The rain had stopped, but Grimwald's streets remained slick with runoff that reflected lamplight like shattered mirrors. Elias stood in the narrow alley behind his tenement, watching his breath fog in the predawn cold. Five shadows surrounded him, each positioned at a different angle—a protective formation that had become instinctive.
Seven days until Caius moved against him. Seven days to find and bind the Sixth Shadow.
The Codex lay open on a crate he'd dragged outside, its pages fluttering despite the still air. The words had changed overnight, arranging themselves into something that looked almost like a map:
Where betrayal meets ambition, where hunger devours loyalty, the Sixth waits in chains of its own making. Seek the place where Grimwald keeps its forgotten guilt.
"That's not helpful," Elias muttered.
Shade coiled around his ankle, a gesture that had become familiar—almost comforting. He could feel the shadow's concern through their connection. It remembered the cost of binding Whisperfang, the way Elias had wounded it to prove his resolve. That memory lingered between them like scar tissue.
"I won't hurt you again," he said quietly. "Not unless there's no other choice."
The shadow pulsed, and Elias wasn't sure whether it believed him.
Mira emerged from the tenement door, wrapped in a coat too large for her frame—one of Elias's, he realized. She'd stayed the night, too nervous to return to her own room after learning about Caius's ultimatum.
"You're really going to do this now? Before the sun's even up?"
"The longer I wait, the more time Caius has to prepare." Elias closed the Codex, tucking it under his arm. "Besides, I think better in the early morning. The city's quieter. Easier to sense things."
"Sense what, exactly?"
"Wrong places. Spaces where the city's energy feels... off." He struggled to articulate something he barely understood himself. "Since binding Ember and touching the Fifth, I can feel Grimwald differently. There are cold spots, dead zones where even the fog won't settle properly. That's where forgotten things gather."
Mira pulled the coat tighter. "And you think the Sixth Shadow is in one of these dead zones?"
"The Codex does." He glanced at her. "You should go back inside. This could be dangerous."
"Everything about you is dangerous." But she made no move to leave. "Where do we start?"
"We?"
"I'm not letting you wander into some cursed dead zone alone. You need someone to watch your back while your shadows do their thing." Her mismatched eyes were steady, determined. "Besides, I know places in this city you don't. Factory districts, abandoned buildings, smuggler routes. If there's a dead zone, I can probably narrow down the location."
Elias wanted to refuse, to keep her safe behind wards and walls. But she was right—he knew the docks and the markets, the places a common laborer might frequent. Mira knew the industrial heart of Grimwald, its hidden arteries and forgotten organs.
"Fine. But if things get dangerous—"
"Your shadows will protect me. I know." She touched the shadow-mark on her wrist, which had darkened overnight. "This thing's been tingling since you started preparing. Shade's already keeping watch, isn't it?"
She was more perceptive than Elias had given her credit for. Shade had indeed extended a thin tendril of connection to Mira, monitoring her heartbeat and position.
"Let's move," he said.
The Dead Zone
They walked east, into the Factory District where the dawn light struggled to penetrate layers of coal smoke. The streets here were wider to accommodate cargo wagons, but emptier—most workers wouldn't arrive for another hour.
Ember provided subtle illumination, its molten light painting the cobblestones orange. Crimson ranged ahead, scanning. Whisperfang's chains dragged behind, leaving faint scratches on stone. And Shade... Shade had split itself, keeping part of its mass with Elias while extending filaments throughout the surrounding blocks, searching.
"There," Mira said suddenly, pointing to a squat building with boarded windows. "The old Thornwood Printing House. It burned down three years ago—electrical fire, they said, though some claimed it was arson. Insurance fraud. The owner disappeared before the investigators could question him."
Elias felt it immediately: a cold spot, a pocket where the city's ambient energy seemed to drain away. Even the fog avoided it, creating a small circle of clear air around the ruined building.
"That's it," he said.
They approached carefully. The boards over the entrance had rotted, easy to pull aside. Inside, the smell of old ash and something else—something chemical and wrong—made Elias's eyes water.
The printing presses had melted into abstract sculptures. Charred paper covered the floor in layers, some pages still showing fragments of text. Elias knelt, picking up a corner of one:
—confess to sins unnamed, to guilt that walks on two legs, to the children we—
The paper crumbled in his fingers.
