Mal reached instinctively towards them, but the visionfractured. The shadow world collapsed like glass underfoot, and she stumbled, caught before she could fall. Thanatos’ hand anchored her back into the realm of the dead.
‘What was that?’ Her voice trembled with awe.
‘The shadow world,’ Thanatos replied, his tone soft but edged with ancient knowing. ‘It is where all shadows dwell, the wellspring from which they are born. There is a reason no shadows fall in the Underworld. They belong tothatrealm.’
‘Like the shadows my siblings wield?’
He inclined his head. ‘Exactly so. When a royal wyverian draws breath for the first time, one shadow tears free from that world to answer their call.’
‘I saw wyverns,’ Mal whispered, still reeling.
‘When beasts perish, they do not come here,’ Thanatos explained. ‘They are claimed by your dominion, the world of shadows.’
Her breath caught. ‘Could I… could I draw them out? Into the mortal lands?’
Thanatos’ lips curved into a sharp, dangerous, and utterly knowing smile.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, you could.’
Mal’s eyes flared wide. ‘Then… I could summon an army of shadows?’
He gave a single, deliberate nod.
She straightened, her spine taut, her chest rising as the fear she had long buried, the fear she had kept locked in a quiet, trembling corner of her soul, broke apart and scattered like dust.
‘Show me.’
Grief is a strange and fickle thing, difficult to grasp, for it wears a different face for each of us. It does not follow rules or reason, nor does it bend to expectation. And oftentimes, it moulds us into shapes we never imagined ourselves capable of becoming.
From the outside, one's actions may seem incomprehensible, even mad. Choices so unlike them, so at odds with their nature, their values, their very soul.
But that is the danger of grief.
It has the power to twist the gentlest spirit into something unrecognisable.
Even the purest heart may be coaxed into darkness… and find comfort there.
Tabitha Wysteria
‘You’re holding your arm wrong,’ Kai observed, his voice carrying the faint edge of a teacher too amused for his own good.
‘Well, doing ityourway hurts,’ Alina retorted, her expression one of pure exasperation.
‘Then it means you’re doing it right,’ he countered smoothly. ‘If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t count.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Should I kick you and see whether you still stand by such idiotic wisdom?’She ignored the low chuckle that escaped him as she tightened her grip on the long sword they had managed to salvage from the armoury.
Kai had insisted they train with proper longswords—none of the curved, short-forged desert blades she and the others were accustomed to, weapons designed for quick, intimate strikes. These swords demanded reach, leverage… and pain, apparently.
‘Astapada palida farahi,’ Arena muttered under her breath, shooting Kai a look sharp enough to cut steel.
Kai blinked. ‘Why do I feel like that was an insult?’ He rubbed the back of his neck, puzzled, while Arena’s lower lip curled into a sneer.
Isla nudged her friend lightly, trying, and failing, to smother a grin.
‘They think you’re insulting their weapons,’ Alina explained, her tone dry as desert sand.
Kai scoffed. ‘I merely said you need to learn to use longswords!’
