Page 1 of Shadebound
Part One
‘Normal Is An Illusion.
What Is Normal For The Spider Is Chaos For The Fly.’
Charles Addams
When the final breath slips through mortal lips, the world holds its silence—a fragile pause before the inevitable end. Death himself waits, a patient shadow lingering just beyond the fading light, offering a choice only the dying can hear—a quiet invitation whispered on the edge of oblivion.
Not all accept. Some surrender to the void, fading into the endless quiet beyond the veil. But others... others step beyond, drawn to a path neither light nor dark, where souls become something other, something bound by flame and shadow.
These are the shadebound.
Any magic-touched creature—dragon, vampire, witch, or beast of other name and nature—may find themselves standing at that twilight precipice. And in that moment, with the world slipping away, a new fate is born.
To become the darkness that moves just beyond sight. The night that folds over the world in quiet, endless embrace.
They carry within a fire that burns without warmth—a cold flame fed by memory and magic, by loss and unspoken purpose. Their magic is a storm, wild and unforgiving, demanding sacrifices spoken not in words but in blood and silence and the binding of a fractured soul.
But beware the shadebound.
For none can walk forever the line between light and dark. The path is not mercy—it is a slow unravelling. What begins as a second chance twists into a cage of shadows. The fire within grows restless, hunger turning to madness, power into despair.
Every shadebound bears the weight of that descent, the quiet decay of mind and heart. Eventually, the darkness claims them fully, and they become something terrible—ghosts of who they were, monsters of what they could not escape.
To see a shadebound is to glimpse the fragile, trembling balance between life and death, salvation and damnation. They are the night made flesh, the silence that speaks, the shadow you can never outrun.
And Death himself waits—watching, always waiting for the next soul to slip beyond the light and into his endless embrace.
The question isn’tifhe will call—it’swhowill answer. And what whispered promise drives him to reach across the veil, again and again.
Field Journal, Entry #060 — Classified
The darkness doesn’t take you all at once. It waits. It watches. It learns your name, your laugh, the rhythm of your footsteps. Then one day, when the world forgets you existed, it wraps around your bones and whispers: welcome home.
Chapter One, The Girl the Night Chose
Every shadebound heard Death’s Call once and chose whether to answer.Inever chose. He whispered to me since I was stillborn. Like a lullaby for a dead girl.
And now I was stuck.
The first sip of my hawthorn tea burned. Far more than my thinking ever could. My mother had mixed the leaves herself. She was a nature witch fond of making potions for every ailment, even silent ones. I hadn’t got the heart to tell her it was vile.Worsethan vile.
Maybe I had been cursed since my death-birth, or perhaps I had simply sinned far too often.
I was leaning towards the sin part. Ididenjoy a good sin.
Though over-steeped leaves and decaying voices inside my head were more entertaining for me, than the nervous pacing that filled my family living room.
Jaw hardening enough to give me a headache, I glanced up at the ochre-painted wall opposite my seat. The silver clock ticked closer to my supposed doom. It ticked impossibly louder as I fought the urge to hurl the china cup in my fingertips.
It was witching hour. But I didn’t believe in that nonsense. The only thing the clock did now was remind me that our city was on hour thirteen of a winter snowstorm I would not see the end of. Sad, considering storms were my favourite. I was only happy when the world was in black and white.
I considered stepping outside into the snow and just lying down in it. Perhaps let the storm bury me like a relic, turning me into a frozen sculpture the world would forget. It would be quiet out there. Peaceful, even. No eyes watching. No judgement passed. None of the spectacle I’d been living through for the past eight months. Bad enough I’d had to quit my bland assistant job at my mother’s store. I wanted none of that nonsense again. I just wanted the cold.
And the stillness of being nobody again.
I wondered if that would be easier than everything else. Then I swallowed the thought like broken glass and straightened my spine.
