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The thought of T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n, the dark moon, intrigued her. Almost every night, T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n rose to cast his shadow over all that was light and to swallow all Adhar. Perhaps, in his blackening gaze, she could find refuge — a momentary shield, a way to move undetected through the omnipresent light. But this was mere speculation. Midnight knew she needed to explore her capabilities and limitations to understand them. Only then could she carve out a space for herself in this radiant world without being consumed by it.
While anticipating the witching hour, Midnight went back to what she knew. Instead of exposing herself to the bending light, she shifted through the stone as she had done when exiting the mountain. As she moved within the mountain wall, Midnight expanded her reach and awareness once more. Though she no longer experienced the world like a beast — no longer saw, heard, smelled, or touched it — she perceived reality in a far more insidious manner, both outwardly and inwardly. The world around her was no longer something to interact with but something to recognise and pass through, while the world within her seemed vast, teeming with thoughts, sensations and power yet to be claimed.
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image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/The-Glass-Wizard_Fantasy-Adventure-Magic-Webnovel-by-The-Duckman_Depressed-Wizard-Webstory_Albweiss-Mountain-Range.png]
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Melding with the rock to progress further downward, she recognised but remained unaffected by the shifting weather that raged just below the clear band of light defining the sky under the Raja Siena. She rushed past fog-flooded storms of snow and hail, where ice fragments as large as boulders hurtled with a fury that could kill any pathera or wizard upon impact. Within the rock, the dangers were of a different nature; sealed areas, witch sigils, creatures like the shadebeast or sprites that prowled the crevices — any of these could lie in wait within the very stone she traversed. Midnight moved with a predator’s caution, her senses attuned to the faintest trace of foreign presences and boundaries.
Simultaneously, her mind wandered, stalking the vast territory that was all of her new thoughts. One of them was that if the beams were a phenomenon bound to the Raja Siena, they might not haunt her once she surfaced closer to the Snowtrail. From this idea, countless others branched off, each considering the consequences that could arise from this possibility. However, such thoughts were mere speculation. They were not reality, and they might never be. For now, there was only the present. To roam freely, Midnight would eventually need to find a way to sustain herself, to preserve the remaining currents of darkness attached to her essence. But for now, she was progressing.
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Yet as she pressed forward, a new thought began to uncurl within her, subtle yet insistent — a serpent of realisation that slowly rose and demanded her attention: Midnight could live within the mountain. She could remain in the darkness of the Albweiss. Here, she could learn from the creatures of shadow, seek out the DΔϢΠΙΠƓϛ, and reveal to them what she had become. Among the beings of darkness, she could learn, grow and evolve. She would thrive. She would become more. The thought of seeking the DΔϢΠΙΠƓϛ coiled firmly around her mind, filling her with a sense of purpose. She could prove to them that their faith in her potential had not been misplaced.
She might. After learning about Yves’ fate. Midnight could not sense whether her wizard still walked the earth or if he had fallen to the Vicha. Her connection to him was frayed, perhaps severed entirely. Without knowing what had become of him, she could not fully embrace the new path bestowed upon her by the DΔϢΠΙΠƓϛ. However, if the wizard that she once chose as her companion had indeed perished, then Midnight would return to the mountain and seek out the Gods that had chosen her.
As Midnight descended, a shiver of darkness coursing through the jagged mountain face, Sey and Burs emerged. The mother moon and her child began their slow, deliberate journey across the sky. Their pale light faintly illuminated the storm-ravaged mountainscape below, casting long, ghostly shadows over the peaks.
Midnight did not see them — not as she once had, with her midnight stalker eyes that could perceive their presences even through the fiercest of storms; glowing orbs, like two wandering eyes in the sky. In her former form, Midnight had also relied on an innate sense of time, always aware of Sey’s arrival and the surge of energy she brought her. That intuitive connection had been severed. Even her perception of time had become unreliable, distorted by her transformation and the time spent within the timeless realm of the mountain.
Despite this, Midnight was certain the moons must have risen, since the sun had already touched upon the horizon when she had first emerged near the Raja Siena. Now far closer to the Snowtrail than to the heights of the dragon realm, Midnight slipped once more from the embrace of the stone, her form seeping into the open as she waited for the familiar sensation, that comforting yet exhilarating rush of power she had always drawn from Sey.
But it did not come.
