I watched as three small bodies, wrapped in white cloth marked with magical symbols, were lowered into the ground.
"We placed protection on the cloth so the black lords would not be able to use their bodies. It is common practice," Nimor said quietly.
I shifted my gaze from one bundle to another and could not accept the thought that they were gone. The world had become empty, drained of life. As though a part of me had dissolved together with them. I threw a handful of earth onto each of them and watched the swordsmen bury the graves.
My heart was tearing apart from pain. I had not been able to protect them then— and I could not help them now.
Hatred for myself rose in a wave. For helplessness. For weakness. For the fact that I remained, and they did not.
"You consider me the chosen one… but look at what happened," I said, not lifting my gaze from the almost covered bodies. "I could not even call for help. I could not do anything. Neither as a sorceress nor as a human being. And you still say I am destined to stop this century‑long war?"
The tears that had seemed already spent rolled down my cheeks again. They burned my skin, but I did not wipe them away. I had nothing to cover this truth with, my weakness, my guilt.
"If Blake said it is you, then so it is," Nimor said with quiet sorrow, staring at the fresh graves of the three nine‑year‑old children. He touched my hand gently, as though wanting to give me support.
"He is wrong. And so are you," I yanked my hand away. "I am a fraud. You must find the real one as soon as possible."
They were all mistaken. Wasting strength, time, faith on someone who was incapable of changing anything.
I was a useless, ordinary person to whom they had entrusted what had never been within my power.
I returned to my room after the professors and the headmaster offered their parting words. They briefly explained that the children had been summoned to the academy from small villages because they were considered promising mages. That they had died as warriors the way they had been taught: without retreating, without losing themselves to fear, fighting the darkness until their last breath.
And everything they said was true.
Their faces, their final battle remained in my heart forever. They came even in dreams: three small mages looking at me in the moment when the Avoddons took their crystals.
Those images would not leave me in peace. Day after day I sat in my room and looked at the river where we had spent so much time together. The water flowed, yet inside me everything stood still, and the pain would not release me.
The days either flew by or dragged on endlessly; I no longer distinguished how much time had passed since the funeral. I still had not left the room. My interest in food was gone. I could spend hours sorting through what they brought from the kitchen, but as soon as I tried to bring a piece to my mouth, everything inside me went out. Appetite, the desire to live, any movement of the soul. I chewed one spoonful endlessly or did not touch the food at all.
Everything inside had tightened. I sat by the window, looking at the river, and the memories circled around me, giving no rest. They pulled me back into the moment when I had been unable to do anything to save their lives.
I asked myself the same question over and over:
Do I deserve this food after everything? Do I deserve life?
But one day someone came to me whom I least expected to see.
Ada.
She entered on her own and placed a plate on the table.
"I heard you hardly eat," she said quietly, with the kind of care only mothers have.
I looked at her, and inside everything twisted into a tight knot.
"How can I eat when I failed them all…" I exhaled, and the tears broke through with such force that I folded over, clutching my knees, trying to stop the pain. But it passed straight through me, scorching everything inside.
Ada sat down beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, stroking my back with a calm, steady hand.
"I am sure you did everything you could," she said, continuing to support me with her warm, even movement.
My sobs only grew stronger. I could no longer hold it back, drowning in tears, in desperate hatred for myself.
"We are not all‑powerful," Ada said softly. "I, too, could not save my family. My magic is not combat—it is kitchen magic."
I lifted my head.
She had magic? I had not even known.
"I could do nothing when disaster came," she continued. "I failed my daughter, my son, my husband. My power is only the control of the temperature of food and objects. Narrow, quiet magic, not military at all."
There was sorrow in her voice, so deep I felt it almost physically.
I could not even imagine what she had lived through.
"How did you manage to go on?" I asked, choking on my tears.
"In spite of everything," Ada said, and bitterness lay softly upon her voice. "I will not give up. I will live to see the day we celebrate the end of this war."
She tried to smile, but the smile barely held.
If only she knew that others considered me the one whose power was supposed to tip the scales to our side…
And if only she knew how helpless I was.
"I cannot change the past," she continued. "I cannot bring my family back. But I cannot be weak and remain aside either. The dark side wants exactly that—to weaken us."
The sorrow in her eyes did not fade, but her voice sounded steady:
"Even if it is hard for me, I will still live and help however I can."
She moved the bowl of soup closer to me on the tray she had placed on the bedside table.
"We will face much more pain and loss before the war ends. Do not let them break you," Ada said, leaned down, and gently kissed my forehead.
Then she quietly left the room.
WAR — the word rang inside me with a dull echo.
How much more would it take? How much had it already taken?
