CHAPTER TWELVE— INTO THE SHADOW REALM.
880 Words
The darkness didn’t wait for Annastasia.
It watched her.
As soon as she stepped out of the Awakening Chamber, the air shifted, quieter, colder, as if the entire realm sensed what she had become. Starborn guards dropped to one knee as she passed, unable to withstand the pressure of her aura.
She didn’t slow.
She didn’t speak.
Her only thought was Kael.
Kael dragged across a floor.
Kael pinned under Hunters.
Kael screaming her name as the Gate swallowed her whole.
Her new power pulsed beneath her skin like a second heartbeat.
The Keeper walked beside her, robes flowing like a nebula storm.
“Annastasia… the Shadow Realm is not a place of living beings. It’s a wound. A tear. A prison carved out during the first celestial war.”
Annastasia didn’t break stride.
“I don’t care. They took him. I’m getting him back.”
“He isn’t like us,” the Keeper warned softly. “The longer he stays there, the more the shadows will bind to his spirit.”
Annastasia’s jaw tightened.
“He’s half-Starborn,” she whispered. “He shouldn’t even exist, yet he does. He survived everything else. He’ll survive this.”
They stepped into a hall lined with shifting starlight. At the center lay a massive circular construct, a gate carved from crystallized void. It pulsed with slow, dangerous breaths.
The Umbra Gate.
Annastasia approached it, her new white-glow eyes reflecting its darkness.
“Open it,” she said.
The Keeper hesitated. “Once you cross, your power will draw the shadows. They will try to chain you. They will sense your lineage. And if the Rift Guardians feel you—”
Annastasia lifted her hand.
Starlight expanded from her palm like a sunburst, slamming into the Umbra Gate. The entire chamber shook. The Keeper stumbled back as cosmic energy surged through every crystal and pillar.
The Gate ROARED open.
A tear in reality split wide, leaking thick black mist that smelled like cold metal and forgotten nightmares.
Annastasia stepped forward.
The Keeper grabbed her wrist.
It was the first time she had ever dared to touch her.
“Annastasia… child… hear me.”
Her voice trembled.
“You are powerful now, yes. But you are not invincible.”
Annastasia looked back at her, just once.
“I don’t need to be invincible.”
Her glow intensified.
“I just need to reach him.”
And she stepped through.
THE SHADOW REALM
The first thing she felt was silence.
Not quiet.
Silence.
A crushing, suffocating silence, like the world had been drained of sound. The sky, or whatever passed for it, was a swirling mass of black smoke. The ground was cracked glass that reflected nothing.
Annastasia inhaled.
It hurt.
The air felt like needles.
Her glow dulled immediately, as if the shadows were drinking her light.
She took a shaky step forward.
“Kael…”
Her voice echoed unnaturally, stretching too far, repeating itself in strange, elongated whispers.
Kael… kaaael… kaaaael…
Annastasia swallowed.
Nothing moved.
Nothing breathed.
Nothing lived.
She walked.
The darkness bent around her, curious, hungry. Tendrils of shadow slid across the ground, coiling around her ankles like fingers.
She flared her aura.
The tendrils screamed silently and evaporated.
“Try me again,” she muttered.
The shadows retreated.
She continued deeper.
Every few steps, she felt something, like the faintest spark of silver bleeding through the dark.
Kael.
He was here.
Alive.
Barely.
Annastasia’s pace quickened.
Ahead, something flickered.
A figure.
Hunched. Bound by black chains. Half-conscious.
Her breath shattered.
“Kael!”
She sprinted.
The shadows surged in fury, rising like a tidal wave to block her path.
Annastasia unleashed a blast of white fire so bright it cracked the realm open. The shadows incinerated instantly, the entire landscape shaking like it might collapse.
She fell to her knees beside him.
Kael’s head lifted weakly, silver eyes struggling to focus.
“Annastasia…?”
His voice was raw.
Disbelieving.
Soft.
Her chest tightened so painfully it almost dropped her.
“Yes. I’m here. I’m here.”
His hand twitched, trying to reach for her but too weak to lift.
“You shouldn’t… be here…” he whispered. “The shadows… they’ll try to bind you.”
“They can try.”
Her light burst outward again, destroying every chain that held him.
Kael gasped as the weight left his body. He collapsed forward, straight into her arms.
His forearm pressed against her waist.
His forehead dropped to her shoulder.
His breath shook.
“You came,” he whispered.
Annastasia wrapped her arms around him, holding him like she would never let go again.
“I’ll always come for you.”
But the shadows didn’t give them time to breathe.
The ground cracked.
The sky split open.
A massive scream tore through the realm—so deep and ancient it rattled Annastasia’s bones.
Kael jerked upright.
“Starlight, run—”
Annastasia didn’t turn.
She didn’t flinch.
She rose to her feet, pulling Kael up with her as a tower of black fire erupted behind them.
A colossal shape formed in the smoke, vast, monstrous, winged.
A Rift Guardian.
Annastasia stared it down, starlight burning at her fingertips.
“No,” she said.
Voice steady.
Unyielding.
“I’m done running.”
- Writer
