Chapter 65 Victims of Darkness
The road back seemed narrower than before, as if the world itself was reluctant to return us to what we called normal. The forest seemed to observe every step, attentive, aware that something had been awakened and could no longer be ignored.
The silence between us wasn't empty. It was calculated.
Conrad walked beside me, too attentive to his surroundings to relax. Kael followed a few steps behind, his senses heightened, while Anor kept the rear, silent as a shadow that knew that terrain better than any map.
I felt the change within me constantly. The mark didn't burn, didn't call. It… organized. As if each memory received in the circle was finding its place, forming a larger design that I couldn't yet fully see.
Then the smell changed.
Conrad stopped the instant I smelled it. It wasn't an immediate threat. It was a trail. Recent magic, tearing through the air like hot metal.
"They passed through here," Kael murmured.
Anor bent down, touching the darkened ground. “Not erasers,” he said. “Something worse. Someone trying to imitate them.”
My stomach clenched.
“The shadowy ones don’t create,” I said slowly. “They consume. Whoever is trying to copy them wants power… or wants to provoke.”
The path ahead forked, and for the first time since we left the castle, the map within me hesitated.
Conrad was the first to move, instinctively positioning himself in front of me. There was no order in that posture, only caution. Aurelion stirred beneath his skin, alert to the strange trail that cut across the path like a fresh scar.
“The scent isn’t old,” he said softly. “It’s still warm.”
Kael closed his eyes for a brief moment, stretching his perception. “Unstable magic. Barely contained. Whoever did this doesn’t understand what they’re touching.”
Anor rose slowly, his gaze darkened. “So it’s not just any imitator,” he murmured. “It’s someone who believes he can survive the price.”
The wind blew from the path to the left, bringing a shiver that made the mark on my chest throb with alertness. It wasn’t pain. It was direction.
“It’s that way,” I said without hesitation.
Conrad turned to me immediately. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Not because I want to,” I finished. “But because he wants me to go.”
Kael frowned. “He?”
“The rift,” I replied. “Or something that has learned to call for it.”
We followed the narrow detour, the vegetation closing in around us. Branches scratched our skin, roots emerged from the ground like fingers trying to stop us. The trail intensified with each step, and the air grew heavier, laden with unresolved energy.
Then we heard it.
It wasn’t a scream. It was a broken sound, like a plea interrupted in the midst of despair.
Conrad drew his blade instantly.
“There’s someone alive,” he said.
The mark on my chest burned for the first time since the circle.
And, in the far reaches of the clearing ahead, I saw a kneeling silhouette, shrouded in unstable shadows—someone who wasn’t completely erased.
Nor completely whole.
I advanced before anyone could stop me.
Each step toward the clearing made the surrounding energy contort, as if space itself were undecided about allowing my approach. The kneeling silhouette trembled, enveloped in threads of shadow that dissolved and reformed, too unstable to be the work of the erasers—but dangerous enough to imitate them.
“Careful,” Kael warned, already with his weapon in hand.
I raised my hand, asking for silence. The mark on my chest didn’t scream. She watched. She recognized.
“He’s still here,” I murmured. “He hasn’t been completely erased.”
The figure slowly raised its face. It was young. Too young to carry that weight. Its eyes were marked by something dark, as if the shadow had tried to anchor itself in them and failed.
“I… I couldn’t.” The voice came out hoarse, broken. “They said all it took was opening a crack.”
Anor took a step forward, alarmed. “Who said that?”
The boy laughed humorlessly, the sound short and desperate. “Those who whisper when fear gets too loud.”
My stomach churned.
“You touched the crack.” I said carefully. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact.
He nodded, tears mingling with the dirt on his face. “I wanted power. I wanted protection. But it showed me things I couldn’t hold onto.”
The shadow around him reacted to the confession, stirring like something angered by being exposed.
Conrad approached, blade lowered but ready. “He’s a risk.”
“No.” I replied immediately. “He’s a warning.”
I knelt before the boy and touched the ground between us. The mark responded, soft, firm. The shadows retreated a few inches, reluctant.
“You’re not the first.” I said. “And you won’t be the last. Someone is teaching the desperate to knock on the wrong door.”
The boy stared at me with fragile hope. “You… you can close it?”
I swallowed hard.
“I can learn,” I replied. “But until then, I need you to survive.”
Around us, the forest fell into absolute silence.
And somewhere beyond that, I was certain: whoever was causing the rift had just realized I was in the game.
The silence that followed was thick, almost reverent. The forest seemed to hold its own breath as the shadows around the boy receded little by little, like animals cornered by light they didn't understand. The mark on my chest stabilized, pulsing in a firm, constant rhythm, as if anchoring not only me, but that fragment of life that resisted collapse.
Kael cautiously approached and knelt beside the young man, examining the signs left by the unstable magic. “He was touched, but not completely marked,” he concluded. “There’s still time.”
Anor watched from a distance, his face serious, heavy with painful recognition. “This is how it begins,” he said. “Promises made to those most afraid of losing.”
Conrad remained standing, vigilant, his eyes scanning the clearing. For the first time since we left the castle, his posture wasn't just that of a king or a warrior, but of someone who understood the magnitude of the enemy rising. It wasn't a visible army. It was an idea.
“Someone is opening small fissures,” he said. “Not to conquer territory. To spread despair.”
I nodded, feeling the truth fit with uncomfortable precision. The rift wasn't being forced. It was being fed, drop by drop, by wrong choices made in moments of fragility.
We helped the boy to his feet. He could barely support his own weight, but he still walked—living proof that not every touch of darkness was a final sentence.
When we left the clearing, there was no relief. There was direction.
I knew now that the path ahead would not only be made of direct confrontations, but of silent rescues, of truths revealed too late, and of decisions that no one else wanted to make.
Before we left, I looked one last time at the place where the trail dissolved.
The rift wasn't just waiting to be closed.
It was learning to call.