“Sometimes, when it appears that a case is nearly closed, I find that I’m right back at square one. So it is with the case of Silver Alurian.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

"This is the same symbol,” Silver half-whispered, staring downward as she remembered the night the Zara tore into her life. Bek knelt, scrutinizing the vast emblem painted across the entryway floor. She glanced at him momentarily, but his eyes were trained on the golden dragon. Seijelar’s warm breath was heavy in her ear.

“What does it mean?” she pressed, somehow afraid to raise her voice with the stifling darkness and ash all around, “What could it mean to the Zara, Bek? I asked you before—”

“I recall. It’s a symbol, from before the Divide,” Bek explained softly, “but it’s still in use now by Periballon Inc, or, as certain radical offshoots call themselves, the Juran. The legal group is an environmentalist corporation with a strong connection to the magical world. They and ENTrust are large-scale corporations under the MASO’s constant scrutiny. I told you it made no sense for the Zara to use this symbol…but that was because I never considered it might be from the castle.”

He glanced back at the closed door, which looked highly unlikely to open for them. Silver was too busy wondering what kinds of corporations required the MASO’s scrutiny, and where they could have come across such a symbol, to follow his gaze.

“We’re going to have to be more careful here,” he finally whispered.

She nodded and wiped flecks of ash off of her jacket. When nothing else happened – nothing swooped or fell from the ceiling, or leapt from the sordid shadows that had collected along the castle walls – she turned her attention to everything but the floor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the walls were stone. Great columns buttressed a vaulted ceiling high over their heads, which was lit dimly by the watery daylight spreading from windows set far up in the walls. Numerous of the windows appeared to have no glass at all, which might have explained how an otherwise undamaged space had been filled with ash from a fire that must have raged beyond the castle walls. Others were set with rosy, thick panes that lent a crimson glow to the vast space. They lit up the remains of tapestries, torched and tattered, hanging on the left-side of the chamber. On the right were more of the same, but they appeared untouched and whole. It was too dark to see much of what they might depict.

The buttresses cast hazy shadows across the hard wood floors, and with no light but that from the windows it was difficult to see much detail. Still, the great staircase that curled ahead of them was too large to miss. It was flagstone, carpeted in scarlet and lined by rosewood banisters. To either side of the stairwell were wide halls, which suggested the possibility of unseen doors lost to the gloom.

“Which way?” Silver asked, staring up the curling staircase.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Great,” Silver was still whispering. “Then I vote for heading upstairs.”

The wolf rumbled agreement, so they walked slowly up the staircase, clustered into a tight group with the wolf at Silver’s side and the hatchlings curled up on each of the humans’ shoulders. Silver found herself peering doubtfully at the stone buttresses of the castle, and carefully avoiding the rosewood banisters just in case they were rotten in areas she could not see.

“You said no one has ventured in here in a long time?” Silver confirmed, glowering nervously forward at the dark landing as it loomed closer with every step.

“Yes.” Bek’s single-word answer felt like it carried a lot more weight than he cared to elaborate on, and she knew him well enough to let it drop for the time being.

Their path forked at the top of the stairwell, but the wolf sniffed and headed down the corridor to the left without hesitation. Again, Silver followed. Seijelar seemed to have settled back into a half-sleep state and made no sound, but emitted soft puffs of smoke from both nose slits.

An eerie silence filled the dark corridors of the castle. There were metal brackets in the walls, flared into elaborate cast iron baskets that must have once held something to burn, but had long since gone dark. Even so, there was no sheen of dust on the wood floors. The occasional wooden panel adhered by some unseen magic to the wall showed no signs of dust or fading. In fact, she wished they could linger to stare at the panels, which displayed all sorts of fantastical things. Through the changing seasons they depicted, she observed sea serpents and dragons and glorious vistas that were as much fantastic as they were familiarly mundane. The windows resumed along the walls after a short distance, many gaping, empty holes filled not with glass, but with intricate ironwork that seemed immune to the elements. No cold seemed to penetrate them, nor did the weather, but Silver was sure nothing would stop her if she tried to stick her hand straight out to the sky…if she were tall enough to reach, anyway.

Although she knew the Zara must be somewhere in those dark halls with them, Silver did not shy away from the shadows. These were not the Zara’s shadows.

When they came across more ash and the clear remains of fire, everything changed. A cold wind charged through the stone walls, distributing a faint dusting of snow over the mildewed, ragged carpets. Dust coated the corridor. Cracks spread across the stone walls, seeping a dark liquid that looked like blood in the shadows. The ironwork in the windows was rusted through and crumbling, if any remained. Mushrooms, lichens, and mosses forayed into the space, lending it the feel of a grotto buried deep beneath the earth.

“Don’t stop, Silver. The faster we can find the Stone and get out of here, the better,” Bek said from behind her.

Startled, Silver realized she had in fact stopped, and was staring down the dark hallway, past rotten carpet and a lush blanket of moss, into the black. Somewhere in that dark expanse, the windows ended, leaving her with the impression that the corridor carried on into oblivion. She had the strange impression that there was something that hid in that oblivion – some other presence that was not the Zara. Like a looming giant, she could feel it at the edge of her senses. It watched them with a hollow, unliving gaze.

As Silver stood rooted to the spot, the ground suddenly gave a tremendous lurch. She was thrown against the wall. As her arm and shoulder slammed into solid stone, she had an instant to be glad the thick coat Cara had given her protected her skin before she was falling – falling into oblivion. Nothing could stop her. Nothing could save her. She simply pitched down into the night…

And stood, still rooted to the spot, in the cavernous hall where they had first entered the castle. An overhead chandelier illuminated everything, casting ripples of crystalline light across the walls. Iron brackets all around the hall leapt into steadily burning life, lit by blue fire.

There were no shadows.

The eerie silence was gone, replaced by the distant murmur of voices from other rooms. Warmth flooded her. Elorian stood at the bottom of the stairwell, looking expectantly up at her. It was waiting. But she turned away, taking a step in the direction of the corridor at the top of the stairs. Just as with before, she turned left. Her eyes found the windows, the wooden panels depicting fantastic things. There was no change in her path, except that the path itself had changed. She stood in front of an open door…

Seijelar’s soft chirrup roused her. Silver’s eyes snapped open.

“Hey,” Bek was crouched next to her, hand on her shoulder. “Are you oka—No. Just stay there for a second,” he stopped her firmly as she tried to get up.

“I’m fine,” she argued, forgetting for a moment to whisper. She winced as she tried to push off the wall and pressed her hand into a clammy clod of moss.

“I’m sure you are the best authority on how fine you are or are not at the moment,” Bek observed.

“There was some sort of earthquake…” She trailed off, seeing the look on his face.

“Not a strong enough one to knock someone out,” he said. Then he paused to look up and down the dark, dirty corridor. “Can you walk?”

“I told you I’m fine,” she said firmly, rubbing her bruised shoulder and hoping she sounded confident.

