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The wizard’s death was a cessation of essence so faint that Midnight felt almost nothing as its finality rippled through the darkness. His convulsing form fell still within the inert shelter of the immobilised golem’s embrace. There was no burst of energy, no last surge of essence to mark his passing — only the quiet extinguishing of a life burned away by its own desperation. And with his death, the golem, though still imprisoned by the orichs’ seal, became an empty construct. Devoid of the essence that had fuelled its movements, it knelt motionless, a towering monolith bereft of will.
The frosthearts embedded within the stone prison pulsed faintly. Scattered across the interior walls, they fed tenuous threads of energy into the magical lattice that held the golem captive. Each pulse of dim light sent shivers through the threads. The web of containment hummed faintly, a structure of magic that consumed as much as it constrained.
Midnight turned her attention outward. Her darkness slipped through the seams of the seal, unfurling like smoke across the mountain. She sought the world outside the forhardened prison, the movements of the orichs.
They descended down to the Snowtrail with a deliberation that exposed their exhaustion. These fighters, who had commanded such imposing power mere moments ago, now hunched and sagged under the strain of their victory. Subtle tremors betrayed their fatigue as they navigated the steep descent. There was no triumph in their expressions, no exultation in their gait. Midnight saw no elation, only the cold resolve of strategists who had always known the outcome of the fight they started. These were not warriors revelling in hard-fought glory, but trappers, their grim satisfaction rooted in precision rather than passion. They had fought not for pride but for purpose, they had orchestrated their trap not with fervour but with calculated ruthlessness, and their victory was as methodical as it was inevitable. Even now, as they approached their prey, their every movement reflected caution.
And then, T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n rose.
Unlike the measured grace of the mother moon, or the distant vigilance of the stars, T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n moved with disconcerting speed. Where Sey was an elegant wanderer, he was a colossal force that swept the sky like an harbinger of bad omen. People called him a moon, but that was a misnomer born of desperate simplification. He lacked the serene surface of Sey, the crimson brilliance of Burs, or even the faint promise of something tangible. T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n was of such profound blackness that not even the midnight stalkers beasts could discern a structure or surface. T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n might as well have been a gaping hole in the fabric of the sky, a void masquerading as celestial. This unrelenting otherness was too unsettling, too incomprehensible for mortal minds to endure, and so they called him the witch moon.
As T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n‘s veil spread across the Albweiss, it brought true darkness. The reflective brilliance of ice and snow, the faint glimmers of the scattered frosthearts, even the subtle pulses of lingering magic dissipated into darkness. T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n brought not the familiar darkness of night, where Sey cast her pale glow upon the world, but an absolute erasure of light. He swallowed not just the light of stars and Sey’s watchful glow, but everything from the erratic flashes of lightning that tore through the storm skies to every last glimmer of fire on earth. His rise was absolute.
Midnight felt the veil immediately, as though the fabric of the mountain itself had shifted beneath her. The light that formed around her whenever she ceased to move vanished entirely. Relief washed over her, intense and instantaneous, like a deep exhale after holding her breath far too long. But the sensation did not stop there. Midnight’s senses sharpened with a clarity so overwhelming it almost tore her from herself. The world around her expanded, not into chaos but into startling order, an intricate lattice of existence laid bare before her. This clarity was unlike anything she had ever known. Mas a midnight stalker, Midnight had always possessed extraordinary night vision, a trait that defined her kind and made her a creature of night. Where wizards, under T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n‘s veil, failed to recognise the world energies anchored in the Alladharian dimension, Midnight had been able to discerning vague outlines of her surroundings, albeit faintly, as though through looking through a distorted shroud of smoke. Sey had always anchored her, a pale but dependable compass. Even in the depths of the Albweiss tunnels, she had been able to perceive the world’s edges, however dimly.
Now, even Sey’s faint comforting presence was gone, smothered entirely by T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n‘s impenetrable shadow. Now, for the first time, Midnight was utterly immersed in darkness — and yet, for the first time, she could see everything.
