The Tomb of the Devourer was silent, heavy, and endless.
Half-mad with exhaustion and fear, I stumbled forward, feeling my way through damp tunnels and crumbling stairs. Without torchlight or a moonlit sky, the tomb gnawed at me, flooding me with its ancient scent and eternal dark. The walls were strange, thrumming with a soft vibration that made the space feel alive, somehow. As though it had been waiting for me all along.
As though it wasn’t just the Tomb of the Devourer but my tomb, my grave.
This is what it must feel like to be buried alive.
I swallowed back tears, coughing as I breathed the dusty air. Where was the Shadow Bringer? He was nowhere in the silence, the dust, the rotting stone. My hand searched the walls for a clue, a sign, something —when I tripped into something dry and rattling.
Bones.
As the sound echoed off the walls, I waited, silent, fully expecting that the Shadow Bringer would reveal himself. When he didn’t, when minutes—perhaps hours—passed, my only companions, darkness and two skeletons, mocked me.
Maker, help me.
I paced around the chamber, dragging my hand along the walls for support as I went. The movement reminded me of when I first entered the Bringer’s castle; encased in darkness, it wasn’t until my eyes adjusted that the space had revealed itself. But there were no lights here. No gilded chandeliers or candelabras, no mirrors by which candlelight could reflect. Still, there had to be a door or a passageway somewhere.
“You can appear any time now, Shadow Bringer,” I said, my voice higher in pitch than I had intended it to be. I tried to ignore the rising fear that Mithras had lied—that the Bringer wasn’t here at all and I was alone, doomed to rot by myself in this pit of darkness.
I clung to the stone, slowing my breathing and counting to ten.
No.
The Bringer was here, somewhere. In the dark, in the cold, in the shadows—this prison was his, and he was within. I pulled my arms in tight, fighting the cold seeping into my dress. The vibration, the steady thrum of power, was back, this time closer and warmer than before. It hummed steadily under my fingertips, calling me to the center of the tomb’s innermost wall. Here the stone felt different—as though it were made from a different material altogether. Curious, I traced a finger over the stone, flinching as my hand passed through. The stone parted like dust or smoke, swirling apart in a curtain of long, sweeping tendrils. I inched my hand forward, shivering as the substance lapped against my wrist, forearm, elbow.
Then, as though the substance was alive, it grabbed my arm and pulled.
I shrieked, mortified as the tendrils passed over me in a quick, freezing blast. It was like jumping into a pond on a summer night—slipping under a crust of warmth, leftover from the sun’s scorching heat, to reach the darker, colder depths below.
I pushed up against the hidden chamber’s floor, scrambling to get my bearings. The space was surprisingly vast; my own home could fit within it five times over, and I still couldn’t see past the shadows that obscured its edges. Stonework arched overhead, curling into a central orb that glowed silver and steady. A slab of obsidian sat underneath the orb, as if patiently awaiting a sacrifice, and thousands of small, quivering flecks illuminated the cavernous ceiling beyond, mimicking stars.
It didn’t take me long to find the Shadow Bringer.
He sat against one of the twisting, arching stones, leaning back with his neck exposed. From his wounds spun a thick, meandering smoke, crystallizing as it drifted up toward the orb. One of the deepest cuts—an ugly, unforgiving gash across his shoulder—gave off the blackest substance, trailing over his skin and tangling in his pale hair.
A beautiful and haunted man indeed.
“End it,” he said to me, his voice echoing strangely in the cavernous space. His eyes were less hollow, cheeks less sunken—but his spirit seemed emptier. “That’s why they brought you to me, isn’t it? End it. I will let you.”
A sound of disbelief escaped my lips. “I’m not here to kill you. I would have, once. But not now. Not like this.”
“Why not? Do you no longer see me as the monster you’ve been taught to fear?”
Not like I once did, no.
“I see you as a necessary evil,” I said simply. It was a cold truth and perhaps not the entire truth, but the Bringer did not so much as flinch. “You harbor demons that would overrun Noctis otherwise. So no, I can’t kill you. But I still don’t know the full truth behind Corruption and how to stop it. Until that becomes clear, I can’t trust you.”
“So, not a monster but a tool.” He let loose a sigh. It was the only sign he was even breathing. “Leave, Esmer. You don’t belong here.”
“I can’t. They sealed the entrance.”
His mouth tightened. “You should have escaped while you could.”
“We almost killed the Light Bringer . Mithras threatened to—” I bit my cheek, changing my mind. He didn’t need to know about my family or my weaknesses. “You can try to drag me out of this tomb yourself if you don’t believe me, but it would be pointless. We’re sealed here together now. This is my punishment.”
“Punishment,” the Bringer echoed, as if it were a question.
“Being here.” I motioned wildly at the strange, starlit cavern. “With you.” I pointed at the Bringer, at his swirling, equally strange eyes. “That’s my sentence. My punishment from the Light Legion is to be caged indefinitely in the Realm.”
The Bringer stood to his full height, and that strange, dark smoke rippled around the lines of his body. Within a blink he was looming over me. “And what do you know about life spent in a cage?”
“I know enough,” I said, meeting his eyes as evenly as I could. Maybe it was exhaustion, but I did not feel fear when I looked upon him. “A lifelong sentence of Absolver duty to Norhavellis and never being able to leave the village. Corruption destroying families and rotting out the eyes of those too young to even know why. Not having a choice—or the power—to say no to those with—” I stopped, frustrated at the emotion rising up my throat.
