The third day of training did not begin with pain. It began with silence.
Nox woke up before dawn, sat up in bed, and immediately understood that something was wrong. Not in the room. Inside himself. His body after yesterday should have ached, groaned, demanded rest, but instead it felt... foreign. Not light, no. Just different. As if someone had taken him apart during the night and put him back together, mixing up some of the pieces.
He raised his hand, clenched and unclenched his fingers, looking at them in the gray predawn twilight seeping through the curtains. His fingers obeyed instantly. No delay. No morning stiffness, which he had grown used to over the years in the slums. Yesterday's training, Sylvana's blood whip, the endless dodging until Shadow became an extension of his instincts, all of it should have left him broken, drained, empty. Instead, he felt as if he had slept for a week.
And that frightened him more than pain.
Lin was still asleep, curled up under the blanket, her light hair spread across the pillow in a silver halo. Nox looked at her, made sure she was breathing evenly and calmly, and quietly left the room. The stairs creaked beneath his bare feet only once, on the third step from the bottom, and he noted it automatically, to step to the left next time.
The kitchen light was on. A single magical lamp above the table, dimmed to a dull amber glow. Sylvana sat by the window, without her hat, without gloves, her silver hair loose, looking almost white in this light, like Lin's. Before her on the table stood a cup of something dark with a bitter herbal smell, and an open book lay in a worn leather binding. The pages were handwritten, not printed, and the ink in the lamplight had a dull crimson sheen.
She did not turn around when he entered, but she said:
«You woke up earlier than I expected.»
«My body feels strange,» Nox said, stopping by the table. «It does not hurt.»
«That is Blood,» she answered, turning a page. «Yesterday, when I applied the ointment to your wounds, I added a little of my power to it. Just a drop. Enough for your muscles to recover faster, but not enough for you to get used to it and stop feeling pain in battle. Pain is information, Nox, and only a fool or a suicide would turn it off completely. I am training you to be neither.»
Nox sat down across from her without asking permission. He looked at the book. The symbols on the pages were unfamiliar, angular, with sharp edges, and they seemed to move slightly when he tried to focus on them.
«What is that book?»
«Someone's diary,» Sylvana said, closing it before he could read more. «Someone very old. Very dead. He was also a Shadow bearer, long before your father, and he left behind notes on how he learned to sense another's Shadow.»
She pushed the book aside and looked directly at Nox, and in her violet eyes was something he had not seen before. Not concern. But something close to it.
«Today we will not train in the basement,» she said.
«Why?»
«Because for the third day I have felt something beyond this house. It is moving. Slowly, carefully, like a beast stalking its prey, not wanting to scare it off too soon. At first I thought it was an echo, a remnant of someone's magic from the upper tiers, but yesterday evening, when you stood in the hall looking at your hands, it came closer. Much closer.»
Nox felt Shadow inside him stir. Not anxiously. With interest. As if it had heard something familiar.
«What is it?» he asked.
«Another's Shadow.» Sylvana took her cup, took a sip, grimaced, either at the taste or at her own thoughts. «There are other bearers in this world, I told you. Some serve the Moon Goddess willingly, for power, for influence, for the immortality she promises them and never gives. Others she breaks, remakes, erases everything human from them, leaving only obedient weapons. And then there are the third kind, those who serve no one, who hide, as your father hid, as your mother hid, and who survive at any cost. The one coming here is not of the third kind.»
«How do you know?»
«Because the third kind do not approach witches.» She smiled, briefly and without humor. «They know I can sense Shadow a mile away, and they give me a wide berth. This one is coming straight. Not hurrying, but not turning aside either. That means either he is stupid, or confident in his power, or he was ordered to. In any case, it is bad.»
Nox was silent, digesting what he had heard. Outside, it was beginning to get light, and the rooftops of the middle tier were slowly emerging from the gray predawn haze, like the bones of some ancient beast sticking out of the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a magic train hummed, low and drawn out, and the sound was so ordinary, so everyday, that the thought of an approaching Shadow bearer seemed almost absurd. But Shadow inside Nox did not think it absurd. It was reaching for something he could not yet grasp, and that reaching feeling was akin to hunger, dull, persistent, having nothing to do with an empty stomach.
