All Chapters of The magic within : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The cloister was collapsing.Stone beams split like brittle bones, raining dust across the fighters. The breach gaped wider, every tremor in the wall shaking the mosaics loose. Light from the torches faltered, choking in the black tide of shadows that pressed forward again.“Fall back!” Maera’s second-in-command bellowed, his voice half-drowned by the shrieks. “To the crypts—go!”The survivors obeyed. Not because they trusted him, but because there was nowhere else to run.Killian heaved Daryl against his shoulder, every muscle screaming. His cousin was a dead weight, breath rasping, his skin slick with sweat that gleamed too dark in the torchlight. The shadows had marked him — Killian could feel it pulsing in Daryl’s blood as though it were his own.“Move, damn you!” Harlow snapped, shoving fighters aside to clear a path. She cut down two more shadow-lings before grabbing Killian’s arm. “Don’t stop. He doesn’t last if you stop.”The guild poured into the stairwell, boots hammer

The dark pressed close after the torches died, thick as tar, tasting of ash and old blood.For a heartbeat, no one moved. Not the guild. Not Killian. Not even Daryl, whose silver-lit eyes burned faintly like embers through smoke. The silence was the worst of it — not broken by screams, not broken by the vault’s rumble, but by nothing at all.Killian held Daryl upright, his cousin’s weight unfamiliar in his arms — heavy, cold, and somehow… deeper, as though his flesh carried more than it should. His chest rose shallowly, then still.And then the voice came.Not booming, not shrieking like the First. It was colder, smoother, carrying the weight of inevitability.“The warden grows weak. The chains fray. And you, little vessels, think yourselves jailers. No… you are the locks. And now, you are mine.”The guild erupted.Some fell to their knees, clutching at ears, their blades clattering across stone. Others raised steel in panic, eyes fixed on Daryl.Maera’s second — his voice cra

There was no stone.No crypt.No guild.Killian opened his eyes and found only ash.An endless plain of it, grey dunes stretching farther than sight, the sky above black but threaded with veins of red like wounds that refused to close. Each time the sky pulsed, the ash stirred — rising, falling, as if the whole place breathed.And in the centre of it stood a figure that was both Daryl and not.Daryl’s body sat on a throne of bone fused with shadow, ribcages woven into an arc, skulls half-buried in the ash. His eyes glowed molten silver, and every time he blinked, a shadow spilled out — smoke thick enough to choke the horizon.But it wasn’t Daryl who looked at him.It was it.“You shouldn’t be here,” the Prisoner’s voice rolled across the plain, deep enough to shake the ash beneath Killian’s feet. “This place is mine. His marrow is mine. I let you see it only so you’ll understand what you can’t change.”Killian forced his legs to move, each step sinking ankle-deep in ash that

The Guild had dispersed, but their whispers clung to the walls long after their footsteps faded.Killian sat with his back against the stone, every muscle aching. His shadow still bled across the floor, twitching and curling like smoke even though he willed it still. He hadn’t yet learned how to hide it.Daryl lay on the cot beside him, pale from blood loss but awake. His breathing was shallow, his eyes sharp. He hadn’t stopped watching Killian since the vault.For a long time, neither spoke.The only sounds were the creak of stone, the far-off drip of water, and the steady rhythm of two hearts. Not just their own — the vault’s, still echoing in both of them.Finally, Daryl broke it. His voice was hoarse, edged with bitterness.“You let it in.”Killian shut his eyes. “I didn’t let it. I fought it.”Daryl shifted, wincing. “You don’t fight a tide. You drown or you’re carried.”Killian turned his head, meeting his cousin’s gaze. Daryl’s eyes were fever-bright, but his words wer

The monastery had always breathed like a living thing, but now its breath was shallow, uneven, like a body waiting for the knife. The Guild had retreated into the lower sanctum, a cavernous hall cut into the bones of the mountain, its ceiling lost in shadow, its walls dripping with veins of iron-dark ore that seemed to hum when Killian passed too near. The air was heavy with salt and lamp-smoke, with sweat and fear that no ventilation shaft could scrub clean.Every sound carried too far. A cough on the far side of the chamber felt like it was in Killian’s ear. A muttered word might as well have been shouted. The Guild was packed tight: mercenaries sharpening blades until sparks flew, thieves whispering over smuggled escape routes, blood mages mixing draughts of stolen vitae into iron cups. And through it all, suspicion hung like a noose.Killian felt their eyes on him. Always. Not just because of what he’d done — the nobles he’d slain, the ledger he’d stolen, the shadows he commande