The house greeted them with silence. That particular, dense silence that comes only after danger has passed, but the body has not yet believed it and continues to wait for a blow. Nox closed the door, leaned his back against it, and for the first time in the last hour allowed himself to exhale completely, to the very bottom of his lungs, until his ribs ached. The air in the house smelled of herbs, old wood, and something else, elusive, that he had learned to associate with safety. With Sylvana.
Lin came down the stairs and stopped on the last step, looking at him. She did not rush to hug him, did not cry, did not begin asking questions. She just stood and watched, and in her gray eyes, in which the silver sparks of the Abyss still danced, there was something adult, almost ancient, in its understanding. She knew he would speak when he was ready. She did not rush him.
Sylvana went into the kitchen, sank heavily onto a chair, and placed her hands on the table, palms up. The venous network on her left forearm still pulsed, but no longer blazed, just glowed faintly, like embers in a cooling fire. She looked exhausted, aged a decade in that single battle, and for the first time, Nox thought about how much truly lay behind her words, «I have killed such creatures twice.» Each time, she gave part of herself. Each time, she spent months recovering. And now, the third.
«How are you?» he asked, walking to the table and sitting across from her.
«I will live.» She smiled, briefly and without humor. «But no training today. Probably not tomorrow either. I need to restore my blood, and that is not a fast process. Your sister, by the way, might be able to help.»
Lin was immediately beside her, as if she had only been waiting for a reason. She sat on the chair next to Sylvana and looked at her with the focused seriousness she brought to everything she considered important.
«How?» she asked.
«The Abyss is absence. Including the absence of pain, fatigue, weakness. If you learn to direct it not outward but inward, into another person, you can take their fatigue. Not heal it, like Blood, not restore it, but take it. Temporarily, but enough for me to get back on my feet faster.»
«Is it dangerous?»
«For you, yes. You might take too much and not be able to handle what you have taken. The Abyss does not distinguish what it devours. It simply devours everything. So if you decide to try, do it slowly and under my supervision.»
Lin nodded, and Nox saw her fingers tighten slightly on her knees. She was afraid. But she did not back down. She never backed down.
«What was that creature?» Nox asked, bringing the conversation back to what had been troubling him since the hunter crumbled to ash. «I saw its face. It was… human. Or had been once. How does the Goddess make such things?»
Sylvana was silent for a long time, staring at the table. Then she stood up, walked to the cupboard, took out a bottle of something dark, poured some into a cup, and returned. She took a sip, grimaced.
«She finds Shadow bearers in childhood,» she began. «Before their power has fully awakened. Sometimes she takes them from their families, sometimes she buys them from those who fear magic and are glad to be rid of a cursed child, sometimes she simply steals them. Then she takes them to her halls, to a place no one can find without her will, and there she begins to… remake them. It is a long process. Years. First, she erases their memories, all of them, down to the last fragment. The child forgets who they were, where they came from, who loved them. Then she burns away their emotions. Fear, joy, anger, love, everything that makes a person human. Only an empty shell remains, filled with Shadow. Then she implants a command into that shell. A single command that becomes the meaning of its existence. Serve. Hunt. Kill. And they serve, and hunt, and kill, until someone destroys them.»
Lin listened without moving, and her face was paler than usual. Nox felt something dark and hot rising inside him, something that demanded release. He clenched his fist under the table, and Shadow responded, swirling around his fingers, ready to burst free.
«And she wanted to do that to our father,» he said. Not a question.
«She did. But he was too strong. An adult bearer, fully in control of his power, cannot be… reformatted like that. He can only be killed. Which she did.»
«And us? Did she want to take us?»
Sylvana looked at him, and in her violet eyes was something like pity. But she did not soften it.
«She still does. You and Lin are the last bearers of the Endragon bloodline. You carry Shadow and the Abyss, the two powers she fears most. If she gets you, if she breaks and remakes you like that hunter…» She shook her head. «I do not know what will happen. But nothing good.»
Nox took the shard from his pocket, the one Sylvana had given him. The black crystal, cold and heavy, pulsing in his palm with a faint, barely perceptible rhythm. He placed it on the table, and all three stared at it as if at something alien and dangerous.
«The hunter's heart,» Lin said. She reached out her hand but did not touch it, stopping her fingers a centimeter from the crystal. «I can feel it. It is… hungry.»
«Shadow is always hungry,» Sylvana said. «That is its nature. It devours light, warmth, life. That is why Shadow bearers must constantly control it, every second. The moment you let your control slip, it will begin to devour you. That is what happens to the hunters. Their Shadow is no longer controlled by anything except the Goddess's command, and it slowly devours them from within, leaving only a shell. What you are holding is all that remains of a person who was once a child, who laughed, who loved someone, who dreamed of something. Now it is just a piece of Shadow frozen into crystal.»