This was not vision as she had once known it. It was not the conversion of light into shapes and edges. This was something far more intricate, more raw. T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n‘s rise had wiped the slate clean, covering the clutter of fragmented light and chaotic energy that had always surrounded her. The only thing that remained uncovered was essence. From one instance to the next, as the veil of the witch moon swept over her, Midnight perceived the world through essence — through the very flows and currents of existence itself.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The veil of T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n did not obscure this new sensation — no, it enabled it. The moon’s veil stripped the world of all distractions, covering the chaos of swirling energy and the distorted fragments of scattered light, and leaving behind only the purest core. It was like the stillness of air after a storm, the clarity of untouched water in the depths of the earth. Midnight’s perception cut through everything, piercing the Albweiss to its very bones.
She could feel the strong pulse of life in the orichs as they descended the Snowtrail, as well as the grand male that was their krag, their essence flickering in her awareness like flames. In contrast to them, the last remnants of the fallen ork warriors were a mere echo fading into oblivion.
But it was not just the essence of the living – of orichs, orks, and birds – that she sensed. No, something deeper revealed itself to her now. Midnight perceived essence in places she had never before known it to exist. In her limited understanding as a patherren, the mountain ranges were first an accumulation of strenuous paths and life-threatening hindrances, then a discernible entity of nature. Now, the Albweiss appeared alive in ways Minight could scarcely comprehend. Its frozen face thrummed with faintest currents of existence, webs so delicate and diffuse they were barely distinguishable from the darkness they inhabited. They were so faint that they were almost nothing, that the mountain too, was almost darkness. But close to this nothing, there was an extraordinary amount of life. It was like seeing the ripple of vibrations beneath still water, the tremors beneath a surface that appeared unmoving. These energies flowed through the Albweiss, threading through stone and snow like veins, weaving life hidden beneath its frozen exterior. Midnight could feel the faint shifts within the mountain, the way its tension an intentions crept through the Snowtrail, cracks forming imperceptibly beneath the frozen crust.
Atop all of that, the frosthearts embedded within the stone trap pulsed in her awareness, their resonance distinct, their hums steady as they fed the seal binding the golem.
Yet it was the golem that unnerved her the most. Within its massive stone body, Midnight detected an essence that felt alien, unfamiliar. It threaded through the construct like the roots of a fungal network, spreading and intertwining, knitting the stone together into something alive, yet not alive.
Was this the same existence that had so briefly touched upon her when she had been drawn into the golem? Midnight was certain it was not a remnant of the wizard. No trace of his essence lingered in this strange presence that threaded through the golem. It was something other. The threads constituted an existence, yet utterly alien — a foreign entity that wove itself through the construct like Midnight’s essence had embedded herself within the darkness that thus became of her.
More unsettling still was the nature of the stone itself. Midnight’s senses had shifted far beyond the conventional, beyond even what she had once understood through her darkness. The golem’s surface no longer felt like inert, unyielding rock but something else entirely. As disturbing as it was, Midnight was sure that it consisted of the same essence she now recognised as flowing through the Albweiss itself. The veins of the mountain and the golem’s form shared the same origin. The entire moving monolith was one big entity of raw essence. It was as if the Albweiss had lent its own being to the creation of this construct, splitting off a fragment of the mountain, an accumulated, condensed part of itself, and then shaping all that essence into something deliberate and potent.
And within that form lay the stranger existence; an intrusion that had settled and steered the construct. Midnight was sure. It was this presence, not the wizard, that had truly animated the golem, using the wizard’s life force as sustenance to enact its will. Midnight could not identify the entity, but she could feel its presence, its threads entangling the raw mountain essence. It was as though the monolith of mountain essence and this alien presence had fused but not fully merged into one existence, almost … almost —
Almost like the other one who has fused with my wizard, said the voice that spoke for her.
