The blood wouldn't come off.
I knelt beside the cracked stone pond near the old clock tower, one of the last places in the city no one bothered with anymore. Moss clung to its weathered bricks. The tower's hands had long since frozen, forever marking a time no one remembered. Water rippled around my wrists as I scrubbed harder, trying to erase the red still clinging to the lines of my palms. My reflection stared back at me, murky and constantly breaking by the ripples.
"I didn't want to kill them," I whispered to myself. "I didn't… I just wanted to scare them."
But I couldn't even confidently say if that was true at all.
The moment the shadows took over, the moment I felt their fear, I didn't stop it. I watched. And a part of me… a part of me liked it. That terrified me more than the blood.
"Was it me?" I asked the still water. "Or was it something else?"
The shadows didn't answer.
But someone else did.
"I've seen that look before."
The voice came from behind me, calm, steady, and most definitely heavy with age. I turned fast, instinctively ready to vanish, but stopped when I saw him.
The man leaning against the broken wall wasn't a thug, or a priest, or some wandering these slums.
He was a soldier.
Broad-shouldered, cloaked in a long, dark coat trimmed with iron stitching. Scars ran vertically through his right eyebrow, three jagged lines like a beast had tried to rip his face open but failed. His eyes weren't showing any sign of hostility, they looked more tired. The kind of tired that knew violence too intimately to flinch at it.
And those eyes were locked on me.
"You made quite a mess," he said.
I stood, not reaching for my dagger, not moving at all. "Who are you?"
He stepped forward, slow, deliberate. "General Draven Ashwyn Netheril."
The name struck something in me. I'd heard of his name whispered in the slums, muttered in the barracks of the war camps. He was a man who single-handedly fought off a battalion all on his own. A man with blood on his hands from every border of the War Nation.
By why in gods name was he here, standing in front of me, in the most wretched parts of the nation?
"And you are?"
"Thorne, no fancy family name behind it though, sorry." I remarked, not hiding my annoyance. "Why are you here, General?"
"I think you already know why I'm here," he said.
"You here to arrest me?"
He raised a brow. "For killing three thugs who had knives and greed? No. Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't finish the third."
I narrowed my eyes. "You watched?"
"I saw 3 thugs enter an alley and thought to go make sure nothing unsightly was happening. I watched enough to know what that was."
He tilted his head.
"Shadow trait. Unrefined. Wild. Powerful. Dangerous."
I said nothing. My fingers curled slowly.
"You're not the first with that power," he said, walking slowly around the edge of the pond. "But you might be the last unless you learn to control it."
I narrowed my eyes. "You speak like you've seen it before."
Draven circled me like a hawk sizing up its prey. "I have. Once. He didn't last long."
"You train him?"
"No. More like I hunted him down."
Silence stretched between us. The air tensed, like the shadows themselves were listening.
"So you're here to hunt me, too?" I asked.
He gave me a sideways glance. "That depends. Are you planning to become a problem?"
I shrugged. "Haven't decided yet."
Draven stopped walking and looked directly at me. "Good. You can at least formulate some decent lines of logic. That's rare around these parts."
"You ask a lot of questions," I said.
"So do you," he replied. "What do you want to know?"
I stared at him, not answering immediately. Then: "What happened to the last shadow-wielder?"
His voice dropped lower. "He drowned in himself. Couldn't tell where he ended and his power began eating away at his brain."
"Is that what you're afraid of?"
"No," Draven said. "I'm afraid of wasting potential."
A beat passed.
"You want to train me?" I finally asked.
He stopped across from me, arms folded. "No. I want to adopt you."
The words hit like a blade between the ribs.
"I don't need your pity."
"This isn't pity," he said plainly. "This is practicality. You've already taken your first steps. You survived the trait's awakening. You even held it off, at least partially. That's more than most."
I searched his face for a trick, a trap. "Why? What do you want from me?"
His eyes flicked briefly, not with hesitation, but with memory. Just a flash. A wound that never healed.
"Nothing now," he said. "But I like to keep useful things alive."
The silence stretched between us.
He didn't press. Just waited.
I didn't trust him. Everything about him screamed danger, calculation, scars both worn and buried. But there's a chance that being near him could give me a chance to get closer to my sister.
I gave a slow nod.
"I'll come."
Draven's mouth twitched. Not a smile. Just approval.
"We leave at dawn." He turned to go, "Follow me, boy."
The General stop a moment, without turning, "I apologize, follow me, Thorne Netheril."
As he stepped into the misty edge of the pond's shadow, I saw it, I thought I was losing it, but his own shadow shifted unnaturally, curling slightly around his heel, like it moved to keep up with him.
And then he disappeared into the fog.
I looked down at my reflection again before getting up quickly to trail after him.