Nox looked at the shard and thought that somewhere out there, in the Goddess's halls, there were probably whole mountains of such crystals. And each one had once been a living person. A child who had been stolen, broken, remade into a weapon, and discarded when it was no longer useful.
«I will keep it,» he said. «Not as a trophy. As a reminder. Of what she does. And of why I must stop her.»
Sylvana nodded, saying nothing. She finished her cup, stood up, and walked to the window. Outside, it was beginning to grow dark, and the first lanterns were being lit on the street, casting yellow trembling circles onto the pavement. The city lived its life, not knowing and not wanting to know what had happened at the abandoned crossroads.
«Tomorrow I will begin teaching Lin to work with the Abyss,» she said without turning around. «And you, Nox, will train alone. You already know how to sense Shadow, control it, shape it into weapons. Now you need to learn to do it faster. Much faster. The hunter we killed was weak, old, his Shadow had almost devoured him. The next one will be stronger. And it is already on its way.»
Nox looked up.
«How do you know?»
«Because the Goddess does not forgive losses. She sent one hunter, it did not return. Now she will send two. Or three. Or something worse.» She turned around, and a cold, sober fire burned in her eyes. «We have a month, maybe two, before they get here. In that time, you must become as strong as possible. Otherwise, we will not survive.»
Lin stood up and walked over to Nox. She took his hand and squeezed it. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was firm.
«We will manage,» she said. «We always manage. You and me.»
Nox looked at her, at her light hair, at her gray eyes with their silver sparks, at her stubbornly clenched lips. Eight years old. Eight years, and there was already more strength and determination in her than in many adults he had met. He squeezed her hand in return.
«You and me,» he repeated.
Sylvana watched them from the window, and in her gaze was something strange. Tenderness? Pride? Sadness? All of it together, mixed into that complex cocktail she never allowed herself to show completely.
«Go to sleep,» she said. «We start tomorrow. And be ready. It will hurt.»
Nox and Lin went upstairs. In their room, Lin immediately climbed onto her bed, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and stared at the ceiling. Nox sat on his bed, took out his mother's dagger, and began to examine it by the light of a single candle. The blade was old but sharp, and dark stains that would not wash off marred it. Blood. Someone's blood, spilled long ago. Perhaps enemies. Perhaps his mother herself. Who knew.
«What do you think she was like?» Lin asked quietly.
Nox did not immediately understand who she meant. Then it dawned on him.
«Mother? I do not know. Sylvana says she was strong. Very strong. And that she loved us.»
«I know that. I meant something else. How did she laugh? What did she like to eat? What were her hands like?»
Nox thought. He tried to remember, but his memory was empty, like a swept room. Only fragments, only sensations, nothing concrete. He shook his head.
«I do not remember. The Goddess took that. She took her face from my memory.»
Lin turned onto her side, propped her head on her hand, and looked at him.
«I do remember something. Not a face. A smell. She smelled of something sweet and something cold at the same time. Like flowers that only grow at night. I do not know what they are called, but I smelled that scent once when we were walking through the upper tier, and it hit me like a blow. I stopped and stood there until you pulled my hand. Then the smell was gone, and I could not find it again.»
Nox listened, and something inside him slowly turned over. Lin had a memory. Tiny, fragmentary, but real. And he had nothing except his father's hands. Large, calloused. And even that, he was not sure was a real memory rather than something he had invented for himself.
«When we are done with the Goddess,» he said, «I will get our memories back. All of them. Every single one. She took them, so she can return them. Or we will find another way.»
«Promise?»
«I promise.»
Lin smiled, for the first time all day, and that smile was like a small ray of light in a dark room. She lay back down on her back, pulled up the blanket, and closed her eyes.
«Good night, brother.»
«Good night, Lin.»
He sat for a long time, looking at his mother's dagger and thinking about what Sylvana had said. A month, maybe two. And then new hunters would come. Or something worse. And by then, he had to be ready.
Nox put the dagger under his pillow, blew out the candle, and lay down. Shadow inside him pulsed quietly, rhythmically, like a second heart, and in that pulse, he heard something new. Not a threat. Not hunger. Something else. As if Shadow also understood that something had changed. They were no longer just surviving. They were preparing for war.
Outside the window, the moon, pale and cold, rose above the rooftops of the middle tier. Nox could not see it, but he felt it. It was watching him, as it always had. But now, in its gaze, there was something else. Not only contempt and hatred. Something like interest. Or concern.
The boy from the slums had killed her hunter. The boy she had considered nothing, filth, refuse. And she was only now beginning to understand how wrong she had been.
Nox closed his eyes and fell asleep with a smile. Cold. Sharp. Like the blade of the dagger lying under his pillow.
In the halls of the Moon Goddess, far beyond the reach of mortals, a Shadow stirred. Not a hunter. Something else. Ancient. Patient. It opened its eyes, in which there was nothing but darkness, and listened to the command its mistress had implanted in it. Find. Track. Destroy.
And it set out on its journey.