LOGINThe entire camp froze.
The sentry who saw it first—the shadows of a portal dancing in fire, water, and wind—didn’t even understand what he was looking at. Only the light burned. The air trembled. Leaves fell soundlessly from the trees. There was no horn. No attack.And yet… everyone knew something had torn open.Then they saw her.The girl who had vanished into the Shadow World.The one they had mourned as lost, dead, sacrificed.Sky had rThe entire camp froze.The sentry who saw it first—the shadows of a portal dancing in fire, water, and wind—didn’t even understand what he was looking at. Only the light burned. The air trembled. Leaves fell soundlessly from the trees. There was no horn. No attack.And yet… everyone knew something had torn open.Then they saw her.The girl who had vanished into the Shadow World.The one they had mourned as lost, dead, sacrificed.Sky had returned.⸻Faith shoved through the crowd at a run. The swirl of voices—Is that her? How is that possible? That portal… was that magic?—turned to background noise. Her body moved on instinct alone. When she saw the figure on the grass, she stopped so hard her heart skipped.Sky lay in the damp green, her hair still tugged by the wind, her face smeared with dirt, thin streaks of blood on her hands.But she was breathing.“She’s breathing,” Faith whispe
The flame grew quiet inside her.It did not go out. It did the opposite. It calmed down. It no longer raged or demanded. It watched. It breathed with her. Like they had joined the same old rhythm, a shared pulse the world itself had forgotten.Sky stood still in that strange, timeless place. This was the level of the mind, where chains, wounds, and prison walls did not exist. Only truth. The deepest core of the soul. And there, in the middle of the ring of fire, under the stars… something moved.A spark. But not the magical kind.A memory.Not from the mind, but from blood.And the world began to turn backward.⸻Visions grabbed her. Not from her present. Not from her childhood. From something far older. From a time no one spoke of anymore. A time no one believed was real. An age when Earth still had another name, when the stars leaned closer to people, and magic was not a privilege, but the natural order.
Two days passed. Two long, painful days of silence, healing, and half heard whispers from the healers.Damian watched the camp through the cool dim light of the medical tent. More sunlight slipped through the canvas each day. The wind brought the smell of the forest more boldly. But inside him only one thing truly moved: determination.His body was healing, slow but steady. The magical wound was stabilized. They could not remove all the Shadow creature poison, but they kept it under control. His ribs still protested with every deep breath, and one wrong move still stabbed like lightning, but he was not a bedridden patient anymore.And that was enough.The healers were not happy when he stood up. Faith was not happy either when she heard he was leaving.“You are not well yet, Damian. Your lungs are only starting to recover, and your wound is still pulsing.”Damian only answered, “I need to speak to the commander. Now.”No
Light. Then pain. Then… absence.Damian’s body crashed heavily onto the grass as he tore through the trembling skin of the portal. The world opened around him again—but not the way it had before. The air here was cooler, more solid, more real. And yet there was no relief in it.Because someone had not come with him.He lay motionless for several seconds after hitting the ground. The pain came in crushing waves. His ribs protested every shallow breath, and the blood seeping from his chest was no longer warm—only cold and dangerous.You’re not alone.That was the last thing Sky had told him with her eyes before she pushed him through.And now… now he was here without her.Somewhere nearby, Faith’s voice broke through the ringing in his ears.“Damian!”She stumbled to her knees beside him. Lennox and Calder followed moments later. All of them filthy. Wounded. Shaken to the core.But alive.Sky was not among them.Damian groaned and tried to roll onto his side, forcing himself up, but a v
The light of the portal died out behind her.With one final tremor the world closed, the world that had meant hope, friends, Damian. In the next moment everything went dark.The ground struck her body hard. Cold, rough stone scraped her skin and seemed to tear at her memories as well. She tried to stand, but she could not even draw a full breath. Then arms reached for her. Rough. Cold. Merciless. They grabbed her and pulled her up like a rag doll. Before her body could respond she was already being dragged away, toward an unknown direction and an unknown fate.The masked figures were silent. No breath came from beneath their dark cloaks. They cast no shadows, because they were the shadow.Sky fought. She kicked and bit, but the magical shackles around her wrists and ankles turned every attempt into sharp pain. The spell binding her was unknown to her. It did not only suppress her magic. It pressed against her will.The dragon fire was still inside her. She could feel it. It wanted to
The fog was thick like a wall, slowly creeping under their clothes and sinking into their bones. The world had lost its colors. It was not black, not gray, but something undefined, twisted, empty. Sky forced herself to her feet, trembling, while the others tried to gather themselves around her. The air was stale and heavy, and every breath felt like tiny needles in her lungs.“Is everyone alive?” Damian asked hoarsely.“Barely,” Faith hissed, gripping her ankle. “This place… it wants to swallow us.”Calder knelt beside Lennox, who was still holding the shard stuck in his shoulder. His face was pale, but his eyes were alert.Sky slowly turned in a circle. The landscape shifted unnaturally, as if the entire world were an unfinished dream that never fully solidified. In the distance dark shapes flickered. At first they looked like shadows cast by nothing. Then she saw movement. They were human shaped, but distorted, with elongated limbs and smooth faces where features should have been. T







