The years that followed my encounter with the monolith passed with deceptive calm.
To the villagers of Blackstone, I was little more than a quiet boy who spent too much time alone and returned from the forest with dirt on his boots and a strange, thoughtful look in his eyes.
To myself, I was a problem waiting to be solved.
The Fractured Shadow Path had lodged itself deep within my core like a splinter of dark glass. It pulsed at irregular intervals—sometimes a faint throb, other times a sharp twist that forced me to steady my breathing until the pain subsided.
At night, I lay awake on the straw mattress, staring at the wooden beams above me, listening to Maeve's soft breathing from the next room. The house creaked in the wind, a rhythm I had memorized.
Normalcy.Peace.Warmth.
It was all… strange.
All wrong.
All fleeting.
This life won't stay gentle for long, I thought more than once.
But until the storm came, I would use my time wisely.
By age eleven, I had learned enough control to nudge the unstable Arcanum inside me without tearing anything vital. I never pushed too much. The monolith had taught me the limits of my body brutally well.
Small pulses.Short flows.Brief compressions.
Movements others might consider basic meditation, but mine required careful precision. A single mistake caused pain like white-hot needles spreading through my ribs.
I endured it.Pain was familiar.Pain was a measurement tool.
"Elias?" Maeve's voice called from outside the door one morning. "Breakfast!"
I sat upright slowly, letting the ache fade.
Another day, another opportunity to observe.
Blackstone was not a large village, but it was busy in ways that mattered.
Farmers hauled sacks of grain.Fletchers shaped arrows for hunters.Children ran through muddy paths, chasing each other with sticks.Merchants arrived twice a month, bringing spices, fabrics, and news of distant places.
The world moved even without me.
That mattered.
A living world was leverage.
"Morning, Elias!"
Old Branik waved at me from his stall where he carved charms out of riverstones. Most were useless—pretty trinkets, nothing more—but a few carried faint traces of runes so primitive they barely qualified as magic.
"Back to the forest again?" he asked, eyebrow raised.
"Just walking," I said.
The lie came easily.
He laughed. "A boy your age should be playing, not wandering into Duskwood. What's there to see? Trees and more trees!"
I offered a polite nod. No one needed to know I had mapped half the outer forest already.
Children played nearby, shrieking in delight as one pretended to be a wolf charging the others. Their joy was loud, messy, uncontained.
A girl named Lira tripped and scraped her knee. Her friend gasped dramatically before rushing to help.
Maeve approached with calm familiarity. "Hold still, little one." She touched the wound, whispering a short incantation. A faint green glow seeped into the scrape, easing the pain.
Healsong Magic. Low-level. Simple.But effective.
Lira's eyes widened. "You're amazing!"
Maeve laughed lightly. "No, just practiced. Anyone can learn healing if they're patient."
Her gaze flickered toward me briefly. Not accusing. Just… curious.
"Speaking of patience," she said, "Elias, have you finished studying the letters Elian taught you?"
"Yes."
"All of them?"
"Mm."
She smiled. "You're a fast learner."
I looked away. The warmth in her voice pressed uncomfortably against parts of me I had never used.
Affection. Attachment. Dangerous things.
By twelve, I had begun experimenting with runes.
At first, I copied the markings from the monolith onto small wooden pieces, observing whether Arcanum reacted to them. Most attempts failed. My drawings lacked the depth and complexity of the ancient carvings, and the energy inside me was too unstable to spare.
Still, every failure taught me something.
The precise angle required.The flow path of energy through carved lines.The difference between "alive" runes and "dead" ones.
One afternoon, crouched beside a stream deep in Duskwood, I carved a simple pattern into a smooth stone—three intersecting lines encircling a hollow point.
Not a full rune.But close.
I pushed a thread of Arcanum into it.
The stone vibrated softly.
My heart pounded.
A reaction.
A weak one, but real. The vibration lasted only a breath before fading.
But success like this was dangerous.
Each experiment risked overloading my fractured core. Many nights I staggered home with pain coiled in my chest, forcing my breaths shallow.