Nimor had said that ninety‑three years had passed. And in a matter of months I had lost the people closest to me. If this was the present, then what had been happening all ninety‑seven years before that?
At the thought alone, anger rose inside me: dark, growing, pushing out mourning and silence.
I still did not touch the food.
All my grief, anger, and hatred toward myself I endured alone, heavily, without respite, in a silence that pressed harder than any scream.
One morning, cold enough to make me shiver, I sat at the window and looked at the river.
Even if they had allowed me to leave the room, I would not have been able to return there.
That place now belonged to memories I did not deserve.
Through the icy air and the unfamiliar quiet I heard Blake's voice.
He was speaking in the living room, muffled, even. I did not know with whom he was speaking.
And truthfully, I could no longer fill the emptiness between us with anything: I did not know when he was home, when he left, how he lived. Even that had lost meaning.
But suddenly I heard my name.
He was talking about me.
I stood up, gathering the last of my strength, and stepped into the living room. And…
In the middle of the living room stood a tall figure in a black mantle.
No… not a man.
An Avoddons.
Terror made my legs buckle, and I collapsed onto the floor. My knees struck the cold stone.
"He—"
The words would not come. My consciousness froze, ruptured, turned into a hollow hum.
He turned toward me. The mask did not fully cover his face, leaving only his eyes open— black, deep, studying.
And Blake…
Blake sat calmly on the sofa, silent, as though everything happening was familiar.
"An Avoddons…" I finally forced out. "How is he here?"
I stared at Blake, unbelieving.
How could he bring him here?
How could he let in the one who killed… who took them all?
"No. I am not him," a low male voice spoke from beneath the mask.
It was a different voice. Not the one I remembered. I would have recognized the murderer's voice instantly— and would never have mistaken it.
The stranger slowly drew his hand from the mantle, removed his glove, and showed his palm. The skin was black, dense, matte, alien. The same as that of the Avoddonss. Only his eyes were not completely dark, and his hands lacked the predator‑like claws.
"How? How could you… betray us?" I whispered, unable to rise.
Blake spoke first. Calmly. Evenly. As though explaining something ordinary.
"This is Roger. The very exception I told you about. He is a dark mage, but he is on our side. On mine."
He stood and extended his hand to help me up.
I ignored it. Gathering the last remnants of strength, leaning solely on my legs, I rose on my own.
"He lives in shadow," Blake continued, lowering his hand. "You will hardly ever see him. But from this moment he will guard you."
He turned and calmly headed to his desk, as if the conversation were over.
I stared at Blake, unable to believe what was happening.
Then shifted my gaze to Roger a dark mage whose mere appearance had dragged up all the nightmare I had mourned alone for so many days.
And now he was my guard.
A nursemaid?
The next moment he sank into the floor.
I gasped and jerked back.
"How?…" I looked around in confusion.
It did not resemble an Avoddons's movement, which left behind a trail of black shadow.
He simply vanished into the floor as though dissolving.
"I am going into the shadow," I heard a low quiet voice behind my back.
I turned so sharply I stumbled back again.
"Wherever there is shadow," he continued, "there am I. And the shadow itself is me."
He picked an apple up from the table and threw it onto the floor.
It disappeared, as though falling into emptiness.
I approached, touched the floor cautiously with the toe of my boot.
The stone was as solid and hard as always.
"Shadow is my magic," Roger said. "And only I decide who and when may enter it."
He extended his hand, and from the wall on the opposite side of the room the same apple flew out.
Such a powerful mage, assigned to guard me?
"You should be searching for the Avoddons," I raised my voice at Blake, "instead of wasting such magic on me!"
He did not even glance my way.
"Your protection is the priority," he said, rising from the desk. "We are dealing with the problems."
"Dealing?" I nearly shouted. "You have not found him. You do not know where he is. That is not dealing. I am not the one who needs protection! You are wrong! I am not the chosen one!"
Tears surged, but I held them back with the last of my strength.
"This is decided," Blake said coldly. "Roger will guard you."
He headed to his room.
"Now you may go wherever you want."
"I am not the chosen one, you stubborn damn ram!" I shouted after him. "You are wrong! Wrong!"
Blake froze for a second.
"She doesn't know?" Roger asked quietly.
But Blake was already speaking in another voice— flat, final:
"All discussions are over. You remain under his supervision."
He left and slammed the door.
The tears broke free.
He was once again placing me above everyone the one who had not protected anyone.
The one who had been useless and weak while others died.
I would not allow myself to cry in front of him.
Never.
Gathering the last remnants of strength, I rushed into my room.
There, where the silence continued to be my punishment for my own helplessness.