It had been days since they took her.
Since I heard her scream my name, since her fingers had brushed mine for that final second before they dragged her away. Since the guards beat me into the dirt and left me there, not even worth the trouble of finishing.
I've been wandering the slums for a few days with the weight of everything pressing into my ribs. I stole food when I could, mostly scraps, half-rotten or stepped on. Most attempts ended in beatings, swollen cheeks, or bruised ribs. But I didn't stop. Hunger didn't give me a choice.
Sometimes, at night, I'd mutter to myself not being able to grasp everything.
"Who the hell was that man?"
I walked along the gutter line, eyes low, feet dragging. "Why only her? Why did the orb glow for her and not for me?"
I swallowed hard, kicking a broken bottle. "Why… why'd they kill her? Why only mom?"
My voice cracked. "Why didn't I protect her? Either of them?"
I sat in silence for a long while that night, huddled beneath a broken stairwell as rain dripped through. It was then that something inside me began to shift.
I needed to know more.
I needed to learn why this happened.
And to do that, I'd need to change.
And so, from that day on I started watching people.
Day after day, I kept to the shadows near the market square, eyes flicking from stall to stall. I tracked the way the pickpockets moved, how they bumped shoulders, how they palmed coin purses, how they slipped into crowds like smoke. I watched the beggars too, how some of them worked together to distract while others lifted fruit, or bread, or coin.
I watched the merchants, the ones who stood taller, who barked orders with full bellies. And beyond them, just on the edge of where slum met gold, I watched the nobles. Their fine coats and quiet escorts. Their polished boots and guarded expressions.
I learned quickly.
I tried what I saw. I started small. A distraction here, a coin lift there. I got caught twice, beaten once. But each time, I got smarter, one time I even feigned ignorance saying how I was lost. By the end of the second week, I was filling my pockets with coppers and crusts before anyone noticed.
That wasn't enough.
Eventually, I realized that I needed to set my sights higher.
One night, just after dusk, I followed a distracted servant through a service gate in the back of the merchant quarter. I've timed the rotations, the guard routes, even the times for when the merchants brought in their special guests from the pleasure isles for days now. I held my breath. Moved low. Stayed quiet.
I found myself in a long hallway filled with painted doors and polished brass handles. I picked the most decorated one at the end of the hall. Jewels meticulously imbedded in an arch along the door. It was a bit tricky and I definitely broke quite a few picks but after a while, it opened.
Inside was treasure.
Gold coins glimmered in stacked trays. Vials of strange-colored liquid lined polished shelves. There were stones that shimmered in unnatural hues, scrolls sealed in wax, daggers with jeweled hilts, and statues small enough to hide in a coat pocket.
My jaw dropped. My hands moved almost of their own accord.
I pocketed a few loose coins, breathing hard. Every breath made the room seem more unreal. Going further into the room, I couldn't help but question how anyone could even think to horde this much valuable loot all for themselves. I pocketed a beautiful-looking dagger, its hilt filled with inscriptions I couldn't read, along with 3 black jewels arrayed in a triangle, the metal was nothing to scoff at either, it looked as if it was bending light itself. I was about to inspect it further, but then something else caught my eye.
That's when I saw it.
A small obsidian orb, no bigger than a marble, resting inside a glass box at the edge of the far wall. It pulsed faintly, a swirling mist curling inside its black surface like smoke trapped in a bottle.
Something about it made the room go quiet.
I stepped toward it, hand trembling. When my fingers touched the glass, the mist moved, reacting like it knew me. Like it had been waiting.
I opened the box.
The moment my skin met the orb, my world fell away.
I was standing in my old home.
But everything was wrong.
The air reeked of rot. The wood groaned. And in the middle of the room was my mother's body, no longer fresh, but bloated. Her skin darkened, one eye collapsed into a cavity crawling with maggots. Yet her head turned.
Her dead eye met mine.
"You let this happen," she rasped.
I staggered back. "Mom... no-"
"You slept while I was choking out, calling your name." Her voice cracked like ice. "Why didn't you stop them?"
I tried to look away, but her voice followed. "Why did you let them take your sister?"
Her tone rose to a scream. "Why didn't you protect us, Thorne?"
I screamed and threw the orb.
It shattered against the stone wall.
The swirling black mist exploded from its shell and rushed toward me, engulfing me in a cyclone of darkness. I gasped and stumbled trying to claw free but the shadows wrapped around me like a living thing.
