ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Liam continued northeast toward Veyrhold with the forest listening around him.

The Shadow Memory Nyxie had sent him still lingered in the back of his mind, not as a complete picture, but as fragments that refused to settle neatly. Old voices drifting from wrong directions. Student tracks bending away from safer routes. Mimic lures placed not like random hunger, but like crude hands pushing scattered prey into deeper danger.

The guide had warned them that Eldervale’s threats were adapted, not ordinary. It had mentioned mimic behavior. It had explained that Choir Demons could only repeat voices they had heard before. But what Nyxie had shown him suggested something more coordinated than the dry academy phrasing had implied.

The forest did not feel alive in a simple sense. It did not breathe like a beast or watch like a person. It was quieter than that, which made it worse. Old trees pressed close with thick trunks ridged by moss and damp bark. Their roots broke through the soil in swollen knots, forcing him to choose his steps carefully. Leaves hung heavy above, dark and layered, swallowing most of the sky.

Mist clung near the ground in low sheets, never thick enough to blind him completely, but always enough to soften distance and make the space between trees feel less honest. The mineral scent in the air had grown sharper as he advanced, mixing with wet soil, decayed leaves, and the faint sourness of old animal remains hidden somewhere off the path.

Liam moved slower than before.

Not because he was afraid, but because haste would erase information.

He watched the ground and the trees with equal attention, comparing each sign against what he remembered from the Eldervale guide and what Nyxie’s Shadow Memory had already fed him. A broken branch on his right had snapped inward toward the trunk rather than outward toward the path, meaning something had pushed through from the side and then retreated. The exposed wood was damp but not darkened yet, so it had happened recently.

A patch of disturbed soil ahead showed shallow boot marks mixed with something else, thin gouges that curved too neatly to be from human movement. A predator had followed or crossed after students passed, not before. Near a low stone half-buried under moss, several leaves had been pushed aside in a pattern that suggested something had slid beneath them without fully breaking the surface.

He stopped near the stone and crouched.

No fresh blood. No scraps of uniform. No scattered supplies.

He touched the soil lightly with two fingers, then lifted them. Damp, loose on the surface, firmer beneath. No vibration. No immediate movement below. If something burrowed here, it was not close enough to react to the pressure of his touch, or it had better discipline than the Vein Crawlers described in the guide. He disliked both possibilities but accepted the first as more likely. He rose and continued.

A faint Myst shift brushed against his senses several minutes later.

He paused behind a thick trunk and waited. The change was not strong enough to be a spell or active creature output. It felt environmental, a slight thickening in the air around a lower depression where mist pooled more densely. The guide had mentioned that certain Eldervale pockets distorted sound and communication. He watched the mist’s movement, then picked a path along higher ground rather than through it. The direct route would have been faster by perhaps two minutes. Two minutes were not worth walking into a place designed to lie to the ears.

’The first danger is still arrival,’ he thought as he crossed a ridge of exposed roots. ’Not Veyrhold. Not unless everyone reaches it stupidly.’

That was the part most students would understand too late. The base mattered, but the scattered path to it was already cutting into the year. Communication could fail. Weak groups could panic. Proud groups could move too quickly. Mimic threats could use old voices to break judgment apart one frightened person at a time. The assessment had begun before command had a roof over its head, which meant the structure Sheila was supposed to lead was already being tested in pieces.

Liam knew more of those pieces now than anyone else in the year.

He was closer to Veyrhold than the rest of the second-years. He knew that not because of arrogance, but because Nyxie had stopped being merely his forward scout and had begun doing what he truly wanted her to do. She moved through Eldervale itself, slipping across shadows in wider arcs, gathering information, observing threat patterns, tracking student movement, and feeding him important fragments through Shadow Memory whenever something mattered.

Through her, he had confirmed that no second-year had died yet and no one had been forcefully extracted, though several students had already made mistakes that deserved to be recorded somewhere under the title "reasons breathing should require permission."

A group west of his path had followed a false voice for nearly ten minutes before turning back. Another farther north had overused communication insignias until the signal distortion made half of them think someone was answering from ahead. One group had split for a short search and reunited only because someone with sense had marked the return path properly. Stupid, but not fatal. Yet.

Nyxie had shown him rough locations of nearly all the scattered groups, but Liam kept only what mattered in active thought. Sheila was moving carefully from the east, slower but preserving her people. Chris was moving faster from the south with a larger group, building momentum like someone desperate to turn speed into evidence. Edith had joined Ariana and Dylan from the north, and that combination was likely far more stable than Edith’s first group had been. Around Veyrhold itself, the routes tightened, the threats thickened, and the realm’s signs became less careless.

That last part bothered him more than the student positions.

Another thing bothered him too.

