"Why isn't it working?"

"I don't know! It should be!"

"Hey maybe- ARGH!"

Rayem's light magic wasn't working. Again. And Edna had no idea how to get it to work again. Every time he tried to do any magic, it got snuffed out by shadows. A reasonable conclusion was that the Child of Shadow had broken Rayem's magic the day he summoned it. But honestly, Edna had no idea how any shadow magic worked.

"Here, let me try something." She said as Rayem's light magic got snuffed out again. Sunny and Zaira snickered and Eclipse glared at them. Taking a deep breath, Edna wove glittering golden strands of light around Rayem's hands, hoping to block the shadows. Nodding with satisfaction she told Rayem to try again. The green light started flowing from Rayem's fingertips, but the shadows stopped it. Edna lurched forward, knowing what was about to happen. The shadows turned her golden light black, and it disintegrated. Edna's eyes widened under her mask, and black crept into the edge of her vision. NO! She thought These shadows won't take me! She wove a tendril of light under her mask and onto the center of her forehead, where light magic originated. Letting the gold soak into her skin, she tried shoving the shadows out, but nothing worked. She could hear her friends voices getting quieter, and everything went dark.

✵

Edna opened her eyes to a golden mask hovering over her. The healer. Great. Looking around the tent, she spotted her mask. Putting it on, she also noticed her friends. Everyone besides Rayem, who was enjoying a steaming plate of berries, was lying on the ground of the healing tent, asleep.

"What happened?" She asked.

Rayem looked at her. "Oh. FINALLY. Who knew someone as small as you could sleep for SO. LONG." He set the plate down, "Sorry about this all..." He mumbled.

"It's not your fault! What even happened?"

"When those three," Rayem pointed at the other sky children in the tent, "Saw what you were doing to get rid of the shadows, they tried to help with their own magic. Eclipse even summoned her light. There was another figure.. a child of shadow? I dunno. Their shadows got connected to mine, and poisoned everyone." Rayem put his head in his hands, "It's all my fault..." Edna looked up at him.

"It's not, trust me," she said. "Anyways, we all are poisoned by shadows now! Isn't that great? I should get us all matching tunics with 'Poisoned Shadow Group' on them!" Rayem cracked a smile at the joke.

After one more check-up, the healer dismissed the five sky children. Edna was sulking about not being able to use light magic anymore when Sunny stopped in her tracks.

"Guys, how are we supposed to continue attending the gathering! After this... we can't do light magic! The spirit said last time that most of the gatherings are going to be focused on magic!"

"One problem at a time, first we need to understand the extent of what the shadows did to us," Edna told her, "And why we were the only sky children poisoned. For now, we will just have to avoid the Gathering."

✵

"TOO MANY LIBRARIES. Too... many..." Zaira complained.

"Oh be quiet, you volunteered to do this," Replied Edna calmly, her nose buried in an old book, "And we're only on the fourth floor."

The duo had been searching the Vault of Knowledge for hours, and coming up empty-handed.

"To these books, shadow magic doesn't exist," Zaira replied, flopping on her back "Neither do Children of Shadow!"

Edna shrugged, "We'll find something eventually." And went back to reading. Zaira groaned. The hours flitted by like butterflies, but time didn't matter. One quality of the Vault was that it supplied the sky children with energy constantly, allowing them to stay awake for weeks on end. Occasionally, they would meet vault sky children, but mostly it was reading. And reading. And even more reading. By the time Zaira and Edna had reached the summit, they had found no information about Shadow Magic. None. And Zaira was not happy about it.

"ALL THAT READING FOR NOTHING?" Zaira screeched. The sound echoed off the navy blue stone bookshelves around them.

"Not nothing," Edna said holding up a book, "This says that there is a secret area of the Vault. The Vault Archives."

"Suuuure. Totally believable coming from a century-year-old book," Zaira rolled her eyes under her mask.

"It's true, just trust me! Apparently, that's where all the forbidden books are kept, so the books on Shadow Magic have to be there!" Edna insisted, "Buuut, it's all the way down on the first floor, so we will have to dive,"

Zaira shrugged. "So what!"

"My thoughts exactly."

Edna grabbed Zaira and dove off the edge, wind whistling in her ears. Plummeting to the ground, Edna opened her wings the last second possible and skimmed over the ground, spinning into a flip. The two sky children landed smoothly on the stone floor, next to a couple of blue gems. "This is it!" Edna said excitedly.

"How do you even know that?" Zaira said. Edna pointed at the book she somehow managed to hold on too.

"Says so right here!"

Zaira squinted at the page "Weird... those don't look like light runes..."

Edna gasped, "You're right! They're SHADOW runes! Those shadows that poisoned our light magic must have done this! Now we can read shadow runes!"

"Cool...? Can we continue to the archives?" Zaira said

"Yes, sorry. I got sidetracked."

The two children of light lit the blue gems, and the light inside turned golden. A panel of stone slid aside in the floor, with stairs leading down into a dark tunnel. Without a second thought, Zaira raced into the darkness.