Part I: The Stillness Before
He hadn't heard a bird in hours.
That was the first wrong thing. Not silence—Arathia had its share of abandoned woods and haunted places where nothing dared sing—but this silence had an edge to it. Like glass held just before it breaks. Like someone was holding their breath, just out of sight.
Val crouched near the edge of a sunken path, half-hidden beneath tangled ferns. The ground here was damp and loose with rot, and his boots made no sound. He raised a hand and touched the trunk of a tree beside him. Its bark was soft and wet—spongy, almost, as if it had died but forgotten to fall.
Above him, the canopy of the Harthwood choked the sky in sickly greens and blacks. What sunlight filtered through came in jagged, shifting lines, as if the forest itself were reshaping the light.
Val stood, eyes narrowing. His long white hair fell over one shoulder, faintly luminescent in the dim. It caught no shadow, no reflection—just shimmered, like memory.
The forest was watching. He knew that feeling too well.
He moved forward. Carefully. No rush. Each step a decision.
He was dressed for silence—black wool layered beneath dark leather, with no steel visible, no metal to glint. His twin swords were sheathed at a diagonal on his back, hilts like the ends of old keys, wrapped in worn crimson cloth. His fingers twitched once. He was listening to the forest the way one listens to an argument in another room—knowing something is coming, unsure who it's for.
A branch snapped somewhere to his left.
He stilled.
Not the clean break of an animal. A slow, grinding snap—like a creature trying to mimic movement, not make it.
He didn't draw his sword.
Instead, he whispered.
"Show me."
The shadows near his feet trembled. The air thickened.
Val stepped sideways—not left, not right. Sideways into the fold. The world around him shivered and folded, like a page being turned the wrong way.
This was the in-between. What he called the "under-shadow." Others had different names. The black between blinks. The hollows of breath. The Forgotten Veil.
It never looked the same twice.
Here, the forest was inverted—twisted and crawling, its forms suggestion rather than solid. The trees bled upward. Roots crept across the sky. There was no sound, only the sensation of pressure. Somewhere far off, water dripped onto stone—but the stone was above him, and the water never hit the ground.
Val kept walking. His body moved, but his shadow lagged. Sometimes it took on a different shape. He tried not to look at it.
The shadows here remembered. They remembered blood, betrayal, bargains. They wanted him to remember too.
He moved with purpose, but not too quickly. The realm didn't like speed. It made it notice you.
After ten steps, he paused. Something was wrong.
His shadow—no longer behind him. It had circled ahead.
And then—movement. In the corner of his eye. A slithering twist, like a cloak dropped over water. No form. No face.
Just a ripple, cutting across his path.
He didn't follow it. He'd learned that lesson. Instead, he reached for his left blade—not to draw it, just to steady himself. The hilt was cool, almost alive under his hand.
"You're early," he muttered.
The ripple stopped.
Then slowly, as if testing his voice, it repeated his words:
"...you're early."
His breath hitched.
Not mimicry.
Memory.
It was speaking with his own voice.
He backed up two steps and began to withdraw. The shadow realm clung to him, like syrup, like hunger.
Then—a whisper, just above thought:
"She waits."
Val's heart surged.
He stepped back into the waking world.
The forest snapped back around him.
Breath came hard and cold. Leaves rustled. He smelled moss and water and the copper-slick scent of old blood somewhere nearby.
He touched his chest—his heart was hammering. That name. That voice.
"She waits."
Who?
He stood there a long moment, eyes fixed on the path ahead. The Harthwood stretched endlessly in all directions, but suddenly it felt narrower—focused.
Then came the sound.
A shriek. High and wrong.
It came from deeper in the forest. Not human. Not beast. Something in between.
It was followed by another—this one cut short.
Then silence.
And then the distant crackle of flame.
Val's feet moved before his thoughts caught up. The forest bent subtly away from his path, as if clearing it.
Each step burned.
Not his muscles—his memory. With every stride, images stirred beneath the surface of his thoughts. A hand in his. A whisper by firelight. A pair of eyes—one green, one gold. Laughter he hadn't earned.
He didn't recognize any of it.
He ran faster.
Whatever waited ahead, it wasn't just danger.
It was familiar.