There are nights when silence screams louder than fire.
This was one of them.
The city beneath me slept, but my mind didn't. I sat on the ruined edge of an old bell tower, staring into the valley where the river carved its silver spine through the dark. The same river that had once carried us both — me and Liam — away from the fortress, away from everything we'd known.
I'd thought the water had saved us.
Now I knew it had only divided us.
The bond throbbed faintly beneath my ribs, a ghost heartbeat that wasn't mine. For weeks it had flickered — distant, fragile — until tonight, when it changed.
It wasn't absence I felt anymore. It was silence.
Complete. Merciless.
As if something had been cut out of me.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of burning wood from the outskirts — the Nightwalkers' patrols cleansing mortal slums again. Every scream was another stone added to my chest.
Marcus's purge had grown bold since the fall of the fortress. He was building his war again, shaping it from ash. And me? I was the name whispered in the cracks of that empire — the shadow traitor, the witch who defied the bloodlord.
If I closed my eyes, I could still see his face the night I escaped: the way he'd looked at me after I'd unleashed the forbidden power. The disgust. The fear.
He'd seen not his weapon, but his failure.
And I had seen my death reflected in his eyes.
I should have run farther. I should have let the river take me where it wanted. But some part of me had stayed — close enough to the ruins of our past, like I could still find Liam in the smoke.
Now I understood how foolish that was.
He wasn't gone. The bond told me that.
But whatever remained of him… it wasn't him.
The heartbeat I used to feel through the shadows — steady, warm, unbearably human — was gone. In its place was something cold. Controlled. Predatory.
The last whisper of him I'd felt had come with blood. So much blood.
I'd woken gasping, my palms slick with it though none was mine. The scent of death had filled the air, carried on the bond like an echo.
I knew then that Liam hadn't died.
He had fed.
And the world had changed because of it.
...
By dawn, Marcus's messengers had found me.
Not because they could — but because I let them.
I'd grown tired of hiding. Tired of the endless running from the ghosts I'd made.
The three of them came cloaked in crimson, faces veiled, blades drawn not for battle but ceremony. When they entered the ruin I called home, the air around them shimmered with enchantment — the Bloodlord's mark.
"Aria Valen," one said. "By decree of the Eternal Court, you stand accused of high treason, sacrilege, and the killing of your kin."
I laughed softly. "You forgot surviving."
The lead messenger stiffened. "You have three choices: surrender and be judged; resist and be executed; or flee and be hunted until the end of your breath."
"Then you already know my answer."
The shadows coiled beneath my feet like wolves scenting prey.
They didn't speak again.
When it was done, the walls were painted black, the sigil of Marcus burned into ash. Only the wind remained, whispering through the gaps of the old cathedral.
I stood among the bodies, trembling. Not from the fight — from the aftermath.
Every time I used the shadows now, they lingered longer, clung tighter. Their whispers were no longer soft. They spoke in tones too close to Liam's voice.
Let go.
Stop pretending.
Become what you already are.
I pressed my hands to my ears, but it didn't stop.
The shadows had begun to remember his hunger.
And that terrified me more than any blade.
...
By nightfall, I made my way to the river again.
The same river where I'd lost him.
Mist crawled across its surface like breath, the moon breaking through the clouds in fractured silver. I walked to the water's edge and knelt, my reflection rippling beside the phantom of another — darker, red-eyed, smiling.
For weeks I'd hoped the bond would guide me to him. Tonight, it only mocked me.
I whispered his name anyway.
"Liam."
No answer.
Just the hollow pulse of distance.
Then, faintly, a vision — unbidden, brutal.
A field of corpses. The scent of blood thick in the air. A woman with hair white as frost standing over him, touching his face as he knelt before her.
Seraphina.
I didn't know how I knew her name. I simply did.
The bond shuddered violently, as if trying to tear itself free from me.
I gasped, gripping the dirt. "No… no, Liam, please—"
But it wasn't him that answered. It was her.
A whisper, cool and silken, crawling into my mind through the tear he'd left.
"He belongs to me now."
I fell backward, choking on air. The vision snapped, but her voice remained, lingering like perfume.
