Ten Shadows Technique の小説・ストーリー

One of those cursed weapons fell with him, and Mikael made a dash for it, barely avoiding another shot from the right side of the room. He stepped into one of the flickering shadows, and Jason did the same, as she watched on with wide eyes. Her own shadow by the door had disappeared when the floodlight went out, and she moved towards the stairs, to the ones they'd created. She could sense them from here, moving in and out of the moving shadows, and she felt a sense of awe. The unique signature of those shadows was continually changing as the light that cast them did, yet they made themselves alike enough to enter them in the blink of an eye, and seemed to change with them.

Chastine was frightened for his life. “I’ll be fine. Poison don’t really work well against me.” Vigilantly panting, he continued, “they must’ve sensed the shadowcasting presence from before.” “H-how?” “Beats me. You should know co'z you’re a witborn, ah!” Juste winced from his other wound, a small shrapnel embedded in his left shoulder blade. He removed it, shaking and with effort. Shadowcasting is a taboo art developed by the fellhounds. It’s akin to the dark arts that bloodhunts are capable of.

But the more I pulled, the more complicated everything became. At midnight, my phone buzzed again. *“The mirror shows what’s hidden. Look closer.”* I glanced at my reflection in the windowpane. The woman staring back at me was pale and exhausted, but her eyes burned with a quiet determination. Slowly, I moved closer, finger trailing the cold glass. And then I saw it — a flicker, subtle but unmistakable. A shadow moving just behind my reflection, a shape that didn’t belong. My heart skipped. ---

I asked. His shadows spread thin, flowing across the ground toward the nearest guard position. "Give me two minutes." We waited in tense silence while Amon worked. His ability had grown significantly since we'd started this mission, more precise, more versatile. He could separate shadows from their sources now, using them as independent tools rather than extensions of himself. The guards never saw it coming. Amon's shadows wrapped around them from behind, muffling sound and cutting off airways just long enough to render them unconscious. Four bodies dropped silently, and we moved forward.

The Interregnum hadn’t just tried to end the age of fire and sky; they’d wanted to outpace it. Which explained too much. The way the threads wove with Umbraen echoes and shards of Obscuran warding practices. The intrusive compatibility with older death magics. Even the subtle signatures of preservation sorcery woven into the outer ring, Thornveil’s signature method of encoding what shouldn’t be alive. All of it flowed together like a broken mosaic someone had tried to force back together without admitting the pieces didn’t match. Except this time, they did.

Even the cashew groves, hardy as they were, looked parched. "We can't just sit here and bake," Thane growled. He had stripped down to a simple tunic, his skin glistening with sweat. His shadow-wolf spirit was agitated, snapping at the air as if trying to bite the heat. "Let me take a strike team through the shadows. We can board the mirror-ships and break the refraction."

“And what a delicious sacrifice you present.” To his right appeared Thorne, the Prince of Shadows, with flowing silver hair that seemed to move with unseen winds, crimson eyes glowing with cunning intelligence, and a lean, predatory build covered in swirling tattoo-like marks that pulsed with dark energy. “Her scent already betrays her,” he purred, stepping closer. His clawed fingers brushed a strand of hair from my face, sending electric shivers down my spine. “Fear… and slick, sweet arousal. This one will break so beautifully.”

"It's the only way you can kill me." Sweat beaded on his forehead. As soon as she wiped the moisture from his skin, it was drenched again. As he panted and thrashed in barely contained agony, his gray eyes turned black with slivers of silver. His features were beginning to distort and she couldn't tell if it was a strange trick of the light, or if there really was a thin, oscillating shadow hovering just above the surface of his skin. The shadow grew more and more noticeable and she realized it wasn't a shadow at all. It looked like millions upon millions of tiny particles of ink all hovering and floating together in the same nebulous cloud.

Whatever the terms, it seemed to be a favorable arrangement, as The Shadows set to work with eerie efficiency. They enveloped Haven's unconscious form, and I watched in a mixture of fascination and unease as they systematically stripped her remaining memories, leaving her a shell of her former self. As they completed their task, The Shadows began to dissipate, their dark, misty forms unraveling and vanishing into the ether from which they came. As they departed, they took with them the unsettling, bone-chilling cold that had permeated the air, leaving an unsettling stillness in their wake.