The Deadwood Crossings stretched before them like a graveyard of titans. Trees that had once reached toward heaven now stood petrified, their bark turned to stone, their branches raised in permanent supplication to gods long forgotten. No birds sang in this forest of the dead. No insects skittered across fallen trunks. Only the wind moved, carrying whispers that might have been the voices of those who had perished here centuries ago.
"How far to the capital from here?" The Shadow Knight paused atop a ridge that overlooked the blasted landscape. His form seemed to absorb the twilight, stars glimmering within the darkness that composed his body.
"Three days if we travel conventionally," Serena replied, her violet eyes scanning the horizon. "Perhaps one if you use the shadow paths. But there's a complication."
She pointed to a column of riders approaching from the south. Even at this distance, their purpose was clear. Armor gleamed with blessed silver. Banners bore the golden sun of the Church's elite hunters. At their head rode a knight whose bearing marked him as commander.
"The Council has sent its dogs," the Shadow Knight observed, something like satisfaction in his harmonic voice. "They must be truly desperate."
"Those aren't ordinary soldiers," Serena warned. "Those are hunter-knights, trained specifically to combat supernatural threats. Their weapons are blessed by the Grand Inquisitor himself. Even with the Soulstone's power, you'd be wise to avoid direct confrontation."
The Shadow Knight studied the approaching force. Twenty riders, each representing the pinnacle of the Light's martial prowess. They moved with disciplined precision, scanning the terrain with the practiced efficiency of predators tracking prey.
A memory surfaced, unexpected and almost unwelcome. These were his brothers once. He had trained alongside men like these, breaking bread in the same halls, kneeling in the same chapels, pledging the same oaths to the same Light. Before the Council's betrayal. Before Marcus's murder. Before everything changed.
"I know them," he said softly. "The leader is Sir Aldric."
"Your former mentor?" Serena's eyebrows raised. "I thought he was imprisoned with the other eastern knights."
"As did I." The Shadow Knight watched the distant figure with new interest. "It seems the Council found use for him after all."
The revelation should have stirred something. Grief perhaps, or betrayal. But the trials had scoured away such responses, leaving only cold calculation. Aldric's presence was a tactical consideration, nothing more. If his old mentor now hunted him, he would simply become another obstacle to remove.
"We should go," Serena urged. "They haven't spotted us yet."
"No." The Shadow Knight descended from the ridge, moving toward the deadwood forest. "They've tracked me this far. Let them find what they seek."
"You can't mean to fight all twenty. Even with your power..."
"Not fight. Hunt."
The distinction was significant. Direct confrontation would indeed be risky, even with the Soulstone's power. But the Deadwood Crossings offered different possibilities. The petrified forest, with its maze of stone trunks and shadowed corridors, would negate the hunters' advantage of numbers and blessed weapons.
One by one, in darkness and confusion, he would teach them why even knight-hunters should fear the night.
The Shadow Knight entered the forest, his form blending with the deeper darkness beneath the stone canopy. Serena followed reluctantly, her natural grace hampered by the uneven terrain.
"If you insist on this madness, I'll wait beyond the forest's edge," she said. "This kind of hunting isn't to my taste."
"As you wish." He didn't need her for what came next. This was between him and his former brothers.
Alone now, the Shadow Knight moved deeper into the petrified woodland. The Soulstone's power allowed him to slip between shadows, covering ground with supernatural speed. He found an appropriate spot near the forest's centre, a clearing surrounded by towering stone trunks that would channel the hunters along predictable paths.
Then he waited, still as the death that permeated this place.
They entered the forest an hour later, the sun setting behind them to cast long shadows ahead. Their confidence was obvious in their formation. Riders grouped in pairs, maintaining sight lines with adjacent teams, blessed weapons drawn and ready. They called to each other occasionally, voices carrying in the unnatural silence of the Deadwood.
"Spread out. Watch the shadows."
"Remember, silver for flesh, fire for spirit."
"Stay in pairs. No one breaks formation."
Sound tactics against conventional threats. Useless against what awaited them.
The Shadow Knight moved, flowing between petrified trunks to position himself behind the rearmost pair. These would be the least experienced, assigned to guard the formation's back. Their nervousness betrayed them, heads swivelling too quickly, hands gripping weapons too tightly.
He rose from darkness directly between them. Before either could shout warning, shadow-tendrils lashed out, wrapping around throats, cutting off sound. Their blessed weapons passed through his insubstantial form, finding nothing solid to strike. He solidified only his hands, reaching into armoured chests to clutch beating hearts.
The hunters died silently, expressions of horrified recognition frozen on their faces. Not merely recognition of death, but of him. They had known whose justice claimed them.
The Shadow Knight eased the bodies to the ground, then retreated into darkness. Eighteen remained. The hunt had begun.
The next pair fell similar, struck from shadows they had failed to properly secure. The third required more direct methods when one managed a truncated shout before darkness filled his lungs. By the time half their number had vanished, the remaining hunters had drawn into a defensive circle, backs together, blessed weapons creating a perimeter of silver light.
"He's toying with us," one whispered, voice cracking with strain. "Playing like a cat with mice."
"Stand firm," another replied. "The Light protects its faithful."
From shadows beyond their perception, the Shadow Knight watched. These men weren't evil. They were tools, weapons wielded by a corrupt Council against its perceived enemies. They believed themselves righteous, hunting an abomination that threatened the natural order.
In another life, he would have stood among them.
