Shadow Darkband knelt in the ash where the village used to stand. The wells were dry. The doors hung off their hinges. Shadow was the only one left who remembered the names of the people buried under the beams. Shadow was seventeen and already dangerous. Years alone with a hidden master had taught them the cold work of necromancy and the shaping of darkness. Their hair had gone white from it. Their armor was black. The red-bladed sword at their hip had a name their master would not speak. None of it was enough. The raiders who burned the village still rode free somewhere past the tree line, and Shadow could not yet lift a corpse without shaking, or hold a shadow longer than a breath. "You're too weak to chase them," a voice said behind them. Shadow turned. A small woman in a purple runed coat stood at the edge of the ash. Black hair, violet eyes, bandages on both wrists. Shadow knew her by the mark burned into her collarbone — the sign of a witch her own coven had cast out. "Moira Nightshade," Shadow said. "You've been watched," Moira said. She did not step closer. "Your master sent me. He says you're ready to leave the tower. He says you're not ready for anything else." Shadow's hand went to the red sword. "I can kill them." "You can barely kill a boar." Moira tilted her head. "Prove me wrong. Then I'll follow you." They went into the wood together. Moira pointed and Shadow swung. The first slime burst across their boots in a splash of blue. The second spat fire and singed their sleeve. Shadow learned to cut low, to let the darkness pool under the creatures and drag them still. By the fourth day the slimes came apart in one stroke. The boars were worse. A razortusk took Shadow off their feet and opened their thigh to the bone. Moira stitched it by firelight, muttering at the wound until it closed clean. "Again tomorrow," she said. "Again tomorrow," Shadow agreed. Weeks passed. Shadow stopped shaking when they raised a dead thing. The shadows held as long as they asked. On a gray morning Moira watched Shadow drop three boars without drawing the sword, and she finally knelt. "Master," she said, and meant it. They made camp that night at the foot of a tall, narrow tower Moira called safe — a library of dark, quiet stone, its windows lined with the spines of books. Shadow set the spellbooks they'd taken from the slimes' nests on a shelf inside, and the jars of boar tallow and slime cores beside them. A place to keep what they gathered. A place to come back to. Shadow stood in the doorway and looked east, toward the tree line the raiders had ridden through. "Now," Shadow said. "Now we hunt them."