“Fine enough to walk, anyway,” he muttered.

“Elorian, you lead,” Silver directed, determinedly righting herself without Bek’s help. He hurriedly moved out of her way. Mostly, she thought, he moved to keep her from tripping over him or herself. When they were both upright, he regarded her steadily for a long moment, bronze eyes ruthlessly seeking hers. Then motioned for the wolf to go on ahead. They had barely taken two steps, however, before the wolf stopped and looked back at them.

The beast had stopped in front of a door. With a glance at Bek, Silver reached toward it tentatively and, when nothing happened, slowly pushed. The door creaked open into another room, and the wolf stepped forward immediately. Silver followed, and stared around the narrow space in awe.

It was a hallway. High up in the walls, there were what looked not like windows, but like arrow slits. Thin bars of light passed through them, and were joined by a narrow channel of pure golden light than ran horizontally across the wall. Together, the two lit the space brightly, almost cheerfully. Massive oil paintings and narrow, silken tapestries warmed the austere walls. Strangely, the hallway gave the impression of being some sort of bridge. More strangely, rosy glass panes were spaced evenly across the flagstone floor, from one end of the room to the other. Through them was only an impenetrable expanse of open space, dimly lit and devoid of movement…and they were too large to jump, stretching from wall to wall of the narrow room.

“Do you think the Stone is hidden behind this frame or something?” Silver asked, still trailing the wolf as it moved to stare at a massive oil painting. It was a painting of a woman with pale green eyes and a calm gaze, dressed entirely in shades of turquoise. Very little of her, in fact, was visible except for her eyes and her slender forearms, and a very sharp dagger that she held delicately across her lap. She wore wide sleeves that draped to her elbows, and some sort of veil. Bek came after them, dubiously eyeing the hallway.

“She must have lived here a long time ago,” Silver continued.

“This isn’t the time—” Bek began, only to fall silent when the door they had just come through snapped shut with a resounding crack. For an instant, their gazes met. Then Bek whirled around to drag it open – something made difficult by the lack of a doorknob. It was clear, after a few seconds of struggle, that the door was not going to open again. He turned back to her, shaking his head.

“We won’t be leaving through that door,” he said, “so we had better hope the other one isn’t locked.”

“You think someone is in here with us besides the Zara?” Silver asked, eyes narrowing at the closed door. “I don’t see why he would bother locking doors on us.”

“I think magic does strange things in old, decrepit castles. Old, trap-filled, potentially cursed, decrepit castles,” Bek said with a scowl. “This is exactly what I was afraid would happen if we came in here.”

“You could have warned me.”

“That we might encounter mysterious self-locking doors? There are dozens of other things we could come across. I could hardly outline them all for you before we came in.”

Silver sighed, gesturing across the hall. “Do you think those glass panels will take our weight?”

Bek stared past her. “Hundreds of years ago, I’m sure they would have. Now, I don’t want to test it.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a way to levitate across using magic?”

Bek scowled ironically. “Not for either of us. There’s a chance I could jump it, but you wouldn’t make it.” There was too much truth in his statement for her to be upset. “This door isn’t opening. We don’t have much choice but to the try the other one. Pull out Cara’s rope. We’ll go slowly, and hope that if anything happens, we don’t drag each other down to our doom.”

“You sound optimistic. Which of us goes first?” she asked, flipping around her backpack and pulling out the length of braided rope. It was a solid fifty-feet, certainly long enough for one of them to go all the way to the end of the room if necessary. Bek gestured past her, and she turned to see the wolf flick its silvery ears and set out cautiously across the glass. The wolf’s paws skittered across it as if it were ice, but the beast seemed unconcerned, and reached the other side easily.

“You go next, Silver. If the glass breaks, I’m more likely to be able to pull you up.” Silver nodded, confidence bolstered a bit by the wolf’s success. Hesitantly, she followed in its paw steps, but the glass did not so much as bow beneath her weight. Bek brought up the rear as soon as she was prepared, but the instant his foot touched the glass, something strange happened; she had the sense that looming presence hiding in oblivion turned to look at them.

“Bek,” she said sharply. He paused, warned off by something in her voice. Then the ground lurched.

In that instant, Silver suddenly understood – what she was sensing was the castle...the castle itself protested their presence, their movement, their seeking and prowling its corridors.

The realization came too late. She just had time to shout a warning as Bek stumbled forward, the glass broke with a crack and a pop like firecrackers, and she watched the last of Skourett’s ebony scales disappear into the gloom.

Empty air remained.

Shocked, she stood, silent, waiting for the yank on the rope that would pull her into the abyss after Bek. Her body was braced for his weight, but it never came. There was only a tug, just enough to pull her forward, and then abruptly nothing. She wanted to cry out, but her breath and voice had frozen in her throat. Elorian snarled by her side, but made no move forwards. Milliseconds passed before Silver forced herself to run and kneel at the edge, staring wildly beyond the remains of the glass. There was nothing; not a shadow or a glimmer of scales or even a telltale light to trace the path of her fallen comrades. The rope hung, frayed, pulled taught against the broken glass.

It seemed that the castle had still greater plans. While Silver stared in horror, the broken glass shards were rising up from the abyss, settling back into place. Seconds later, it appeared that the glass had never been broken. Silver’s fingers left faint afterimages where she pressed and dragged them back across the panels, as if hoping to wipe away the obscuring film of emptiness beyond.

Silence swallowed the hallway. She remained, kneeling with her hands pressed against the cool glass, as if that would give her some answer. Then she tore her eyes from the floor, combing the ceiling and the walls and seeking who-knew-what that could somehow help her. There were still several glass panels to cross, and she was shaking just looking at them.

“He’s there.” Silver froze, finally sensing the shift in the attention of the crimson beast coiled about her neck and shoulders. “They are several levels below us, but unharmed.”

“How do you know?”

“I sense my brother. His mind and mine are not so far.”

“Can you lead us to him?”

“The way is obscured.”

It was the first time the dragon had actually spoken to her. Silver turned enough to see the beast’s slit green eyes regarding her coolly from inches away, and then slowly rose to her feet. She looked wordlessly at the wolf, knowing her expression must read a certain amount of desperation, and wishing that the beasts could not see what she was feeling so easily. Her only solace was that, if the dragons could sense each other, surely they could also find each other. Somehow.

Only when the wolf growled plaintively did Silver reach one trembling hand up to touch Seijelar’s delicately curved head, fingers finding the twin spines rising from the dragon’s skull, and say, “I’m coming.”

The door at the far end of the hall creaked open as the wolf started toward it. Its green eyes were pleading when it looked back to see that she followed. She did. And the glass held her. Silver had known from the beginning, despite herself, that it would. The castle had acted with purpose. What that purpose was, she had no idea, but there was a purpose. Of that, she had no doubt.

