Ronyn’s eyes stay fixed on me, wide and expectant. “Are we gonna discuss this, Isk?”
“Not now,” I snap, pacing the corridor like the motion might help me claw together a plan. “We need to get back across the bridge before they lock it down.”
Think.Think, damn it.
The footsteps are closing in. I canfeelthem pressing in on The Tannery from all sides, tightening like a noose.
“I have my bow and eight arrows,” Ronyn offers, but we both know it’s not enough. Not against what’s coming.
“It’s not enough,” I bite back, sharper than I mean to.
He drags both hands through his hair in frustration but doesn’t argue.
Then Kael clears his throat, utterly unbothered. “If you’ll follow me.” He gestures toward the exit like he’s inviting us over for tea.
Ronyn and I exchange a look—equal parts suspicion and desperation.
We follow.
“And where, exactly, are you leading us?” I ask, tone clipped.
“I’m a Shadowweave,” Kael says simply, as if that explains anything. “I’ll take care of it.”
I stop dead. I know next to nothing about Shadowweaves. Though I’ve spent my entire life separated from the Starborn, I’m no stranger to their skills. Especially Aetherstrides and Bloodbonds who guard, hunt and raid through the slums and The Barrier District. But Shadowweaves—they remain an enigma. Rare, coveted, and the full range of their skills elusive. “A Shadowweave?”
“Magic of the Obsidian Serpent constellation,” he explains. “Sentient shadows, illusory strikes, cloaks of darkness. You know?”
I stare. “No, I don’tfuckingknow.”
He turns to face me, sighing like I’m the difficult one. “It means the guards won’t see us until it’s too late. A cloak to hide us. Phantoms to distract them. Sound simple enough?”
Not in the fucking slightest.
I glance at Ronyn. His face is tight with scepticism.
Kael’s calm is infuriating. His certainty even more so.
“This better work,” I mutter, stepping in behind him, anyway.
Kael isn’t wrong. We are blanketed in the cover of his magic, moving through The Tannery like wraiths. The first guards burst into the main space, their torches casting wild shadows against the walls. They look around us, their eyes scanning the room. No—they lookthroughus.
“I can feel magic,” one guard snarls. “Strong magic,” he adds, crouching low as he moves across the space like a predator tracking prey.He has to be an Aetherstride.
“There!” Another guard shouts, pointing at a broad-shouldered man near the corridor. He charges, sword raised, and slices clean through thin air. The illusion flickers, its edges distorting like ripples on water before vanishing.
It’s not just illusions. It’s intentional misdirection—Kael’s playing puppet master while we slip by like ghosts.
Another projection takes shape behind them, then another, and another—each one more lifelike than the last, their faces twisted into cruel sneers. The guards falter, disillusioned, their shouts turning frantic as their blades meet nothing but shadows. The air thickens with confusion, chaos, and a building sense of terror.
The guards lose all sense of reality, unable to determine what is real and what is a trick of the eye. It’s unsettling. Horrifying. But right now, we need this. Or we’d be outnumbered, unprepared... and probably dead.
We don’t stick around to watch. Under the shroud of Kael’s magic, we sprint for the bridge, the sound of guards’ boots and panicked cries echoing behind us. He moves like a piece of the night itself, eyes never catching on his shape. My chest burns—not from the effort, but from the cold wrongness of his magic. The shadows snake around me, alive and unnerving, their icy tendrils slithering across my skin.
I push the thought away.
We don’t have time for doubts.
Not now.
