The Blighted Forest lived up to its name. Trees grew wrong here - trunks twisted into agonized spirals, branches reaching down instead of up, leaves that whispered without wind. The air tasted of copper and old magic, thick enough to chew. Even the destrier grew nervous, its ears constantly swivelling toward sounds that shouldn't exist.
Kaelen followed the merchant's map by touch rather than sight. Darkness here was absolute, swallowing moonlight before it could penetrate the canopy. The paths marked on the parchment seemed to exist more as suggestions than reality. Sometimes the way forward appeared only when he wasn't looking directly at it.
Three days passed in that green-black maze. Or perhaps three hours; time moved strangely beneath those twisted boughs. His supplies dwindled, but hunger seemed distant, unimportant compared to the pull of the map's destination.
On what might have been the fourth night, they found him.
The attack came without warning: shadows given substance, flowing between trees like liquid hunger. The destrier screamed, rearing as something with too many teeth latched onto its neck. Kaelen rolled from the saddle as the horse fell, his sword already clearing its sheath.
The blade met nothing but air. These weren't creatures of flesh but living darkness, immune to mortal steel. Claws raked across his back, shredding leather and skin. Another shadow-thing flowed up his legs, its touch burning cold.
He struck wildly, uselessly. For every shadow dispersed, two more emerged from the forest's depths. They played with him - cat with mouse, predator with prey. Testing. Tasting. Finding him wanting.
Weak, a voice whispered inside his skull. Not heard but felt, like ice crystals forming in his brain. Too much light still clings. Too much humanity remains.
"Then take it!" Kaelen snarled, surprising himself with the words. "Take whatever keeps me weak!"
The shadows paused, as if considering. Then they struck properly: not at his body but at something deeper. Pain beyond physical description swept through him as they began to feed.
They took his memories first. Not all; that would leave him empty, useless. But they carved away the soft parts. His mother's lullabies. His first kiss with the miller's daughter. The pride in his father's eyes when he'd been knighted. Everything warm, everything that had made life more than survival.
"More," he gasped through agony. "Take more."
They obliged. His compassion went next: every moment of mercy, every instant of empathy. The times he'd helped strangers without thought of reward. The tears he'd shed for others' pain. All of it ripped away like old bandages from wounds that needed air.
What remained felt cleaner. Purer. A blade stripped of ornamental gilt to reveal killing steel beneath.
The shadows withdrew, satisfied or perhaps sated. Kaelen found himself on his knees, shaking but oddly clearheaded. The forest looked different now: still alien but no longer entirely hostile. He could see patterns in the darkness, paths that had been invisible before.
"Impressive." The voice came from ahead, definitely external this time. "Most who meet the Hunger Shades die or flee screaming. You fed them willingly."
A woman stepped from between twisted trees. Tall, graceful despite the forest's oppressive atmosphere, with hair so pale it seemed to glow. Her robes might have been purple or black; colours shifted strangely here. Most unsettling were her eyes: violet-dark, holding depths that promised secrets worth dying for.
"Who are you?" Kaelen rose carefully, noting his sword lay within reach but making no move toward it.
"Serena Nightwhisper. Guardian of the deeper paths. Guide for those the forest deems... interesting." She circled him slowly, studying. "You're the fallen knight. The one who burns with beautiful hatred."
"You've been watching me."
"The forest watches everyone who enters. Most it devours. Some it tests. A very few it adopts." She stopped directly before him, close enough that he could smell midnight on her skin. "You fed the Hunger Shades your humanity. Why?"
"It was weakness. I need strength."
"Strength for what?"
"Revenge. Justice. To make the Council pay for what they've done."
Serena laughed: a sound like silver bells wrapped in velvet. "Justice? After what you just sacrificed, you still use that word? No, Sir Knight. What you seek is simpler and purer. You seek pain for pain, blood for blood. The mathematics of vendetta."
She was right. The shadows had taken his illusions along with softer things. What remained was single-minded purpose: hurt those who'd hurt him. Nothing more complex. Nothing more noble.
"Will you help me?"
"Perhaps. The Soulstone doesn't give itself to just anyone. You've passed the forest's first test, but greater trials await." She glanced at the destrier's corpse. "Can you walk? The paths ahead aren't meant for mounts."