She and the wolf exited the strange hallway together, into a corridor where the windows cast a faint crimson glow upon the floor. The stone walls were lined by eerie figures carved from marble, jade, basalt, and obsidian, frozen in everyday poses. They looked as cold as the snow beyond the castle walls. Doors beyond counting passed them as they strode through that corridor and into others, unable to see where one ended and another began, save where they were forced to turn left or right or to move up or down twisting stairs. After a time, she saw a door in front of her that she knew instinctively must mark the outer edge of one wing of the castle. It most likely lead into the heights of one of the towers that had been visible from the outside.

Silver stopped before it and the wolf, who had been padding steadily onwards around the corner, returned. It looked up at her questioningly, but she had eyes only for the heavy blackwood door. Bek is several floors below us, last Seijelar said anything, so moving upward will certainly not put me on a collision course with him. The tower will also be dead end…

For several moments, Silver stood, contemplating her options, before she decided to test the door. As with the entrance to the castle, the door swung inward easily when she pushed.

“What do you think, castle?” she asked aloud. “Should I climb to the top of this tower?” A faint rumble was her only answer. The door slid open a little wider, and a narrow channel of light leading up the stairwell burst into life.

“Well, that’s that,” Silver said under her breath, glancing at the wolf. Trying hard not to look concerned, she stepped through the door, and carefully closed it behind her.

As she had expected, she found herself staring up a steep, winding set of steps. Sighing inwardly at the exertion, but determined to move onward now that she had picked a path, Silver started to climb. She passed several arrow slits that gave her the opportunity to mark her passage by the view outside, which meant only that she saw the snowy earth grow steadily farther below her, and the heights of the forest canopy creep closer and closer. Uncertain, she paused when she reached a flat landing with a single door, but saw that the stairs continued upwards. Seconds passed and then, wordlessly, she continued up, ignoring the wolf’s grumbles and the dragon’s continuous stare.

Their steady ascent was relentless and mechanical. The stairs were steep enough that Silver’s thighs burned if she stopped even a moment to rest, and began to cramp and tighten angrily with every step. As a result, it was with relief and a certain amount of surprise that she found herself finally at the end of the winding staircase, staring at an arched blackwood door identical to the first. Quickly, before she could convince herself against it, she pulled the door open and stepped into the small, warm space beyond.

It was, or had once been, a bedroom; that was immediately obvious. A single large bed dominated the room’s center, surrounded by a wardrobe and desk. The wolf glared around the small space warily, balking when Silver took another step forward and the trenches engraved deep into the stone walls leapt into flickering life. A strange chandelier that appeared to be constructed of liquid flame flickered into being at nearly the same instant. Silver stared a moment at that alone, wary of the flames lest they escape from the confines of what she recognized to be some magical restriction. It took several seconds for her to decide they would not pour down on her head the moment she stepped beneath them.

Between the chandelier and the trenches, the room was magnificently bathed in a warm golden light. By that light, she could see that a beautiful mirror hung against one wall, not so far from an open window, and that rich crimson tapestries hugged the walls. Silver regarded the mirror for a moment, but never moved close enough to see her reflection. After only a moment’s hesitation, she crossed the open space to the window in the far wall. It was snowing thickly outside. Magically, none of the bitter chill of the outdoors made it past the windowsill.

When the wolf rumbled to draw her attention, Silver turned her gaze to a picture frame that sat propped up on the desk beside the bed. The wolf appeared to be looking at it, ears canted thoughtfully. An old portrait, rumpled, perhaps a bit torn around the edges, was placed within…the frame was unusual. No glass, just a copper sheet with the corners curled over. Silver moved closer, picking it up and realizing as she did that the portrait was not a picture at all, but a painting, done in delicate, short strokes. Within it, a man leaned against a pitch-black tree with a wolfish beast at his feet. The man’s mouth was set in a thin, firm line, and he appeared to be looking past her into the room. The beast reminded her of Elorian. Its eyes were the eyes of a wolf.

Before she could get a really good look at the picture, the ceiling shook and an ominous rumble issued up from the staircase. Overhead, the chandelier dimmed, and the rest of the light in the room was extinguished. Silver replaced the picture on the desk and ran after the wolf to the door - which swung open before they reached it - struggling to keep her balance as Seijelar squawked and dug claws into her spine. None of them had any intention of being trapped in the tower when the Zara found them, and Seijelar was hissing something in her ear about shadows and magic and danger.

Down, down, down the stairs. Silver’s eyes darted to the door as they hit the first landing, and her hands hit the wood even before she had ceased to move forward. This she regretted the moment she slammed against the door and, feeling foolish, realized she needed to pull to open it by a narrow groove seamlessly carved into the wood. With a last glance behind her, she flung it open only to find two scarlet eyes leering at her. The Zara crouched there, watching her expectantly, motionless. The scent of the outdoors drifted in around him; the scent of ice and snow and cold. Silver’s lungs protested the sudden blast of freezing air, and she promptly slammed the door shut again, cutting off the wolf’s startled snarl and Seijelar’s angry hiss.

Turning, she hurtled down the staircase that she had climbed only moments ago, silently cursing because she was breathing like a bellows and could not spare any air. Adrenaline driving her forward, she skipped the last couple of steps and flung the door at the end of the staircase open, fully expecting to see that the Zara had once again beat her there. Her eyes fell on open hallway, but…the wrong hallway.

Startled, she froze, glancing from side to side. It seemed different from what she remembered. Nothing was out of place, but she was certain something was not as it had been. The shape of the glow cast by the windows down its length filled her with a faint sense of discord.

As she stared, Seijelar clung tighter to her back, peering behind them and sputtering angrily. Silver followed the dragon’s eyes to find the shadows creeping across the walls towards them. In an instant, she was off down another corridor, the wolf at her side and the blood pounding in her veins. She could not fight without Bek. There were too many things he had not been able to teach her, and she needed him to cast his spells. All she had was Cara’s rope, now considerably shorter.

Gasping for breath, Silver stopped when the wolf skidded to a halt. Another place, another door. When she entered, it closed behind her with a decisive snap. Here was another hallway filled with artwork, one of what she was beginning to suspect were throughways cutting directly through the heart of the castle. Some of the works were sodden, overtaken by liquid that seeped from the cracked castle walls. A scorched trail of charcoal smeared the hallway, from one end to the other. There was no time to waste on puzzling out her predicament, however. Panicked, she opened another door and found herself in a stunningly white room with five doors and a large conference table. Seijelar hissed and smoke curled from the dragon’s thin nostrils. Through one of the doors was a new set of stairs. Down the stairs…through a door…through another door…and she was back in the hall with glass panels lining the floor.

Silver stopped again, looking down and seeing her fingerprints on the glass at her feet. It really was exactly the same room. There was no mistake.

A cold dread settled into the pit of her stomach. They were lost. If the castle truly was alive, then the halls seemed to be moving. Magic again. Is there no end to this madness?

