ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Edith Roswell had landed on the northern side of Veyrhold with nine other second-year students, though calling it landing together would have been generous.

Mystica’s teleportation spell had released them across the same general region, but not in a neat circle or any arrangement that suggested the academy cared about convenience. Edith had appeared in a patch of dark forest beside a slanted stone ridge, two students crashing down somewhere close enough for her to hear their surprised shouts, while the others had been scattered through the surrounding trees and uneven ground.

The first stretch after arrival had been spent doing exactly what Headmaster Thion had warned them they would need to do. They found one another, checked for injuries, tested their communication insignias, marked separate arrival points, and tried to understand where they were before anyone decided to move too far in the wrong direction.

Compared to some groups, Edith knew they had been fortunate.

There were very few injuries. One student had bruised his ribs when he landed against a root, another had a shallow cut along her forearm from broken bark, and a third had twisted two fingers badly enough to make gripping his weapon uncomfortable, but none of it prevented movement. That allowed them to cover ground more safely than a group forced to carry or support someone with a serious wound. They had also found each other within the first half hour, which was more than some students could likely say.

But luck did not make the path comfortable.

The northern side of Veyrhold had been marked in the guide as a dangerous approach territory, especially because it overlapped with signs of two distinct Realm-Touched threats. Hollowbacks were expected in damp, root-heavy stretches where fallen timber gave them cover, and Glassmaws had reportedly been seen nearer to the broken stone ridges and mist pockets that marked the older roads.

The two threats favored different kinds of danger, but both punished careless movement. Hollowbacks hid low and struck when groups stepped over the wrong deadwood. Glassmaws used mist and reflected light to distort where they truly stood. Edith’s group had not encountered either directly, and that was the kind of luck she did not intend to mock by becoming careless.

Still, danger was not the only thing wearing down her patience.

Among the nine students with her were two Tempestian cousins, Lyra Vossane and Caed Marrow, and if Edith had believed Eldervale would be difficult before meeting the northern route’s threats, she had since learned that a hostile realm could not compete with two loyal Chris supporters given too much air and too few consequences.

Lyra was sharp-faced, dark-haired, and proud in the way some noble-adjacent Tempestian families raised their children to believe certainty was a virtue even when it lacked sense. Caed was broader, louder, and just smart enough to be dangerous when he thought he understood something.

From the first few minutes after regrouping, they had questioned Edith’s position as vice commander, her decisions, her pace, and whether she had any right to give orders when Chris Rature would supposedly have handled everything faster, better, and with less unnecessary caution.

Edith tolerated them.

Not because she enjoyed it or because their points were valuable.

She tolerated them because openly breaking the group apart in the first hours of Eldervale would hurt everyone later, and because leadership sometimes meant swallowing irritation until it could be used more cleanly.

That did not stop her from privately imagining leaving them tied to a tree with a neatly written note explaining that the forest could keep them until they learned the difference between loyalty and noise.

Now, slightly more than two hours after arrival, Edith’s group was moving south toward Veyrhold.

They had covered a decent amount of ground because of their limited injuries, but the journey had been vexing enough that several students looked more tired from listening than from walking. Edith had arranged them in a basic marching order. Two watchers kept their attention on the flanks, a quiet girl named Ilyen marked the route behind them, and a narrow-eyed boy named Oren carried the map and checked their heading whenever the canopy opened enough to reveal the sky.

Edith kept herself near the center-front, not because she wanted the place of honor, but because it allowed her to see the scouts ahead, hear the students behind, and correct problems before they spread through the group.

Lyra and Caed were the most consistent problem.

"If Chris had landed with us, we would have reached Veyrhold by now," Caed said for what Edith suspected was the seventh time, though she had stopped counting after four for her own sanity.

"No, we would not have," Oren muttered without looking up from the map. "The distance did not shrink because of his name."

Lyra ignored him. "We have stopped too many times."

"We stopped to verify markings, check terrain, and confirm direction," Edith said evenly.

"And each stop cost time," Lyra replied.

"Yes. Mistaking speed for progress costs lives."

Caed scoffed. "That sounds like something Princess Sheila would say."

Edith stepped over a thick root and continued walking. "Then perhaps listen to it twice."

A few students looked down, hiding faint reactions.

Caed did not. "This is exactly the problem. You all decided Sheila should command, then accepted you as vice, and now every decision is wrapped in caution. Chris would not waste half the morning because a path looks slightly unpleasant."

A boy near the rear, Joran, finally snapped, "Can you both shut up for five breaths? Just five?"

Lyra turned on him. "If you dislike hearing concerns, maybe you should not have agreed to follow someone ranked ninth as if rank suddenly stopped mattering."

Joran opened his mouth, then closed it, because arguing with Lyra had already proven as useful as explaining manners to a cracked bell.

Edith did not look back immediately.

She kept walking for several more steps, using the rhythm of movement to keep her voice from becoming sharper than the moment required. She could not discard them. She could not silence them by force. She could not let them continue draining the group either. Every unnecessary argument thinned attention. Every mention of Chris made some students look away from the trees and toward the debate. That was exactly the kind of stupidity Eldervale rewarded with teeth.

’Not yet,’ Edith thought. ’But close.’

They moved another stretch through the forest before the path ahead split near a cluster of half-buried stones. Oren raised one hand, and the group slowed behind him. Edith came forward carefully, studying the ground before she looked at him.

"What is it?" she asked.

Oren pointed to the first mark, carved into the side of a tree at waist height. It was an academy route marking, or at least it looked like one, angled downward toward a lower path that cut between dense roots and collapsed stone. A second mark sat several paces away on a darker trunk, partly hidden behind moss and lower branches, pointing toward a longer ridge path that curved south-southeast before dipping again.

Both looked almost identical at a glance.

They pointed in different directions.

The group became uneasy immediately.

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