Kaelen retrieved his supplies from the saddlebags. Food, water, the precious journal and toy horse. The map pulsed warmer now, almost eager. "Lead on."
She guided him deeper, following trails visible only to her eyes. The forest grew stranger: trees that bled red sap, flowers that sang discord, pools that reflected faces he didn't recognize. Sometimes they walked on solid ground, sometimes on bridges woven from shadow and nightmare.
"Tell me about the Council," Serena said as they travelled. "About what they took from you."
He told her. Not everything; the shadows had taken some memories completely. But he remembered enough. His father's execution. Marcus's murder. Lyanna's captivity. The systematic destruction of his bloodline for the crime of questioning.
"The Grand Inquisitor sounds efficient," she observed. "Using truth as a weapon, making justice serve ambition. Almost admirable if it weren't so petty."
"Petty?"
"Small. Limited. Temporal." She paused at a crossroads marked by skulls. "The Council thinks in terms of political power, worldly authority. The Soulstone offers something grander. The power to rewrite reality itself, if you're strong enough to claim it."
"And if I'm not?"
"Then you join them." She gestured at the skulls. "Each one thought themselves worthy. The stone taught them otherwise."
They walked in silence after that. Hours passed, or days; time remained fluid. Occasionally other shadow-creatures appeared, but they kept their distance, recognizing Serena or perhaps sensing what the Hunger Shades had done to him.
Finally, she stopped at what looked like an ordinary clearing. "We're close. But first, answer honestly: what did the shadows leave you? When they took your humanity, what remained?"
Kaelen considered. The question felt important, like a test with consequences. "Purpose. Anger. The will to see my enemies destroyed."
"Nothing else? No love, no hope, no connection to anything beyond revenge?"
"My nephew's memory. My sister's survival. But those drive the revenge, not temper it."
Serena nodded slowly. "Good. The pure of heart can't touch the Soulstone; it would destroy them instantly. But neither can the empty. You need enough darkness to survive its touch, enough light to give purpose to its power. You're balanced on that edge."
"So, I can claim it?"
"You can try. Whether you succeed..." She shrugged elegantly. "That depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice. The shadows took your humanity. The stone will demand more."
"Then let's find out what I have left to give."
She led him from the clearing down a path that shouldn't have existed: a stairway carved from air itself, descending into depths the forest floor couldn't contain. The temperature dropped with each step. Frost formed on his armour, ice crystals in his breath.
At the bottom lay a cavern that predated human naming. Walls of black stone wept constant moisture that never reached the floor. The ceiling vanished in darkness so complete it might have been void. And at the centre, on a pedestal of fused bone...
The Soulstone.
It didn't look like much: a sphere of dark crystal perhaps the size of a man's fist. No radiating light, no ominous aura. It might have been polished obsidian except for the way it seemed to eat the torchlight, creating a perfect sphere of absolute darkness.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Serena's voice held reverence. "Older than the Light itself. A fragment of the primordial void, given form and purpose."
Kaelen approached slowly. With each step, the temperature dropped further. His breath came out in clouds. His joints stiffened. The stone pulled at him; not physically but in ways that made his remaining soul ache.
"What do I do?"
"Take it. Hold it. Survive it." Serena had stopped at the cavern's edge, unwilling or unable to come closer. "Let it judge your worth. Feed it your pain, your hatred, your absolute commitment to vengeance. If it finds you sufficient..."
"And if not?"
She gestured at the floor around the pedestal. What he'd taken for black stone was actually glass: volcanic obsidian formed from impossible heat. Beneath its surface, frozen in their final moments, were dozens of figures. Men and women, human and otherwise, all reaching for the stone. All failing at the very last.
"Then you join the gallery."
Kaelen studied the frozen forms. Knights in ancient armour. Scholars with books still clutched in dead hands. Warriors bearing weapons from lands he couldn't name. Even what might have been a dragon, compressed to human size but retaining scales and wings.
All had thought themselves worthy. All had been wrong.
But they hadn't lost what he had. They hadn't fed darkness willingly, hadn't been carved hollow by justified hatred. The Council's cruelty had prepared him for this in ways they'd never intended.
He reached for the stone.
