Word ran faster than rumor in small places. By dawn the day after the creature, a dozen small voices and an accusing dog had already circled the lane and returned with news: a boy had fought a thing of the scrub with something like shadow for hands. Kael heard the rumble of it before he left the granary—old women muttering in measured disbelief, boys trading wild details and inflating them as boys do. He tied his patched cloak tighter against the slight chill and tried to move through the village as if nothing had changed. Everything had changed.
Arin found him where he always trained: the shallow stretch by the hawthorns, stones worn smooth by boots and time. Arin arrived like a spark arriving from nowhere—red hair flaring in the weak sun, grin wide enough to split trouble in two. He carried a short practice staff and a handful of blackened pebbles someone had sold him for a laugh. He looked like the kind of person who'd borrow trouble and return it tamed.
"You're making the grocers lie awake with excitement," Arin said without preamble, dropping his pack and squatting on his heels. "Maren swore she heard a howl and then a hymn. You killed a demon and started a worship service, didn't you?"
Kael's face stayed flat. He was learning the economy of truth in a village: small measures, traded carefully. "It was a beast," he said. "It came from the dip. I—" He stopped because the rest sounded like boasting or a plea.
Arin tilted his head, the grin sharpening into something like curiosity. He had a scar nicking one eyebrow—a souvenir from a fight with a locked gate, he later said, though Kael suspected it came from a risky prank. "You okay?" Arin asked. "You've got that look. Like a man with a coin in his fist trying not to count it."
Kael laughed a breath that did not reach his eyes. "It wrapped around my hand," he said. "Like smoke that knew my name."
Arin whistled. "That's either the beginning of a song or the start of trouble. Which is it?"
Kael folded his hands around his staff. He felt the shadow under his skin like a clever thing pacing. He remembered Maren's loaf, the old woman's apron, the boys on their knees. He did not want songs about himself that smelled of superstition. "I don't know," he said honestly.
"Good," Arin declared with finality. "Not knowing is where the fun is." He pushed to his feet and paced a short circle. "Teach me something. I'll show you something in return. Deal?"
Kael hesitated. He had practiced alone for so long that another pair of eyes felt like thin glass between him and whatever he was becoming. But the shadow hummed impatiently, and Arin's grin was a kind of invitation. He nodded.
They began simply. Kael stood with his feet planted, staff across his palms, and closed his eyes for a breath. The village noise softened into something like distance; a child's laughter became a tide washed far away. He reached for the thread he'd felt the day before—the braid that had wrapped his wrist—and tried to send it a thought: hold. The thought came out clumsy, a door opened with the wrong key. The shadow answered with a twitch, a whisper, a minor annoyance. It was present but unruly.
Arin, who had expected an easy demonstration, watched with furrowed brow. He tossed a pebble into the hedges and made a small, careless show with his staff—two quick spins, a clap that sent dust up like a breath. From the hollow of his palm a warm line of orange flared for a heartbeat and vanished: a trick, a child's glow caught from the baker's oven, but Arin made it look like a promise.
"Fire takes shape when you mean it," Arin said. "Light listens when you talk right. Maybe shadow listens differently. Maybe you have to coax it, not command it."
Kael opened his eyes. When he looked, Arin's warmth made the gray of his irises feel like a lens; the shadow answered with a small, curious curl along his forearm. He extended his hand slowly and let the darkness flow into the space between his fingers, shaping it like a ribbon. The ribbon was not flesh or flame; it drank the light around it and left a garnish of cold where it wound. He tried to make it do something—wrap, bind, point—and found that thinking too much broke it. The knowledge came not from will alone but from ease: the shadow moved best when his fear and need stepped back.
"Ease," Arin said, watching. "Like breathing. Not like grit."
They practiced until sweat salted their brows. Kael learned the shadow would echo the shape of his intent if his mind kept to a single clear line: hold, gather, send. If he let doubt slip in—if he pictured what might happen or counted teeth—the ribbon frayed. He made a crude loop and tightened it until it looked almost like a knot of living ink. It snapped taut and hummed at his command.
"Good," Arin said, the simple praise quick as a blade. He tried to mimic Kael's movements with his pebble-made ember and made it flare into a small, obedient tongue of heat that hovered on his palm. The contrast was ridiculous and beautiful: Arin's light leaping like a playful dog; Kael's shadow braided like a patient snake.
A villager passed—the smith's apprentice—stopping long enough to gape. "Maren said that you—" He swallowed. "Be careful, lads."
"Always," Arin said, though both of them knew the word was a joke. Danger had not yet learned to keep its distance.
They sparred, civil and careful. Arin feinted with fire, Kael responded with shade. Together they learned the first lesson that would bind them: when light met shadow neither died; they argued. Where Arin pushed heat too hard the shadow recoiled and thickened, finding its own shape; where Kael tried to swallow light, it struck back with a fierce clarity that cut through the ribbon. They discovered, in clumsy fits, that their powers did not simply oppose—they reframed each other. A quick ember at the wrist could anchor a shadow braid; a slender ribbon of shadow could redirect a flare.
At midday the baker's bell rang—Maren summoned volunteers to move a cart—and Arin, ever hungry, offered Kael a hand and an excuse. They carried sack after sack. Sweat and labor grounded them; the world's small mercies steadied the larger strangeness.
After the cart was stowed and the baker fussed (and gifted them a burnt but honest loaf), Arin sat on the low wall and prodded Kael with an elbow. "Listen," he said. "You could keep the notebook secret and be the village's talking legend, or you could learn what that thing is before a lord or a stranger comes sniffing around Emberfall."
Kael felt the shadow tighten with something like agreement. He thought of doors opening beyond the hedges, of creatures stitched of wrongness, of Ancient ruins and Celestial gates told of in the scraps Liora might read. He thought of the pack of boys who'd watch him now with a hunger that smelled like future shame.
"What do you want?" he asked.
Arin's grin softened. "I want to be someone who doesn't have to steal bread when winter comes," he said simply. "I want to see the world without being scared of every stranger. If you have a shadow that can make you more than a ledger entry, I want to know how it works. Teach me the ways I can help, and I'll teach you the tricks to keep every flame you light from burning your hand."
They shook on it as if it were coin. The pact was small and practical and a little ridiculous—a handshake over a loaf—but it was real. Kael tucked the notebook deeper into his tunic and felt the weight of it like a small, steady stone.
When dusk bled into the hedges, Arin walked Kael to the ridge and they practiced again in the failing light. The shadow was calmer now, as if appeased by companionship. Kael made a sliver of darkness curl into a finger that tapped a leaf, lifting it as if to examine this new world. Arin answered with a tiny circle of warm air that made the leaf tremble.
"Tomorrow," Arin said, voice low. "We go farther. I know a place by the river where the scrub breathes different. Maybe there's more like those things. We train, and we learn. No crowns, no songs. Just practice."
Kael nodded. He had no map and no promise beyond the ridge, but the shadow thrummed with something like hope. He had, for the first time, a companion whose hunger matched his own—not for bread or for praise, but for mastery.
They parted with a laugh that sounded, to Kael, like a beginning. He walked back through the lane, past Old Maren's window where she muttered her own salted prayer, and thought of the knot of living ink on his wrist. The world beyond the hawthorns felt bigger and stranger, but for the first night it felt less lonely. The shadow inside him settled like an animal at his feet, patient and bright with waiting.