Chapter 8: Lessons in Shadow

Chapter 8: Lessons in Shadow

The Chancellery’s training room was nothing like the sprawling, ancient library above it. Located in a deeper sub-level of the archives, it was a stark, modern cube lined with seamless panels of polished black obsidian. The air was cold and still, and the silence was so absolute it felt like a physical pressure against the eardrums. Alistair explained that the walls didn't just provide privacy; they absorbed and neutralized any errant thaumaturgical energy, preventing magical feedback or, worse, detection from the outside world.

“The pact-brand is a conduit,” Alistair said, his voice the only sound in the sterile room. He stood by the far wall, hands clasped behind his back, observing her like a scientist studying a volatile element. “Malakor has opened a tap into the infernal planes and connected it directly to your soul. The shadow-magic is the effluent. You have been drinking from it instinctively, but you have not learned to pour.”

Elara stood in the center of the room, her grey hoodie discarded, revealing the angry, black thorns of the brand on her forearm. The new terms of the contract pulsed with a constant, low-grade malevolence. “How do I ‘pour’?” she asked, her voice tight with a mixture of fear and resolve. “Every time I try to do anything other than just… step through it, it feels like putting my hand in a fire.”

“Then you are using it incorrectly,” Alistair stated simply. “You are trying to fight it, to force it. It is an infernal power, Mrs. Vance. It does not respond to force. It responds to will, to desire. It is a predator. You must convince it that you are the more dangerous hunter.”

His first instruction was deceptively simple. On the obsidian floor between them, he had placed a single, white candle. He lit it with a snap of his fingers, the small flame casting a single, long, dancing shadow.

“Take hold of the shadow,” he commanded. “Do not move it. Do not change it. Simply… hold it. Make it yours.”

Elara focused, her gaze locked on the flickering darkness. She reached out with her mind, with the cold presence inside her that she now recognized as the magic. She tried to grasp the shadow, to impose her will upon it. The moment she did, a searing pain shot up her arm from the brand, hot and sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. The shadow on the floor writhed violently, as if in agony, and then snapped back to its natural position, leaving her gasping and clutching her arm.

“It rejects me,” she panted, sweat beading on her forehead.

“Of course it does,” Alistair said, his tone devoid of sympathy. “You are treating it as a tool. It is not a hammer. It is a serpent coiled around your heart. You cannot command it; you must charm it. What is your strongest desire right now?”

The answer was instant, a primal scream in her soul. “To protect my daughter.”

“Then use that,” he said. “Do not think about the shadow on the floor. Think about shielding Lily. Imagine that flame is a threat, and its shadow is the only thing you can place between it and her. Let your desire shape your will.”

The training was a grueling crucible. For hours, she failed. Every attempt to control the shadows ended in a fresh wave of pain from the brand, a psychic backlash that left her dizzy and nauseous. The cold, alien nature of the magic fought her at every turn. It was Malakor’s power, and it felt like it still answered to him, resisting her as an unauthorized user. She thought of Liam’s hurt, betrayed face, the chasm that had opened between them. She thought of Kael’s easy laugh and Seraphina’s quiet kindness, the lives she was now entangled in. The weight of it all was crushing, and the magic fed on her despair, growing more recalcitrant.

She was on the verge of collapse, her body trembling with exhaustion, when Alistair’s voice cut through her haze of failure. “Malakor gave you this power as a chain, Mrs. Vance. As long as you see it as his, it will remain so. But it is bonded to your soul. He may hold the leash, but the collar is around your neck. It is more yours now than it is his. Claim it.”

Claim it.

The words resonated deep within her. He was right. This agony, this power, this curse—it was inside her. It was her burden to bear, her weapon to wield. She closed her eyes, shutting out the sterile room and Alistair’s watchful gaze. She didn't picture Lily cowering behind a shield. She pictured herself standing before her daughter, a furious, unbreachable wall. She channeled all the terror, all the rage, all the ferocious maternal love that had driven her to make the pact in the first place. She didn't ask the shadow to obey. She didn’t command it.

She became it.

The coldness in her veins wasn't a foreign substance anymore. It was her own blood, chilled to absolute zero. The pain in her arm didn't vanish, but it changed, twisting from an enemy’s attack into the straining of her own muscles. She opened her eyes.

The candle’s shadow was perfectly still. The flame flickered and danced, but the darkness it cast was frozen, locked in place by her will. She tentatively pushed, and the shadow stretched, elongating unnaturally across the obsidian floor, a tether of pure darkness that originated from the flame but answered only to her. She let go, and it snapped back, but gently this time, like a released ribbon.

A small, triumphant gasp escaped her lips.

Alistair’s expression was unchanged, but a flicker of something—approval, perhaps—passed through his ancient eyes. “Better,” he said. “Now, make it solid.”

This next task seemed impossible. She focused again, channeling that same protective fury. She pulled on the shadow, but this time she didn't just stretch it. She drew it up from the floor, coaxing the two-dimensional darkness into a three-dimensional form. It was like trying to knit with smoke. The shadow resisted, wavering and threatening to dissipate.

Frustrated, she poured more of herself into it—not just her will, but her essence. She felt something deep inside her, a spark of warmth that had nothing to do with Malakor’s icy gift, connect with the infernal cold. The two energies met, and the shadow abruptly solidified.

It formed into a sharp, wicked-looking blade, hovering in the air. It was a perfect silhouette, a hole in reality shaped like a dagger. It didn't reflect any light; it consumed it. And it was undeniably, impossibly solid. She could feel its weight, its presence, as if it were an extension of her own hand.

She held it for a full ten seconds before her concentration broke and it dissolved back into a harmless shadow on the floor. She slumped to her knees, breathing heavily, her body screaming with a strange new form of exhaustion.

When she looked up, for the first time since she had met him, Alistair Finch looked utterly shocked. He stared at the spot where the blade had been, his mouth slightly agape.

“What?” Elara asked, her voice raspy. “Was that wrong?”

He slowly walked over, his eyes no longer on the shadow but on her. He studied her with a new, intense scrutiny, as if seeing her for the very first time.

“The pact Malakor offers grants passage and influence over ambient darkness,” he said slowly, his voice laced with a confusion that unsettled her more than his stoicism had. “It allows one to step through shadows, to manipulate them, to cloud the perceptions of others. It does not, under any circumstances, grant the ability to manifest them into solid, physical constructs. That… is an entirely different order of magic.”

He knelt down, his gaze fixed on her, searching for something she didn't understand.

“Mrs. Vance,” he said, his voice a low, bewildered whisper. “What you just did… that power did not come from the pact. That came from you.”