The grove was colder tonight.
Kieran stood still, surrounded by crooked trees and a half-moon sky. The leaves rustled with something more than wind—an awareness he couldn't explain. His shadow rippled beneath him, restless.
He didn't summon it.
It came anyway.
The darkness peeled from his feet and took shape, shifting between forms—his silhouette, then something taller, then something inhuman. Kieran's chest tightened. He tried to control it.
Settle, he thought. You're mine. I made you.
The shadow paused. And obeyed.
But not out of obedience.
Out of recognition.
Something about that felt worse.
---
Back in the dormitory, the others slept fitfully. Dreams always came for Awakened, especially after their Trials. Kieran had started to notice the signs: twitching limbs, teeth grinding, the faint glow that pulsed in their veins when nightmares stirred.
Calla dreamed loudly—soft murmurs and the occasional startled breath. Talon flinched often. Rei never moved at all.
Selene never slept here.
Kieran didn't know where she went at night, but he wasn't the only one who noticed.
"Creeps me out," Talon whispered one morning, his arm still bandaged. "She's like… always watching. Doesn't blink. Doesn't speak unless she has to."
"She passed her Trial just like the rest of us," Calla had said.
"Yeah. But what did she see?"
No one answered.
---
Later that day, the instructors handed them maps. Not of the real world—but of the simulation zones. An artificial shard of the Forgotten World. A testing field.
"You're going in," Corvan said. "Each of you, alone."
Kieran stared at the parchment in his hands. Forest. Ruins. Water. One gate in. One Transporter hidden somewhere inside.
"Time limit?" Rei asked.
"You have until dawn," Corvan said. "If you're not out by then… we assume the zone claimed you."
He let the silence stretch.
"Good luck."
---
Kieran entered the portal second.
It felt like being turned inside out and dropped into someone else's memory. Cold air slammed into his lungs. The sky was wrong—green at the edges, burning near the center. Trees bent at impossible angles. The ground pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat buried under roots.
He moved fast.
He had no blade this time. Just instinct. Just shadow.
---
He lasted two hours before the first creature found him.
It crawled from a crack in the earth, long and thin, like a centipede made of bone. No eyes. No mouth. Just clicking joints and the smell of copper.
Kieran ran.
Not because he couldn't fight.
Because it was smart enough to follow him.
He lured it toward a fallen stone arch. As it surged toward him, he leapt—and called the shadow.
It answered.
A spear of darkness erupted from the ground, impaling the thing. It writhed, shrieked without a throat, and split open. Ash poured out.
Kieran collapsed to his knees.
Breathing hard.
The shadow coiled beside him. Closer now.
Not obeying.
Watching.
---
When he finally reached the Transporter, blood soaked one sleeve and his ankle throbbed with every step. But he was alive.
As he activated the device, the shadow leaned close—almost touching his chest—and whispered, not in words, but in hunger.
Soon.