“We’ll never find the Stone like this,” Silver panted, aware of the wolf’s hot breath on her leg, “we’ll have to face the Zara, but not without Bek and Skourett. We have to find them.”

The wolf whimpered, clearly at a loss as to how they would do such a thing.

“Can you find your brother, Seijelar? Is he closer?” she asked, desperate.

“I sense him, but he moves too quickly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Space is meaningless here. I do not understand it. One second, we are so close, the next, he is very far.”

Silver would have said more, but she could feel the Zara creeping towards them once more. Rather than the icy chill of the shadow beast, however, she now felt a heat, like liquid fire, dancing like sparks across the surface of her skin. It was magic, she had no doubt.

But not her magic.

Her stomach did an odd sort of backwards flop and she braced herself, suddenly stricken by the sensation that she was standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean during an intense storm. Before her eyes, the walls began to waver and ripple. The doors sped passed her on either side in a blur of brown wood. Underfoot, the glass panels cracked abruptly, shattering, and just as suddenly coming back together. Finally, with a great, shuddering tremor, the motion stopped and the walls ceased to ripple. The odd sensation of being in the middle of the ocean in a bad storm persisted a moment longer, and then gradually faded, leaving her swaying in the desolate bridgeway, struggling to regain her land legs.

Silver felt completely disoriented. She held a hand out to her side and pressed it against the cold stone that she found there, taking quick, short breaths and slowly regaining her sense of balance. Neither the wolf nor the dragon seemed to pay much heed to her discomfort. Instead, their eyes were trained straight ahead, to the place where the single wood door in the wall had become two, each as wide as the span of her arms and once and again her height. If the castle truly was alive, its message was clear.

That was where was meant to go.

Silence. Her breathing echoed eerily back to her, uncertain and alien in the dark hallway. When Silver finally took a hesitant step forward, the doors swung open without her so much as touching them. The heavy wood made no sound, and the air that rolled out reeked heavily of magic. From the outside she looked in, her mind racing. This was it. Without passing through the double doors, she knew that the Zara would be waiting for her on the other side. The one who had taken everything from her …and yet somehow, she had made him what he was.

There would be no more running. She had known that already, but it seemed more real from where she stood. She smiled as if to encourage herself.

It’s time I pay him back.

One step.

She could feel the castle urging her on, and the distance seemed to shrink before her.

Two steps.

She was confident that Bek would find them.

Three steps.

Her eyes found Seijelar, staring intently into the vast room before them, and she took one last, shaky breath.

Four steps carried her through the doors, and she heard them slam shut behind her.

Beyond was an otherworldly space. The ground was smooth and lifeless, and the sky a wall of roiling clouds. It was a massive space. Windows hung high up in the walls, but no light came through them. Outside, it looked like night had fallen. She was sure she could see stars through the glass, but no sign of the moon. Massive columns marched through the cavernous space, perfectly smooth and perfectly straight, riddled with lines that looked, to her eyes, unnecessary. Those lines formed a distinct pattern, just like the channels in the bedroom. Maybe they had been used for light once.

When Silver took a step, it echoed around them. Otherwise, silence greeted her every movement, at least until she felt a chilling wave of air heavy with the Zara’s power. Then, she heard the soft snarl of the wolf by her side and the silence ended. It was replaced by the resounding crackle of the windows shattering. Glass fractured into the room, spinning through the empty space to the lifeless floors below. All the way down, it glittered with an eerie light that seemed to come from nowhere at all.

Maybe that light was magic.

Silver was too distracted to care, her ears turned to the clip of talons against stone, the rustle of scales, the grate of bones…and a rage that swelled over her in a great, menacing wave. The warm tingle of magic that had become almost as familiar to her as her own thoughts began to prickle through her fingers, and her green eyes glowed with their own light.

“Come, Elorian,” Silver said as she strode towards the center of the room. The wolf hesitated, but did not disobey. The Zara’s magic is thick here…and it causes all things to be afraid, she realized, even Elorian.

Somewhere beyond her vision, the darkness moved. Another wave of frigid air rushed from it, washing over her like the icy river waters. She felt her arms and legs grow numb. The warmth in her fingers was extinguished as easily as a candle flame in a bucket of icy water. And then, suddenly, her eyes were able to discern the Zara’s silhouette. Standing in the center of the room, it was as if he had always been there, just waiting for her gaze to find him. An eerie sound filled the space between them then – a whisper, some hint of a voice, a roar that turned her blood to ice – her ears seemed to be playing tricks on her. Regardless, the sound seemed to incite change in the castle.

All along the walls and around the columns, the sconces filled with flame. The cavernous space was, abruptly, illuminated. Silver could see now that it must have been a spectacular place, long, long ago. The floors were polished black marble veined in gold, the walls tiled, laced with silver and gold and all manner of precious metals, and the doors glowed with the magnificence of their wood grains. This was a room made for glory and magnificence, built to awe its every occupant through sheer size and elegance.

In the center of it all, the Zara looked out of place. He stood as a living shadow, black against black in the dark room, oblivion come to life. Dangerously curving black talons emerged from the darkness that was his flesh, glimmering in the magical torchlight and clicking ominously against the marble. Only his burning crimson eyes seemed to hold any life of their own, and their glow was lit by rage and hatred.

A cold breeze kicked up around them as Silver and the beast of shadows regarded one another. It whipped up the glass, spreading it on the dark floors in gleaming ripples. It was a moment before she realized those ripples curled into words, once again, in a tongue she should not know, but did know.

“I know who you are.”

Silver shook her head, staring at the words. She could feel the hatchling’s intense gaze on the Zara, never wavering.

“Well, I don’t know what you want from me.”

Silver somehow managed to force the words from her tight throat. There was no change in the Zara’s smoldering gaze. Seconds passed. A snarl bubbled up from the depths of the wolf’s chest as Elorian took a step forward. That was some sort of cue to the Zara. He wiped the words away with one massive paw and then charged toward the three of them. Silver took a step back, eyes widening.

Seconds before he would smash into her, a translucent gold wall sprang up before the Zara’s claws. He crashed into it full force, and the barrier shattered.

“Silver, damn it, I didn’t have those nightwings drop things on your head for no reason!” Bek shouted from the doorway behind them. Silver could not spare him a glance. She was too busy stumbling back, away from the Zara.

“You know the shadows,” the shadow beast persisted, voice seeming to fill the room.

“I don’t,” she half-yelled as she reached for the wolf, fingers coiling into its coarse cot for courage. The wolf’s only response was a soft fluctuation in the tenacity of its snarl. Silver felt a slight shift in the position of Seijelar’s weight on her shoulder, and the little dragon pushed its head under her chin, as if urging her to action. All the time, Silver was running over the plan in her head again and again, trying to remember every miniscule detail. The fingers of her free hand crept into her pocket, fingering the slick scales that the wolf had stolen from the Zara. Where they touched, her fingers ached and went numb.