“My mother once told me that a caged life is like being a wolf confined to some desolate, enclosed space,” he began, threading his fingers through some of the shadows that rose from his injuries. “You snarl and howl, desperate to sink your teeth into something tangible, but you have no way to explore the vast wilderness just outside your reach.” He made a fist, squeezing a thread of shadow until it broke apart. “You can almost feel the earth beneath your feet or the wind on your skin, but you’re trapped. You ache for the wild unknown, where the rest of your life—every possibility, every hope for the future—waits, but you can’t move.”
So, he had a mother. The tales never told of such a possibility—never humanized him at all.
“I’ve felt that way before,” I admitted. “I desperately wanted to escape my life for something better, but I never could. And now I have nothing.” I brushed my hand across a shadow as it moved to touch my shoulder. “It’s a horribly accurate comparison.”
“It is, isn’t it? Ironically, my mother used to make that comparison to encourage me to dream. Whenever I was facing something challenging in reality, she’d tell me to escape to the Realm and let the Weavers guide me.” He looked away, swallowing hard. “If only she knew I’d spend most of my life not even having the choice.”
“Did your mother pass before you were locked away, then?”
He nodded. “My mother and father both died when I was a child. They never knew what I would become. And now you’re here facing the same fate.” His eyes snapped to mine. “I told you to run.”
“Even if I managed to outrun the Light Legion, I wouldn’t be free. They would have hunted me down and made my family suffer all the more because of it.”
He clenched his fists. “Then I should do more to ensure they don’t.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And what, exactly, does more mean?”
“It means exactly what you’re thinking.”
“Kept them sleeping, then?”
A smile tugged at his lips. “If that’s the only trick you think I’m capable of, then I clearly need to do more demonstrations.”
He was suddenly too close, too overwhelming. Had the Shadow Bringer been a normal man, I would have felt the heat diffusing from his skin. He searched my eyes, breath hitching at whatever he found in them, then spun on his heel to walk to the obsidian slab, pieces of his ragged clothing sliding across the floor.
“What is that?” I asked, following.
“A means to an eternal slumber,” he answered. The slab, its edges curling upwards, was surprisingly pliant to the touch, its surface reflecting the light from above. “It anchors you to the Realm, but being physically tethered alters you. It distorts the mind over time and shatters memories—all while its bearer lies comatose.”
I nodded. “I was taught that the Weavers took precautions against such a fate. They’d periodically wake so they wouldn’t lose themselves to the Realm.”
In the tales, the Weavers rose from their sleep to attend the most extravagant and pivotal moments in Noctis’s history. They were there for the crowning of kings and victories in war. They were honored guests at city-wide celebrations, deity-like in the fanfare they caused. Though waking from the Realm was a risk—it made them mortal and perceptible to death and aging—they were protected and beloved by the people.
Until Corruption.
“Weavers be damned,” the Bringer growled. “For centuries I lied upon this stone, waiting for a release that never came. Death would have been preferable.”
A shiver coursed unbidden through my skin. He was locked within his castle in an eternal sleep for centuries . I couldn’t imagine what he had lost during those years—what he had forgotten. I shuddered to think what I, too, would lose or forget if Mithras chose not to release me.
“Do you honestly believe you were wrongly imprisoned?” I asked, lowering my voice. It felt like I was asking something forbidden. “Only your wickedness is recorded in the tales. There’s no trace of goodness there.”
The Bringer placed his forehead into the palm of his hand, clenching his jaw as though he were in physical pain. “Threads of memory, broken moments in time—that’s all I have. And they don’t always tell me what I’ve lost or what life was like before. But I feel a deep hatred toward the Weavers and Mithras. That I do know.” He looked at me again, long and hard, as though he were considering an unspoken decision. “I slept here for centuries as my soul withered. Perhaps I was good once, and perhaps I can change Noctis’s fate, but there’s nothing good or worthy in me left. You need to understand that.”
Something didn’t feel right. It was in his eyes; in the way they shifted, lowering.
“You look as if you could use some rest,” he murmured, his voice a soft caress. His words felt like silk or velvet—a deep, rumbling purr. “Come, lie on this stone and let me ease your burdens.” His words had an irresistible pull, and I found myself surrendering to the exhaustion that was weighing me down. As I lay on the slab, the stone seemed to soften and embrace me, easing away my weariness.
I nodded in agreement, thanking him.
Didn’t I?
I sighed, my eyes heavy and warm. I couldn’t remember.
“You’re all that I have left,” I whispered. “Do you know that?”
The Bringer leaned over me, lips a breath from my own. “That isn’t true.”
“But it is,” I breathed. Tears ran down my face, bubbling up from where I had suppressed them earlier. “And it is heartbreaking.”
I felt a hand—is it a hand or his shadows? —slide around the nape of my neck, threading my hair with long, cool fingers. I shivered, leaning into him as he held me, and marveled at the new shade of darkness spinning around us. I reached out to touch it, to see what it felt like—and realized it was rippling from my own skin.
What is this? I thought I asked. What is this coming from my body?
But my eyes were heavy again—the stone so soft and welcoming.
Something brushed my temple, my wrist.
And then I felt no more.
