Lukas Brighthand's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

For three nights Lukas Brighthand had chased the shadow through his hometown, and for three nights his light had missed. He opened his hands and let two orbs bloom, pale and warm, the only weapon he owned. The thing feeding on his town was not a beast he could punch. It slid under doors. It thinned the people it touched until they slept and did not wake. Lukas could hurt it. He could not find it. He was throwing light at flickers, and the flickers always fled. He knew that now. Chasing was losing. He had to find where the shadow slept in the day, its nest, its root. So he stopped running and started following the cold instead. The shadow left the air chilled behind it. Tonight the cold ran one direction, downhill, toward the old boarded chapel at the edge of the empty market. The door was open. Inside, a small figure knelt at the altar. She wore a black robe marked with painted symbols, and a silver eye hung at her throat. Candles burned in a ring around a hole in the floor. Cold poured up from that hole like breath. This was Miriam Ashwood. Lukas had known her once as the widow two streets over, the one who stopped leaving her house after her husband died. She did not turn when his light filled the room. "You brought your little suns," Miriam said. "He's hungrier now. You've been keeping him awake." Lukas understood then. The shadow had not found the chapel. Someone had brought it here and fed it. "You're feeding it," he said. "On purpose." "It promised to give him back." Her voice cracked. "It only needs a little more." Behind her, something rose from the hole. Not the widow's dead husband. A squat, thick-shouldered shape wearing a cracked mask over a ruined face. Its black eyes held no light. Lukas had seen this creature in the alleys, herding the sleepers toward the cold. The masked thing planted itself between Lukas and the altar and did not move. Lukas did not chase this time. He had the nest. He grabbed a fallen device from a crate by the door, a metal disk with a solar core he'd carried for a week without a target. He twisted it awake. Its heart flared white-hot, brighter than his hands could ever burn. The masked creature flinched from the glare and stumbled back. Lukas set the burning disk at the mouth of the hole. Light poured down into the cold. The shadow shrieked, a sound felt in the teeth, and recoiled deep into the earth. It did not die. It fled its own nest. Miriam screamed and threw herself over the hole to shield it. The masked creature caught her and dragged her toward the back door as the chapel filled with searing light. Lukas knew where it lived now. But he had shown his hand, and the widow and her masked guardian had escaped into the dark, warned, and taking their god deeper down where his light had never reached.