The moment his fingers made contact, the world exploded. Not outward but inward, reality collapsing into the singular point where flesh met crystal. Every nerve burned with cold fire. Every thought crystallized and shattered.
The stone spoke without words, questioned without language. It reached into him with tendrils of absolute dark, examining what remained after the shadows' feast.
Show me, it demanded.
He showed it Marcus. Not the living child but the corpse: small body broken by questioning, innocence murdered for convenience. The memory flayed him raw, but he pushed it forward, offering it like prayer to an alien god.
More.
His father's execution. Head separated from body while crowds cheered. A good man killed for asking questions. A lifetime of service repaid with judicial murder.
MORE.
Lyanna's screams echoing from the Tower of Questions. His own helplessness as they dragged her away. The certain knowledge that she suffered still while he wandered free.
The stone drank his pain like wine, savouring each vintage of loss. But it wanted more than suffering; it demanded commitment. The absolute certainty that he would do anything, sacrifice anyone, become anything to achieve his goals.
Would you burn the world? it asked.
"If necessary."
Would you damn the innocent?
"If they stood in my way."
Would you become the very evil you fight?
That gave him pause. Was that what this path led to? Becoming a mirror of the Council's cruelty, justifying atrocities with personal cause instead of divine mandate?
ANSWER.
"Yes," he whispered, and knew it for truth. "I'll become whatever I must. Do whatever's required. The Council made a monster; let them face one."
The stone pulsed, satisfied. Then it began to feed properly.
It took his remaining mortality first. Not killing him but changing the nature of his existence. His heart slowed, blood thickened, flesh hardened into something more and less than human. He felt his connection to the living world stretching, thinning, transforming into something altogether different.
Next went his name. Not forgotten but diminished. Kaelen Dawnblade became just sounds, syllables marking who he'd been rather than who he was becoming. Identity flowed into the stone, replaced by purpose given form.
Finally, it took his fear. Not courage, that had already fled. But the simple animal terror of death, pain, failure. Without it, nothing remained to check his actions. No survival instinct to moderate revenge. No concern for consequences that might stay his hand.
When it finished feeding, he was empty. A vessel drained of everything except directed hatred. The perfect container for what the stone offered in return.
Power flooded into that emptiness. Not the trained strength of a knight or the borrowed might of blessed weapons. This was older, darker, drawn from the void between stars. It filled his veins like liquid midnight, rewrote his bones in scripts of shadow.
The world shifted. Colours bled away, replaced by spectrums visible only to the dead. He could see the cavern's true shape: not stone but calcified suffering, every wall built from compressed agony. He could taste the fear of everyone who'd died reaching for the stone.
More changes came. Knowledge that wasn't learned but simply existed. How to call shadows into substance. How to walk between moments. How to reach into a man's chest and squeeze his soul like overripe fruit.
The stone itself began to merge with him. Not physically, it remained on its pedestal. But something fundamental shifted. He became its extension into the world, and it became his anchor to powers no mortal should touch.
When the transformation ended, he stood changed beyond recognition. Still humanoid in shape but wrong in every particular. Armor, if it could be called that, had grown from his skin like calcified midnight. His blade had become part of him, emerging from his arm when needed. His eyes burned with cold fire that cast no light.
"Magnificent," Serena breathed from the cavern's edge. She'd been right to stay distant; the very air around him now carried whispers of ending. "The stone hasn't taken a bearer in three centuries. You're the first to survive its appetite."
He turned to her, movements too smooth, too predatory. When he spoke, his voice carried harmonics that made stone weep.
"I am... changed."
"Transformed. Elevated. Become." She approached carefully, eyes bright with something between fear and worship. "You're no longer Kaelen Dawnblade. That man died when the stone judged him. What should we call you now?"
He considered. Names had power, defined purpose. His old one belonged to a knight who'd believed in justice. What he'd become needed something that spoke truth.
"The Shadow Knight," he said finally. "Let the Council's faithful whisper it in fear."
Serena smiled. "Perfect. And now?"
Now came purpose. The power flooding through him demanded use, direction, victims. The Council thought they'd destroyed House Dawnblade. They were wrong. They'd forged something far worse: their own ending given form.
"Now," the Shadow Knight said, darkness writhing around him like a living cloak, "we plan a war."