The horizon darkened properly now, not just from distance. The trees below knotted into denser, harsher shapes; the leaves lost their shine, edges ragged, shapes warped. Patches of ground glowed faintly with residual spells, like someone had dropped ink in water and never cleaned it up.
Shadowick.
I had been there once before, technically, but not like this. That had been through the Academy’s mirrors, or through neutral ground, or in a way that felt almost dreamlike.
This was… not dreamlike.
This was brutally, bleakly real.
The village of Shadowick came into view with a cluster of low, dark buildings clinging to a crooked road, roofs slanted likethey were trying to duck out of the sky’s attention. Thin spirals of smoke rose here and there, but the whole place seemed… hushed. Expectant.
The hunger path dipped toward it, then veered, threading along the outskirts.
The broom veered with it.
We skimmed over the village edge.
For a heartbeat, I saw the central square—smaller than Stonewick’s, dominated by a jagged, black-stone monument. People moved below, some looking up, faces vague and pale, like shapes in fog. A few kids pointed. A man in a heavy coat grabbed one by the arm and dragged them inside.
They weren’t my concern.
Not right now.
Because the broom didn’t slow.
It followed the path as it ledpastShadowick, toward the hills beyond.
Hills that, in my visions, had always been gray smudges.
Background.
They resolved now into range and folded into low, rolling mounds covered in sparse, scraggly growth and patches of exposed rock.
The air felt thin. The magic felt… old. Tired and mean.
The broom finally,finally, began to lose speed.
The steady, determined pull under me slackened to something like a glide. My stomach, which had been trying to climb out of my throat for the last several miles, cautiously unclenched.
We dipped lower.
“That’s it,” I whispered. “Good broom. Continue not killing us.”
Up ahead, tucked against the side of one of the hills, I saw it.
At first, I thought it was just another outcrop of rock. The colors blended in grays and browns, a funny, almost greenish sheen to some stones where moss had tried to live and given up.
But as we drew nearer, the lines sharpened.
Straight edges where there shouldn’t be straight edges.
A shape that was almost, uncomfortably familiar.
A house.
If you could call it that.
It looked like someone had tried to build a cottage out of bad memories and leftover fortress plans. Low and squat, half sunk into the hill, with a roof so dark it might have been slate or simply shadow. Narrow windows, taller than they were wide, set too high to see into from the ground. A single, thick door, iron-banded and sullen, sat in a slight recess.