«Should I meet him?» Nox asked.
«No,» Sylvana cut in. «You need to learn to sense him before he senses you. That is what I was going to teach you in a week, not sooner, but there is no time. So today you will sit here, in this house, and listen.»
«Listen to what?»
«To Shadow. Not yours. Another's. It leaves traces everywhere it passes, like an animal leaves a scent, like a snake leaves its shed skin. If you learn to read those traces, you will always know where other bearers are, how many of them, where they are moving, and what they feel. This is not a combat skill, Nox. This is a survival skill, and it is more important than any blade you will learn to shape from Shadow.»
She stood up, walked over to him, and placed her hand on his shoulder. Her palm was warm, almost hot, and Nox felt a faint pulse emanating from it, the beat of her heart transmitted through Blood.
«Close your eyes,» she said. «And find me.»
«You are standing in front of me. Why do I need to find you?»
«Not with your eyes, Nox. With Shadow. Every living creature has a shadow, even if it is not magical. It is attached to the body, follows it, mimics its movements. But with Shadow bearers, it is different. It is alive. It breathes. It watches. Find my shadow and feel the difference.»
Nox closed his eyes. At first, there was only darkness, ordinary, warm, with blurred spots from the lamp. Then he reached inside himself, to where his own Shadow pulsed along his spine, alive and familiar, like a second heart. He asked it not to move, not to attack, just to be his eyes. It obeyed, not immediately, with lazy reluctance, but it obeyed.
And he felt.
There were many shadows in the room. From the table, from the chairs, from the cup on the table, from Sylvana herself. But Sylvana's shadow was different. Not just a dark silhouette on the floor. It... hummed. Low, almost inaudibly, like a distant bell underwater. It was denser, heavier, and in it, he felt something alive, something that had nothing to do with the light casting it. Blood. Blood magic saturated her entire being so deeply that even her ordinary shadow carried its imprint.
«I feel it,» Nox said quietly. «It hums.»
«Good.» Sylvana's voice sounded satisfied. «Now expand this feeling. Do not hold it in this room. Let it go. Let Shadow search on its own. It knows what to look for. It can sense its own kind.»
Nox tried. It was harder, much harder, than just feeling the shadow beside him. He had to let go of control, allow Shadow to extend beyond his body, beyond the room, beyond the house, and not lose his connection to it, not let it break free and drift. Shadow inside him hesitated, unsure of what was wanted. It was used to attacking. It was used to defending. But searching? Stalking? That was new.
Slowly, very slowly, it began to expand.
Nox felt the house around him. Not the walls, not the floors. The shadows. Dozens of shadows, small and large, from furniture, from books on shelves, from dishes in the cupboard. They were all dead, ordinary, just the absence of light. He passed through them like through water and moved further.
The street. The shadows of passersby, vague, blurred, moving in different directions. The shadows of buildings, heavy and still. The shadow of a magic train, long and fast, flashed somewhere to the left and disappeared.
And then.
Something twitched at the edge of his perception. Not a shadow. Something else. Dark, thick as resin, and just as hot. It was moving slowly, very slowly, but purposefully, like a blade drawn across skin, not pressing but not letting go either. It was far away, at the limit of what he could grasp, but it was there. And it was searching. Not for him. Not yet. For something else.
And the moment Nox touched it with his perception, it stopped.
It froze.
And it looked back.
Nox's eyes flew open with a sharp intake of breath, like surfacing from ice water. His heart pounded somewhere in his throat, and down his back, along his tattoo, ran cold shivers, fast and prickly like needles. Sylvana stood before him, looking at him with an expression he had learned to recognize. Assessment. Expectation. And somewhere deep, beneath layers of calm, concern.
«You felt it,» she said. Not a question.
«It… it saw me. I only touched it, and it was already looking back. As if it was waiting.»
