Page 7 of Crown of Storm and Silence
"Nesilhan," the shadow figure whispers, and the name resonates through me like a bell. "Come home."
I want to run toward him and away from him all at once. Want to remember and forget.
But before I can choose, the dream fractures. I'm falling through darkness, through memories that scatter like leaves in a storm.
I wake gasping, my nightgown soaked with sweat, the phantom taste of shadows on my lips. Outside, dawn breaks in shades of gold and rose.
I press my hands to my stomach and make a decision. Whatever my past holds, I need to know the truth. The dreams are getting stronger, the memories more insistent.
The violent poundingon the cottage door comes at dawn.
I bolt upright as Mira's urgent voice cuts through the morning air.
"Elif! Child, wake up! We need you!"
I stumble from bed, pulling a shawl over my nightgown as I rush to the main room. Mira bursts through the door, her face grim and streaked with dirt. Behind her, villagers carry two broken forms on makeshift stretchers.
"What happened?"
"Karaköy," Mira says, her voice tight. "The whole village is gone. A merchant caravan found these two crawling along the forest road at dawn. They're the only survivors."
The stretchers are set down, and I see why Mira's face holds such despair. The survivors are more dead than alive, a blonde woman perhaps my age, and an older man whose breathing comes in wet gasps. Burns cover their bodies, but not from any normal fire. These wounds are wrong—flesh blackened and cracked like charcoal, with dark veins spreading outward as if life itself has been burned and poisoned.
"Please," the woman whispers, finding my eyes with desperate hope. "Help us. You have to tell them what happened."
I kneel beside her, but something feels wrong. The air around her wounds shimmers with unnatural chill, and my skin prickles with warning. These injuries pulse with malevolent energy that makes my healing warmth recoil.
"What did this?" I ask, keeping my voice gentle despite the horror crawling up my spine.
"Shadow," she gasps. "Living shadow. It burned cold...so cold. And the screaming..." Her voice breaks. "Everyone was screaming, and then...silence.”
I press my hands to her burns despite every instinct screaming to pull away. Heat flows, but it's like pouring water uphill—my power meets active resistance, something dark and hungry that devours my healing energy. The burned flesh begins to crack and split wider under my touch, the blackened edges spreading as if the wounds are alive and feeding on my attempts to heal them.
"I don't understand," I whisper, moving to the man. His injuries are worse, deep gouges like claw marks, burned black at the edges. When I touch him, my hands actually burn with cold fire that makes me cry out and pull away.
"Something's wrong," I tell Mira, panic rising. "I can't—the healing isn't working."
For the next hour, I try everything. Every technique that felt natural with Willem, every instinct that guided me before. But whatever did this left something behind, some poison that fights against every attempt to mend what was broken.
The woman dies first, her last words a whispered warning: "It's coming. The shadow lord is coming for all of us."
The man follows soon after, his final breath carrying the scent of ash and despair.
I kneel between their bodies, my hands soaked with their blood, shaking from exhaustion and failure. The villagers stare at me with confusion and accusation, as if my inability to save them makes me complicit.
In the corner of my vision, I see Sinan in the doorway, his face grave. How long has he been there? But when our eyes meet, I see only genuine horror and concern.
"What kind of monster could do this?" someone whispers.
I look up at Mira, my face streaked with tears and blood. "I can't save them."
But even as I speak, something deep inside whispers recognition. Whatever destroyed Karaköy, whatever left these wounds that devour healing itself, some buried part of my soul knows this darkness. The shadows that feel like home in my dreams, the dark eyes that call to me across the void of my lost past...
What kind of monster indeed. And what does it mean that part of me isn't afraid of it, but drawn to it with the fatal pull of a moth to the flame?
3
The Mad Lord's Gambit
