And for the first time, I felt the weight of my cursed existence lessen, just slightly, as if this priestess’s light—faint though it was—had reached into the depths of my darkness and illuminated something I had long forgotten.
Hope.
And in that moment, I knew that the battle between us was far from over.
Chapter 5: Elena
The first thing I noticed was the silence.
It was not the ordinary quiet of midnight prayer in the Sun Temple, where the hush was reverent, filled with the warmth of burning incense and the muffled breaths of worshippers.
No, this silence was hungry. It seemed to cling to my skin, settle into my lungs, as if even the act of breathing too loudly would rouse something ancient and dangerous.
The oppressive darkness was gone, replaced by something softer, quieter. When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing.
No shadows, no trees, no sky.
Just… nothing.
The ground beneath me was damp. My robes clung to me, mud-soaked at the hems, and the smell of rotting leaves filled my nose. I shifted, only to discover that I could not move far. Shadows, slick and sinuous, coiled around my wrists and ankles, tethering me to the rough trunk of a blackened tree. They pulsed faintly with an unnatural rhythm, like the steady beat of a second heart. My staff lay by my feet, useless.
I tugged at my bonds once, sharply, and the shadows tightened in response, cool against my skin. I hissed, baring my teeth in frustration. I tried again, forcing the fire within me to flare, summoning the golden spark of the Phoenix. For a heartbeat it answered, warmth rushing up my arms, but the shadows smothered it, swallowing the glow until only faint embers lingered beneath my flesh.
The Sun was too far. Its strength did not reach me here.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to breathe evenly.
Panic was the enemy. Panic fed the dark.
I knew that. I had trained my acolytes to remember it during trials in the Temple crypts, where they prayed blindfolded in the dark.
And yet here, in this prison not of stone but of shifting, living shadow, the memory of my own advice mocked me.
A voice cut through the stillness, low and rough.
“I wondered when you would wake.”
My head snapped up. My pulse leapt to my throat. That voice…it was like the growl of a storm rolling across the mountains, distant yet inevitable. I pressed back against the tree instinctively, trying to find the source.
“Show yourself!” My voice rang out sharper than I intended, but steadier than I felt.
The silence stretched. Then the shadows in front of me thickened, coalescing, peeling themselves from the black air. And from them stepped the figure every Paladin of Solaris had been sworn to destroy.
The Shadow King.
He was taller than I expected, his form lean but not fragile. Cloaked in living darkness that writhed like smoke around him, his presence distorted the very air around him, like heat waves rising from a brazier. His hair was dark, falling loose across his shoulders, blending into the shifting veil that wrapped aroundhim. But it was his eyes that trapped me—cold, dark, unblinking, as though they saw through the façade I wore and into the marrow of me.
I had imagined a monster—fangs, claws, a twisted form birthed from the Night Goddess herself. But the being who faced me now was disconcertingly human.
Human, and yet marked by something…otherworldly.
“High PriestessElena,” he said. My name on his lips struck me harder than I expected, wrapped in bitterness, weighted with a familiarity I did not understand.
I lifted my chin, forcing defiance into the tilt of my head, though my heart thudded in my chest. “You know me.”
His mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile. “I know many things. The hunters of the Sun whisper your name often enough. Their prayers reach even here.”
A flush of anger burned away the edge of fear. “You speak as if you listen to our prayers like a thief at the window.”
