Book One – Chapter 13

Midnight halted, staring. In that fraction of a second, the bending phantom presences of light caught up with her sudden stillness. It was a brief but crucial lapse in her stealth. The voltera’s head snapped in her direction, his eyes locking onto the faint shimmer of the emerging orb of light. Above, the wizard stirred, his head lifting, eyes bloodshot and hollow, yet filled with a sudden awareness for the darkness that had long surrounded them.

Midnight’s essence compressed, the flickering edges of her darkness coiling in on themselves as the bending light twisted and writhed around her, burning away what belonged to her, consuming her presence. The raw energy of the storm and snow surged around and swept through her, creating their very own cocoon of chaos around the ravenous orb of gold that engulfed her. Yet, Midnight lingered, suspended between the onslaught of the elements, the devouring light, and the violence unravelling below.

This moment of stillness was not hers alone — it extended to the monstrous voltera and his companions. The wizard atop the beast strained his gaze upward. Though sunken and glazed with sickness, his eyes still held a last fragment of sharpness, revealing the remnants of a once-mighty force. Frail and ravaged by disease, his body trembled, yet a sensibility lingered in his expression, as if he could see beyond the growing orb of radiance. He had not grasped all that she was, but something within Midnight, something of her drew his attention. His gaze followed her, even as she shifted between nearby ledges, momentarily evading the revealing fragments of light —

The artefact.

It was the voice that spoke for her which suddenly revealed the source of her exposure; the sigil ring gave her away. Though a relic that transcended both the Material and the Alladharian dimensions, it had magical ties to both. In that regard, it was the only tangible part of the nothing that was her, latched onto her net of darkness. Ethereal yet potent, its presence both elusive and undeniable, the ring anchored Midnight’s existence in this world of matter and Rothar.