Nox…
It felt comforting, like it was home. I slipped towards it a pace, then another, until the guards' voices blurred. The alleyway yawned, no deeper than a wagon's length, yet darkness clotted there like spill ink. The air smelled of rain on cold stone.
A decisive step took me across an unseen threshold.
Color bled away. The street behind me turned to a charcoal sketch. Its sounds muffled as though wrapped in wool. Above the sky was a smear of iron. Every edge lamp post, shutter, my own hand glimmered with a faint silver outline, as if reality had been traced but not filled.
A woman waited beneath a crooked lamp that cast no light. She was carved from midnight: skin moon pale, a dress blacker than coal wrapped tight around curves that would have made the succubae courts of Hell jealous. Her irises were bottomless wells, impossibly dark, yet threaded with star pinpricks that drifted with embers.
"Welcome to the border," she said. The voice did not echo; it simply arrived inside my thoughts. "Here the world's glare cannot pry at us."
I set my stance, tail rigid. "Who are you?"
"Mortals call me the Goddess of Darkness. My children call me the Shadow." She smiled, and space folded: in one blink she stood no more than a break away, dress rustling with neither wind nor motion "But you may refer to me as Vantara."
Her voice shook something half remembered, but I pushed the memory aside. "What do you want?"
"I want potential. And I like spirited woman like yourself." She breathed into my ear and sent a shudder down my spine. She then stood up and held her hand palm up. An obsidian token coalesced from nothing, spinning slowly. Its facets sparked with distant constellations. "Break this, and the curse consuming your sister unravels at once. Her strength will return. Your own horizons will stretch beyond any hellborn's birthright."
"Define 'stretch.'"
"My power in your veins, strengthening your blows, granting access to magic without the need to study. You would be a paladin in my mantle. A shade knight. One of an elevated position. Equal to some of midnight's eldest servants, even the pale wind walker you traveled beside."
The reference to Zephyr sent a chill down my next. "Cost."
Her eyes snapped to mine, her hand reached out and trailed from my collar to my chin lifting my head to meet hers. "Careful now girl. I like feisty. Not disrespectful."
She let go and backed up, "By becoming my shade knight you will swear four oaths. Only four."
Behind her, the twilight thickened into sigils that pulsed in rhythm with my heart. Each sigil written was written in the language of the devils, Infernal. Infernal did away with the bluntness of the common language, for once a message had been compiled, its meaning could be subtly altered with a single stroke. I began to decipher the four hovering characters.
Seize secrets as chain. I would have to collect truths as weapons, revealing them only to bend, never to gossip. I was never to betray a confidence without purpose, or my power would falter.
Walk the borderline between light and dark. I was to perform good and evil without boasting. To commit necessary evils without delight. To let my own reputation be forged by others' tongues, not your own.
Honor your words. If I were to break a promise, I would sever my pact, relieving all power and killing my sister.
Progress the grand design. This was more complicated to interpret. But it boiled down to when given a task, obey, or face Vantara with reason strong enough to stand before her.
"Swear these, and Dalia rises before sunset, curse free. Your lifespans will run long as I shall deem, untouched by rust or rot. You may choose to age normally, but after you pass your body will still be mine."
My thoughts flashed to Zephyr's moonlit bargain immortality shackled to darkness and to Humperdink's tablets buying Dalia only hours. I tasted iron behind my teeth.
"Swearing binds the soul," I said. "If I accept, your tasks must never endanger Dalia. And I will not overturn oaths I have already given."
Vantara tilted her head, star lit gaze softening. "Wise conditions. I consent." The drifted closer, cool night radiating off it. "You need not decide this heartbeat. My timeline is the same as that old duke. Forty hours remain. Break it and I answer. Let it lie, and mortality chooses for you."
I turned but hesitated. "Why us? Why a pair of hellborn strays?"
"Because you are unclaimed." Her smiled erupted. When she smiled, I realized why Albedo said that a woman could bring about a kingdom's ruin. "Hell forges many chains; you broke yours. I admire that pattern."
She caressed my cheek, her face mere inches from my own. "Now be a good girl and make the right decision."
With her final words the alley brightened, color soaking back into brick and sky. Street sounds crashed in Qapla's low rumble, Annalise's airy laugh, Vantara's dress fluttered once, then folded into nothing, leaving only the token hovering before me. I cupped it in both palms. I expected chill; it felt like velvet night pressed to my skin.
She was gone.
"Nox? Nox? Hello?" I heard Annalise's call. I walked out to see her looking at me. "Hey! Where'd you disappear off to? I thought you managed to get lost somehow with those grand horns of yours.." She laughed way too loud at her own… joke? My horns weren't that big. Yea. They were simply fine as is.
Qapla looked over her shoulder at me with a quizzical gaze. "You ready to go now?"
"Yes. Needed some air" I said, tucking the token inside my collar.
"Then let's go!" Annalise chirped.
We begin to head down the street further, Qapla still leading the way as he spoke. "They'll let Maxim go if we find and deal with the monster inside. Once we provide proof of the kill. Two rules of engagement. Don't burn any books, don't look at Maxim's private research. It's apparently trapped and dangerous."
"Who traps their research. That seems stupid to me." Annalise giggled as we walked.
There is no way this chick is this happy all the time. We were headed to a monster infested library.
"Any details on the monster?" I ask.
"Maxim mentioned the monster could blend in to it's environment. It could basically become invisible, the only way to make it come out of hiding is to get lucky, or provoke it with blade or food." Qapla said.
"Pretty cool right." Annalise said, "Kinda like you, able to have a super cool tail and horns. Or. Or. Hear me out, look like me? We could be twinning."
"No thank you." I was not revealing that I wasn't a changeling any time soon.
"We are here." Qapla stated.
The library loomed in front of us, tall and improbably thin, a slab of seasoned oak pressed between marble fronted boutiques like a bookmark forgotten in a gilded tome. Its boards bore the gray brown patina of centuries: not rotted, merely tempered by rain and sun until the grain ran like river maps.
Leaded windows, long and slender, rose in stack pairs; filigreed iron grilles traced across the glass in curling glyphs that hinted at wards rather than decoration. A single gargoyle perch, nothing more than a hunched silhouette jutted from the steep shingle roof, its stone eyes leveled at the cobbles as though judging every passerby's literacy.
The doorway dominated the ground floor: a sweeping arch of carved oak inset with brass scroll work. Vines, quills, and chimera heads intertwined around a central shield that bore no title. Only a stylized dragon's head. Brass studs marched the jambs, catching thin morning light and scattering it in timid sparks across the lane.
A hush settled the moment Qapla touched the handle. As if the building itself inhaled. Oak gave way under his palm, and the ornate door swung inward without a creak.