Chapter 10: The Road to the Black Sun (Continued)
Kael began his ascent of the Umbra Keep mountain face. The material was cold, smooth, and seemed to actively defy the Law of Friction. Kael countered this immediately by activating his purified Law of Impact not for force, but for controlled adhesion, allowing his boots and hands to cling to the slick, unyielding surface.
As he climbed, the atmosphere grew heavier, colder, and darker. The air was saturated with the Law of Shadow, a pervasive influence that bent light and distorted perception. This environment was fundamentally hostile to Kael's Law of Time, which dealt in absolute, measurable reality.
Kael's Law of Resonance immediately detected the problem: The fortress was protected by a massive, high-level Law of Illumination Inversion. Any attempt to generate light—even residual Aetheric glow—would be instantly absorbed and redirected, essentially casting Kael's location into an absolute, localized blackness, rendering him blind and exposed.
He relied entirely on his internal, purified Laws. He maintained his Law of Concealment (physical and Aetheric invisibility) and used his restored Law of Sensation to feel the slightest shift in air pressure or temperature that might indicate a hidden trap.
The first layer of defense was not a wall or a gate, but silent, weaving figures carved from the mountain itself: Shadow Sentinels. There were twelve of them, spaced evenly along the approach, each radiating the deep, cold energy of the Law of Shadow.
They were not alive; they were complex, self-sustaining constructs woven purely from Shadow and bound by a high-level Law of Vigilance. They didn't rely on sight or Aetheric resonance to detect intruders; they sensed the imposition of foreign Law.
As Kael passed the first sentinel, its head, a featureless knot of shadow, snapped toward his location. It had detected the minute wisp of Aether Kael used to power his Law of Impact for grip.
The sentinel did not move, but it began to weave a complex, localized Law of Density—compressing the air in a sphere around Kael, attempting to physically crush his invisible form.
Kael's purified Law of Resistance immediately flared, its Fluid Deflection mesh shunting the immense external pressure harmlessly away. The Law held, but the localized conflict was a massive surge in the ambient Aether, alerting the other eleven sentinels.
Kael knew he couldn't afford a full, sustained conflict with all twelve. The Law of Vigilance meant that any noise, any sustained Aetheric conflict, would summon the Keep's masters.
He needed surgical, silent annihilation.
He activated the purified Law of Thread-Severance.
He targeted the Law of Vigilance thread that bound the nearest sentinel to the overall network. He didn't unmake the Sentinel itself; he annihilated the thread that made it aware.
Snip.
The Sentinel instantly stopped weaving the Law of Density. It froze, inert, a mute statue of shadow, its connection to the Keep's central defense severed.
Kael moved with ruthless efficiency. Using the purified Law of Velocity (Temporal Displacement), he moved from Sentinel to Sentinel, engaging the purified Law of Thread-Severance in rapid succession.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
Twelve perfectly woven Laws of Vigilance were annihilated in under three seconds. The Sentinels remained standing, but they were blind, deaf, and disconnected from the Loom's network. Kael had neutralized the entire perimeter without a single acoustic or large-scale Aetheric signature.
Kael reached the massive, perfectly smooth entrance gate of Umbra Keep. It was a solid wall of solidified shadow, vibrating with a high-level Law of Barrier that repelled physical force and Aetheric flow equally.
He used his Law of Scission—the Aetheric blade—to look for weaknesses. The Law of Barrier was too vast, too strong to be cut directly.
He needed to apply the Law of Time to the Law of Shadow itself.
Kael placed his hand on the gate. He did not seek to regress the gate to dust. He sought to regress the Law of Shadow that composed the gate by a fraction of a second, causing an infinitesimal failure in its cohesion.
The Shard of Time responded. For a sliver of time, the perfect, unified Law of Barrier was returned to its previous state—a state of unwoven Shadow.
Fzzzzzt...
The gate didn't open; a section of it simply behaved like a momentary void, a single, body-sized gap in the solid Law.
Kael, using the purified Law of Velocity, passed through the instantaneous opening. The gate snapped shut instantly behind him.
He was inside the fortress.
The interior of Umbra Keep was a disorienting labyrinth of winding passages, sudden drops, and flickering, internal shadows. The pervasive Law of Shadow was strongest here, creating a constant, unsettling sensation of being watched from every angle.
