Adrien stood at the window in his office overlooking the central plaza of the academy. It was the largest room on the third floor of the building, circular, and much like a small library unto itself. Only the most restricted or rare books and artifacts were stored here as the room was only able to open for one person and none of the objects could be taken out of the room due to barrier magic.

He’d watched from this very window as his guests had walked across those cobbled stones on their way home. “Quite the interesting turn of events,” he said to himself, the quiet soaking up his words with no echo, “though not what I had planned for, that’s for certain.”

Adrien ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. It took a concerted effort to push down the desire to call Thea and Luin back, to make them stay, to lock them up somewhere completely safe until he had a handle on how to proceed.

He glanced at his arms. Silver lines that only he could see wound themselves around his wrists, swirling like the gilded lines of a quill pen up his forearms and under his sleeves. There was only so much he could do. The old oath was both infuriating and solidly binding. Memories of long lost friends, acolytes, lovers…all gone, some in horrible ways. And he’d been powerless to stop it. He could all too easily see Thea and Luin’s faces overlaying those in his memories.

Adrien put an end to the thoughts and his dark mood before his mana could do more than singe the nearby pages of a stack of permission forms. The blinding light fizzled out as fast as it had appeared.

The oath was old news, but the events unfolding before him offered some measure of hope, even if it was tenuous at best. The young one wasn’t bound by the same oath, his movements and decisions were not limited as Adrien and his other siblings were. A cunning smile slowly blossomed on his lips.

Perhaps the young one won’t fail where I have failed so many times before. But stars, it would rock the underpinnings of this world if they weren’t careful. Part of me wishes it would, though. This stalemate is getting us nowhere.

He moved to a door at the side of his office and put his hand on the handle. His mana made the handle glow for a moment with a light so intense that the sunshine outside the window could not rival it. He pulled open the door, revealing a dimly lit office with the curtains mostly drawn. He stepped across the threshold and felt gravity and his vision waiver for a moment before he stepped onto the plush carpet on the other side.

Adrien let the door begin to swing closed behind him. It was a very different door than the one he had opened.

Across the room, on a sofa, sat an old man. His beard was white and neatly trimmed close to his face. His mustache was nicely waxed too but wasn’t long enough to curl at the sides. His white and gray hair was combed back in waves that ended at the base of his skull. He was bent over several documents on the coffee table, reading them as he cradled a steaming cup of tea in his gnarled hands.

Adrien remembered when those hands had been smooth, when the hair had been chestnut brown, when the eyes hadn’t been surrounded by creases and instead shone with the desire to know as much about the world as humanly possible. It hadn’t seemed that long to him, but nearly four decades was a long time to a human.

As the door clicked, the man looked up. When his eyes met Adrien’s, they went wide but were followed by a welcoming smile. “Master Adrien! You haven’t visited like this in ages. What brings you? Oh, well first, have a seat, and I’ll get you some tea.”

Adrien walked to the chair next to the sofa and took a seat, crossing his legs and leaning into the velvet lined back. “I apologize if I startled you, though that’s no reason to slip back into calling me ‘master,’ is it? You’d confuse your secretaries if they were here right now. I should be calling you by your title then, isn’t that right, Marquis?”

The older man laughed as he plopped three sugar cubes in Adrien’s cup and brought it over. “The Marquis is my son, and I’m just an old headmaster now.”

“So you are, Roy. So you are.” Adrien sipped his tea, the bitter edge of Roy’s strong brew sliding off into syrupy sweetness. He thought he’d been good at hiding his melancholy, but Roy’s brows furrowed.

“Something has happened, hasn’t it? Are you alright, Adrien?”

The sound of Roy saying his name with concern in his voice let Adrien’s shoulders relax. “Indeed. I have much to tell you. I’m sorry to say that there may be much I’ll be asking of an old man such as you.”

Roy chuckled at that. “Since when did you not? This old man can still pull the finest strings in the empire if need be. You made that possible.”

Adrien hid his lips behind his cup and looked Roy in the eyes over the rim. “Possible, yes, but you did the work. This may be quite dangerous in the long run. You can still choose—”

Roy cut him off with a shake of his head. “My vow is as good as yours. Knowing you, you’ve got some plot to stop the destruction of the empire or some such on your mind. Who would I be if I didn’t help how I could?”

Behind his teacup, Adrien’s smile was tinged with sadness. “Indeed,” he agreed. Roy was still very much the Roy he remembered despite the progress of time.

***

Remmond Bonnty had sat in the dark of his room. The orderlies had long learned to keep the lights out if they didn’t want him screaming for hours on end. He liked it dark. His skill had awakened in the early days of their emergence in the empire, nine years ago. The passive skill Nocturn Eyes had taken over his vision, blinding him in the normal light of day. And because it was passive, he couldn’t turn it off. Only when the world was dark did his vision return to a normal, bearable level. Colors had become muted, but at least his eyes did not stab with pain during the night like they did during the day.

