Page 20 of Shackled By Shadows

I stumble back a step, my mind reeling. The pieces don’t fit they can’t fit.

Before I can press him, before I can demand answers, the trees thin, and we emerge from the dense cover of the forest into a wide clearing, and the breath I didn’t realize I was holding escapes me in a shaky rush.

The air here is cooler, touched by the scent of moss. The ground softens beneath our feet. And there, sprawling before us, is the world.

A sheer cliffside drops away suddenly, revealing a vast valley bathed in the pale glow of the setting sun. Jagged peaks pierce the horizon, their snow-capped summits catching the last golden light. The sky stretches wide and endlessly, brushed with fading hues of violet and rose.

For a heartbeat, the weight in my chest lifts. The horizon whispers of freedom. Of possibilities.

But the echo of Oberon’s words pulls me back, That door wasn’t left open by mistake.

I turn to him, the view forgotten. “Why?” My voice is quieter this time, but no less demanding. “Why me? If you could have let me go, why bring me here? Why not let me run?”

He holds my gaze, and for the first time, there is no teasing smile. No smirk. Only something raw, something I’m not sure I want to name.

“Because you wouldn’t have made it,” he says, voice steady but low. “And because—” He hesitates, just for a second. But I see it. “—I wasn’t ready to let you go.”

Chapter eleven

Price Of War

I don’t understand what I am looking at.

The sight before me feels like a terrible wound cut across the fabric of the world, a jagged trench dividing the Dark Realm from the Light. Yet both realms, now twisted beyond recognition, feel equally foreign. The Dark Realm has never been a place of beauty, always sorrowful in comparison to my Realm, but this . . . this is something else entirely.

The land is scorched and barren, the once-lush forests reduced to smoldering stumps, their skeletal remains casting long, eerie shadows over the ashen ground. In the distance, mountains loom, their bases cracked and blackened, deep scars running through the earth as far as the eye can see.

What was once the heart of the Dark Realm seems to have turned against itself, as if the land has grown weary of its own bitterness and burned away in its own fury.

Far beyond the devastation, small villages cling to existence, their chimneys puffing out thin trails of smoke, faint, fragile signs of life amid the ruin. But even as I focus on them, a sickening weight settles in my chest. It wasn’t just my world the King destroyed.

He destroyed everything. Every village. Every Kingdom. Every Realm.

The devastation stretches far beyond anything I have ever known or feared. The enormity of it strikes me in waves, a suffocating force pressing down as the realization takes hold. His greed and madness haven’t just shattered my realm. They tore apart every last shred of hope.

I strain to see through the dimming light, my eyes searching for something, anything that still feels familiar. But there is nothing. This is a world forgotten by light, where even the most resilient forces have been worn down into nothingness. My breath catches as my legs buckle beneath me, and I collapse to my knees, unable to stand beneath the weight of it all. Tears blur my vision as I try to comprehend the full extent of what I am seeing. It is worse, so much worse, than I ever imagined.

The rivers that once shimmered under the sun have withered into cracked, empty beds. The forests that stood tall, their green canopies stretching toward the sky, are now husks of blackened wood, their branches twisted in agony. The towns are ghosts, their broken structures reduced to rubble and memories.

The realm I once called home, vibrant, thriving, full of life, has been hollowed out, turned to dust. I once feared the Dark Realm and its endless shadows. But now, the true horror has settled in.

My world has become no different, a wasteland, scarred and broken, hollowed out from within.

The pain twists deeper, a raw, jagged ache that has nothing to do with the physical wounds I suffered but with the loss of everything I have ever known.

What have I been fighting for? What have I been running toward? There is no refuge anymore. The sight of my ruined home so stark against the empty land of the Dark Realm feels like a betrayal, a reminder that no matter where I run, no matter how far I try to go, this devastation is inevitable.

The earth beneath me seems to mourn the loss as much as I do, the weight of its sorrow pressing down on me until I think I might crumble. This is the price of war.

The price of everything. And it is unbearable.

I sit there, the sobs wracking my body, my throat tight with the weight of everything I have just seen.

My voice breaks as I try to speak, raw and barely audible. “What is this place?” I manage to choke out, the tears blurring the devastation before me.

Oberon doesn’t immediately answer, but the softness in his eyes catches me off guard. His expression, usually so composed, is tinged with something I can’t quite place, sympathy? No, it can’t be that. He kneels beside me, the weight of his presence a steady, grounding force against my turmoil. “The edge of both worlds,” he replies, his voice quieter than usual, almost reverent in the stillness that hangs between us.

I can’t pull my eyes away from the scorched horizon. The land that was once mine is now reduced to a fractured ruin. I blink hard, trying to swallow the grief that feels like it will swallow me whole.