Jared stepped back into the drainage tunnel. He flicked his hands, and the orbs of light blossomed in the darkness, swirling around them. He felt a deep throb in his bones as the Dark pulsed inside him. Moving forward, he sloshed through the water with Adrian right behind him. He could sense a tight, Dark wire spinning out of his chest and pulling him down into the tunnels. He could feel them on the other end of the wire. Waiting.

Water met their boots, cold and unyielding. Each step echoed as the tunnel curved downward, concrete slick with algae. The orbs of light struggled, arcs dissolving into the wet dark pressing in from every side.

“They’re waiting,” Jared whispered.

Adrian didn’t question it.

Water climbed to mid-calf, cold biting through fabric, into bone. The tunnel opened into a wider chamber. Storm drains met here. Water dripped from every seam. Rusted gratings twisted and broken on the floor, wrenched free by something strong.

Jared slowed. The Dark pressed against his ribs, a low, hungry growl beneath his heart. The wire pulled taut, thrumming with vibration.

“They’re here.”

The largest stepped from the shadows, standing before Jared. He let his pistols fall to his sides. The Dark wire pulled tight, sternum to sternum. Adrian’s hand pressed into his back, unnoticed. Jared stared at the creature. It clicked at him, soft. He holstered his pistols, stepped forward, hand out. It bowed its head. He rested his hand on its muzzle.

Adrian watched with wide eyes, standing still.

“They belong to us,” the Dark purred.

Shadow poured from him. Like breath held too long. 

It did not erupt. Did not tear free. It opened. Slow, deliberate. Something ancient stretching its limbs. The Dark flowed over Jared’s skin in ribbons, in halos. Crawling along arms, throat, spine. No burning. No pain. It recognized him. Changed him. Hair, eyes, and nails were shifted into obsidian.

The creature shuddered beneath his palm.

The wire between them thickened. No longer a thread. A conduit. A bridge. He felt the Dark inside the creature: smaller, fractured, jagged. A shard, not a sea. It thrashed, sensing what was coming. It could not pull away. It had already bowed.

“I’m sorry,” Jared whispered. He wasn’t sure to whom.

The Dark answered for him.

It surged forward. Not violence. Gravity.

Shadow spilled from Jared’s chest, pouring into the creature where they touched. Flooding scales and sinew. Slipping past flesh as if it were only a suggestion. The creature screamed, high and keening, echoing through the chamber. Then silence. Its jaws fell slack.

Inside it, the Dark screamed back.

Jared felt it. The moment of collision. Two vast pressures meeting. The creature’s Dark lashed, sharp and terrified, striking at the presence. Jared’s Dark did not fight. Not a predator. It embraced.

The chamber vanished.

Jared’s awareness exploded outward. Unmoored from flesh. No water, no stone, no darkness. He fell upward through a field of stars. Not points of light, but living things. Immense. Breathing. Woven together by threads older than time.

Creation folded in on itself. Birth and death in the same instant. Black holes blooming like flowers. Galaxies spinning, slow and reverent. A vast intelligence pressed against him. Not watching. Not judging. Knowing.

Beautiful. Terrifying. Perfect.

He dissolved. Boundaries stripped away. No Jared. No Dark. No division. Only a vast, luminous whole. A chorus of existence, singing in harmony so precise pain became meaningless. For one breathless moment, he understood.

This was what the gods saw.

The creature’s Dark broke. Shattered like glass in light. Fragments dissolving as Jared’s Dark absorbed it. Not devouring. Absorbing. Pulling every splinter inward, smoothing it into itself. Fear vanished. Hunger quieted. What remained was power. Clean. Resonant. Complete.

The creature’s body collapsed beneath his palm. Weightless. Scales dulled. Muscles slackened. Its heart stuttered, then stopped.

The vision folded back into him.

Stone. Water. Adrian was shouting his name.

Jared staggered as the Dark withdrew. Flowing back into bone, blood, breath. His hair faded to its old color. Eyes cleared. The orbs of light steadied.

The creature lay dead at his feet. Empty now. Hollow.

Adrian caught him before he fell. “Jared! Jesus, what did you do?”

Jared gasped. Hands shaking. Pulse roaring in his ears. He felt fuller. Heavier. As if the universe had settled a little more inside his chest.

“I… took it,” he said hoarsely. “The Dark inside it. It’s gone.”

Adrian stared at the body, then back at Jared, fear and awe warring on his face. “You killed it just by touching it.”

Jared swallowed. Looked down at his trembling hands.

“No,” he said softly. “I didn’t kill it.”

He closed his eyes. The echo of stars still burned behind them.

“I ended its division.”

The attack came from above.

A shadow detached from the ceiling with a hiss of rushing air. Jared reacted instantly. Dark power flared across his shoulders like a burst of black static. The creature slammed into the shield, claws screeching across the surface, before it rebounded off and landed in the water with a feral bark.