The five of them only needed a second to put their plan in motion…they would have only one chance. When the shadows began to rise up around her, Silver held her ground, ignoring the fact that Bek was yelling something from the doorway.

Elorian understood. The wolf threw back its head and howled, voice a resounding wail in the enclosed space. Like smoke before the wind, the Zara reeled back

“Now, Silver,” Bek said breathlessly, drawing level with her. It sounded like he had been running for a while. But that did not matter.

It was time.

As she threw herself down on one knee, Silver sensed Bek’s magic, cool and wild as an autumn breeze, gathering at her back. Just as we planned. I have to do just as we planned, she repeated to herself. Icy fingers crawled down her back and her throat clenched until it was difficult to breathe.

Just as we planned…

In front of them, the Zara collected himself, spitting sparks that bounced across the glossy floor. Slowly, the shadow beast’s gaze moved to the pitch-black scales clenched in Silver’s fingers, so cold that they burned white hot against her skin. There was a silvery sheen to them now, creeping along the edges. She had no clue what it meant, but she forced back her own fear, once more repeating Bek’s instructions in her mind.

Normally, to affect a body with magic you’re going to have to touch it, at least as long as you’re trying to work magic on a person or an animal or something. But there is an exception to the rule.

A fine mist of white chalk dust rolled in from behind her, forming five strange, interlocking symbols. They were meaningless to her, but she had neither the time nor inclination to ask what they meant.

That exception comes into effect when you have something magically charged that is intimately related to the body in question. Normally we would need blood or bone or something more central to the magical core processes, but a Zara’s scales must hold a tremendous amount of magic.

Bek shifted next to her, placing his fingers against her exposed wrist.

Now listen. I can’t teach you how to paralyze his body right now, and I can’t maintain both that magic and the seal meant to weaken him. We need two people. So, what I’m going to do is send the magic through you, and you have to hold the paralyzing spell for as long as you possibly can. Then I’ll cast the seal on the Zara using those scales.

Silver looked up into the Zara’s hazy form, eyes unfocused as she willed power through her arm and fingers and into the scales, and then from the scales to him.

This will have to work. It’s the one chance we have for stopping the Zara.

Bek called on his power, and Silver gasped; she had never felt someone else’s magic work through her, and it was every bit as alien and wrong as the touch of the Zara’s power. She wanted to rip her wrist from Bek’s grasp.

Instead, the fingers of her other hand closed around the slick, woven fabric of Cara’s rope, pulling it from the side pocket of her backpack. She could feel it already burning with her magic. The fibers, she knew without looking, were glowing a gentle blue. Then the rope began to move, writhing within her grasp, darting quick as a snake across the glassy floor. Where it met the Zara it suddenly zagged, hurtling over and around what she imagined would be the Zara’s neck, and then down to the ground again, where it stopped as if rooted to the earth. Again it zagged, up over the creature’s spine, back and forth, again and again, ensnaring the Zara beneath a net of pale blue light and woven rope. It was shorter than it should have been, but he still would not be able to escape quickly.

The Zara tipped back his grotesque skull in a silent cry. Only a dead weight against the rope alerted her to the fact that he was trying to escape into the shadows; it was as if she were a fisherman, and someone had dropped a lead weight at the end of her line. Now she was the lone person trying to keep it from sinking to the bottom of the sea.

“Elorian!” she shouted. The wolf must have heard her. It leapt bodily at the shadow beast, colliding with solid darkness and then skittering backwards with claws curled against the marble.

Just a few more seconds.

In front of them, the chalk dust had begun to glow. Silver’s eyes were riveted to the Zara, which was now thrashing within the net’s confines as it fended off the wolf’s strikes. That did not stop her from spreading her arm across the ground in front of her, depositing the Zara’s scales in a wide arc. Bek shouted something. Amid the thunderous clash of the wolf and the Zara, the scales shot forward to rejoin the flesh from which they had been torn.

A sky-shattering roar filled the room. They could all see the scales now, silver against the black haze of the Zara’s flesh. If they were to follow Zien’s plan, they would grab the Dawn Stone now if possible – which it probably was not, since there was no sign of the Stone – and then run, leaving the Zara weakened. They would run far from the castle. Far from the mountain, if they could.

But that did not seem to be Bek’s plan.

Silver saw the flash of steel as he started forward with his dagger in hand, and she yelled at him to stop. Elorian was backing away, struggling to dodge the reaching shadows that the Zara sent rippling across the marble floor as he slipped farther and farther from her control. She felt his crimson gaze on her, and the weight on the end of the rope increased until she gripped it with both hands, knuckles white and fingers and arms numb with the effort of holding it. Scrapes like burns seared her palms where the rope had torn from her grasp and taken skin with it, but if she had worn her gloves, they would have been wrenched off of her fingers long ago.

Their time was almost up.

Almost…and Bek was moving too quickly for a human, his steps light and quick, his attention absolute. He must have been using the magic he had struggled to teach her and she had failed to learn; enhancement. He had no choice, because if she looked closely in the glare of the torchlight, she could see how the shadows pooled and pursued him across the marble. There was no escape for him or anyone else.

And in the instant that she saw this, she felt her fingers jolted from the rope as pain lanced through her arms; freezing, burning, numbing pain. She rocked backward, clutching at her chest and gasping again as she slammed her head against the marble floors. Dark spots swam in front of her vision. It took her a minute to realize what had happened. Bek had warned her about it.

Backlash.

The spell they had used been too strong for her, and the Zara must have suddenly broken free, causing Bek’s magic to rebound not against Bek, but against her.

“Stand, human.”

She heard the hatchling’s voice close to her and made as to respond, but she felt her eyelids flutter closed instead. Sweat slid down her neck, so cold she shivered. That, at least, she could do; to shiver was an involuntary action, perhaps, but a motion nonetheless. Even then, however, she still felt it, that alien touch, that ghostly crawling of her own skin as her body failed to respond. Her mind painted strange images of magic, until she dreamt that in the moments between seeing and dreaming, magic had become a visible thing. It flashed against her closed eyelids, and chased the fearful tremors up and down her spine.

Gradually, her senses returned to her. The skin against the back of her head felt raw. There was noise all around her. It pounded through her head; the wolf’s snarls, the Zara’s hiss, the sound of footsteps on marble. And Seijelar’s soft thrum, questioning and thick with concern. The hatchling coiled around her head, warm in the face of the Zara’s chill.

With a sharp intake of breath, Silver sat up straight, blinking. She had only lost a couple of minutes, but still, it was too late. The tide of the battle had turned. Across the floor, the wolf lay still, a bright spot in the darkness. The Zara stood, having lifted Bek into the air even as he struggled against the constricting shadows that were now coiling up his legs, around his waist, and then to his shoulders. The dagger still flashed, useless, in his hands.