«Because it was waiting.» Sylvana walked to the window, stood with her back to him, looking out at the waking city. «It is not searching for you, Nox. Not yet. It is searching for Lin.»
Nox stood up so abruptly that the chair slid back and hit the wall with a dull thud that echoed through the empty kitchen and faded somewhere in the corners, unanswered.
«What?»
«The Abyss, Nox. Your sister awakened the Abyss, and we were not the only ones who felt it. The Moon Goddess knows that a new Abyss bearer has appeared in this city, and she has sent her servant to find him. Or her. The servant does not know exactly who he is looking for. He just follows the trail, like a hound. And the trail leads to this house.»
Nox was already walking toward the stairs, not waiting to hear the rest, but Sylvana was in front of him faster than he could take a third step. Her hand landed on his chest, not hard, but firmly enough to stop him.
«Calm down,» she said. «Lin is safe. As long as the servant does not know exactly where she is, he will not attack. He needs confirmation, visual contact, a magical trace, something to tell him: yes, it is here, yes, it is her. Without that, he will circle around, narrowing his circles, but he will not cross the threshold.»
«How do you know?»
«Because I have killed such creatures before.» She lowered her hand but remained standing between him and the stairs. «Twice. The first time was hard, the second was easier. The third will be easier still, if you do not do anything stupid and give yourself away too soon. Sit down.»
Nox did not sit. He stood and looked at her, and two desires fought inside him: to run upstairs to Lin, grab her, and carry her as far away as possible, or to stay and listen, because Sylvana knew more than she was saying, and her calm, no matter how irritating, had grounds.
«Tell me about the Goddess's servants,» he said finally, his voice sounding steadier than he expected. «Who they are. How they fight. How to kill them.»
Sylvana looked at him with a long gaze, then nodded, walked back to the table, sat down, and gestured for him to do the same. This time, he sat.
«The servants of the Moon Goddess are Shadow bearers she has broken,» she began. «Not all, but many. She finds them at a young age, before Shadow fully awakens, and takes them. From some, she erases their memories, leaving only loyalty to her. From others, she burns away their emotions, turning them into living weapons that feel no pain, no fear, no doubt. From a third kind, she leaves their minds intact but breaks their wills, slowly, over years, until they come to believe that serving her is the only possible path.»
«And the one coming here, is he one of them?»
«Judging by how he moves, he is from the second category. A hunter. A living weapon. He does not think, he follows orders. Find the source of the Abyss. Confirm it. Report. If he confirms it, others will come after him. Many others.»
«So he must not confirm it.»
«So he must not leave.» Sylvana took her cup, took a sip of the cold brew, grimaced again. «But killing him will not be easy. Hunters feel no pain, know no fear, and fight to the last because they have no survival instinct. The Goddess burned it out along with their other emotions. They can only be destroyed completely, down to the last drop of Shadow. Otherwise, they will regenerate and keep coming.»
Nox listened and felt something boil inside him. Not rage. Something colder than rage, more calculating, more dangerous. He thought about Lin upstairs, about her light hair and gray eyes, about how she had held the Abyss in her palms yesterday, trembling all over but not letting go. About how she had said: «I am not afraid of it, Nox. It is not an enemy. It is just there.» And now, somewhere out there, beyond the walls of this house, down the streets of the middle tier, walked a creature that wanted to find her and report her to the one who had killed their parents, erased their name, stolen their faces from memory.
«You said you killed such creatures twice,» he said. «How?»
«The first one, I caught off guard. Hunters do not feel fear, but they do feel magic, and if you strike fast enough and hard enough, their Shadow cannot react in time. I used Blood to stop his heart for a fraction of a second, and in that fraction of a second, I cut him in half. Messy, but effective. The second one was smarter. He knew I was coming for him and prepared. The fight lasted four hours, and by the end, I was forced to burn half my blood to completely burn out his Shadow. After that, I spent six months recovering.»
She fell silent, staring into her cup, and Nox could see her fingers tighten slightly on the ceramic rim.
«The third one, I will kill faster,» she said finally. «Because now I have you.»
