When she turns, seeing that I’m awake, she walks to me with a familiar frown—the softness from last night gone. “We need a plan.”
I blink blearily, yawning. “Morning to you, too.”
“Let me see your map.”
I sit up slowly, reaching for my satchel with a grunt. “What, no dramatic goodbye? No shadow creature flying you off into the mist?” I hand her the folded parchment. “I half expected to wake up alone.”
She gives me a look and snatches the map from my hand. “And I half expected you to be dead, but here we are.”
I smirk faintly and lean back against the crumbling wall as she studies the map. Her eyes look tired from lack of sleep.
She turns on her heel. “Come on.”
Sighing, I rise and follow her out into the knee-high water. “You know the portal’s the other way, right?”
“I do.”
I narrow my eyes. “So we’renotgoing to the portal?”
“Not yet,” she says, never taking her eyes off the path.
“Well then—”
“While you were unconscious,” she says, cutting me off, “I sent out two shadows. One for Asbel and one for Lioran.”
I slow. “You did what?”
“It took a while, but my shadows found them and latched onto their shadows, so now I can track them. The men aren’t very far away from each other.”
It’s quiet for a moment before she says, “We already lost Aren.” Her voice cracks. She clears her throat before continuing, “I’m not letting anyone else die. If I’m staying to help you, I’m helping them too.”
We wade forward in silence, the sound of water lapping around our knees and the call of some strange bird overhead filling the space between us.
After a while, I glance at her and say, “You really meantit. You’re staying.”
Her sharp gaze lands on me. “I said I was, didn’t I?”
“You don't have to.”
She sighs, shoulders dropping. “I know.”
I let the quiet sit for a moment. Then, I say, “You’re going to throw this in my face for the rest of the trials, aren’t you?”
She chortles, “Obviously.”
I shake my head, chuckling. “Great. Can’t wait.”
------------? ? ? ? ?------------
Serenya
The water laps quietly around our ankles as we wade through the half-submerged ruins, sending tiny ripples across what had once been a marble street. The air smells faintly of salt and rot. The stench of a land drowned centuries ago. I grit my teeth, trying not to think of what else this water has swallowed.
A flicker of movement catches my eye. Shadows coalescing into twisted forms, drifting unnaturally over the water. Wraiths. My pulse quickens. I don’t need to speak—Koen is already in motion. The silver glint of his blade catches what little light filters down from the storm-heavy sky. His stance is calm, fluid, like he’d been born holding a sword.
The first wraith lunges, a dark blur of shifting limbs and smoke. I strike instinctively, drawing on my shadows to form a sword. My shadow-blade arcs in a sweeping motion, cutting clean through the wraith’s center. It screams a soundless, hollow wail and shatters into mist that dissolves into the stagnant water. Another wraith dives from my left. I pivot, letting mymomentum carry me in a spinning strike. Its form collapses against the shadow of my blade, vapor curling upward like smoke from a dying fire.
Koen is a storm beside me. His sword flashes in rhythmic arcs, meeting every attack with precision. A wraith swings at him from behind a crumbling pillar. He spins and cleaves through it, his movements smooth, practiced, and deadly. I catch a glimpse of his eyes as he fights. He’s focused and alert, but also calm. Something about him in the midst of battle makes my own heart beat faster.