Seeing her wake, the Zara’s powerful jaws twisted with an expression as deathly cold as the Antarctic winter. Spines lifted slowly from the shadows that she now realized must be his tail, spreading down its length. By the way Bek once more began to struggle, it was evident that the spines had reached him. He cried out, his teeth clenched as he coughed and tightened his grip on the dagger. Then he was silent, but she could see that his face paled as the pain continued and worsened. There was another sound that could be heard now; the sound of steadily dripping liquid. To her horror, Silver could see blood tracing thin rivulets down the shadow beast’s tail, running down Bek’s legs to fall to the hard floor below. The sound echoed in the cavernous room, and the Zara bared his ebony fangs.

Finally, the dagger clattered to the marble floor, freed from Bek’s grasp. Silver’s attention was so focused on him that she did not at first understand when a deep rumble shook the marble floor and a great shower of dust and wood rained down from overhead. It was then that she saw a pillar, the delicate lines carved into it crumbling as it fell forward. The Zara, too, looked up just in time to see the structure topple down over his head, sending up a still greater cloud of dust, now interlaced with a black mist.

Perched upside down on the ceiling, roughly where the pillar had once stood, Skourett leered down at the damage.

Silver was far enough away that it did not reach her. Before she could so much as stand, however, something darted from beneath the rubble – a length of absolute, pitch-black nothingness that rippled with impossible speed across the marble floors. As it reached her, it rose, abruptly tangible once more.

“Seijelar, get away!” she yelled.

Talons closed over her rib cage, crushing the air from her lungs and…dissolving. She stared down, watching as the darkness melted like water away from her skin, raining back to the cool marble floor, unable to touch her. At her chest, the slightest glimmer of a gold chain could be seen, tucked into the fabric of her shirt. It was the necklace that Bek had given to her, saying that he did not believe the Zara could touch her so long as she wore it. He had been right, of course. But it had also been his only protection, and he had given it up for her.

When the Zara struck a second time, all light was blotted from Silver’s vision, and only the whoosh of air in her ears alerted her that anything was coming. Caught by surprise, Silver could do nothing to stop the mass that struck her full against the side and sent her flying across the chamber to land hard against her elbow. She heard Seijelar chiding her incompetence from the other side of the room. Wincing both with pain and with the truth of the jibe, she pushed herself to her feet as quickly as possible, swaying and gasping despite herself. The ice bird had been right…the Zara was completely ignoring the hatchling dragons.

The shadow beast stood now, more nightmare than reality, gaze fixed on her from across the room. His tail, which she guessed he must have struck her with, was half raised, dripping insubstantial liquid to the floor; that liquid hissed and steamed and then was gone when it fell. As the seconds passed, the haze around him seemed to gather, coalescing until he was more and more the dragon he was rumored to have been. But not the weakened dragon they had hoped for. The scales were supposed to be a seal on his powers…if he was weaker now, that only told her how wide the gap between them had been from the beginning.

Opening his jaws wide, the beast belched forth the bright, all-consuming black and sapphire flames that he had unleashed on her home. Then, they had burned across the roof and walls, consuming everything. Now, the flames caught magically on the marble floor and diverged to form a flaming ring around her.

The plan had failed. That was the bottom line. There was no sign of Bek on the other side of the rubble from the column, and the wolf lay so still she was terrified that it was dead. The hatchlings could not help her, and so Silver stood alone, naked against a beast many times her superior. As if to confirm her fears, the Zara stepped easily through the flames, dark silhouette framed by liquid fire.

“Death,” he hissed, “that is what I want from you.” She was frozen with fear, immobile. His every movement sang only words of destruction, death, and suffering. “You stole everything from me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she shouted, angry because there were hot tears on her cheeks. Every inch of her body was trembling despite the fact that she wanted nothing more than to stand firm. Her life depended on this moment.

“Lies.”

“No,” she shook her head, undecided whether she was angry or desperate.

“You will suffer as I have. All those you love will die. This is the lament of my soul.”

Silver stood for a moment, stunned. But only for a moment.

Hatred bubbled up inside of her like a living, physical, terrible thing. They regarded each other, each silent now, each consumed, perhaps, by their own rage. Her eyes glowed with green fire. Even when she had walked through the door imagining that a pain beyond comprehension awaited her, possibly struggling to comprehend that she might die…even when she had first run from the Zara, she had never hated him like this. Fear and desperation had always been forefront in her mind. Now she looked into the Zara’s eyes, seeing tragedy, seeing her own pain echoed back to her, and she could not forgive him for it. Finally, as the wolf had once promised, she was calm. There was only one path forward, and there was no space for mercy between her and the Zara.

Only mutual, assured destruction.

Silver’s magic came to her readily for once, thick in her veins. This magic was like liquid fire, scorching the flesh beneath her skin and sending cold shivers down her spine…but it was not a physical pain, and she made no move to stop it.

I’ve changed since we first met. You can’t take anything else away from me, even if I have to kill you, she thought.

She had never known such conviction. The Zara took a step forward. Silver’s gaze, meanwhile, danced over the flames, searching until something caught her attention…maybe a pair of blue eyes burning amidst the flames? The fire began to wane, and the burning in her hands grew worse as the flames slackened, collapsing in on themselves without warning.

The shadow beast froze, sensing her spell. His gaze turned as the flames began to sway with more purpose, blending and intertwining, merging and rising until they formed instead a circle of solid imps borne solely of fire and smoke. Their blazing blue eyes glowed against their luminescent flesh, if flesh it could be called. The remnants of the flames still burned in them, shifting across their fiery skins, and smoke shot from their noses and ears. Steam coiled in great plumes from their backs to form twisted tails of mist.

The ring closed in a blur of fiery bodies, the imps blending heatedly together. Smoke still wafted sinisterly from their flesh, the haze of heat above their bodies making the walls of the room dance and the floor beneath their flickering paws waver. The Zara stepped towards Silver and the flaming imps followed, their blue eyes riveted on him. He snarled and smashed one with his tail. In a moment, it had sprung up again, swaying back into flickering life.

“The dagger.”

Seijelar’s sharp chirp sounded from the direction Silver had last seen Skourett disappear to when the Zara let Bek go. She understood it. Silver cast around for the narrow blade, finally spotting it in the distance. Intent now, she made a dash for it, trying to circumnavigate the battle in front of her. The Zara saw her, but could not follow. In her fiery imps, he found himself met with solid fangs that cut through his icy hide without heed to the cold. Even so, the Zara managed to catch one and hack it to pieces with his claws. Liquid fire swelled from the gashes down its side as the flaming creature fell, gasping and steaming horribly. Out of the corners of her eyes, Silver saw its sides heave with breath as it rose in a blaze of fire and was extinguished. More imps sprang from the liquid fire, each attacking the Zara as viciously as the first.

The Zara howled with rage.