«I am not ready to fight such a creature.»
«I am not asking you to fight. I am asking you to be bait.»
Nox blinked.
«Bait?»
«He is searching for the Abyss. But he can also sense Shadow. If you step outside and let your Shadow show itself, he will feel you. And realize that there is not only the Abyss here, but Shadow as well. That will confuse him, make him hesitate, make him come closer to check. And when he comes close enough, I will strike.»
«And if he strikes first?»
«He will not. Hunters do not attack without orders. His order is to find the Abyss, not to kill Shadow bearers. Seeing you, he will try to go around, approach from another direction, figure out what is happening. That will give me time.»
Nox was silent, weighing her words. The plan was risky. Very risky. But there was no other. If the hunter kept circling the house, he would eventually confirm Lin's presence, and then they would have to fight not one but many. But if Nox went out and showed himself, there was a chance Sylvana could strike first.
«When?» he asked.
«This evening. He is moving slowly, but he will be here by sunset. I can feel his rhythm. He is in no hurry. He is enjoying the hunt. That is good. It gives us time to prepare.»
Footsteps came from above. Light, fast, not at all sleepy. Lin was coming down the stairs, and from the sound of her steps, Nox could tell she had been awake for a long time and had most likely heard at least part of the conversation.
She entered the kitchen, stopped in the doorway, and looked first at Nox, then at Sylvana. Her light hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, her gray eyes looked clear and straight, without a trace of fear.
«Someone is coming for me,» she said. Not a question. Just a statement.
«Yes,» Sylvana answered. «A servant of the Moon Goddess. A hunter. He is searching for the Abyss. He is searching for you.»
Lin turned her gaze to Nox.
«Will you go to meet him?»
«I will be bait. Sylvana will kill him.»
Lin walked to the table, sat down on a free chair, and folded her hands before her. She looked as if they were discussing what to have for breakfast, not a plan to kill a magical hunter sent by a goddess.
«I can help,» she said.
«No,» Nox and Sylvana answered in unison.
«I controlled the Abyss yesterday. I can do it again. If he is searching for the Abyss, I can show it to him, distract him, confuse him even more than Nox's Shadow. He will expect Shadow. He is a servant of the Goddess. He knows Shadow bearers exist. But he will not expect to come face to face with the Abyss. He thinks he is looking for a child who cannot control her power. If I show him that I can control it, that will…»
«That will make him attack immediately,» Sylvana interrupted. «Hunters are programmed to destroy high level threats. If he sees that you can control the Abyss, his orders will change from "find and report" to "destroy at any cost." You are not ready to fight a hunter, Lin. Even I struggled to kill the second one, and you only learned to gather the Abyss in your palms yesterday.»
Lin frowned but did not argue. Instead, she turned to Nox and looked at him with a long, studying gaze, the way you look at something you are trying to memorize forever.
«You will come back,» she said. Not a request. Not a question. A statement of fact, as if it had already happened and could not have happened otherwise.
«I always come back.»
«I know. That is why I said it.»
Sylvana stood up, walked to the cupboard, and took out the same pouch of artifacts she had shown Nox before. She emptied the contents onto the table. The leather bracelet with dark stones, the thin chain with the eye pendant, the pair of black rings, the sharp edged hairpin.
«Put it all on,» she told Nox. «The bracelet will partly hide your aura, not completely, but enough that the hunter will not immediately understand how strong you are. The chain will warn you if he looks at you with magical sight. The rings will strengthen your hands. Press the hairpin to your wrist, not your hair, so you can break it with one motion if needed and disappear into the smoke.»
Nox put on the artifacts. The bracelet fit snugly, the stones cold and seemingly vibrating slightly in time with his pulse. The chain lay around his neck, the eye pendant falling onto his chest and immediately warming from his body heat. The rings were heavier than they looked, and when he clenched his fist, he felt a faint electric shock run through his fingers. He secured the hairpin to the inside of his left wrist, held in place by the bracelet's strap.
