I moved silently through the forest—my home and my prison—where the shadows clung to me like old regrets. Every step I took was muffled, swallowed by the dampness, as though the forest itself was conspiring to keep my movements hidden.
The Forest of Night’s Bane greeted me like a lover armed with knives—familiar, intimate, and cruel.
The air was heavy—thick with dampness and something else, something I couldn’t quite name. It pressed against my skinlike a shroud, reminding me that this was the only place in the world I could truly exist. The darkness wrapped around me like a second skin, giving me form, keeping me anchored.
My boots sank soundlessly into the black loam as I walked, the trees rising around me like twisted sentinels. Their bark was charred, their limbs contorted by centuries of stagnant magic. Twisted, blackened things they were, stretching upward like skeletal fingers reaching for a sky they’d never touch.
Leaves, the color of ash, barely clung to the gnarled branches, and when they fell, they disintegrated before they ever touched the ground, as if even they knew that decay was their only destiny.
The air was cold, damp, and smelled of iron and decay.
No light ever touched this place. Not truly. Above me, the ash-colored canopy blotted out even the suggestion of sunlight. Even the moonlight seemed hesitant to reach this far, as if it feared what it might find in the deep shadows.
Which was good, since the light of the moon—reflected from the sun—still held the powers of sunlight, diminished as they were.
In the moonlight, I was as formless and incorporeal as a true shadow. A shade, nothing more.
But in the darkness, Iruledas the Shadow King.
Meryn flew ahead of me, wings slicing the silence. She landed on a bent limb, blinking down at me as I passed beneath her.
“I’ve missed your judgment,” I muttered dryly, my voice rough with disuse. “You must have been eavesdropping on my thoughts again.”
She fluffed her feathers, unimpressed.
We made our way deeper into the thicket. My cloak dragged behind me, not of cloth but of living shadow, tendrils sliding across the forest floor and coiling idly around my ankles like a pet seeking warmth. It had a mind of its own sometimes, thoughit never resisted me. Nothing did, not anymore.
I stopped near the creek that didn’t flow. Its water was still, black as oil, mirroring nothing but emptiness. I dropped to my knees at its edge, listening to the silence, and reached for the smooth stones beneath the surface. The cold bit at me but never hurt. I had not felt true pain in a century.
Meryn landed beside me, delicately folding her wings.
“You know,” I said quietly, “there was a time I loved forests.”
She tilted her head.
“In my youth. Before I grew arrogant. Before I decided I was smarter than gods.”
I flicked one of the stones across the unmoving water. It skipped once, then vanished into the stillness.
“I wanted knowledge. I was a mage, Meryn. Not a king. Certainly not this.” I gestured at my shadowed body, my voice rasping with the weight of years. “I thought I could trap her — Nyx, the Night Goddess. Thought I could steal her secrets. Steal her immortality.”
Meryn stared back at me, unblinking.
“I got what I asked for,” I said bitterly. “Just not in the form I expected.”
Meryn ruffled her feathers and gave a low, almost imperceptible hoot.
“I know,” I said with a tired smile. “Hubris makes fools of us all.”
Meryn didn’t reply, but she didn’t need to. As my familiar of many years, we understood each other.
She was the only living thing that sought out my company. Everything else that lived in this forest feared me and my presence.
As if to mock my thoughts, Meryn flew high into the sky, leaving me behind as I carefully selected another stone and sent it skipping across the surface of the water.
A few moments later, there was a brush ofsomethingagainst my consciousness.
I turned my head slightly, just in time to catch the faint flutter of wings. Meryn descended from the blackened treetops, her white feathers glowing faintly against the oppressive darkness. She landed on a low branch, her glinting golden eyes fixed on me with that familiar, unsettling intelligence.
