Lion woke in the dark, a scream lodged in his throat.
That dream again.
Thick shadows coiled around his limbs like icy fingers burrowing under his skin. In the distance, a pair of crimson eyes watched him, whispers scraping against his eardrums like rusted metal. He thrashed, only to hear the shadows laugh—
"Wake up, boy!"
A sharp flick to his forehead yanked him back to reality. His foster father, Brook, loomed over the bed, his beard flecked with dried ale froth, a charred hunk of black bread in his calloused hand. "Sun's already on the rooftops! Twenty blades for the guard today—quit lazing like a damned sloth!"
Lion sat up, gasping. His linen shirt clung to his back, soaked in cold sweat. Outside, the forge's chimney belched gray smoke, and the bleating of a neighbor's goat cut through the morning mist. Everything was ordinary—except for the lingering sting in his palms and the puddle of shadow on the floor that had just slithered back into the cracks.
This isn't right.
He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, the floor was normal again.
By noon, the anvil burned under the sun's glare. Lion hammered the glowing sword blank, sparks searing tiny black holes into his leather apron. Sweat dripped into his eyes, but he didn't stop. Since the nightmares began last month, only this mindless rhythm kept the creeping dread at bay.
"Messenger from the North came this morning," Brook muttered, his voice low. He was hafting a spear, thick fingers deftly winding flax cord. "Said monsters tore through a shepherd's village. Half the folk gone."
Lion's hammer struck crooked. He stared at the ugly dent in the blade, throat tight. "What… what kind of monsters?"
"Captain let it slip when he was drunk." Brook spat. "No real body—just a biting black mist. Called it a 'shadowbeast.'"
Shadowbeast.
The word slithered down Lion's spine like ice. Creatures of the Dark Age, long extinct since the War of Light a thousand years ago. His gaze flicked to his own shadow—compressed under midday sun, yet its edges writhed like boiling pitch.
"The capital's sending paladins to purge 'em." Brook tested the spear's edge on a whetstone, steel mirroring his frown. "Ain't our damn concer—"
A bell shattered the air.
Not the church's steady chime, but a frantic, rending alarm.
Lion looked up to see black smoke coiling over the marketplace.
The first scream came as he hauled ingots in the yard. So shrill he mistook it for a slaughtered pig. Then came the second, the third—mingled with hoofbeats and splintering wood.
"Monsters in the village!" A man sprinted past the fence, his straw hat splattered with blood.
Lion dropped the ingot and bolted for the forge. Brook barreled into him, gripping a freshly sharpened spear in one hand and a rusted hauberk in the other. "Cellar!" he roared, beard quivering. "Take the rations and flint—go now—"
The fence exploded.
The thing resembled a wolf sculpted from tar—but twice as large. No eyes, no fur, just oozing black slime and six scythe-like bone claws. Where it stepped, the ground foamed, reeking of scorched rot.
Shadowbeast.
Brook shoved Lion back and lunged. The spear pierced the creature's chest—but no blood came. Instead, the slime crawled up the shaft, tendrils snaking around Brook's arm.
"RUN!" His voice cracked.
Lion's feet rooted to the ground. The beast's head split open, a jagged maw unhinging toward Brook's throat—
He grabbed a red-hot poker from the furnace and charged.
The searing metal plunged into the shadowbeast's back with a hiss of burning fat. The monster howled—a sound no living thing should make—and whirled on Lion. Claws grazed his ribs; he smelled his own blood vaporize.
As he fell, he saw it lunge for little Martha cowering behind the woodpile—the neighbor's six-year-old, her blue eyes brimming with tears, clutching a ragged cloth rabbit.
Lion tried to scream. No sound came.
Something deeper, darker, erupted from his bones.
Later, he'd only recall fragments: His shadow swelling into a tidal wave, black thorns spearing the beast from below. The monster melting like wax, its slime shrieking where it touched his skin. Martha curled against the wall, her face not relieved, but terrified.
When he collapsed onto the reeking black sludge, his hands were veined with spiderweb-dark tendrils.
"Shadow magic."
The voice was ice. Lion turned to see armor gleaming silver. The man's face under the helm was young, pitiless, his breastplate etched with a sun-and-sword sigil—a Church inquisitor.
"By the Seventh Edict of the Sacred Codex," the inquisitor raised his blade, golden runes flaring, "the penalty for heresy is death."
Lion tried to speak. Only blood answered. The sword fell—
Fire erupted between them.
The blast flung the inquisitor back. A hand seized Lion's wrist, crushing bone. "Shut up if you want to live!" A red-haired girl snarled, her pupils blazing orange in the smoke, like twin embers.
In the last instant, Lion saw Brook stagger from the forge, half-armored, his face twisted in shock—and something else, unreadable. Then flames swallowed everything: the village, the shadowbeasts, his father's shouts—all lost to the howling wind.