Jade Goldlight's Arc

Chapter 9 of 20

Dusk came slow over the fort. Jade led the way out through the heavy wooden gates, Raihan at her hip, the stranger a step behind. The lightning scar tree waited at the threshold, its cracks pulsing orange. Beyond it stretched the warm tan brick road, every stone glowing soft in the failing light. She had promised a peaceful handoff. She meant to keep it. The shade came down the road like spilled ink. Its cloak dragged over the bricks without sound. Bone fingers lifted toward Raihan. "Give him," it rasped. Jade stepped between them, hand raised. "The tree is yours. Take it and go." The shade tilted its hood toward the dead trunk, then back to the wolf. It did not move. Raihan moved first. He lunged low, jaws closing on the shade's left shin. Bone cracked free in his teeth. The shade shrieked and staggered, robe flapping empty where the leg had been. Raihan backed onto the brick path, the pale shin bone clenched between his fangs. Smoke poured thick from his shoulders. His purple eyes did not blink. "Leave," the collar spoke for him, voice low around the bone. "Leave this village. Swear you will never return. Or I chew this to splinters before your eyes." The shade reached one trembling claw toward its missing leg. It hissed something old and broken. Then it bowed its hood. "I swear it. Never again. Give it back." Jade nodded once. Raihan set the shin bone down on the warm brick between them, careful as a gift. The shade snatched it up, fitted it to the empty hem of its robe, and was gone — pulled into its own shadow with a sound like wind through dry leaves. The road lay quiet. The dead tree stopped glowing. Raihan stayed on the bricks a long moment, staring at the spot where the shade had stood. Then he turned and walked back to Jade. He dropped something at her boot — a second pale sliver of bone he had kept hidden in his jaw. A promise, or a warning, she could not yet tell. She picked it up. Behind her, the fort gates began to open, and the villagers came out to see what their hero had done.