Instead, it was the light that sought her. Unlike the volatile, ever-shifting amalgamation of light fragments that formed the sun, the light fragments that covered the world from the ground to the realm of the dragons remained fixed, their positions undisturbed unless shifted by wizards or other ethereal forces. Yet now, as before, they reacted to Midnight’s presence. Again they gravitated towards her, forming a growing spiral that compressed and intensified with each passing moment. The light grew brighter and stronger, creating an almost palpable aura around her. It was an anomaly that marked her, exposed her in a manner that was both disturbing and alien to her new existence; a light so vivid that even those who could not typically perceive the phantom presences of light during the absence of the sun would now see it.
For such beasts and peoples, the setting of the sun heralded a plunge into shadow, while Midnight had always been able to see beyond that veil, perceiving the ethereal world with a clarity as natural to her as breathing had once been. Now, as darkness, she no longer saw in the conventional sense — she perceived. Her awareness unfurled like a shroud of mist over the land, touching and knowing everything it covered. Yet in that vast and intimate connection, she could no longer feel Sey.
The realisation twisted something deep within Midnight, beneath all the new thoughts that had begun to coil around and reshape her mind. She knew she had changed, and while she was eager — hungry — to change and become so much more still, this revelation also signified a profound loss. The moon, Sey, which had filled her with strength every night, its ethereal light coursing through her like lifeblood since her birth, now remained unseen, distant, indifferent.
As a midnight stalker, Sey’s energy had sufficed to sustain her, much like Yves drew his strength from Adhar. Her consumption of physical sustenance had always been selective, deliberate. Midnight only devoured prey she had hunted herself, creatures of value, untainted by the poisons and rot that infested so many in the barren Northlands and the northern Midlands. But could she still hunt? Could she still consume prey? She understood she no longer needed to tear flesh or gnash bone, but did not all living things possess an essence? Something she could devour, something that could feed the darkness within her?
Midnight lingered where she had emerged, despite the relentless beams of light that began to unravel her darkness. The layers of darkness surrounded her essence, the last remnants after her battle with the shadebeast, already felt perilously thin. She knew she could contain far more, that her essence had the capacity to bind and wield a much greater volume of darkness than the dwindling strands that now threatened to dissolve entirely. But the light clawed at her, like fire consuming the wax of a burning candle, gnawing its way down to the wick, her very core. She could feel it, this insidious force, pulling at the essence that defined her, threatening to consume her completely once the protective shell of darkness was exhausted. After the wax would come the wick.
Despite the relentless pull of the light, Midnight refused to extinguish the flame. To retreat back into the safety of the mountain would be to cage herself, to confine the potential that pulsed within her new form. Her new form was a profound transformation that demanded more than mere survival; it required mastery, and mastery could only be attained by pushing beyond the confines of the Albweiss.
Growth required action. It demanded risks, challenges, and the relentless pursuit of understanding. To become more, she had to expand the territory she traversed, to confront and transcend the limits of her abilities. Yves, too, held knowledge that she would need to acquire. Growth would come from change, from pushing against the boundaries of her very existence. And it would come. She would be more.
With a resolve burning as fiercely as the light that sought to unravel her, the nothing that was Midnight moved. Unbound by the constraints of gravity, she soared along the jagged mountain face, a wraith of rippling darkness against the everlasting stone. Exhilaration surged through her as she realised the light could not hold her captive; the beams that threatened her fell back into their original patterns as she left them behind, while new orbs formed where she ventured. As long as she stayed in motion, faster than the light could close in, she could evade the consuming flame.
Improving her control with every passing moment, Midnight quickened her pace, gliding effortlessly through the physical storms that battered the mountainside, through the ethereal light fragments whose phantom presences sought to ensnare her, untouched and unbound, like claws raking through air. The world around her was a discord of sensations, starkly different from all that the mountain had grown and held within its depths. As she honed her ability to perceive this new old world, Midnight focussed on discerning what should be the thin, biting air, and the weight of the night wind heavy with the scent of snow and stone. Yet, amidst these tangible impressions, she remained aware of the dangers that might lurk in the dark. Her darkness extended outward, probing the environment for any sign of other entities —beasts, humanoids, ethereals. She also sensed for prey.
A few hundred meters above where she suspected the Snowtrail to lie, she arrived at an expanse where the stale night wind seemed to weave the heavy storms into a restless slumber. Here, she sensed the presence of life. Winged beasts, their forms cloaked in the colours of snow, nestled in the crevices of the mountain, sheltered by long, horizontal fractures in the rock. Sensing what she could only interpret as the warmth of their bodies, Midnight felt something stir within her — a flicker of hunger, perhaps, or the primal thrill of the hunt that had once defined her predator existence. Here, she decided to hunt.--
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