Falling Shadows

Brax³ corners Raven¹ in the living room after the rescue. He extends a finger, watches it turn to stone-gray, and sharpens the nail to a point. Then he drags it across his own forearm, drawing blood. Heal me, he demands. She refuses.

He digs deeper, blood trailing down his arm, repeating the command. The other Bishops watch in tense silence. When a knock at the front door interrupts (Leila⁶ arriving for the party), Brax³ refuses to relent. Finally, Raven¹ cracks. She cannot heal him because she has no magic at all. She is a Void.

The admission hangs in the air, raw and exposed. To her shock, none of them recoil. Creed⁵ suggests her condition may be due to Shadowmoor's magical suppression rather than innate deficiency. The possibility that she might not be powerless after all takes root.

Professor Burton announces a surprise Gauntlet week for all years. The arena pit contains a siren whose song lures victims close before rows of teeth tear them apart. Third-years go first: a girl named Taryn dies horribly, ripped apart in the water while students watch in horror.

Sebastian⁷ dispatches his siren with lightning magic, smug and victorious. When first-years begin on Thursday, Eldon² burns his siren to ash with fire magic. Zane⁴ is bitten badly but turns invisible and crushes his siren with a boulder.

Creed⁵ psychically forces his siren to attack itself in a gruesome display. Brax³ turns entirely to stone, grows to colossal size, and crushes his siren like an insect. Through it all, Raven¹ watches from the stands, calculating her odds as a powerless Void against a magical monster designed to kill.

When Raven's¹ name is called, she descends into the pit certain she will die. But Brax³ grabs her arm as they pass on the steps and whispers cryptic instructions: moss in her ears, left boulder stack. Inside the pit, she finds the moss and stuffs it into her ears, muffling the siren's deadly song.

Racing to the left boulder formation, she discovers it has been secretly weakened, cracked and ready to collapse. As the siren's blond hair flashes through the rising water, Raven¹ throws her entire body against the compromised stone.

The boulder crumbles, crushing the monster. Water drains. She survives. When she searches the stands for Brax³ afterward, he refuses to look at her, refuses her thanks, storms away. He helped her, but cannot bear to acknowledge it.

At the post- Gauntlet gala, Raven¹ endures a miserable dinner seated between Sebastian⁷ and Finn,¹¹ while her parents smile across the table as if their forced suppression removal never happened. Eldon² rescues her, taking her to meet his warm-hearted mother and Zane's⁴ father, a high-ranking Monarchy member.

As they prepare to leave, Eldon's² eyes slam shut. A vision consumes him: a pink-feathered raven¹ stands on a chessboard amid a storm. A single bishop piece³ falls. The raven¹ nudges it with its claw, rolling it until it stands upright again.

The moment the bishop³ reconnects with the board, the raven's¹ feathers turn black. Eldon² jots the vision in his notebook, shaken. Later that night, back at the house, a drinking game escalates into a shared sexual encounter between Raven,¹ Eldon,² Zane,⁴ and Creed.⁵ Brax³ leaves partway through, unable to watch.

During a lake trial where students are paired on watercraft, Professor Fitch assigns Brax³ and Raven¹ together. She drives while he sits behind her, civil for once, and she asks about his busted knuckles. He admits he hit Sebastian⁷ for information about her whereabouts.

When she thanks him, the dam breaks. Brax³ lists everything he hates: how she gets under his skin, how she makes him terrified, how fast she has him under her spell, how much he wants her. He orders her to run when they reach shore. She bolts for the house, and he hunts her down.

Catching her inside, he pins her to the wall, slices off her wetsuit with a stone-sharpened nail, and claims her with raw intensity. Afterwards, when the other Bishops find them through the shattered patio door, Brax³ simply states he is not done with her yet.

Sebastian⁷ collects Raven¹ from class and delivers her to the medical center, where Abel⁸ and Evangeline⁹ wait with a strange old man. They reveal the truth: when Raven¹ was a toddler, her paternal grandparents hired a seer who examined both children's latent magic.

The seer saw something in Raven¹ so powerful, so dangerous to the realm's power structures, that her grandparents ordered the magic suppressed immediately. The black star mark on her temple was the seal. Abel⁸ has now arranged for its removal despite Raven's¹ protests.

She screams and fights as her father⁸ uses his own magic to hold her immobile while the healer works. When she wakes later in her bedroom, the suppression is gone. Her mother's⁹ astral projection later warns her to trust no one, not even family, because what the seer saw makes her a target for those who would either kill her or use her.

With Gauntlet training now added to the curriculum in simulator mode, first-years enter the arena in groups. Raven's¹ group faces a griffin: half lion, half eagle, golden feathers glinting despite the dim light. While the others prepare to attack, something pulls Raven¹ forward.

She walks toward the massive creature, ignoring her friends' shouts, and reaches up to stroke its beak. The griffin croons and nuzzles into her stomach. Professor Figgins,¹² watching from above, declares with delight that Raven¹ has found herself a familiar. The griffin's name comes to Raven¹ instinctively: Ari.

Figgins¹² explains that spirit familiars are rare and powerful bonds, and she promises to release Ari from the Gauntlet so Raven¹ can formally meet him. For the first time, Raven¹ has tangible proof that she is not void of magic. Something in her called to this creature, and it answered.

A class trip to the Shadowmoor outpost begins under grim skies. The outpost is bleak, bloodstained, perpetually dark, a suicide posting where guards die namelessly. As groups tour the west tower, explosions rock the stonework. Trolls assault the outer walls while men in forest-green cloth and faceless hoods breach the interior.

Raven¹ is knocked unconscious by falling debris. Zane⁴ carries her to a rear building with Finn,¹¹ Creed,⁵ Eldon,² and Brax.³ Finn¹¹ heals her head wound, but before they can escape, the faceless attackers burst through the door.

Finn¹¹ is run through and killed instantly. The Bishops fight desperately but are outmatched. When Raven¹ regains consciousness on the desk, she sees Brax³ turn to stone too late. A curved blade pierces his back. His body crumples. His summoned sword vanishes from existence, confirming death.

Raven¹ drops to her knees beside Brax's³ body, a wail tearing from her throat. She screams his name over and over, the sound building until it becomes something more than grief. The flames crackling through the room freeze mid-flicker. The smoke hangs motionless. Everything stops. Even the attackers pause, disoriented by the impossible stillness. Then Ari's answering cry rings through the air.

The griffin has come. Eldon² and Zane⁴ use the distraction to cut down the remaining enemies while Creed⁵ dispatches the last one. But Raven¹ sees none of this. She is bent over Brax's³ chest, her forehead pressed to his, her scream still vibrating in her throat. Then she hears it: a heartbeat. Brax's³ mismatched eyes, one brown and one green, blink open.