The Shadow Bringer’s voice came to mind. He had already warned me of this.
If he succeeds, you’ll never leave. You’ll share my fate, bound to this castle and unable to watch your loved ones grow older. You’ll live here as Noctis sinks further into ruin, oblivious to the waking world and numb to the passage of time. Don’t let them take you.
“You’re sentencing me to die in this tomb,” I sobbed. “I just want to be with Elliot. Let us go.Please.”
“What other fate would you prefer?” Mithras drew close, eyes wide and desperate. I took an uneasy step back, heart thundering. “To simply rot into the earth, leaving behind no legacy, no meaning, no purpose? The tomb will be the safest place for you; Istralla will be the safest for Elliot. The safest and the most necessary.”
“Corruption is overrunning our kingdom,” Silas added, his voice colder than I had ever heard it. “If there is a chance this helps us bind more demons, then hope will spread, illuminating our kingdom in the light of the Maker.”
Silas turned, half-hidden by the tomb’s entryway. One more step and I’d never see Elliot again. I surged forward, screaming, but Mithras hauled me back, binding me to the wall with two shimmering bands of light.
“Remember, the Shadow Bringer is a necessary darkness, even though you’ve been taught otherwise. I donotdesire his death or his release.” Mithras considered me fiercely, as if he wanted me to understand something that I was not fully comprehending. “So above all else, do not harm the Shadow Bringer, and do not release him from his tomb or his castle. We need him there.Ineed him there. Swear to me, Esmer. Donotrelease him. If you do, the deaths of these people will have been for naught.”
“If you wanted to spread the Maker’s light, then why did they need to die?”
Beyond the tomb’s entrance, wind groaned softly through the trees, rustling leaves and speckling dawn’s early sunlight across the expanse of the clearing. I stretched myself upright, standing as tall and as straight-backed as I could. I needed to find strength somewhere, so I drew it from my family. I drew it from Father, who had patrolled our home without fear. Every night he had battled demons. Demons of the unknown,demons of the twilight. Demons of dread, demons that made sounds as they shifted in the woods, snapping twigs and howling at the stars. Demons created out of fear. Demons built out of Corruption. I drew it from Mother, too, who had shielded Elliot and me from Corruptive fates. I drew it from Eden, who had shown me kindness even though I persuaded her to dream. I drew it from Elliot, who faced life with joy even in the darkness.
All wasn’t lost. It couldn’t be. I needed to steel myself for what was about to come—for what my fate had conspired to be.
I need to survive. Whatever it takes.
Mithras regarded me with cool detachment as he responded: “Becauseno onecan know where this tomb is, not even my legionnaires. This place must fall into desolation like it always has. Like it wasmeantto.” Without warning, he dissolved my bindings and shoved me backward. “Andyouwill keep it that way.”
Then he slammed the tomb door shut.
The Tomb of the Devourer was silent, heavy, and endless.
Half-delirious with exhaustion, grief, and fear, I stumbled forward, feeling my way through damp tunnels and crumbling stairs as I tried to avoid the Light Legion’s corpses. Without torchlight or a moonlit sky, the tomb gnawed at me, flooding me with its ancient scent and eternal dark. The walls were strange, thrumming with a soft vibration that made the space feel alive, somehow. As though it had been waiting for me all along.
As though it wasn’t just the Tomb of the Devourer butmytomb,mygrave.
This is what it must feel like to be buried alive.
I swallowed back tears, coughing as I breathed the dusty air. Where was the Shadow Bringer? He was nowhere in the silence, the dust, the rotting stone. My hand was searching the walls for a clue, a sign—when I tripped into something dry and rattling.
Bones.
As the sound echoed off the walls, I waited, silent, fully expecting that the Shadow Bringer would reveal himself. When he didn’t, afterminutes—perhaps hours—had passed, my only companions, darkness and two skeletons, mocked me.
Maker, help me.
I paced around the chamber, dragging my hand along the walls for support as I went. The movement reminded me of when I’d first entered the Shadow Bringer’s castle, encased in darkness; it wasn’t until my eyes had adjusted that the space had revealed itself. But there were no lights here. No gilded chandeliers or candelabras, no mirrors by which candlelight could reflect. Still, there had to be a door or a passageway. His shadows had carried him somewhere—but where?
“You can appear anytime now, Shadow Bringer,” I said, my voice higher in pitch than I had intended. Perhaps the Shadow Bringer was dead. Maybe I was doomed to rot alone in this pit of darkness. “Haunt me like you usually do.”
I clung to the stone, slowing my breathing and counting to ten.
No.
The Shadow Bringer was here, somewhere. This prison was his, and he was within—in the dark, in the cold, in the shadows. I could feel him. I pulled my arms in tight, fighting the chill seeping into my dress. The vibration, that steadythrumof power, was back, this time closer than before. It hummed steadily under my fingertips, calling me to the center of the tomb’s innermost wall. Here the stone felt different, as though it was made from another material altogether. Curious, I traced a finger over the wall, flinching as my hand passed through. The stone parted like dust or smoke, swirling apart like a curtain. I inched my hand forward, shivering as the substance lapped against my wrist, forearm, elbow.
Then, as though the substance was alive, it grabbed my arm andpulled.
I shrieked, mortified, as the wall passed over me in a quick, freezing blast. It was like jumping into a pond on a summer night and slipping under a crust of warmth left over from the sun’s scorching heat, to then reach the darker, colder depths below. I pushed up against the hiddenchamber’s floor, scrambling to get my bearings. The space was surprisingly vast; my own home could have fit within it five times over, and I still couldn’t see past the shadows that obscured its edges. Stones arched overhead, curling into a central orb that gave off a slow, meandering light. A slab of obsidian sat underneath the orb, as if patiently awaiting a sacrifice, and thousands of blue quivering flecks illuminated the cavernous ceiling beyond, mimicking stars.
It didn’t take me long to find him after that.
He sat against one of the twisting, arching stones, leaning back with his neck exposed. From his wounds spun thick tendrils of shadow, crystallizing as they drifted up toward the orb. One of the deepest cuts—an ugly, unforgiving gash across his chest—gave off the blackest substance, trailing over his skin and tangling in his hair. His helm’s caged mouth, along with one of its draconic horns, had broken off, leaving more of his hair and mouth exposed.