Strangely enough, he didn’t miss the daylight all that much. Night work in the merchant’s quarter had kept him paid and fed for several years before that.

But there was a funny thing about his gift that didn’t come to light—Remmond snickered to himself—until several months afterwards: when you can see this sharply into the darkest shadows, the shadows start to see you too!

He’d first seen a few small shadowy things standing in the corner of bars or the backs of alleyways. They were still, like fixtures. Their glowing eyes and dark, smokey bodies left him questioning his sanity and plagued him with nightmares. He tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t long before some of them noticed he could see them.

In one of the darkest alleys near the edge of the city, Remmond had stumbled across one of these shadow creatures that was larger than the others, and it had moved with purpose. It had circled two men as they struggled in the alley. To Remmond’s eyes, it was as clear as daylight, and he saw the two men wrestling, both pushing back and forth on a dagger until one of them managed to run the blade into the other’s neck. At that moment, the shadow creature that resembled some demonic dog with a smushed face and huge claws grew larger. It siphoned dark mist off of the two men into itself. The man who’d stabbed the other had looked up, saw something in the dark—perhaps the brimstone-like eyes—and ran, stumbling past Remmond. It was then that the shadow creature had locked eyes with Remmond. It seemed to wait for him to run, but Remmond had long started to distrust what he was seeing. He’d stayed, and that had been quite the turn of events.

Remmond hummed to himself at the memory. That had been long ago, and he was so glad now that he’d run into that creature. If it hadn’t been for that, he would never have met his master.

“Master, Master. It’s so wonderful to be needed by you again. I promise not to fail you this time. I’ll use the power you gave me quite well!” Remmond gestured with his hand to a shadow creature in the corner of his room. This one looked more like a large fox—well, if a fox had claws as long as its muzzle, teeth as black as the void, smoke-like fur that moved on its own in an unseen breeze, and brimstone eyes that glowed darkly red. It was a creature of nightmares, but it was a loyal extension of the master, and Remmond nearly shivered with joy at being able to command it.

The fox melted into smoke and squeezed under the door to his room. Remmond heard the lock click, and the door swung open, letting light in. The fox re-entered the room and sank into Remmond’s shadow created by the light from the hallway.

A wide grin spread across Remmond’s face. He pocketed the last of his lunch and walked out the door. Amidst the chaos that descended on the hospital as light after light fizzled out just ahead of where Remmond walked, the mana stones going dark, he calmly emerged from a side door of the building and into an alley that led to the main street.

He put on a set of goggles that would keep his eyes in the dark as much as possible. The daylight was still a nuisance, but it was bearable like this. Standing on the edge of the sidewalk at the main road, he ignored the odd stares people were giving him. Oh, they’ll know Master’s greatness soon enough.

He almost turned and began walking down the sidewalk, but then he noticed the emblem on the carriage that was approaching. “Fortune is smiling on me, Master.” It was the symbol he’d seen in a dream the night before, that of a clock tower. “Right,” he said to himself, grinning and rubbing his hands together.

Just as the carriage was bearing down on where he stood, he dashed out in front of it. The horses screamed as the driver tried to avoid running Remmond over, and the carriage came to a wood-splitting stop that was quite satisfying. Remmond kept running until he was in the alley across the street, where quite another unexpected boon happened to appear.

Before Remmond could stop himself, he ran into a surly looking fellow who’d had his arms full with several bags of trash. The bags fell from the man’s hands. “Hey! Watch it! What’er you doin’ back here?” The man’s irritation and hostility showed itself to Remmond in dark, misty waves.

Remmond didn’t bother answering the man, but let him stomp over to him.

“You’ll do nicely,” Remmond said. And with a twitch of his finger, the fox jumped from Remmond’s own shadow into the air above them. Its jaws opened as it came down and clamped onto the back of the man’s neck. The man yelled once in confusion and pain, hands flying up to the back of his neck before his arms went slack and his eyes were coated in a dark mist.

Remmond clapped his hands. “This new power is amazing, Master! Simply amazing!” The fox slid back into Remmond’s shadow away from the minimal daylight of the alleyway. “It’s not going to be strong or last long once he’s in full daylight, but it might last long enough,” he muttered. Then, to the man, he pointed and said, “You. You’ll be wanting the owner of that carriage over there. You owe them for such an inconvenience, right?”

Remmond watched as the veins in the man’s neck bulged. The man rolled up his sleeves, muttering to himself about his valuable time and common decency under his breath. A long board that had split long-ways down the middle to make two, thin boards laid against the brick wall, and the man grabbed one of them in his fist like a club before stalking off towards the scene of the carriage accident.

“I’d love to stay and watch, but Master’s orders are Master’s orders,” Remmond said to the leaving man’s back. He turned down the back of the alley, steadily moving towards the noble estates his master had directed him to visit. Remmond wondered what kind of shadows would be lurking there—probably ones much darker than these, he imagined.

With a skip in his step, he pulled his bread roll out of his pocket and bit into the tough crust with relish.