Footsteps echoed outside. The guards.
The door creaked open.
"I heard something. In here?"
"Sounded like glass. You sure it wasn't just-?"
They stepped into the room. Looked around.
Nothing.
A few loose coins. The empty glass case.
"Could've sworn it was this one…"
"Maybe a rat knocked something over. Let's move. We'll check the next hall to be sure."
The door shut again.
I gasped, falling to my knees. My skin felt ice-cold. My breath came in ragged bursts.
"What… what just happened…?"
I stared down at my hands. They looked like mine, but didn't. My arms felt too light, my chest too hollow. Like I hadnt been in my own body for a moment there.
I looked up.
A full-length mirror stood at the end of the room, fractured down the center with a jagged crack running across my reflected face.
The shadow behind me didn't move when I did.
I stared at my reflection, the crack splitting my face in two.
My shadow, still wrong, still not mine.
My hands were shaking, but my breathing had slowed.
Something wasn't just different. Something had been pulled out of me, or awakened, and it wasn't going back to sleep.
I don't know what it is yet, but I do know that it might have just saved my life.
I left the merchant quarters with my heart still hammering in my chest. My legs moved on instinct, dodging alleyways and lamplight, pushing deeper and deeper into the city's underbelly until the stone roads gave way to broken dirt paths. I didn't stop until the walls of Korvale were nothing but a jagged silhouette behind me.
I didn't know where I was going, only that I needed to be far. Far from that room. Far from the mirror. Far from the shadow that moved when I didn't.
Eventually, I found myself in the trees. The forest swallowed me with every step, its canopy blotting out the starlight above. Only slivers of moonlight made it through, casting long, black shadows that shifted with the breeze. My body trembled but not from cold, from something else, fear maybe?
I sat on a fallen log, trying to catch my breath.
"What the hell was that?" I whispered to no one. My voice felt thin, like it didn't belong in this place.
I remembered the orb. The way the mist swallowed me. The way the guards looked straight at me and saw nothing.
I clenched my fists. "Can I do that again?" I whispered.
That moment had been pure panic, but something inside me had answered. Something had risen. Had felt like listening.
"If I could vanish then… maybe I can do it again now." The feeling when everything closed in around me. I hadn't wanted to fight. I hadn't tried to run. I just wanted to disappear. To sink. To melt into the dark.
That was the key.
I stood and walked to where the moonlight carved through the trees. Where its glow touched earth, the shadows were deeper, cleaner. I stepped into one, closed my eyes, and breathed.
Nothing happened.
I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists. "Come on."
I tried again, reaching for that feeling, not of anger or fear, but that desperate need to vanish.
And then I fell.
Not downward, but through.
My body shifted, and in an instant, I was no longer where I stood. The air left my lungs like I had been plunged into icy water. Every sound dulled, and the forest turned to blurred ink. My skin prickled with pressure from all directions, like the darkness itself was holding me.
Then I was flung- no, drawn, to the next shadow of the base of another tree. Then another. And another. This was much easier than I thought. This feels natural to me, as natural as breathing.
I hit the ground on my knees, gasping.
Then again. I stepped with excitement, reached, and the shadow pulled me forward. Faster this time. I moved from tree to tree like a phantom, each time slipping through the black veins, the forest stretched between trunks. It was like slipping beneath the surface of a still lake at night, the world above dimmed, distorted, and distant. The silence wasn't empty; it was thick, full of weightless pressure. I felt the cold seep into me, like I'd left heat and sound behind.
With every leap, the movement grew easier. My body lighter. My eyes sharper. I could sense where shadow pooled thick enough to grab, feel the right angle to step into like a door swinging open only for me.
Finally, I stopped, chest heaving, heart pounding, a cold sweat on my skin.
I looked back the way I'd come. I had covered 4 or 5 miles, maybe more, yet somehow the sun seemed to be poking out. I entered the merchant quarters just after sunset, I wasn't there for more than two hours and yet the sky seemed to be daring to paint itself a brighter hue of orange.
Did I lose that much track of time?
I collapsed to the ground, staring up through a break in the canopy.
"I have something now," I whispered to the trees. To myself. "Something real."
I sat there for a long time, letting the silence settle.
"For the first time," I said, "I might actually have a chance to find out what happened to my family."