My hands shook uncontrollably. My power surged, reacting to the intrusion — shadows spiraling outward, devouring the light until the moon vanished behind them.
The river churned black.
I screamed, and the sound tore through the forest like thunder.
For a moment, I felt something snap — not in the world, but within me. A thread pulled too tight, breaking under its own weight.
The bond went silent.
Not dim. Not distant.
Severed.
And with it, the last warmth in me died.
...
I don't remember walking back to the city. Only the blood on my boots, the taste of iron on my tongue, and the way the people stared when I passed — like they could see the storm inside me.
The rebellion I'd whispered about in hidden corners, the one I'd meant to build from faith and resistance, had turned into something else.
They called me the Black Heir now — the one who'd killed her own kind and lived. Some bowed. Some fled.
I didn't correct any of them.
If Marcus wanted a traitor, I would become one worth fearing.
The shadows followed me like soldiers. The mortals I saved began to fear me almost as much as they feared him. Word spread of my power — of the witch who could swallow the sun.
But I didn't care about legends. I only cared about one truth:
Liam was gone.
Not dead. Not free.
Taken.
And the part of me that had once been light now wanted blood.
Sometimes, when the wind was quiet, I'd hear Seraphina's laughter — faint, distant, mocking.
She'd taken him because she could. Because she'd seen in him what I had seen first: potential. Hunger.
The same hunger that now lived in me.
...
Weeks passed. Maybe months. Time lost meaning.
Marcus declared open war on the remnants of Seraphina's faction. His armies spread across the borders like a disease. Villages burned. Cities drowned.
In the chaos, my name grew sharper — not a rumor anymore, but a rebellion. Mortals began to gather around my fire. Refugees. Runaways. Those who'd lost faith in the Nightwalkers' rule.
They called me the Shadow Saint.
I almost laughed when I first heard it.
If they saw what lived behind my eyes, they'd call me something else entirely.
But I let them follow me. I let them believe.
Because belief, I'd learned, was just another weapon.
At night, when the campfires died, I'd sit alone and watch the horizon burn.
That was when the visions began — not dreams, but memories stolen through the severed bond.
Liam's hands, red with blood. Seraphina's voice whispering lessons. The thrill of killing. The silence after.
Each image was a blade pressed against my throat.
I couldn't stop seeing him — not as he was, but as he'd become.
And I hated her for it.
But I hated myself more.
Because beneath the horror, a part of me understood. The darkness that had saved me that night in the fortress — the power I'd sworn never to touch again — it was the same that now lived in him.
We were reflections carved from the same sin.
And if I wanted to destroy Seraphina, to free him, I'd have to become the thing I feared most.
A shadow unbound.
...
It happened on the night of the Red Moon.
The sky bled light, the river burned silver, and every Nightwalker in the realm felt the pull of prophecy whispering through their veins.
I was standing on a cliff overlooking the valley — the same place where it had all ended once before. The wind howled, carrying the scent of storms.
Then, for the first time in weeks, I felt him.
Faint. Tortured. Alive.
It was like a blade piercing through the scar the bond had become. I gasped, gripping my chest, the world spinning around me.
"Liam?"
The air shivered.
For a heartbeat, I saw his eyes — not in front of me, but inside me. Crimson. Haunted.
He didn't speak. Didn't move. Just looked.
And then I realized it wasn't him looking at me.
It was through me.
The bond flickered once more — a dying flame gasping for air.
Then it broke.
This time, completely.
The force of it threw me backward. The shadows screamed, erupting from me in waves that shattered the stones. The cliffside cracked, the river below boiling black.
When the silence returned, I was on my knees, breathless, trembling. The bond was gone.
Not severed by distance. Not silenced by power.
Destroyed.
And with it, the last tether to who I had been.
I lifted my head to the blood-colored sky and whispered, "If he's truly gone… then so am I."
The wind answered with a single whisper — cold and cruel:
Then rise, and make them remember why they feared you.
I stood, the shadows crawling back around me like armor. The girl who had once loved Liam died there.
In her place stood the creature the world would soon learn to dread.
The war was coming.
And when our paths crossed again — when Liam's crimson eyes met mine — the world itself would decide which monster it feared more.