Another shape slipped from the shadows at their flank, moving with terrible coordination. One swept low, claws slicing toward Adrian’s legs, while the other leapt, jaws gaping for Jared’s throat.

Jared pulled his pistol and turned to the creature lunging towards him, firing mid-spin. Two sharp cracks. A streak of muzzle flare, tinged with the Dark’s energy, arced through the thick air. The creature twisted in midair, dodging the shot. It was learning, adjusting with each movement.

Jared cursed under his breath. “They’re faster.” He drew his second pistol.

Adrian already had his air dart pistol out and was loading a tranquillizer. “Then don’t let them breathe.”

The nearest creature lunged, water spraying from its sickle claws as it darted forward. Jared flicked his wrist, sending a ripple of Dark force that shoved the creature’s head aside, just enough to bring his left pistol to bear. Two shots.

The rounds, charged with the Dark, tore through its shoulder, sending it skidding across the water. It shrieked, a sound tangled with anger and calculation, then circled back, never breaking its gaze.

“They’re flanking,” Adrian warned.

“I know,” Jared said, breath tight.

The Dark honed the edges of his vision. Every movement became a streak of intent. Ripples in the water whispered warning. Each shift of weight, a prophecy of violence.

The other creature sprinted along the wall, claws biting into the concrete, running sideways with impossible speed. Adrian fired a dart, the shot missing by inches, the hiss of the tranquilizer lost in the chaos.

Jared planted his heel, twisting as he brought his arm up. The Dark snapped around his forearm, guiding his aim, bending the bullet’s path. The shot ricocheted from the wall and buried itself in the creature’s skull as it leapt. It dropped into the water with a heavy splash.

“One down,” Adrian confirmed, already reloading.

The last one rounded and faced Jared, learning from the death, testing the boundaries of Jared’s defenses. It hissed, a warning that echoed through the chamber, while it crept low, its eyes catching the light with a glint that was almost human.

“Be careful,” Adrian whispered. Adrian grabbed Jared’s arm and injected him mid-motion. “Go.”

The effect struck like lightning. Strength surged through Jared, reflexes sharpening, the Dark roaring forward with a hunger that threatened to consume him.

Jared stepped forward. Time slowed. He lifted both pistols. The Dark coiled around the barrels, smooth and cold as black silk. Four shots. Perfect placement. Two ricochets, Dark-augmented.

The creature jerked, the rounds tearing through its lungs. It staggered, struggling to rise, then collapsed against the wall, its body twitching in the shallow water.

That was the last of the three. But the Dark still pulled at him. Something else was down here. Something more.

The ripples hadn’t settled yet.

Jared stood in the chamber, breath uneven. The echo of stars faded behind his eyes. Shadows along the far wall shifted. Not the way darkness moved when light changed. Deliberate. A folding inward. A seam unzipping.

Someone stepped out.

Tall and willowy, her body seemed too slight for the burden she bore. Limbs long, elegant, not quite human. Ears swept back, the arc visible even beneath the hood pulled low. Elf. No robes, no relics. Only streetwear: carbon-fiber jacket, seams reinforced, utility belt worn thin, boots marked by sewer water and blood.

Her skin shimmered, faint and opalescent, like moonlight on stone.

And she was bound to Jared.

A thin black wire stretched from her sternum to his. The same as before. It trembled, vibrating with strain, pulled tight between two collapsing stars.

Adrian sucked in a sharp breath behind him. “Jared…”

The elf raised one hand slowly, palm out. Not a threat. A greeting.

Her voice slid into the air, smoke finding a current it knew. She spoke in Shadow Kind Common. The words resonated somewhere deeper than sound.

“Tuner.”

The Dark inside Jared stilled. Not recoiled. Not surged. Recognized.

Jared straightened despite the ache in his bones. “You know what I am.”

A faint, exhausted smile curved her mouth. “I would not be here if I did not.” Her gaze traced the shadow still lingering at the edges of his aura. “You carry it cleanly. That is… rare.”

Up close, the damage was clear. Fine fractures webbed beneath her skin, shadow lines spidering through her veins, cracks in glass. Her breath hitched between words. She leaned into the wire’s tension, as if it alone kept her standing.

“You’re hurt,” Jared said.

Her laugh was brittle. “I am coming undone.”

The words settled. Quiet. Final.

Adrian stepped closer, eyes flicking between the wire and the fractures creeping along her neck. “Jared, I don’t like this.”

“I know,” Jared murmured. His attention never left her. “What’s happening to you?”

She closed her eyes, steadying herself against a tide. When she opened them, grief waited there. Old. Vast.

“I woke them,” she said softly. “The creatures. I fed them the Dark. Just enough to tear the veil of their making open.” Her fingers curled into the fabric of her jacket. “Hilberger Technologies has been poisoning worlds they cannot see. I wanted them to pay.”

