Page 14 of Starlit Bargains

As if to confirm his words, a shimmer of blue-white light began to emanate from Eliar as well—fainter than Kai's golden glow, but unmistakably similar in quality. The twoenergies reached for each other, tendrils of gold and silver-blue intertwining in the space between them.

“Oh, that's definitely not normal,” Kai said, aiming for casual but achieving something closer to breathless wonder.

“It shouldn't be possible,” Eliar whispered, and there was something in his voice—grief? longing? hope?—that made Kai's chest ache with an emotion he couldn't name. “My power has been dormant for centuries. Locked away. Part of my punishment.”

“Well, it doesn't look very dormant right now.” Kai gestured to the glowing markings on the floor, which had begun to spiral outward from where they stood, climbing the crumbling temple columns like luminous vines. “In fact, it looks decidedly active and possibly about to explode.”

Despite the tension of the moment, Eliar's lips twitched into what might almost have been a smile. “Your talent for understatement is remarkable.”

“I have many talents,” Kai replied automatically, though his mind was racing, trying to process what was happening. The magic surging through him felt both foreign and achingly familiar, as if it had always been a part of him but had been sleeping until now. Until Eliar. “Is this dangerous? Are we about to, I don't know, tear a hole in reality or something equally dramatic?”

Eliar shook his head, uncertain. “I don't know. This shouldn't be happening at all. My connection to the celestial realm was severed when I fell.”

“When you—” Kai started to ask, fascinated despite the circumstances, but Eliar suddenly tensed, his attention snapping back to the forest edge.

“It's here,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Kai turned to look, and immediately wished he hadn't. At the edge of the clearing, where the forest shadows were deepest,something moved. Not a person or an animal, but a distortion in the fabric of reality itself—a smudge of absolute darkness that seemed to absorb the moonlight around it. It had no definite shape, its edges constantly shifting and reforming, but there was a horrible suggestion of limbs, of a mouth filled with void.

“What the fuck is that?” Kai breathed, his hand tightening around the knife he'd drawn earlier, though he seriously doubted it would be of any use against... whatever this was.

“A consequence,” Eliar said grimly. “Of our magic awakening together. The barriers between realms grow thin in this place. What sleeps in the darkness between stars sometimes... notices.”

The shadow-thing moved forward, not quite touching the ground, a silent glide that was somehow more terrifying than any sound it might have made. The celestial markings on the temple floor flickered as it approached, as if recoiling from its presence.

“So, fight or flight?” Kai asked, trying to sound brave even as the sight of the creature filled him with a primal, instinctive dread. “Because I'm game for either, but I'd appreciate some guidance from the apparently celestial being in the room.”

Eliar's hand closed around his arm, grip firm but gentle. “Neither,” he said, his eyes never leaving the approaching shadow. “My power is still too weak to confront it directly, and yours is too unpredictable. We need to break the connection that's drawing it here.”

“And how do we do that?”

“We run,” Eliar said simply. “Now.”

He tugged Kai's arm, pulling him toward the far side of the temple, away from both the shadow-thing and the path back to the village. Kai hesitated for just a moment, some stubborn part of him reluctant to flee from a fight, but another look at the writhing darkness quickly overrode that impulse.

“Running sounds good,” he agreed, turning to follow Eliar.

As they sprinted away from the temple, Kai could feel the golden energy still coursing through him, responding to Eliar's proximity, to the ancient power of the place they were leaving behind. Behind them, he heard a sound that wasn't quite a sound—more like the absence of noise, a void that swallowed even the concept of silence.

The shadow was following.

Chapter 4

Suspicion of Magic

Kai's lungs burned as they finally slowed to a stop in a small clearing, far enough from the temple that the celestial markings no longer glowed beneath their feet. The forest here felt different—warmer, more alive. Moonlight filtered through the canopy in dappled patterns, illuminating a circle of ancient trees whose massive roots created natural seats and shelters.

He doubled over, hands on his knees, gulping in air. “Next time,” he gasped between breaths, “a little warning before we sprint through the forest of death would be nice.”

Eliar, infuriatingly, wasn't even winded. He stood alert, head tilted slightly as if listening for pursuit, his eyes still holding that faint inner glow though the rest of his otherworldly aura had faded. After a moment, his posture relaxed marginally.

“We've lost it. For now.”

“Great,” Kai straightened, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “Excellent first date energy, by the way—dodging creepy shadows and running for our lives. Very memorable. Though traditionally, dinner comes before the life-threatening danger.”

Eliar's brow furrowed, clearly caught off guard by Kai's flippant response to nearly being devoured by a shadow monster. “This isn't a joke, Kai.”

“Humor is my coping mechanism,” Kai shrugged. “It's either laugh or scream in terror, and screaming tends to attract more trouble.”

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