Strangely, that was what stopped the imps in their tracks. Silver skidded to a halt beside the knife, shoes leaving rubber trails on the marble. As she bent over, she could feel the chill breeze of before rising again, whistling around the walls of the enclosing room and bringing with it the eerie tang of the black beast’s hide. When she looked back – a mistake – it was to see the flames retreating into the imps’ skins. She could feel the strain of holding them in a solid form now, deep in her chest. She knew she had to let go of the spell.

Silver’s fingers closed around the hilt of the dagger. The imps, all at once, dispersed as flaming smoke in the wind.

Heart pounding, she turned towards the Zara, bracing herself. The shadow beast was already on top of her. Desperate and overwhelmed, she stumbled out of the way, but not far enough. The breath froze in her lungs as she saw the Zara’s tail coming towards her. When she slashed, the dagger hit home, dragging through Zara flesh and clicking metallically against the scales she knew must lie beneath the black haze.

There was too much power behind the strike. Her numb fingers could not hold the blade, and when it snagged and skittered away across the polished marble floor, she knew she had to find another way to kill the Zara.

Talons closed around her rib cage once more, but this time the beast pinned her to the floor and then hovered overhead, his dark flesh inches from her skin and apparently outside the range of the necklace’s power. Their eyes met, hazel green to crimson. Seconds passed. He was not moving. Silver took a deep breath, ignoring the burn in her lungs, and shouted, “I’ll kill you!”

Still, nothing changed, except that something moved elsewhere in the massive room. Something called her name in the language of the beasts. Out of the corner of her eye, Silver could see the wolf and the crimson hatchling. Seijelar had retrieved the dagger, but both wolf and dragon were too far away to save her.

“The one that you are, you who is the lament of my soul…death is not the worst of this world.” Silver felt frigid breath against her ear, and knew the Zara’s jaws were at her throat when he spoke. The necklace would surely injure him, but even if it killed him, he could easily kill her first.

“Fight,” the wolf seemed to say, its emerald eyes on the shadow beast as it crept closer. Against the marble floors, its paws made no sound. “Fight as a pack fights. You are not alone. This is our hunt.”

Silver took another deep breath, filling her lungs with air. And then she began to gather all the power in her tired body to perform one last spell; one strong enough to kill the Zara, and possibly strong enough to kill her. She was ignoring every caution Bek had ever drilled into her about magical exhaustion.

Magic glimmered red against her eyes. It spread from the tips of her fingers up her arms, seeming to fill every inch of her body.

This is our hunt, Elorian.

“Now,” she shouted. The power burst from her. The shadow beast had no chance to move as her pure, untamed magic hit him. It came out only as burning light. All of her anger, all of her heart went into that blast.

It was blinding.

Pain seared through her flesh, as if she had been burned, and the air was once more crushed from her lungs. Red-hot blood sprinkled her tongue. She tasted salt and warmth. For an instant, she thought she saw leap between them. Its fur was white as the snow instead of silver; aglow with the light of her magic. Then everything faded, and she was alone.

That was it, Silver knew. Everyone was gone. Seijelar and Bek and Skourett were lost to her; she had failed to find her family, or to help the tree wolves, the nightwings, Zien…that had all been a foolish dream from the beginning, she realized now. It had really been too much for her. Traveling within the pack, watching the miles melt away beneath her sore feet, scheming beneath the tons of rock in the nightwings’ caverns, she had started to believe she was special, somehow. As nerske, or whatever the beasts wanted to call her…as a pyromancer…as the human Elorian had chosen to follow on this crazy adventure, she had believed they could defeat one of the Zara. She had thought they could defeat death.

Bek knew from the beginning…

The darkness seemed to shift aside as if black curtains had suddenly been drawn from her vision, and she could now see through a window that had previously been obscured. Silver was looking down out of the trees. There was a place she did not recognize there, a city she had never known. Smoke hung above it. Fire burned through its streets, the buildings razed, its people gone. Around her, there were only bodies, men and beast and who knew what else. Blood stained the soil with rust. The scent of rot overwhelmed her.

No, no, no, her mind cried.

The image vanished, little more than a dream, a nightmare…maybe a memory.

If it was a memory, it was a memory of hopelessness. Of helplessness. Of watching the world burn, unable to act, unable to change the course of her fate.

But it was not Silver’s memory. She knew there was no way it could be. Instead, it was the Zara’s. As if drawn by this realization, the darkness filled her mind once again. This time, she had the sense that she was not alone there. Red light approached through the gloom. As it neared the light diverged, until finally the Zara stood before her, its two crimson eyes gleaming.

“You.” Silver heard herself whisper. She had thought the word would come out sounding hateful, but it was surprisingly gentle. The sound, nonetheless, was swallowed up. In that vast hall of shadows, she seemed very small and vulnerable indeed. Not even her own heartbeat could reach her ears.

The Zara’s hiss filled her mind. “How have you come here?”

Silver considered the beast before her for a moment, uncertainty and fear roiling within her. She should run. She should be afraid. But she did not. Instead, she weighed her next words.

“What happened?” Silver finally asked. The Zara regarded her for a long moment.

“I am all that remains. A shadow is nothing but the absence of something. Long ago, something was lost, a light died, and the shadows remained. Alone.”

“You’re alone,” she repeated, eyeing the beast. It did not move as a living thing should. It did not blink. Its attention never wavered.

“I am alone.”

“You know,” Silver said, taking a shaky breath, “you say a shadow is the absence of something, but for it to be cast, there has to be light, right? That day…”

The Zara continued to regard her as she considered the ruined city she had seen in his memories.

“All the people we love, all those who are thinking about us; they are always with us. We fight for them, every day. Whoever you lost…maybe those left alive were the light that remained. If not for them, you wouldn’t be here, even as a shadow. Someone I love told me recently that there’s light even in the deepest darkness…I think it’s there that we find what we really fight for.”

As she said this, she felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her chest. Her mother and father, Lena and Ren, Elorian, Seijelar…she could still feel them as close as if she could reach out and embrace them all.

“There is only darkness, always darkness, everywhere. There is no light,” the Zara growled heavily. “There is only war and blood and death, and those who are left behind to wait centuries for their revenge. You have not seen the ages that I have. The light dims, it wavers. It must be ignited, or it ceases to be.”

“I hate you,” Silver admitted more softly, “I lied to Bek about it. I hate you for taking everything away from me. As you said, the light dims. From what I’ve seen, that’s your fault. But there’s so little I understand. You tell me I stole everything from you, but I don’t even know who you are.”

“I let you suffer when I should have saved you,” the Zara hissed, seeming to ignore her words, “You who are the lament of my soul…my duty is to protect you, my wish to see you dead. The brighter the light, the longer the shadows. The living cannot understand. I have strayed too far...”

Silver felt stronger the more time passed; warm from the inside out. Seijelar’s breath was hot in her ear. She could hear the wolf howl, as if from far away.

“There is always light,” she repeated the wolf’s words a second time, “even in the deepest darkness.”