«Now listen carefully,» Sylvana continued. «You will leave the house an hour before sunset. You will go east, toward the old magic rail line. There will be fewer people there at that time. Do not look back. Do not show that you know about him. Just walk and think about Lin, about how she is waiting for you at home. Shadow will reach toward those thoughts, show itself more strongly, and the hunter will feel it. He will follow you. And I will follow him.»
«And if he realizes it is a trap?»
«He will realize. Hunters are not stupid. They just do not feel. But even knowing it is a trap, he will have to check. Because his order is to find the Abyss, and you are the only lead to it. He will follow you, even knowing it might be a trap. He has no choice. That is his weakness.»
Nox nodded. His head felt strangely empty. Not from fear. From focus. All his thoughts condensed into a single point, a single simple plan: go out, walk, let the hunter sense Shadow, come home to Lin. Everything else was Sylvana's work.
«There is something else,» Sylvana said, and her voice changed. Grew quieter, heavier. «Something I have not told you before. About your father. About why he truly refused to serve the Moon Goddess.»
Nox looked up.
«You said it was because of your mother. Because of love.»
«That is true. But not all of it.» She paused, looking out the window at the gray sky of the middle tier slowly filling with the light of the approaching day. «Your father refused to serve the Moon Goddess not only because he loved your mother. He refused because he learned something. Something the Goddess hides from everyone, even her closest servants. Something that could change everything.»
«What did he learn?»
Sylvana turned her gaze to him, and in her violet eyes, Nox saw something he had not seen before. Doubt. She was doubting whether to tell him this now, just hours before he walked out to meet the hunter.
«He learned that the Moon Goddess was not always a goddess,» she said finally. «Long ago, in an era erased from all chronicles, she was mortal. One of the first Shadow bearers. And she found a way to steal divinity from the true God of Shadows, the one now called the Lord of Shadows. She imprisoned him somewhere, in a place that is on no map, and took part of his power. But not all of it. The rest scattered across the world and settled in the blood of the first Shadow bearers. In the blood of your bloodline.»
Nox listened, and inside him, something slowly, like an ancient mechanism, clicked into place.
«That is why she hunts for Shadow,» he said. «Not because it is a rare power. Because she wants to gather it back. All of it, down to the last drop.»
«Yes. Every Shadow bearer she breaks and subjugates gives her back part of that power, which once belonged to the Lord of Shadows. Every Shadow bearer who dies releases that power, and it returns to her. That is why she hunts you. That is why she will not stop until she has it all.»
«And my father learned this.»
«He learned it. And he refused to give her his Shadow. He refused to give her you. He knew he would die, but he hoped you would survive and continue what he did not have time to finish.»
«What did he not have time to finish?»
Sylvana looked at him, and in her gaze was something heavy as stone and just as unmoving.
«To find the Lord of Shadows, Nox. To free him. And to give back what the Moon Goddess stole.»
Silence fell over the kitchen. So deep that Nox could hear his own heartbeat, Lin's breathing behind him, the wind outside stirring the forgotten curtain on the windowsill.
«That is why she is afraid,» he said finally. «Not of me. Not of Lin. Of what we can do together. Shadow and the Abyss. The power to find the Lord of Shadows and free him.»
«Yes.»
Nox looked at his hands. At the rings glinting in the morning light. At the scars pale on the right side of his face. At the shadows swirling at his feet, alive and waiting.
«I do not know where to find the Lord of Shadows,» he said. «I do not know how to free him. I do not even know if he is alive.»
«I do,» Sylvana answered. «That is why first you will go to Noxspire. There, in the restricted library, there are maps and records that may point the way. Your father managed to hide them there before the Goddess came for him. And then…»
She did not finish.
Because at that moment, the chain around Nox's neck, the one with the eye pendant, flared with cold blue light and vibrated so strongly that he felt it through his entire body.
Sylvana jumped up, knocking over her cup, and the dark brew spilled across the table, but she did not even look at it. Her gaze was fixed on the window, on the gray sky, on something Nox could not yet see.
«He is here,» she said. «He came earlier than I expected. Much earlier. He is already on our street.»