Book One – Chapter 10

Midnight felt the mountain. She felt it so much stronger than her bond with her wizard. She also sensed that the witch runes were keeping the sprites at bay. Throughout the fight, they had not once descended to the ground. Even now, they hovered noticeably above Midnight’s level, reluctant to come closer — Because they could not. The witches had erected a barrier to confine all living beings within the mountain. They contained even ethereal beings like the sprites, preventing them to approach both the runes and the mountain’s outer walls that framed this cavern, but they could not confine the essence of darkness that was Midnight.

Midnight glanced up at the sprites, conveying through her gaze and posture there was nothing to gain from her.

There was, however, one thing she still needed to retrieve from the mountain: the two messenger strings. During the fight, the shadebeast had torn them off her and flung them aside. She found them just a few leaps away, lying flat on the ice at the edge of the wall, with both rings still attached. As Midnight lowered her head to pick them up, something caught her senses. In front of her face, right where her strings had landed, the rock wall bore claw marks. Midnight discerned them below the fractured ice. They seemed to trace individual rock fragments, defining their outlines.

Discarding the Rings of Light but holding onto the strings, the darkness that was Midnight seeped into the small cracks, past the ice and through the rock. She remained unaffected by the witch magic.

   
We will wait your return, silent one
Your dark existence has just begun

    
The words were distant whispers, reduced to two singular voices that faded along with the presence of the sprites. Shortly after, the last echoes within the grand ice cavern vanished, carried away by the eternal breath of the mountain. To many beings born or brought into darkness, the Albweiss gave their last breath, but the silence that was Midnight seeped through the cracks. With her, she carried three messenger strings and a grand beast-wizard sigil ring.