Light split my skull in two as they dragged me from my tower, the only place I had ever known.
Once, its darkness terrified me.
Slowly, painfully, that cold dark became my home. My friend.
The guards’ hands were rough and merciless, gripping my arms as if I might vanish into smoke if they did not hold tight enough. They had watched me grow up in that tower, watched me whisper to the dark corners and trace shapes in the dust, and now they would be the ones to drag me into judgment.
“Let me go!” I screamed, kicking, twisting, desperate.
Their armor clanged as they pulled me through the corridors, sunlight cutting through tall stained-glass windows. The colors bled across my face, red and gold and white, holiness sharpened into knives.
Servants stopped to stare. Some crossed themselves. Others whispered, “The cursed girl. The one the Fates warned of.”
I kept my head down, but inside, the shadows coiled tighter. They knew my name. They knew my truth.
The Great Hall loomed ahead, blinding white marble gleaming like bone. Every inch of it hurt to look at. My feet burned against the polished stone.
“What is happening?” I demanded, though my voice sounded small even to my own ears. “Why am I here?”
One of the guards shoved me forward. “You have been brought before the High Lord of Saminda to plead your cause. You stand accused of being a woman seer.”
I stumbled into the blinding chamber and froze.
The man before me was barely a man at all, more skeleton than flesh. His skin hung in thin sheets over bone, but his eyes were fire, the kind that burns at the bottom of the world, the type that judges.
Around him stood twelve priests in white robes, each holding a candle. The flames bent away from me.
“I was born this way,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. “I can’t change what I am. I don’t even use it. My spark is unlit.”
The High Lord moved, and every bone in his body rattled like dry leaves. “Born this way?” His jaw clicked. “Birth is never an accident. One’s beginning shapes one’s end. The universe chose to give you life, child, and that choice defied its own design.”
He leaned forward. “The prophecy has spoken. A maiden seer of Ilina will drown the sun with the darkest night. The cold will leave Celentra hollow, a void of itself.”
My throat tightened. My knees felt weak. “I never asked for this. I don’t want to destroy anything. I just want to keep the dark for myself.”
“The penalty,” he rasped, “is death.”
For a heartbeat, the world held still.
Then something inside me snapped.
The air thickened. Light fractured. Every motion slowed, the guards’ breath, the drip of wax from the candles, the tremor in my own hands. I saw it all, and I saw the weakness in the man nearest me.
I moved before I could think. Grabbed his wrist and twisted.
Snap.
The sound was clean, final, beautiful.
“Well,” I said, my voice trembling with something close to laughter. “What do you know. The shadows are my strength because the light abandoned me.”
The shadows stirred. They crept up from beneath the marble floor, curling around my feet and arms, cold as water and certain as truth. The priests screamed as the candles guttered out one by one, snuffed by an unseen breath.
Power surged through me, not like fire, but like the void itself waking up.
The second guard lunged. I met him with both hands, using strength I did not know I possessed, and hurled him into the others.
“Death!” the High Lord shrieked, bones shuddering. “Death to the Darkborn!”
But I was already gone.
I ran through the sunlight, the hateful, burning light, until my lungs ached and my vision swam. I ducked into the first alley I found, sinking to my knees in the cool dark.
The air here was different. It smelled of ash and spoiled fruit, of rot and smoke. It smelled like freedom.
I pressed my palms to the stones, feeling the pulse beneath. The shadows pulsed back. Alive.
A sound startled me, the shuffle of footsteps. A girl about my age stumbled into the alley.
Short brown hair. A tattoo winding up her arm. Her breathing was ragged. “I didn’t do anything,” she whispered to no one in particular.
I tilted my head. “Hey,” I said quietly, “this is my hiding spot.”
Her eyes went wide.
From the street came the shout: “Quick! Find the girl!”
I smiled, stepping back into the dark. “Gotta go.”
And the shadows rose to meet me, cool and soft and endless.
They did not hurt. They held.
For the first time in my life, I felt seen.
As the sunlight vanished above me, I thought, If they fear the darkness so much, perhaps they deserve it.
And the shadows swallowed me whole.