"Then we tell them. All of it. Before the rumors get there first."
It makes sense. We’re not evil even if we are carrying darkness. Mother Nature hasn’t called on Skye again after that last time and we haven’t really been able to reach out to her either. Not that she’d be able to tell us anything that we didn’t already know. The darkness will consume. That’s inevitable. It’s how we use the time we still have that matters.
23
A Year Later
Skye
Autumn has settled over Phoenix Sanctuary, turning the courtyard trees amber and gold, dropping leaves across the flagstones that the earth-type students clear every morning as part of their practice. The sanctuary runs smoothly now. Classes operate on a schedule Ambrose built into the infrastructure contracts. The network hums with steady traffic between fifty-three allied communities. Students laugh in the corridors, argue in the dining hall, and practice their essence in the courtyard without looking over their shoulders.
And somehow, I morphed from counseling to teaching, now in charge of a fourth-year class on bond theory when I notice the darkness.
The demonstration spell I'm building between my hands is a simple one, a lattice of connected threads meant to show how bonds distribute stress across a network instead of concentrating it in a single point. I've done this demonstration dozens of times. The lattice should glow with my aura's pale pink light, each thread bright and clean, the connections visible to every student in the room.
The threads are black.
Not threaded with black, not carrying dark veins the way my aura has since the absorption. The threads themselves are dark, the pink light buried beneath a layer of shadow so thick it changes the color entirely. The lattice still functions. The bonds still connect. But the darkness has saturated the working so completely that what I'm showing my students isn't a demonstration of bond theory. It's a demonstration of what happens when corruption weaves itself into the fabric of your magic.
I close my hands, the lattice immediately dissolving. "That's all for today," I say, keeping my voice level. "Review chapters three through five for next session."
The students file out, a few of them glancing back at me with curiosity. One girl, an empath, lingers at the door with her brow furrowed. She felt something shift in my emotional state when I saw the threads. I give her a smile that costs me more than it should and she leaves, unconvinced but polite enough not to push.
I sit at my desk after the room empties, staring at my hands. The dark veins in my aura pulse with Dmitri's rhythm, the same alien cadence that's been living in my essence since the chamber. But this is different. The veins have always been present, visible,and manageable. What I just saw in the lattice wasn't the darkness riding alongside my magic. It was my magic being replaced by the darkness, pushed out, and overwritten.
I build another lattice, smaller, just between my palms where nobody can see. The threads come out dark again. Pink at the very core if I look closely, but buried so deep beneath the shadow that a student watching the demonstration would see nothing but black threads connecting black nodes. My bond magic, the essence I was born with, the power that defines who I am as a Praestes, is drowning in the thing we chose to carry.
I dissolve the lattice before anyone can walk in.
Mother Nature told me this would happen. The darkness consuming us over the course of our lifetimes, processed through our essences, balanced against the light we carry. She made it sound gradual, decades-long, something we'd manage through daily practice until our bodies gave out and the darkness dispersed with our death.
Almost a year and a half. The lattice spell was pure black at not even eighteen months.
Quickly, I pack my things and rush through the corridor toward my mates. Students pass me, calling out greetings, a few of them stopping to ask about assignments or schedule changes. I answer on autopilot, smiling with a face that feels like it belongs to someone else. The bonds between us haven’t rippled with any new emotions which means they didn’t feel the spike. The darkness in the lattice was quiet enough that it didn't ripple through the bonds, which means it's learning to hide, which is worse than if it had screamed.
I find Harlow in the eastern gardens, sitting on the stone bench beneath the willow tree that the earth-type students planted last month, his form solid in the late afternoon light. The death realm presses close to him here, closer than anywhere else on the grounds, and I've noticed that he gravitates toward thisspot when he needs to think. The boundary between worlds is thinnest where the willow's roots dig deep, and something about that proximity settles him.
He looks up when I approach, his expression shifting as he reads whatever is showing on my face, the calm attention sharpening into focus. "What happened?" he asks.
I drop down beside him. "I was teaching bond theory," I say. "Building a demonstration lattice. The threads came out black."
Harlow is quiet for a moment. His hand finds mine on the bench between us, his fingers cool and steady around my own.
"Not threaded with black," I continue, because the distinction matters. "Completely saturated. The pink was buried. My magic was still functioning but the darkness had taken over the visual signature entirely."
"Has it happened before?"
"Not like this. The veins have been consistent since the absorption, present but manageable. This was different. This was the darkness pushing my essence out instead of coexisting with it. The darkness is growing," I say. "I don't know how long we have."
Harlow turns my hand over in his, tracing the lines of my palm with his thumb. His touch carries the faint vibration of the death realm, a frequency I've learned to find comforting instead of unsettling. He's been more present since the absorption, more anchored in the physical world, more deliberate about touch. Choosing life, he told me once. Every day, choosing all of you.
"Have you told the others?" he asks.
"Not yet. I came to you first."
"Why me?"
A small smile spreads across my face. “Because you were mine first,” I whisper before pressing my lips to his cheek. “And because I know you won’t panic. And that you'll tell me the truth about what you see."
