Aveline stepped out into the rain-washed grounds with nothing but Hamilton at her side, his familiar weight a quiet reassurance against her palm. Ahead of her, Kael walked with easy purpose, while she lingered a few steps behind, her gaze drifting—taking everything in with a kind of quiet wonder she couldn’t quite hide.

It wasn’t just the grandeur of the mansion that held her attention.

It was the silence.

A strange, almost sacred kind of stillness that wrapped around the place. No hurried footsteps, no careless noise—only the soft murmur of water weaving through the air. Fountains stood everywhere, their gentle rhythm blending with the whisper of wind through leaves, creating a calm so deep it felt deliberate.

She shouldn’t have liked it this much.

But she did.

It soothed something inside her she hadn’t realized was restless.

Even the shadows here felt... different.

They stretched and shifted in ways she couldn’t fully explain—subtle distortions that reminded her of the tavern. That same faint wrongness. That same sensation...

Of being watched.

"We are not alone, are we, Shadow Spider?" she asked, her voice light but certain as they moved down the long corridor toward the training hall.

Kael slowed, glancing back at her before letting out a quiet breath. With a snap of his fingers, the illusion shattered.

The shadows peeled away.

Figures emerged.

Men and women. A few boys and girls. At least a dozen of them, pressed silently along the walls, their presence so perfectly concealed that it sent a flicker of surprise through her.

"If you have questions," Kael said calmly, his gaze sweeping over them, "you can ask Ava to her face."

A soft glow sparked at their fingertips—and in the next instant, most of them vanished, dissolving back into nothing.

All but one.

A small girl remained, standing there as if rooted to the ground, her wide eyes fixed on Aveline with open, unguarded awe.

"You’re beautiful."

The words landed gently.

But they struck deeper than anything louder ever could.

Kael’s brows lifted slightly as he glanced at the child—his cousin, who rarely spoke more than a whisper to anyone, now standing there with startling clarity in her voice.

Aveline barely noticed.

Her attention was entirely on the girl.

She was... adorable. Soft, rounded cheeks, tiny lips pressed together as if she were holding something back, and those wide blue eyes framed by thick lashes that made them seem almost too big for her face. There was something luminous about her—something untouched.

And she had just called her beautiful.

Aveline didn’t know what to say.

The word echoed, unfamiliar in a way that made her chest tighten.

It had been so long.

So long since anyone had said that to her.

Her mother’s voice flickered faintly in her memory—the only one who had ever spoken it with such certainty.

Children don’t lie, do they?

The thought came unbidden, fragile and hopeful all at once.

Warmth spread through her, sudden and overwhelming, stealing her breath, her words—everything. She opened her mouth, wanting to respond, to thank her, to say something—

But before she could, the girl turned and ran, disappearing down the corridor as quickly as she had appeared.

Aveline stood there for a moment longer, the echo of that small voice still wrapped around her.

Then, slowly, a smile bloomed across her face—soft, bright, and entirely unguarded.

And with a lightness she hadn’t felt in a long time, she followed after Kael, her steps carrying a quiet, buoyant rhythm.

At the end of the corridor, hidden beneath layers of his own carefully woven spell, Edric watched.

Every line etched into the floor, every sigil carved with patience and precision, had been placed with purpose. The circles stretched across the stone and climbed the ceiling above, a quiet net of magic meant to catch her, study her... understand her.

Nothing more.

(Of course.)

And yet... He dropped to his knees... Because she walked through them; not cautiously and not hesitantly, but with the careless ease of a child wandering through an open field, unaware of the traps buried beneath her feet.

One circle.

Then another.

And another.

Each one should have reacted... should have resisted her, revealed something, anything about what she was. But they did nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Edric’s breath hitched.

This wasn’t right.

Cloaked behind his spell, he shifted his focus to the final circle—the one he had drawn with the most care. The one designed specifically for shadow-benders.

He had saved it for last, because he didn’t want that answer.

He had tested for everything else first, almost hoping, no, insisting, that she would fall into any other category. Anything but that.

And now...

She stepped closer.

Edric’s gaze sharpened.

Kael noticed it. The man adjusted his path, walking around the circle without a word, his instincts honed enough to recognize the danger even without seeing it fully.

But Aveline... She walked straight into it. A flicker of certainty sparked in Edric’s chest.

She was untrained and couldn’t sense it. She didn’t know what she was walking into.

Good.

The circle flared to life beneath her feet, its glow subtle, invisible to untrained eyes—but to Edric, it burned bright. Kael would see it too. Others wouldn’t even know it existed.

Edric leaned forward, anticipation tightening his chest.

Now.

Now it would reveal her.

Aveline stopped in the center. She was calm and she did not stop in alarm. She just... stopped, as if something had quietly reached out and asked her to.

Edric’s pulse quickened.

Her shadow... It began to thin. To distort. To slip away from her feet as though it were being pulled from her, unraveling into the circle itself.

That was how that circle worked.

A shadow-bender, once caught, would feel it immediately. Their shadow was not just darkness—it was an extension of them. To lose control of it, even briefly, was unbearable.

They would fight, instinctively and desperately. And yet... Aveline didn’t move. She didn’t struggle. She didn’t even seem afraid.

Her brows drew together slightly as she looked around, her gaze searching—not outward, but through something unseen.

"There’s..."

She tilted her head faintly, as though listening to something just beyond reach.

"...something here."

Edric stilled.

That wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

Aveline’s attention drifted past the circle, past the corridor, toward the far end where a lone birch tree stood in quiet stillness. Her gaze fixed there, sharpening with a strange, instinctive certainty.

There was something there.

Something wrong.

She didn’t notice the absence at her feet. Didn’t feel that her shadow had vanished entirely, swallowed by the circle meant to bind it.

Only that faint, unsettling presence curling at the edge of her senses, dark and ugly.

Hamilton sprang up onto her shoulder, his small body tensing as he followed her line of sight. Whatever she felt, he felt it too. His usual playful ease was gone, replaced with alert stillness.

Edric’s brows drew together, a flicker of unease slipping past his composure.

That was impossible.

Nothing within these grounds escaped his awareness. No distortion, no hidden current of magic—nothing.

So what was she looking at?

Aveline took a step forward, drawn toward it without fully understanding why.

And then... Something pulled her back and her movement faltered.

She turned and froze.

"Where... is my shadow?"

The question slipped from her lips, quiet and unguarded.

But she didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to process the strangeness of it, because the air shifted.

Edric’s hand pressed against the ground... And the world answered. The shadows around her stirred, not as absence of light, but as something alive.

They peeled away from the earth. From under the trees and the tall columns lining the corridor. Even from the delicate shapes of the fountain, where tiny sculpted fish cast rippling silhouettes across the stone.

One by one...They rose, stretching upward, twisting, solidifying into dark, upright forms that trembled with unnatural intent.

Aveline stood at the center of it, her breath catching as the stillness shattered.

Then... They moved, all at once.

A surge of darkness lunged toward her, swift and merciless, closing the distance in a heartbeat.

Hamilton’s ears perked up. Aveline furrowed her brows as she saw the shadow figures marching around her.

She turned to look at Kael in panic.

Help!