The academy burned in silence.
No crackle of flame. No roar of collapsing towers.
Only the wet, hungry whisper of ink swallowing stone.
Elderglow Academy's great marble pillars sagged like candles left too long in the rain, their once-golden runes bleeding black tears down melting walls. Above it all, the sun hung like a punched-out hole in the sky—an empty wound that drank warmth and color from the world.
Aren walked through the ruin because walking was the only thing left he understood.
His shadow walked ahead of him.
It moved without permission now, stretching twenty feet in front, peeling across the courtyard with long, deliberate fingers. Wherever it passed, the Inkborn paused—those that still possessed anything resembling a head. They tilted their eyeless, lantern-like faces toward him as though listening for a command older than language.
Then they knelt.
Or bowed.
Or simply unraveled, dissolving gratefully into mist.
Aren hated how natural that felt.
He stepped over what remained of Master Callan—the pyromancy instructor who'd spent two years rapping Aren's knuckles for dozing off during lectures. Now Callan was a statue of frozen shadow, mouth open in a scream that would never finish. Aren crouched, brushing the man's cheek.
Cold. Brittle. Already flaking away.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
He didn't know whether he meant Callan, himself, or the world that had allowed this.
A sound stirred behind him. Wet. Dragging. Heavy.
A massive Inkborn hauled itself from the shattered fountain, spines scraping sparks against the stone. Its lantern eyes narrowed—swirled—focused.
Little prince, it rasped, its voice like parchment tearing underwater. The Veil thins. The court returns. Will you deny us twice?
Aren rose slowly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Liar.
The creature lunged.
Aren didn't move. He didn't raise a hand.
He didn't need to.
His shadow surged up the Inkborn's body like a rising tide, slipping into joints, seams, hollows—every crack where darkness lived. The monster froze mid-leap, twitching violently.
Then it folded like wet paper and collapsed into a spreading puddle.
Silence again.
Only bodies turning to ink and the black sun staring down with the judgement of a forgotten god.
Aren looked at his hands.
Clean.
Always clean.
The shadows took care of that too—whether he wanted them to or not.
He turned toward the shattered front gates and walked. Beyond the academy, the kingdom was unraveling the same way—streets drowning, cities suffocating, skies bleeding. People screaming prayers to gods who no longer answered.
Then—
"Aren?"
The voice was thin, trembling but alive.
He spun.
Lira Voss—third-year illusionist, cinnamon-scented robes, freckles like stardust—was pinned beneath a fallen beam near the collapsed eastern dormitory. Her left leg bent in a way no human limb should. Blood pooled around her ankle, staining the ground a dark, dull red.
But her eyes were bright. Fierce. Unwilling to die politely.
"Knew you'd still be breathing," she muttered through a grimace. "Stubborn bastard."
Aren crossed the courtyard in six long strides and knelt beside her. Shadows curled at the edge of his vision, restless and hungry.
"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
"Neither should you." She coughed, wincing. "Everyone's dead, Aren. Or worse. The sky—those things crawling out of it—"
"I know."
She studied him then. Not his face—his shape. The way the shadows around him moved like a second body.
"Your shadow's… bigger," she whispered.
Aren glanced down.
The darkness pooled around him like spilled oil, deeper and denser than any sky-born shadow should be.
"It does that now," he said.
Lira's hand reached up and seized his wrist. Her fingers trembled, but her grip was iron.
"Listen to me," she said. "I remembered something. Old archive stuff—restricted records. There's a legend about the day the sun dies. When the Veil breaks both ways, something comes through… but something has to go in. A key. A sacrifice." She swallowed hard. "They say the last Veilborn can close it again. Or open it completely."
A whisper slid through Aren's mind like cold smoke.
Heir. Eclipse. Throne.
Aren pulled his arm free, heart tightening. "I'm not sacrificing myself, Lira."
"I'm not asking you to." Her laugh was short, bitter. "I'm asking you not to sacrifice everyone else."
For a moment, only the slow drip of ink from collapsing roofs answered her.
Then Aren reached down, slid his arms beneath her, and lifted. She weighed far less than she should. His shadow curled around the broken beam, dissolving it to dust so nothing scraped her crushed leg.
"Where… are we going?" she whispered against his shoulder.
"North," Aren said. "There's an old watchtower past the Ashen Ridge. If anywhere still has light—it'll be there."
"And if it doesn't?"
He stepped past the ruined gates, the black sun framing him like a crown of void.
"Then I'll find out," he said quietly, "just how dark I can make this world… before deciding whether it deserves saving."
Behind them, Elderglow Academy finished melting into ink.
Ahead, the dead horizon stretched endlessly, untouched by dawn.
And for the first time since the sun went out, Aren Nightflare felt something sharper than fear.
Purpose.