The Whisper in the Dark

Isadora:

The night tasted of fog and static.

The storm had passed, leaving the world in a half-light that clung to the bones of the academy like rot. Every corridor hummed faintly with the aftershock of shattered wards, the stones themselves seeming to whisper as if remembering the screams of the monsters she’d slain hours before.

Now, the halls were still. Too still.

Inside my chamber, the boys lay scattered in exhausted disarray—fallen saints, warriors turned into sleeping ruins. Rhett collapsed in the chair near the fire, one arm slung across his chest, blood dried to rust down his temple. Kai slept on my bed, skin pale as wax, his light magic dimmed to a faint shimmer that pulsed with his heartbeat. Silas was sprawled at the foot of the bed like a fallen shadow, and Lucian leaned against the wall, eyes half-closed, ancient blood still drying along the cut at his hand.

I sat in the middle of it all, the quiet pulling tight around her throat. My body still trembled with residual magic—mine and theirs tangled like a curse. I should have felt victorious. Instead, my veins sang with something hungry and unholy.

I was afraid to close my eyes.

But exhaustion didn’t ask for permission. It took me.

And then the darkness began to breathe.

The dream wasn’t soft.

It came on like drowning. One moment I stood in my chamber, the next I was submerged in thick shadow that smelled of smoke and decay. The floor beneath me vanished. My body lifted and drifted through the black, weightless, suspended in an air that shimmered like liquid mercury.

Then came the voice.

“Little devourer.”

It was velvet and gravel, familiar in the way that nightmares always are—ancient, seductive, cold.

“Maldric,” I breathed, though my voice was soundless in the void.

Something moved behind me. Not footsteps. Presence. The kind that prickled along the back of my neck and crawled beneath my skin. I turned, and there he was—no longer the frail figure locked beneath the academy.

He was beautiful in the way only something damned could be—obsidian skin streaked with crimson light that pulsed beneath like molten veins, eyes like twin eclipses. His mouth curled, and every shadow in the dream leaned toward him.

“You called me,” he murmured.

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, but you did. Every time you touched power that wasn’t meant for you. Every time you stole from them.” His voice slithered around me, dark and melodic. “You’ve been opening doors, Isadora. You just didn’t know who would walk through.”

The air around her trembled. Sound distorted—whispers layered atop whispers, echoing in impossible directions.

“Get out of my head.”

He laughed softly. “This isn’t your head anymore. This is your soul.”

The words made my chest tighten. I felt the ground shift beneath my bare feet—stone forming out of nothing. When I looked down, I stood in the scriptorium, or what was left of it. Shelves towered above, twisted and blackened as if fire had eaten the books alive. Candles dripped blood instead of wax. In the distance, I could hear a low, trembling melody—a woman humming a lullaby I didn’t remember ever knowing.

Maldric stepped closer. His presence pressed against my mind, his magic brushing along my senses like invisible hands. I shuddered. It wasn’t touch—something worse. Understanding. He saw everything: the way I feared myself, the guilt of what I’d done to the boys, the part of me that had enjoyed it.

He smiled as if he’d found a secret. “You think yourself their savior, little devourer. But what if you’re their ruin?”

“Stop—”

“You drain them. You feed on them. And still they adore you. That’s not salvation, Isadora. That’s consumption.”

The shadows around them pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat. Each thud louder. Sharper. The air was thick with magic and hallucination. I could almost see the vibrations—silver threads weaving from my body into the dark.

He reached out his hand, fingers long and clawed, glowing faintly with ember light. “Come below with me. Where the truth of you won’t be hidden. You were never meant to belong to the light.”

My throat constricted. The air was alive with whispers—voices layered over voices, chanting my name, pleading and commanding in equal measure. My knees buckled beneath the pressure. I could feel something tearing—like a thousand invisible hands trying to pull me into the void.

A scream built in my chest, trapped between terror and fury.

“No.”

Maldric’s expression softened with something almost like pity. “You’ll come willingly, when you’re done pretending.”

The shadows lunged for me, mouths open, their sound a thousand overlapping cries. I stumbled back—my body heavy, my lungs filled with smoke. Light fractured across my vision—gold, blue, violet—and I could taste metal on my tongue.

He stepped closer, lifting a blade made of smoke and fire. The air around it hissed, dripping molten shadow.

“It’s mercy,” he said. “To take you with me, before you unravel them all.”

The world narrowed to the burning tip of that blade.

And then—something in me snapped.

The fear inverted. It became something sharp and blinding, an instinct older than my name.

Light erupted from my palms, pure and violent. It wasn’t gentle sunlight—it was celestial fire, holy and ravenous. The dream shattered at its touch, the walls of the scriptorium splintering into shards of gold and ink.

Maldric screamed—not in pain, but in rage.

“You think this makes you pure?” he roared as his form began to unravel. “You can’t change what you already are, Isadora!”

I didn’t answer. I let the light swallow him whole. Then, before the silence could settle, I reached into the collapsing dark and pulled at it—my shadows, obedient and trembling. They coiled around my like armor, twisting into a sigil, binding his fading presence and dragging it into the void where it belonged.

The light met shadow, searing through the dreamscape in a violent, celestial collision.

And then—nothing.

I woke gasping.

My body was drenched in sweat, the sheets tangled around her legs. The room was dim, candlelight flickering weakly, shadows long and trembling across the stone walls. The boys were still asleep—untouched, unaware.

But something felt different. The air hummed faintly, alive with lingering power. My skin glowed faintly beneath the moonlight streaming through the window—soft pulses of silver racing along my veins like lightning under glass.

Isadora lifted a shaking hand. The air responded.

Shadows bent toward me like they were bowing.

My stomach churned with a sick, heady mix of fear and euphoria. I had banished him—Maldric—but at a cost. He had touched my mind, my magic. I could feel the echo of him humming beneath my ribs like an infection.

My gaze drifted to the sleeping figures around me. Rhett’s brow furrowed even in rest. Kai’s light flickered faintly. Lucian’s chest rose and fell in steady rhythm. Silas’s hand twitched once, as if reaching for something.

I wanted to weep. Instead, I whispered into the quiet:

“I won’t let this take you.”

My voice trembled. The promise wasn’t to them—it was to myself.

Outside, thunder rolled again across the mountains, shaking the ancient windows of the academy. The storm had returned.

And this time, it felt personal.

When I closed my eyes again, I swore I could hear Maldric’s voice—faint, almost tender, buried in the sound of the rain.

“You can banish me, little devourer.

But you cannot banish what you are.”

My heart stuttered. The candles flickered violently—one by one, they went out.

Darkness claimed the room.

And somewhere beneath the academy, far below the scriptorium and the sleeping boys, something ancient smiled in the dark.