Cylinder bearings whistled through the air all around Kar. They cracked against the shadowcryst surrounding him, shattering their crystal casings. More and more, he found himself on the receiving end of such blasts. He—again—thickened the armor along the back of his helmet and chest-plate. He was having to do so at an alarming rate. The void-cryst of his shadow forgings struggled to hold up against the focus-forged metal rounds.

  He didn’t think the Darby Focusers were aiming at him deliberately, but it hardly mattered. Scores of them were scattered across nearby rooftops around the Causeways, blasting away. In his shadow-forged armor, he surely blended in with all the other shadowcryst.

  An elongated crystal tail swept toward Kar. He leapt over it and whipped his chain towards the beast it belonged to. A hook formed at the chain’s end and snagged into the void-cryst’s hide. Kar used that connection to begin Absorbing.

  A familiar struggle ensued. The Shadowcryst had caught on now. They knew what he was trying to do, and none shared their power willingly.

  Kar fell to his knees even as the creature before him yielded. It wasn’t about resisting the other’s Absorption, he’d learned. It was a contest of speed and endurance; who could take from the other faster.

  He was winning this exchange. Barely. He’d gained only a trickle of Dark Energía when a snake-like shadowcryst lunged from the side and wrapped itself around his void-cryst arm. Kar heaved himself upright, released the chain, and flung the creature away.

  He was perhaps a third of the way down the steps now. And he was exhausted. Kar couldn’t energize himself with Dark Energía the way he could with the normal kind. All it seemed good for was Shadow Forging.

  The only reason he was still standing was because the Shadowcryst continued to give him space. They flowed around him rather than confront him directly.

  Reverberating Drum beats echoed distantly, mercifully drowning out the din of screams and shouting he’d been hearing from the town. Kar hoped the drums meant Valorcryst and their Cryst-soldiers. But he wasn’t sure if even they could stop this tide he’d let free.

  He took a deep breath and prepared to descend further.

  Something new crossed the threshold of the central Causeway. Like a dark, massive root. Its tip, a creeping tendril, growing along the ground at a languid pace.

  What was it?

  Kar froze in place on the steps, an irrational fear possessing him. There was something eerily familiar about that black tendril and its root.

  An image flashed through his mind unbidden, of an iced over pool, a dark thorn embedded in its center. A strong, wide shouldered man grasping Kar’s hand tightly.

  He suddenly couldn’t breathe, overwhelmed by a memory of drowning that shouldn’t be his. Of Nat’s much younger face crying over him. Descending into the depths of the Rift. A baby Isa wrapped and bundled tightly next to him as they floated downstream in a small wooden boat.

  Were all those memories… his? His knees threatened to buckle, and emotions eddied through him like a whirlwind. He remembered. Not everything—not clearly—but enough. His father and his mother. That night…

  Across the amphitheater-like bowl, Shadowcryst halted in place. That tendril stopped also, orienting itself to point in Kar’s direction. As one, all the Shadowcryst did too.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Kar struggled to pull himself back to the here and now, flashes of broken memories still flooding through his head.

  The Shadowcryst remained frozen, even as Darby Cylinders rained bearings into their crowded midst.

  Another figure emerged from the Causeway. A man. He strode forward, a dark robe draped over his shoulders. Grey-streaked hair and a thick beard framed his face.

  Kar stumbled back and fell onto the step behind him.

  Cylinder bearings streaked toward the robed man. He never flinched, just stood there next to that black root, a hand laid along its rough side. The bearings struck an invisible barrier and vanished without a sound. The air there… warped, in a disconcerting way that made Kar’s skin crawl. Some, unnamed, sense of his screamed.

  The man cried out in a strange, guttural language Kar didn’t recognize.

  Another barrage of bearings died on that invisible barrier. With an annoyed expression, the man raised a fist and clenched it.

  Screams rang out from the rooftops behind Kar. He turned in time to see mangled bodies collapsing from their perches; Darby Focusers falling broken to the street below.

  Kar had yet to sense any Focusing from the man.

  He stood shakily and Shadow Forged a shield on his right arm, then a chain in his left hand. They seemed inadequate, but he didn’t want to die empty-handed.

  The robed man strode forward. The Shadowcryst parted before him soundlessly. He tried a different language, this one higher pitched and fluting. When Kar still didn’t respond, the man grew irritated. He gestured pointedly toward his side, speaking yet a third distinct tongue that Kar still didn’t know.

  Kar descended through the corridor cleared between him and the stranger. He didn’t know what was happening or who this man was. All he knew with certainty was that he was an enemy.

  Kar stopped a chain’s length away from the shadow commander.

  The man studied him.

  “Why are you here?” Kar asked him.

  Recognition flashed in the man’s eyes, and he smiled slightly. “You speak Valoran.” He said with archaic pronunciation and an odd accent. He paused, looking around at the buildings above. “But this is not Valor?”

  Kar didn’t speak, concerned he might say too much.

  “Tell me, boy, what is a Sinícryster such as yourself doing here? And why don’t you understand our language?”

  Kar shifted uncomfortably, on edge. “I don’t speak your language because I don’t know it.”

  Understanding dawned on the man’s face. “I see. So you do not serve the Void?”

  Kar simply shook his head side to side.

  The man shrugged, then raised his hand toward Kar in the same way he had toward the Cylinder Focusers on the surrounding roofs. Kar flinched back, expecting to feel excruciating pain…

  Nothing happened.

  Surprise flashed across both their faces. Kar lashed out, snapping his chain toward the man’s ankle. With effortless grace, the man lifted his foot and stamped down, pinning the chain in place.

  Kar improvised, forging a spike beneath the man’s foot that punched upward through leather and flesh.

  He Absorbed.

  His prize wasn’t the Dark Energía he’d expected, but something adjacent. A step removed.

  The man hissed but suffered it, allowing Kar to siphon freely for a moment while he seized the chain and yanked Kar toward him.

  Kar released it, converting the strange Energía he’d taken. He forged a spear in his left hand. The fight against Melisdra flashed through his mind. This was following an all too familiar pattern.

  He turned his forward stumble into a leap, thrusting the spear towards the man’s chest. Its void-cryst point disintegrated against an invisible barrier. Kar’s forward momentum continued to carry him forward.

  Time slowed.

  The spear unraveled piece by piece. Kar’s hand would be next. Was he about to lose his left arm, as he had his right? The white crystal ring he’d taken from Ember’s ship glinted subtly in the dying light.

  Kar released the spear and spread the fingers of his left hand. He tried to Focus through the ring, to create a blast to save himself from striking that barrier.

  It didn’t work.

  He’d used up all his normal Energía healing Lore.

  Just before that ring came into contact with the man’s barrier, however, something shifted. The invisible wall unraveled, the warping in the air marking its presence vanishing.

  Kar continued forward unchecked. His left hand still out thrust toward the Shadow commander.

  He reacted a beat before the other man, whose face wore an expression of utter disbelief. A blade of void-cryst appeared in that ringed hand of Kar’s, an exact replica of one of Melisdra’s pair. It pierced the man’s breast, and Kar drove it in to the hilt.