"What were they printing?" Mira whispered.
Elias shook his head. Whatever had happened here, it had been more than insurance fraud. The wrongness in the air was thick enough to taste—guilt and fear and something darker, all compressed into this space.
Crimson suddenly contracted its scanning pattern, focusing on the building's rear. Shade hissed a warning.
"Down," Elias said. "There's a basement."
Descent
The basement stairs were partially collapsed, forcing them to descend carefully. Ember's light revealed walls covered in scratched symbols—not magical wards, but desperate tallies and prayers. Someone had spent a long time down here, counting days or pleading with gods who didn't answer.
At the bottom, the space opened into a larger chamber. And there, suspended in the center by chains bolted to the ceiling and floor, hung a shadow.
But not like any shadow Elias had seen before.
It was humanoid in shape but wrong in proportion—arms too long, torso too narrow, head cocked at an angle that suggested a broken neck. The chains that bound it weren't physical restraints but seemed to grow from the shadow itself, as though it had trapped itself in bondage.
The moment Elias entered the chamber, the shadow's head snapped toward him. Its eyes—if they could be called that—were empty holes that somehow still managed to convey desperate hunger.
Free me, a voice whispered directly into his mind. Not the Codex's voice, but something more raw, more broken. Thirty-seven months in darkness. Free me and I serve. Free me and I devour your enemies. Free me and—
"Stop," Elias commanded.
The shadow's mouth—a gaping void in its face—clicked shut.
Mira had pressed herself against the wall, as far from the shadow as possible. "That thing is wrong, Elias. Wrong in a way that makes my skin crawl."
She wasn't wrong. This shadow radiated desperation and madness in equal measure. The Codex pulsed against Elias's chest, pages forcing themselves open:
The Sixth: Hunger. Born from imprisonment, sustained by deprivation, it knows only want. It will serve, but service comes with appetite. Bind it, and accept what it must consume.
"Consume what?" Elias asked aloud.
Memory. Not yours—others'. It feeds on forgotten things, stolen moments, the gaps in human recollection. Bind it, and everywhere you walk, small pieces of the past will disappear. Most won't notice. Some will.
Elias felt his stomach turn. The other shadows had costs—Shade required trust, Whisperfang demanded betrayal, Ember needed exposure to fire—but this was different. This shadow would change the world around him, erasing pieces of history with every step.
"Can I control what it consumes?"
With practice. With discipline. Without either, it will feed indiscriminately.
The chained shadow rattled its bonds, that desperate voice returning: Please. So hungry. So long alone. Free me and I'll be good. I'll be so good. Just please please please—
"Elias," Mira said carefully. "Think about this. If you bind that thing and you can't control it..."
"I know." He did know. But he also knew that in seven days, Caius would come with fire and trained operatives. Five shadows might not be enough. Six, properly commanded, could make the difference between survival and burning.
Shade pressed against his legs, radiating concern. Crimson's geometric patterns had become chaotic, calculating probabilities and finding none that satisfied. Whisperfang's chains rattled in what might have been recognition—one prisoner to another. Ember flickered uncertainly, as though the Fifth's influence had made it more cautious.
The Codex whispered: Every shadow strengthens and hollows. This one more than most.
Elias approached the bound shadow slowly. Up close, he could see that the chains weren't just restraints—they were part of its punishment, growing from guilt and shame made manifest. Someone had bound this shadow here deliberately, sealing away something they'd done or known.
"Who put you here?" he asked.
The shadow's empty eyes focused on him. The printer. The father. The man who knew what he'd done and couldn't live with knowing. He bound me here with his confession, with his guilt, with—
It broke off into wordless keening.
Elias understood then. This wasn't just a shadow. It was a memory-shadow, born from someone's desperate attempt to forget their own sins. They'd ripped it out of themselves and chained it in this basement, then burned the building to seal it away forever.
Binding this would mean releasing decades of compressed guilt and hunger into the world.
"Can you tell me what memory you hold? What sin you represent?"
