heartbeat, no breath, but not quite dead either. His cloak was torn, his boots caked in road dust, and yet his eyes gleamed with something sharp and knowing.
He sat across from me without asking.
"You drink like someone who remembers thirst," he said.
I didn't look up. "You talk like someone who remembers dying."
He laughed — a dry, sandpaper sound. "Once, yes. But not as many times as you."
That made me raise my head.
Up close, he looked like the world had chewed him up and spat him back out. Scars crisscrossed his face, one slicing through his lip. But his gaze was steady — too steady.
"Who sent you?" I asked, voice flat.
"No one." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "But someone calls to you. You've felt it, haven't you? The pull. The whisper in the dark when your power wakes."
I froze.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He smiled — or tried to. "A messenger. My name's Corren. Once, I served under a man named Kael."
The glass shattered in my hand.
Kael.
"You lie," I whispered. As if knowing who it was.
The shadow spoke to me.
Corren's grin widened. "If only. No, Aria Valen. He's alive. And he remembers you."
"How do you know my name?"
He shrugged. "Everyone does, by now. The court calls you traitor. The mortals call you saint. Kael…" — his voice dipped to a near whisper — "calls you unfinished."
I stood before I realized it, shadows uncoiling beneath my boots.
Around us, the tavern's other patrons barely noticed. A hush fell — not of awareness, but of magic. Corren had veiled us, a subtle trick of glamour that turned eyes elsewhere.
"What do you want?" I hissed.
"To warn you," he said, sliding something across the table. A piece of parchment, worn and smudged. A map.
"He's calling to you. Whether you go to him or not, he'll find you. But if you want a chance to face him on your terms — to end what he began — follow this."
The parchment showed the eastern mountain pass — the Vale of Crows. A place where even shadows whispered of death.
"Why help me?" I asked.
"Because I ran once," Corren said quietly. "And it didn't save me."
His gaze softened, though his voice didn't. "Kael doesn't teach anymore, Aria. He consumes."
...
After he left, I sat there for a long time, staring at the map.
The candlelight flared, and with each, another memory stirred — pieces of a life I'd tried to forget.
A starving girl, barely sixteen, shivering in an alley.
A loaf of stolen bread clutched in her hands.
Boots approaching. Voices shouting.
Then — silence.
A man had stepped out of the dark.
"You're fast," he'd said, smiling faintly. "And desperate. That's good. Desperation is the mother of power."
I hadn't even screamed when he bit me. Maybe I'd been too tired. Maybe part of me had wanted it — an end, or a beginning.
When I woke, the hunger had already begun.
...
I found Corren again before dawn.
He was waiting outside the tavern, leaning against the wall, the faintest trace of smoke curling from the cigarette between his lips.
"You followed me," he said without surprise.
"You said he calls to me," I said. "How?"
Corren exhaled. "You feel it when you dream, don't you? The cold behind the stars. The way your shadow twitches before you move."
I said nothing, but the silence was answer enough.
"He left a mark in you when he changed you. All his fledglings have one. Most don't survive it — the shadow devours them from the inside."
"And those who do?"
"Become like him," Corren said. "Hunters of their own kind. Kael doesn't just make vampires — he builds extensions of himself. Every shadow he creates becomes a door."
My stomach turned. "A door."
"He can walk through you, Aria. See through your eyes. Hear your thoughts if you let your guard slip."
I felt the air tighten around me.
"So what am I supposed to do?" I asked. "Hide forever?"
Corren shook his head. "No. You face him. You sever the bond. But if you go, understand — he won't fight you to kill you. He'll fight to bring you back."
"Back to what?"
Corren's gaze was pitying. "To himself."
...
That night, I didn't sleep.
I sat by the window of a crumbling inn, the map open before me, the world outside drowned in rain.
The more I stared at the inked lines, the more they seemed to move — shifting, writhing, like veins under skin. The Vale of Crows pulsed faintly on the parchment, its name shimmering in shadowlight.
I reached out.
The moment my fingers brushed the paper, the world bent.
For an instant, I saw through Kael's eyes.
A cavern vast and hollow, lit by thousands of candles burning black.
Bodies kneeling in circles of ash.
His voice, smooth as ever, calling names that were not mine — yet echoing with a promise I remembered.
Come home, duskling.
I tore my hand away, gasping.
The parchment smoked where I'd touched it.
And beneath the noise of my heartbeat, I heard another — faint, familiar, echoing through the dark.
Not Liam's.
Kael's.
The monster who'd made me.
..
I left Varlin before sunrise.
Corren tried to stop me. "You're walking into the lion's mouth."
"I already live in it," I said.
He handed me a small vial — silver liquid, pulsing faintly. "Holy water. Won't kill him, but it'll make him bleed."
"You really think I can?"
Corren smiled sadly. "You're the only one who can ever do. His true blood is inside you, I can smell it."
His words stayed with me long after I vanished into the mist.
The road east was long and empty, littered with the bones of war. Villages burned by Marcus's men. Ash floating through the air like gray snow.
And yet, for the first time in years, I felt a direction.
A purpose.
Liam's fire had awakened somewhere far away. Seraphina's war was spreading. Marcus was tightening his crown of blood.
And now Kael — the ghost of my past — was calling.
Every monster I'd ever known was gathering.
And in the middle of them all, me — the girl who'd once just wanted to survive.
...
I stopped that night in a ruined temple by the cliffs. The moonlight pooled on the floor, pale and cold. The map lay open beside me, the Vale of Crows shimmering faintly like an open wound.
I spread my hand over it and closed my eyes.
The shadows responded — whispering, twisting, painting images in the air.
I saw a mountain carved with black spires.
A cavern shaped like a mouth.
And at its center, Kael — ageless, smiling, waiting.
He hadn't changed at all.
"Why?" I whispered. "Why me?"
The shadows shifted, forming words I couldn't fully understand — fragments of prophecy, echoes of something ancient.
The first shadow birthed the last flame.
The bond was never between two, but three.
To kill your maker, you must become his mirror.
I gasped, jerking my hand back. The whispers dissolved.
Three.
Me.
Liam.
Kael.
The bond that had once connected me to Liam — the one I thought Seraphina had corrupted — had roots far older, far darker.
It had begun with him.
Kael.
And now he was calling to reclaim it.
...
I stood at the cliff's edge, watching dawn bleed into the horizon.
For the first time in years, the sun didn't burn. The shadows wrapped around me like a second skin, protective, possessive. They were part of me now — no longer wild, no longer forbidden.
I whispered into the wind.
"Kael, if you're calling me home — then wait. I'm coming."
The wind answered in a shiver of cold laughter.
But beneath it, I felt something else — a flicker through the bond. Not fire, not warmth.
A heartbeat.
Liam's.
Faint. Distant.
Alive.
And for the first time since the fall, hope and dread shared the same breath in my chest.
Because if Kael's shadow still lived in me…
Then perhaps Liam's flame still lived in him.
...
When I left the temple, the map had already changed.
The lines had shifted, now leading not east, but north.
Toward a land called Eredan Hollow.
Corren's words echoed in my skull.
"Kael doesn't teach; he consumes."
But I wasn't the same girl he'd made in that alley.
And I wasn't coming to be taught.
I was coming to end it.
Every step I took left faint traces of shadow that shimmered and disappeared — like ink bleeding into light.
The map glowed faintly at my belt.
The night bent around me, whispering secrets.
And somewhere, far away, a fire answered with a roar.
The game was changing.
The war between shadow and flame had found its map.
And both paths led back to me.