He had not perceived a single academy observer.

Not through Nyxie’s wider scouting. Not through his own awareness. Not through shadow disturbances, air shifts, Myst concealment residue, or the kind of wrongness left by someone hiding too well in ordinary darkness.

The academy had said observers would be watching. Liam believed that. Thion did not make empty statements about procedure. Yet if the observers were nearby, their concealment was beyond what Liam could currently pierce, which was irritating enough. If they were farther away than students assumed, then the academy’s safety net was wider, slower, and less comforting than most of the year likely imagined.

’Either they are better than I can read,’ he thought, stepping around a patch of slick roots, ’or they are not close enough to matter when a mistake happens.’

Neither answer was pleasant.

He was not frightened by it. Fear wasted space. But he became more cautious, adjusting his assumptions. He would not act as if hidden academy eyes were positioned to intervene instantly. He would also not act as if he was unwatched. Both errors were stupid in opposite directions.

A soft flutter moved above him.

Liam glanced up.

A small shadow detached itself from the underside of a branch and glided ahead between the trees. Its form was lean and compact, shaped like something between an owl and a bat, with a narrow owl-like head, long folded wings, and feathered edges that dissolved into faint smoke whenever it turned. Along its crown, several tiny ember-like eyes glowed dully, opening and closing in patterns that made it look perpetually half-annoyed with the world. It was not built for combat. Its talons could scratch, perhaps distract, and its beak-like shadowed mouth could tear at softer targets if necessary, but using it in a direct fight would be a waste.

Its value was awareness.

Silent aerial scouting. Blind-spot watching. Reading movement through branches. Catching shifts in the canopy before danger reached Liam’s path.

Liam had named it Wing.

Mabel would have stared at him if she heard it. Charlotte would have found a way to make it sound suggestive. Dylan would probably call it inspirational and then ruin the word. Liam considered all of them wrong by default. It had wings. Wing was sufficient.

Wing circled once above him, then slipped ahead, smoke-edged feathers brushing through leaves without sound. Its vision threaded back to Liam in faint impressions, less deep than Nyxie’s Shadow Memory but immediate enough to help. Upper branches clear. Movement to the far left, too small for a threat. Old stone ahead beneath roots. Slight opening in the canopy.

Liam followed.

The forest gradually began showing signs of old civilization.

At first, it was subtle. A half-buried stone under his boot that was too flat to be natural. Then another, cracked down the middle and swallowed by roots. Soon the stones formed the remains of an old road, broken into irregular pieces and hidden beneath moss, mud, and fallen leaves. Drainage channels appeared along either side, mostly collapsed, their shallow trenches filled with black water and root fibers.

He found a broken milestone leaning against a tree, its markings worn nearly smooth but still positioned beside what had once been the road’s edge. Farther on, a low roadside wall had collapsed into a line of stones, and rusted iron markers jutted from the ground at uneven intervals, some bent, some swallowed halfway by bark where trees had grown around them.

Veyrhold’s outer territory.

He moved along the old road for several minutes, not directly on the stones, but near enough to use them as guide points without making himself predictable. Wing passed overhead and returned an impression of larger stonework ahead. Liam adjusted his path and soon saw the remains of an ancient aqueduct rising through the trees, its arches broken in several places, vines hanging from the upper channels like dark ropes. Sections had collapsed completely, but one stretch remained high enough to offer a view.

Liam studied the stonework from below.

The obvious climb was along a pile of fallen blocks near the eastern side. Too exposed. Too unstable. He circled toward a darker section where a tree had grown close enough for its branches to reach a broken ledge. He climbed quietly, fingers finding holds in bark and old stone, boots pressing into cracks where moss tried to slip beneath him. He did not use Shadow Step. He did not need it. A minor slip was not worth spending Myst or revealing a habit to any unseen observer.

When he reached the remaining upper stonework, he crouched low and moved along it until the canopy opened.

Veyrhold sat in the distance.

Liam had expected a ruin. He had expected walls, towers, damaged structures, and enough space for a hundred students to pretend they understood fortification. He had not expected the settlement to look so large.

The outer walls rose from the mist in a broken, uneven ring, damaged in several sections but still imposing. Some stretches stood tall enough to cast thick shadows across the ground beyond them, while others had collapsed into sloped piles of stone that could serve as entrances for students, creatures, or anything patient enough to climb.

Watchtowers marked the corners and gate sections, though two had lost their upper levels and one leaned inward over the wall like a tired sentinel. The main gate facing the southern road was half-collapsed, one door hanging at an angle while the other lay broken across the entryway. Mist crawled through the streets inside, slipping between buildings, pooling in courtyards, and moving around old stone like it knew the place better than any map did.

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