The shadow's head tilted further, impossibly far. Children. Missing. Disappeared. The printer's press ran on innocence and small bones ground to—
"Enough." Elias's voice was sharp. He didn't need to hear more. The printer had been a monster, and this shadow was his imprisoned conscience.
Mira had gone pale. "You can't release that. Whatever those chains are holding, it needs to stay held."
"I'm not releasing it. I'm binding it." Elias opened the Codex fully, finding the ritual pages. "Binding means control. It means taking responsibility for what it does, what it consumes. If I can master this shadow, I can make sure it never feeds on anything important. I can direct its hunger toward things that should be forgotten—trauma, pain, the memories that poison people."
"And if you can't master it?"
Elias had no answer for that.
The Binding
The ritual was more complex than any he'd attempted before. It required him to physically touch the chains—to take ownership of the binding while simultaneously breaking it. The paradox made his head ache.
He commanded his other shadows into position. Shade would absorb any backlash. Crimson would calculate the exact moment to sever the chains. Whisperfang would provide its own chains as replacement restraints, should control falter. Ember would burn away the guilt-residue that had accumulated over decades.
"Mira, get back. All the way to the stairs."
She retreated without argument.
Elias placed both hands on the chains. They were cold enough to burn, and beneath his palms he felt decades of compressed anguish and self-loathing. The printer had bound his shadow with everything he couldn't face, and it had festered here in darkness.
The Codex's words burned in his mind: Name it. Claim it. Command it.
"I name you Hunger," Elias said, voice steady despite his racing heart. "I claim you as Sixth. I command you to serve, to feed only on what I allow, to remember that which others have forgotten—so that justice can be served even when memory fails."
The shadow screamed. Not with sound, but with psychic force that made Elias's nose bleed instantly. His shadows surged—Shade absorbing the worst of it, Crimson striking at the chain's anchor points, Whisperfang's chains wrapping around the shadow, Ember burning away layers of accumulated guilt.
Elias pulled.
The chains shattered.
For one terrible moment, the shadow was free—truly free, unbound and ravenous. It lunged toward Mira, sensing fresh memory, warm and vital.
"NO!" Elias roared.
His will crashed down like a physical weight. All five shadows moved as one, intercepting Hunger, wrapping it in layers of control and command. Shade cocooned it. Crimson pierced it with precision strikes. Whisperfang's chains bound it tighter than the originals ever had. Ember burned away the madness, leaving only the core.
And through it all, Elias forced his intent into the shadow's being: You. Are. Mine.
The Codex flared with heat against his chest:
Sixth Shadow bound: Hunger, the Forgotten. It devours memory, erases the past, consumes what should not be kept. Master it, or become its meal.
Slowly, agonizingly, the shadow submitted. It collapsed into itself, compressing into a form more manageable than the desperate thing it had been. When it reformed at Elias's feet, it was smaller—child-sized, with chains of Whisperfang's making wrapped around its torso like a straitjacket.
Elias fell to his knees, gasping. Blood ran from his nose and ears. His hands shook violently.
Mira rushed down the stairs. "Are you—"
"Fine," he lied. "I'm fine. Just... give me a moment."
But he wasn't fine. He could feel Hunger's appetite gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. It was restrained, bound, controlled—but barely. This shadow would require constant vigilance.
Shade pressed against him worriedly. Crimson's patterns had simplified to basic defensive shapes, as though exhausted. Whisperfang's chains were dimmer than usual. Ember flickered weakly. Even his shadows had been pushed to their limits.
And through their connection, Elias felt something new: the first stirrings of the Seventh. Not yet ready to bind, but aware of him now. Watching. Waiting to see if he would survive long enough to claim it.
The Codex whispered: Six shadows. Six days until fire comes. Did you gain enough strength, or merely hasten your end?
Elias had no answer. He simply sat in the darkness of a dead man's basement, surrounded by shadows that were becoming harder to distinguish from himself, and wondered what he was becoming.
Outside, Grimwald began to wake. The morning shift bells rang. Cart wheels rattled on cobblestones. Life continued, unaware that one of the city's hidden horrors had just been claimed by a young man who was running out of time and running low on reasons to believe he'd survive what came next.
"Let's go home," Elias said quietly.
Mira helped him stand, and together they climbed back toward the light, six shadows trailing behind like an executioner's cloak.