Maeve worried.Elian watched.The villagers whispered.
But no one stopped me.
How could they?They didn't know what I was doing.
At thirteen, I began noticing something new—an awareness of the forest itself.
Not just its dangers.Its… patterns.
Duskwood was not a random assortment of twisted trees and uneven paths. It was organized, in a way that defied normal ecology.
Clearings aligned in geometric shapes.Roots twisted in spirals around stones.Wind moved through the leaves in repeating rhythms.
The monolith wasn't an isolated artifact.
It was the heart of a larger system.
A formation.
Ancient, broken, enormous.
Pieces scattered throughout the forest like fragments of a shattered constellation.
When I realized this, I felt something inside me click.
If I can understand this formation… I can understand what the monolith gave me. And if I can understand that… I can control it.
The thought filled me with a hunger sharper than any blade.
But the world outside my mind didn't slow down.
Storms tore through Blackstone that winter. Roofs had to be patched. Livestock went missing. A traveling merchant warned of growing tensions between distant territories.
Rumors spread faster than carts.
"Academies are tightening their borders.""Beast sightings are increasing.""A hunter found a corpse drained of Arcanum."
Whispers of fear seeped into everyday conversation.
One night, Elian sat sharpening an old blade at the table while Maeve prepared stew. The fire crackled. The air smelled of herbs and simmering broth.
I sat quietly, whittling a small piece of wood into a rune form—not enough to activate, just enough to practice precision.
"Elian," Maeve said softly, "you've heard the merchants. Should we… consider leaving? Moving somewhere safer before trouble spreads?"
Elian's sharpening slowed. The rasp of steel against stone fell into silence.
"We can't uproot our lives on rumors," he said. "Besides… trouble always finds a way."
He wasn't wrong.
Maeve hesitated. "But what about Elias?"
A pause.
Then—"He'll be stronger than he looks."
They both glanced toward me.
I kept carving, pretending not to hear them.
Inside, a strange warmth unfurled.
They cared.Deeply.
Too deeply.
I did not know what to do with that.
At fourteen, I began testing my limits.
I pushed Arcanum deeper into the cracks of my core, trying to force consistency. Each attempt was a gamble.
Sometimes the energy flowed.Sometimes it jolted, sending shockwaves through my ribs.Twice I collapsed in the forest, breath torn from my lungs.
Each failure brought me closer to understanding.
The flaw wasn't random.It was structural.
The monolith hadn't just fused shadow into my core—it had reshaped the foundation itself, leaving channels that normal cultivation techniques couldn't navigate.
I needed my own method.
So I built one.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Hour by hour.
Breath by breath.
Night after night, I sat with my back against the cold wooden wall of my room, knees drawn up, hands resting on my chest. The world outside quieted, leaving only my heartbeat, my thoughts, and the restless, pulsing shadow inside me.
You won't control me, I thought more than once.
The shadow pulsed in response.
Fine. Then we'll coexist.
The morning I turned fifteen, the sky broke open with sunlight.
Villagers congratulated me with smiles and pats on the back. Lira brought a small carved wolf she'd made herself. Branik gifted me a riverstone charm "to keep the forest spirits friendly."
Maeve hugged me, warm and proud. Elian ruffled my hair—something I had never grown used to.
Life felt almost gentle.
Too gentle.
A feeling settled in my spine that day—a tension, a shifting of the air around Blackstone. The forest was quieter than usual. Birds avoided the sky. Even the wind felt wrong, carrying scents I had not smelled before.
Danger.
It glinted at the edges of the day like a hidden blade.
That evening, as the sun set behind the mountains, I stood at the edge of Duskwood and watched shadows crawl between the trees.
The monolith pulsed faintly in the distance.
Something was coming.
Something inevitable.
Something violent.
I placed a hand over my chest, feeling the fractured rhythm of my core.
I'm not ready, I admitted silently.
Then—But I will be.
I turned toward the village lights, unaware that this would be one of the last peaceful nights Blackstone would ever see.