Chapter 32: Shadows That Watch
Night had fallen by the time Jean and Karen descended Stormspire Ridge.
The storm had broken—scattered like frightened birds—leaving the land hushed in the wake of thunder's retreat. Raigen glided high above, trailing sparks that slowly dimmed, a quiet sentinel in the twilight.
Jean leaned on Whitney, her body bruised but spirit unshaken. Karen walked at her side, arms crossed, her halberd dissolved into vapor. They said little, but the silence between them held weight.
They weren't enemies.
Not anymore.
---
In the shrouded ruins of Black Hollow, a different kind of silence ruled.
There, among broken statues and forgotten blades, the Shadow Guild stirred.
Vaelros the Hollow stood before a ring of fire, his skeletal mask faintly glowing with cursed runes. Around him, his lieutenants whispered, their voices like silk over steel.
"She has defeated Frost and Thunder," murmured one.
"Too soon. The balance isn't ready."
"She'll ruin everything," rasped another.
Vaelros said nothing. His fingers traced the scar over his chest—a mark left by Charles Luther decades ago.
At last, he spoke.
"Light cannot illuminate what it cannot see. Send her a shadow she cannot ignore."
The fire flared.
---
Back in the heart of the Luther Clan, Sylvia Luther meditated beneath the ancient tree of swords—an ancestral monument where fallen Luther champions had planted their blades. Her crimson aura swirled gently around her.
She opened her eyes as a messenger knelt beside her.
"News from the west, Lady Sylvia. Jean has earned Thunder."
The elder sister said nothing for a long moment. Then: "And she still walks?"
The messenger nodded.
Sylvia exhaled slowly. "The road she walks is paved in blood. But she does not stray."
"She grows stronger."
"She will need to."
Her eyes turned to the blade she'd once wielded. A massive greatsword forged by Charles himself.
"She's awakening them, one by one. If she cannot tame Shadow next… the Patriarchy will devour her before the dragons ever arrive."
---
Elsewhere, beneath Mount Veilcrest, in the catacombs of the Magistery, Erin Magus stood before a sealed door. Arcane glyphs pulsed along its edge.
A voice echoed from the other side.
"You're thinking of unleashing it."
"I'm considering all options," Erin replied.
Ryan stood behind her, pale. "It's still not stable. We haven't even tested—"
"She defeated Frost and Thunder," Erin said. "You know what comes next."
"Shadow?"
"No. Before that. Temptation."
She turned to face her son. "We'll offer her power. Knowledge. Everything the Magistery can give. If she refuses…"
Ryan tensed. "Then what?"
"Then we show her what darkness truly is."
---
That night, Jean dreamed.
She stood in a forest of mirrors, surrounded by a thousand versions of herself—bloody, broken, triumphant, hollow.
At the center stood a version of her with black eyes and a crown of shadow.
"Not all of us are meant to carry the Light," the shadow-Jean whispered.
"Then I'll carry it for all of us," Jean answered.
And as the mirrors shattered, she awoke with a gasp.
Whitney stood watch at the edge of her camp, growling low.
A presence stirred in the dark.
The Shadow Guild was coming.
---