The glowing crimson eyes before her were still.

“Always?” the shadow beast hissed, almost as if he desired reassurance of this fact.

“I have proof.” The Zara watched her expectantly. “I’m alive. You haven’t killed me yet. And I have not killed you. It seems to me we have a choice before us.”

“Death,” the Zara rumbled.

“Or life…” Silver disagreed.

She felt her eyes opening and the darkness faded away. Slowly, Silver sat up, pushing Seijelar off her chest so that she could breathe, and then staring wildly around. Her eyes found the hulking form of the Zara, collapsed against the slick marble floor. The dagger protruded from his chest.

Her eyes widened. If he had possessed breath to breathe, she might have looked for the rise and fall his rib cage, but he was as still in death as in life. A few drops of dark blood dripped from his mouth to smoke on the charred floor. She sat up and started to struggle towards him.

“No, don’t go near him,” Bek said urgently from behind her. “Don’t go any closer.”

Silver looked back. His face was set and his eyes narrow with some unreadable emotion, but he gasped and clutched his side when he spoke, coughing painfully. Bek must have stabbed the Zara after she used her magic. Clearly, it had taken all of his strength to do so. He was obviously struggling to remain upright.

“This is it. That beast won’t be getting up again, Silver. You’ve done what you came to do. You can live your life now,” Bek pressed his point.

Silver looked at the dying creature before her in indecision. A choice…she had a choice.

“No,” she said softly, “I was wrong.” She turned to look at Bek. “And the ice bird was right. He never touched Skourett or Seijelar. He didn’t kill me when he had the chance, either. He says his duty was to protect me, but his wish was to kill me. I don’t understand.”

The young man looked to be torn between anger and uncertainty for a fleeting instant, but then he shook his head. “Then let the Zara leave this world in peace,” he gasped, “there’s nothing worse than having the duty to protect something you want to destroy.”

She looked at the Zara once again and knew she could never do as Bek said. Was it evil that she chose to prolong his life and his sorrow, refusing to take the blood of a tragic creature onto her own hands? She hated him so deeply…but to kill him would make her no different than a Zara herself.

On her knees, Silver crawled forward to set her hand on the beast’s finely chiseled head; it was the head of a dragon now – a dragon with scales shrouded in a dark haze, but a dragon nonetheless. His flesh was still icy to the touch, so cold her nerves registered heat.

“I hate the things that you’ve done,” she whispered, “but you spared my life more than once. I can’t just let you die.”

Her voice trailed off into nothing. Why did you hesitate? Why did you have to make me hesitate?

The Zara’s crimson eyes would not leave her face. They stared blankly, lifeless now with no rage to fuel them.

“Live,” Silver whispered.

She could not feel her fingers anymore, then her arms left her too. In her moment of decision, what remained of her magic flowed out of her, and the Zara’s crimson gaze regained focus as the flicker of his life strengthened. The shadow beast struggled to lift his head, but failed. The bleeding from his mouth, however, had stopped.

“The boy – protect him.” Silver shivered at the voice that she heard, deathly, half insane, echoing within her mind. “And Seijelar. She is the most precious…live for her. I do not want another dragon…to suffer as I have. That power…do not….”

Silver stroked the beast’s great nose gently and pushed herself back to her feet. Seijelar stared down at him as well.

“This is not over…” the Zara promised.

Slowly, the darkness of the shadows pooled under Silver’s feet, threatening to reach up her legs and wrap, suffocatingly cold, around her. Instead, they crept across the Zara’s head. He sunk down, fading into the floor itself, until all that remained was the gleam of gold where his eye had been, staring still, it seemed, at her. She reached down and lifted the Dawn Stone from the marble. Bek was sitting in silence, staring at her wordlessly.

“But, you did—,” Bek gulped uncertainly. His eyes were shadowed and he ground his teeth. “You really are a handful,” he finally blurted out suddenly. Then he coughed again, his fingers tightening around the wounds in his side, as he looked at her. “That was a mistake…”

“I understand, but I couldn’t live with myself if…” she averted her gaze guiltily. Then she sighed with some form of relief, because even if it all seemed to be in some twisted way according to the Zara’s plan, they had succeeded. “I made my choice,” she finished.

Silver started to approach Bek, her green eyes bright with worry, but he shook his head slowly. “You can’t heal me. You’ve used enough magic,” he warned, and she could see the slightest glow of magic on the tips of his fingers.

Silent as a ghost, the wolf walked over and pressed its silvery head against her leg, sighing contentedly. She was so relieved to see that it was alive and well, that she just set her hand wordlessly on its head and tried not to cry.

“Why did you turn against the MASO?” Silver asked to avert herself from tears, sitting gingerly across from Bek. Even if he was in pain, the question could not wait. Bek laughed sharply, startling her because it was a laugh devoid of amusement, wry and cold. After that, he remained silent for a long time.

“I couldn’t forgive them,” he replied grimly, eyes on the wolf, “just like you couldn’t forgive the Zara.” Bek stopped, grimacing, and touched his neck with his injured hand. Silver cocked her head questioningly, too tired to push him, and her vision swayed dangerously. There was a faint song, its raw notes distant and hardly audible. Leaning a bit more heavily against the wolf’s silky ribs, she let her chin rest against Seijelar’s warm scales.

Then the darkness of exhaustion slipped through her body like ice and cold took hold of her. Bek’s voice called to her, dim and vague and growing more distant with each passing second. The song was growing louder now, the voice of a woman she had never known. It was a beautiful, haunting song. Elorian stiffened, clearly startled, and she knew the wolf could also hear.

Changing, shifting, darkest fear,

leeching parasite of life,

darkest night hovering ever near,

bringer of both hate and strife,

ancient cloud of deep injustice –

of pasts so deep and bold,

blackest form of carapace,

thee keeps stories untold.

Thou heart hath sprung a thousand wells,

each darker than the last.

A messenger of evil spells,

a creature of the past.

Hearts of blackest form thee sought

in sadness and disrepair,

to teach thee what learn thee could not,

but found what was despair.

O’ why is this the path thee choose

when life is by thy side;

when light awaits to set thee loose

and turn the darkest tide?

The soul so wounded does live still,

the heart still beats within;

when descends the deathly chill

and love and hope fray thin,

do not allow me wait in vain

for times that will not be.

I at least can feel thy pain

and heal thy heart for thee.

Changing, shifting, darkest fear,

leeching parasite of life,

I dub thee Shadow, hovering near,

bringer of both hate and strife.

Ancient cloud of deep injustice

of pasts so deep and bold,

please now shed thy carapace,

return to love of old.

Fill my heart with happiness

if not in my life’s sight,

for even in the deepest darkness

there is always light.

The world had lost its tangibility, hovering in her mind like the afterimage of reality. The last sensation Silver felt was of something soft brushing up against her, velvety and smooth as goose down. It felt warm and alive next to her skin.

Then her mind slipped away.