The first thing I felt was the inability to breathe. For several moments, I struggled to take a breath, and then my heart skipped a beat and stopped. When I finally awoke from my sleep, I realized that I was surrounded by the damn shadows!

Panting, I struggled to draw air into my lungs as if I were lifting an immense weight. The dormitory was cool in the morning, but even the cold air warmed my chest, and my heart began to beat again.

“Ha-a-a-asr...”

I looked at the shadow with hatred, fighting the urge to throw something at it. Even a pillow, as childish as that might’ve sounded.

Just when I got used to one of their antics, they escalated. It wasn’t enough that they talked. Or rather, tried to. It wasn’t enough that they now appeared even when I was surrounded by people. But now this ice that formed after their touch chilled my heart. Every night for the past decade, I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up. It was foolish, of course. I didn’t know what the shadows wanted from me, but they certainly didn’t want to kill the last carrier of their creator’s blood.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe I wasn’t the only one, and certainly not the last. Maybe my brother or sister would carry the same blood, though I wasn’t so sure I wanted siblings. To feel, even in a dream, your heart stopping, turning into a piece of ice, and yourself dying, unable to breathe, wasn’t something I wished for another person, especially a close one. To hell with the chilling touches and the cold in my chest when the shadows drained the Soul Flame, but to die knowing that my heart had been turned to ice...

I took a deep breath.

A short distance away, Braur stirred, mumbling sleepily:

“Lial? What happened?”

“Nothing. I have to pee,” I grumbled.

Braur dropped his head back onto the pillow and immediately started snoring, falling back asleep. I wasn’t so lucky, wondering once more what could’ve caused the changes this time. I hadn’t killed anyone. If anything, I kept dying. The mentors set traps for us in the forest, on the roads, in the villages, in the places where we were supposed to help the “king.” Even when we fought ‘army against army,’ I died every time, as if I was cursed.

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I had long since given up trying to learn External Techniques or to break into the chest with my mother’s books. I hadn’t so much as peeked into that section of the Forge’s library, even though there are plenty of texts on the subject.

That was why I couldn’t be sure if the enchantment on the blade that ‘killed’ me had anything to do with the shadows. Though the very fact that it seemed to leave a shard of steel in me and a wound that could only be healed by prayer at the altar should made me suspect some connection. Of all of us fledglings, only I suffered from my wounds. Everyone else seemed to forget all about them after a few hours.

Could it be that the enchantment was based on the knowledge of the destroyed Valio Kingdom? Why not? The Forge was founded right after that war. Now the lands of the cursed kingdom were desolate, and even the ruins were probably gone, but back then, those lands were full of riches and secrets of the destroyed Houses.

I could now devote myself to the study of books on External Techniques, though I doubted that I’d learn anything about the enchantment they placed on the training blades. And certainly nothing about the shadows. The mentors had taught us to fight draugrs, not specters, as if the shades hadn’t existed in the Nameless One’s army. But I remembered the prayers I read in our basement. Draugrs were born from the union of humans and shadows. This memory frightened me, as it was written that when the kingdoms were engulfed by shadows, no one would be able to withstand them. Not without the Ancestors to help us.

But I wasn’t the Nameless One. The thought alone made me shudder. I had never thought of it before. What if the shadows didn’t pull something out of me with their touches, but placed something in me? A fragment of the Nameless One’s soul? And with each day, there was less of myself in me and more of him. Did my body not endure because it couldn’t contain him? What was I to do with it? Kill myself to save the kingdom and my parents from his vengeful shade?

The dormitory door creaked open.

“Get up!” the mentor barked in greeting.

The boys stirred around me. For several more heartbeats, I sat motionless on the crumpled bed, filled with thoughts and fears. Not much longer to endure. I had to survive the winter and the spring, then I’d find myself at the southern altar. If there really was a part of the Nameless One in me, Amania’s Keepers would either kill me or save me.

It was no longer important to be the best. I just had to make sure I wasn’t expelled.

I’d end this one way or another.