Kael knew the architecture was designed to invoke fear and doubt—emotions he no longer possessed. But he was hampered by his stolen Law of Trust and Law of Patience. He was forced into constant, hurried suspicion.
He encountered the Shadow Cultists who had escaped him in the Salt Flats—about twenty of them, led by two of the dark figures. They were weaving in a large, pillared hall, preparing a massive, synchronized Law of Seclusion—a ritual designed to trap Kael in a localized pocket of non-Aetheric space.
The cultists' leaders looked up, their eyes glowing with faint, cold Aether. They were not surprised to see Kael; the Law of Shadow dealt in probability.
"The Shard of Time," one of the leaders hissed, a voice like rustling silk. "You seek to shatter the Law of Concealment with your crude, noisy reality. You will be bound here, Mistborn."
The leaders executed their Law of Seclusion. The walls of the chamber seemed to blur, and Kael felt the pressure of the space around him shrinking, forcing him toward the center.
Kael needed to break the formation immediately, but he couldn't use Impact or Destabilization; the confined space would amplify the chaos and injure him.
He activated the purified Law of Concealment and instantly turned invisible.
The cultists, who were trained to track Aetheric flow, were not fooled.
"We see the thread, Weaver!" the second leader laughed. "Shadow is the absence of sight, not the absence of being! We have woven the Law of Failsafe Sight!"
Kael felt a horrifying mental projection—the cultists were now perceiving him, not through light, but through the Shadow he cast on the very fabric of the Loom.
He was betrayed by the core Law he sought to steal.
Kael had to think faster than their coordinated Law. He immediately activated the purified Law of Misdirection (an innate function of Shadow's domain that his Law of Concealment could mimic).
Kael didn't try to disappear. He used the purified Law of Impact (Force Amplification) and simultaneously applied the Law of Misdirection to the resulting Aetheric shockwave.
He punched the floor, but the sound, the Aetheric impact, and the resulting shockwave were misdirected to appear to originate from three different, far corners of the hall, creating three massive, simultaneous 'impacts.'
The Law of Seclusion pattern, which relied on the fixed point of Kael's position, instantly fractured. The twenty cultists stumbled, their weaves broken by the chaotic, misdirected data.
Kael, moving from the true center, executed a rapid, focused strike. He used the purified Law of Scission to target the Aether Threads linking the two leaders to the rest of the formation.
Slice. Slice.
The two leaders dropped, their ability to channel and amplify the Shadow Law severed. The remaining cultists scattered, their synergy broken.
Kael had broken the ambush. He did not pursue the scattered cultists; they were no longer a tactical threat. His Will drove him toward the source of the Law of Shadow.
He followed the overwhelming Aetheric signature of the Shard, plunging deeper into the fortress's core. The passages grew cold enough to freeze moisture, and the air crackled with a distinct, unsettling energy.
He entered a final, massive circular chamber. The ceiling was impossibly high, a black dome that contained the perpetual darkness of the external Wastes.
At the center of the chamber, suspended over a swirling pool of crystalline, liquefied shadow, was the object of his quest:
The Eclipsed Shard of Shadow.
It was a shard of pure, geometric, frozen darkness. It did not emit light; it consumed it. It radiated the overwhelming, undeniable Law of Concealment and Misdirection.
Standing directly beneath the Shard, waiting for him, was the final guardian of the Shadow Realm:
A tall, ancient woman clad in heavy, woven Shadow-silk, her face etched with a millennium of concentrated Aetheric mastery. This was The Keeper of Umbra, the Patternmaster of the Shadow Shard.
She did not weave an attack. She simply opened her eyes, and Kael felt an immediate, profound invasion of his own core.
"You are Kael Draven. The Mistborn. The Empty Vessel," the Keeper stated, her voice a dry, echoing whisper. "You have purged yourself of weakness, but your Law of Time will never conquer Shadow. We are the architects of what is Unseen."
She raised her hands, and the entire chamber dissolved into a swirling vortex of blinding confusion. Kael's senses—his sight, his Aetheric resonance, his very sense of space—were instantly warped.
The Keeper did not attack Kael physically. She attacked his mind, applying the ultimate Law of her domain: the Law of Absolute Misdirection.
Kael Draven was standing at the core of the Eclipse Realm of Shadow, facing an enemy who sought to annihilate him by making him believe he was everywhere and nowhere all at once. His final battle for the Second Shard had begun.