Sir Aldric sat astride his mount at the circle's centre, his weathered face showing neither fear nor uncertainty. His eyes scanned the shadows methodically, searching for his former student in the darkness between trees.
"Kaelen," he called, voice strong despite the situation. "I know you're there. Show yourself."
The Shadow Knight remained still. Old name. Old identity. The trials had stripped much of that away.
"The Council deceived me," Aldric continued. "They claimed you'd become something monstrous, something that required destruction. I agreed to lead this hunt to see the truth for myself."
Interesting tactic. Appeal to their shared past. Suggest division between himself and the Council. Create opportunity for parlay rather than violence.
The Shadow Knight stepped from darkness into the blessed light of their silver weapons. Not out of sentiment or mercy, but curiosity. What game did Aldric play?
The remaining hunters tensed, weapons raised, but didn't strike. Aldric raised a hand, signalling restraint.
"What do you see, old friend?" the Shadow Knight asked, his harmonic voice echoing against petrified wood. "The monster they described?"
Aldric studied him, eyes narrowing as they traced the patterns of starlight visible within shadow-flesh. "I see what the Council's cruelty created. What they will answer for, if there's any justice remaining in this world."
"There is justice," the Shadow Knight replied. "It stands before you."
"Is it justice to slaughter these men? They follow orders, believing they serve the Light."
"As did I, once. The Council taught me the price of such obedience."
Aldric dismounted, approaching despite his men's protests. He stopped just beyond arm's reach, close enough that the Shadow Knight could see the new lines grief had carved into his face.
"I mourned you," the old knight said simply. "When they told me what you'd become, I refused to believe. The Kaelen I knew was a good man. An honourable knight."
"That man died in the Council's dungeons." The Shadow Knight allowed his form to solidify slightly, becoming more substantial without sacrificing the advantages of shadow. "What stands before you is the consequence of their actions."
"And these men? What are they to you?"
"Obstacles. Nothing more."
Aldric nodded slowly. "Then the Council was right about one thing. You have changed." He drew his sword, the blessed silver gleaming in the dying light. "But perhaps not completely."
Without warning, he tossed the weapon aside. It clattered against stone, the sound shocking in the forest's silence. The other hunters murmured in confusion.
"If I am merely an obstacle," Aldric said, "strike me down. I stand defenceless before you."
The Shadow Knight remained motionless. This was unexpected. The trials had prepared him for resistance, for combat, for the righteous fury of the Light's defenders. Not for surrender. Not for this test of what humanity might remain despite everything.
"Why would you do this?" he asked finally.
"Because I failed you once. I won't fail you again." Aldric's eyes held steady. "The Council is corrupt. What they did to you, to your family, to all the eastern lords, was unconscionable. But becoming what they feared won't bring justice. It will only confirm their lies."
The Shadow Knight extended his hand, shadows coalescing into claws that could rend blessed armour like parchment. Aldric didn't flinch, didn't close his eyes, didn't retreat a single step.
"You're a fool, old friend," the Shadow Knight said, letting his hand drop. "But your courage honours us both."
He turned to the remaining hunters, their weapons still raised in trembling hands. "Return to your masters. Tell them what you found here. Tell them the Shadow Knight continues his journey to the capital, where accounts will be settled properly."
"And if we refuse?" one knight called, bravado thin but present.
"Then your bones will join the dead wood of this place, and no one will hear your story."
The hunters exchanged glances, calculating odds that had already proven disastrous. One by one, they lowered their weapons.
Aldric watched this exchange with an unreadable expression. "You spare them but killed the others. Why?"
"The others didn't have you to speak for them," the Shadow Knight replied simply. "And the dead send messages of their own."
He began walking away, then paused. "What will you do now, Sir Aldric? Return to the Council you know to be corrupt?"
"No. My eyes are open now." The old knight retrieved his sword but didn't resheathe it. "I'll gather others who see the truth. Knights who remember their oaths to protect the innocent, not persecute them at a tyrant's whim."
"Then perhaps we'll meet again, under different circumstances."
"I hope so, Kaelen. Or whatever name you bear now."
The Shadow Knight melted into darkness, leaving the hunters to their confusion and new understanding. He found Serena waiting beyond the forest's edge, her expression suggesting she had expected a different outcome.
"You let them live," she observed as they continued their journey. "The trials were supposed to eliminate such mercy."
"Not mercy. Strategy." The Shadow Knight looked back once at the forest where shadows now concealed whatever decisions Aldric and his men made. "The survivors will spread word of what happened here. Fear will precede us to the capital."
"And your former mentor? Was sparing him strategy as well?"
The Shadow Knight considered this. The trials had indeed stripped away much of what had made him human. But perhaps not everything. Perhaps some connections transcended even the Soulstone's transformation.
"Aldric represents potential allies," he said finally. "Knights who might turn against the Council when the time comes. Killing him would have been wasteful."
Serena smiled knowingly but didn't challenge the explanation. They travelled in silence as night fully claimed the land, the Shadow Knight moving more easily now in his natural element.
Behind them, the hunters gathered their dead with the sombre efficiency of those accustomed to loss. Aldric watched the darkness that had swallowed his former student, seeing in it both horror and hope. The Council had indeed created something terrible in their cruelty.
But perhaps they had also created their own destruction. Perhaps justice would find its way back to a world that had forgotten its meaning, arriving in a form no one had anticipated.
The hunt continued, but roles had changed. Predator had become prey, hunter had become teacher, and justice had found its avatar in deepest shadow.