The moment she heard the voice, Midnight’s focus broke. She reeled, her essence unravelling into the vastness that surrounded her. No longer confined to a core that simply received impulses from her darkness, her being stretched outward, a tidal wave of sensation that swallowed the world. It was a revelation that both intoxicated and terrified her. She was everywhere, her presence diffused into the smallest cracks of the mountain, the faintest breaths of air. And yet, she was insubstantial, unmoored, the singularity of her mind unravelling and her very sense of self slipping away.
The mountain was no longer something she observed — she was becoming it. Her awareness flowed into the stone veins of the Albweiss, into the faint hum of frosthearts buried deep beneath the ice, into the residual tension of cracks forming in the Snowtrail. She was part of everything.
She was nothing becoming not.
A wave of panic surged through her. Midnight clawed her way inward, fighting to hold onto the thread of herself. She forced her focus back, retreating from the pull of the infinite. One by one, she severed her connection to all she touched: the orichs with their purposeful descent, the seal’s pulsating frosthearts, the potent mountain currents, and the essence within the golem. Each tether fell away as she focused, shrinking back into the singularity of her own mind, where there was only her. Just her. Her, and sometimes the voice.
Midnight concentrated on the sharp edges of her thoughts, on her singular purpose. The wizard was dead. Whatever this stranger existence within the golem was, it was not something she could understand now. The orichs were approaching. She let go of the vastness that threatened to consume her, pulling herself together, though the echoes of all she had perceived still reverberated through her mind. The overwhelming clarity began to recede like the tide, leaving her redefined and resolute.
Her gaze shifted to the messenger string coiled at her side. Midnight grasped it tightly, her darkness curling around its length. The string melded into her essence, affixing itself just as the beast wizard sigil ring had before. This string was not the lifeline Yves had entrusted to her; she would never risk its integrity by offering it to a stranger. The string she had handed to the beast wizard was the second messenger string, the one she had found within the ice cavern. Whatever its origin, its purpose had now changed.
If there was ever a moment to move, it was now. T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n‘s veil had blocked all light, freeing her from the radiant orb that had ever again betrayed her presence and burned against her darkness. Her heightened perception made the world clearer than it had ever been, and she felt no tether to the frozen battlefield. For her entire life, she and Yves had been instructed to stay hidden, to avoid the witching hour’s lightless grasp. But this time felt different. This time felt right. There was nothing keeping her.
Midnight began to move. Stretching herself through the darkness, she left the battlefield behind. The sealed golem, the dead wizard, the weary orichs — her purpose lay not with them. And yet, her mind was anything but silent. The clarity granted by T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n’s rise lingered like an echo, sharpening every question that captivated her attention. The wizard’s death had not come swiftly. What had driven him to fight so desperately? Had he truly believed the voltera, the golem and the avian beast were worth such sacrifice? And what was the essence she had sensed within the golem itself — the strange, unfamiliar existence woven into its stone and movements?
Midnight had always been an observer, a shadow to her wizard, slipping between the cracks of the world, unseen and uninvolved. But now, the clarity she had gained under T?????e????????_???????h????a???????????r????????????????u???????????????????n‘s veil made detachment impossible. The interconnectedness of everything she had witnessed, the threads of consequence and decision that wove through the battle, demanded her attention. Yet she could not unravel them, not here, not now —
No, she would not. The party’s fates and struggles belonged to a different web of consequence, one she would no longer entangle herself in. The wizard’s death, in the end, held no meaning for her beyond the faint interest of having observed it. What value his final message might hold, if any, was for Yves to determine.
Her duty lay ahead. The Albweiss Mountain Guild and the Barnstream Harbour Guild — the destinations Yves had spoken of with measured certainty, names weighted with rumour and reputation. They were sanctuaries for those who thrived on peril: fighters, wanderers, and adventurers who dared traverse the treacherous expanses of the eastern Midlands and Northlands. Midnight’s path led to them, driven by purpose, though she did not yet know what form that purpose would take. Among them, she might find a ship or a lead, a fragment of opportunity to serve the course Yves had set for them.--
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