The Dark shifted uneasily.

“You used it as a catalyst,” Jared said. “Not as a weapon.”

“Yes.” Her voice wavered. “But the Dark does not like to be portioned. It does not like restraint. I thought I was strong enough to hold it back. I was wrong.”

The fractures spread as she spoke. Fine motes of shadow lifted from her skin, drifting like ash.

“It is trying to join us,” she continued, her voice dropping. “To force an opening wide enough to pour through. I cannot contain it anymore.”

Jared felt it then. Pressure building beneath reality, slow and inexorable. The Dark did not rage. It aligned. Seeking convergence.

“You’re disintegrating,” he said quietly.

She nodded once. “Piece by piece. Memory by memory.”

Adrian swore under his breath and dropped to one knee, already pulling equipment from his medical kit. Carbon cuffs. Injectors. A containment shroud laced with suppression runes.

“I can stabilize her,” he said, too fast. “At least slow it down.”

The elf shook her head. “No.” She looked back at Jared, eyes luminous with pain and resolve. “There is only one way this ends without tearing a hole through everything you stand on.”

The wire between them thrummed.

“Come and contain me,” she said.

The chamber went very still.

Adrian froze. “Absolutely not. Jared, she’s asking you to...”

“I know,” Jared said.

He stepped forward.

She sagged with relief as he closed the distance, the wire slackening just enough for breath. Up close, she smelled of rain, ozone, and something ancient. Stone warmed by centuries of sun.

“Your name,” Jared said.

She smiled, soft and sad. “Aelith.”

He nodded. “I won’t let it tear you apart.”

Aelith lifted trembling hands and rested them against his chest. “I know.”

The Dark unfurled again.

Not violently. Reverently.

Dark poured from Jared, wrapping them both. The hush cocooned the space, swallowing sound. Adrian spoke, but the words never reached him.

The moment their foreheads touched, the wire flared.

Aelith gasped.

The Dark surged through her, drawn to Jared, iron to a star. She cried out, not in pain, but in release as it pulled free, unraveling from her bones in strands of shadow.

The chamber vanished.

Jared fell into her.

He stood beneath an alien sky, violet and vast. Twin moons hung low over crystalline forests. Grass beneath bare feet. The hum of ley lines threading the soil. Young. Lithe. Laughing.

He was Aelith.

Centuries unfolded in heartbeats.

He ran through cities grown from living stone. Learned the first songs that bent shadow into shape. Stood at the edge of the Shadow Realm and felt awe, not fear. Loved. Lost. Loved again. Watched empires rise, then erode into memory.

He felt the first time she touched the Dark: not as corruption, but as communion. As a necessity. He felt her horror when humans began tearing at forces they did not understand. Felt her rage. Her resolve.

He felt the moment she chose punishment over patience.

He felt her regret.

All of it poured into him. Joy and sorrow braided so tightly he could not tell them apart. The Shadow Realm opened, vast as a cathedral, endless, echoing, filled with voices older than stars.

He understood.

Then, gently, inexorably, the Dark finished crossing over.

Aelith’s essence thinned. Her form dissolved into shadow, flowing into Jared’s core. The fractures vanished. Not healed, but emptied. No Dark left to tear her apart.

Her final thought brushed against him like a kiss.

Thank you, Tuner.

Jared screamed and returned.

He was on his knees in the chamber, water splashing around him, Adrian gripping his shoulders hard enough to bruise. The Dark receded. The wire snapped into nothing.

Where Aelith had stood, only silence. Ash drifted into the room, floating on the water’s surface.

Jared gasped, breath tearing through him, chest burning as if he’d run for lifetimes.

Adrian shook him. “Jared. Jared, look at me.”

He did.

The Dark settled inside him, vast and quiet and full.

“I saw everything,” Jared whispered. “Her whole life.”

Adrian swallowed. “Is she…?”

“She’s at peace,” Jared said. And for once, he knew it was true.

Somewhere in an untouchable place, the Shadow Realm shifted, pressing against the thin membrane that held it separated from the Mundane Realm. Something, ancient and watchful, took notice.

The Gift of the Lethe came quietly. No ceremony. A cool blade sliding into Jared’s mind, precise. It did not rip or burn. It cut, clean and merciful, peeling away the weight that was not his. The histories of empires dissolved first. Then the maps of continents he would never walk. Names of clans and kings unmade before they could settle. Knowledge bled out in soft layers, eras collapsing into mist, until only her shape remained. The world stripped away. What endured was Aelith: her first fear, her stubborn hope, the warmth of laughter under alien moons, the ache of choosing punishment when patience failed. When the blade withdrew, Jared was left breathless and hollowed, not a civilization in his skull, but a single life folded carefully against his heart.