A burst of her fear.Confusion.Pain.
She was close.Too close.
“Cass—”
He spun toward the door just as it cracked open, Cassie starting to slip inside.The Book bellowed.
Instinct, protective, possessiveness roared through him.Trik thrust out his hand and a wall of shimmering force slammed into Cassie, sending her stumbling back into the hall as the doors snapped shut with explosive finality.
“NO!”Her voice cracked on the other side.“Trik!”
The echo of her hurt tore through him, but the surge of darkness recoiling from her presence was worse.He pressed both palms to the door, shaking.
Myrin cursed softly.“Trik, you should open it.Let her?—”
“No.”Trik cut him off, his voice was raw.“The shadow in the Book reacted to her.To her magic.I won’t risk it touching her.”
“She is your Chosen,” Myrin said sharply.“Her presence steadies what you fear.”
“Or it destroys her,” Trik snapped.“I won’t gamble with her life.I will not lose her!”
Myrin’s stare was unforgiving.“You already are.”
Those words hit harder than the Book’s magic.
In the hall, Cassie’s voice rose again, angry, wounded, desperate, and Trik shut his eyes, jaw trembling.“I can’t,” he whispered.
Myrin’s expression softened with deep, elder sorrow.“Then you may lose her anyway.”
His bond to Cassie trembled, then shuttered closed, leaving Trik hollow.The silence after Cassie’s voice faded was worse than her shouting.Much worse.It pressed into Trik’s ribs, sharp and insistent, like something cracking from the inside.
Myrin stood beside him, gaze fixed on the doors Cassie had been thrown from.“She shouldn’t be out there alone,” Myrin murmured.
“She’s safer out there than in here,” Trik said, breathing unsteady.“The Book, it reacted as if she were a threat.”
“Or as if she were the answer.”
Trik spun on him.“What does that mean?”
But the elder didn’t answer immediately.Instead, he walked, slowly, to the Book’s edge.His fingertips hovered over the page without touching.
“The Chamber of Dark and Light,” Myrin said quietly.“You remember, yes?”
Trik swallowed.His pulse thudded too fast.“Fragments.”
“Fragments become a full picture,” Myrin murmured.“Let them return.”
He didn’t want to.Damn, he didn’t want to.But the memories came anyway, ripping through barriers that had kept them dormant for centuries.
A cavern of impossible brilliance.A void of living shadow.Magic writhed between them, devouring everything in its path.The ancient war, light elves and dark elves tearing the realm apart.Screams.Blood.A child sobbing.Warriors burned to bone.And at the center, a rift.A womb of magic that birthed something new, something neither side meant to create.
“The shadow elves,” Trik whispered, the words torn from his throat.“Children born from the war’s residue—born from the clashing of a light warrior with a dark warrior.”
Myrin nodded.“Not created by intention.Created by imbalance.Dark and light clashed in a resounding battle, and the shadow elves were its echo.They hid in a large opening in a mountainside, unsure of what would happen to them.Unsure of what their own powers were.But the Chamber they lived in took on a life of its own because of the shadow elves.”
Trik stared at the Book, the dark in its glow twisting in slow, hungry shapes.“We sealed it.You, me, the elders ...We sealed it because the Chamber began pulling at the realm, at us.”
“And because if it stayed open,” Myrin added softly, “the shadows would have consumed everything.”
