I wake in a familiar plane of red sky and black, frothy grounds. The realm where I lost Boeru surrounds me. A horizon filled with black mountains ebbs and flow like waves. Vile screeching and shrieks echo at my back. But worst of all, I no longer feel like a visitor.

  Drinking the entire potion may have been the biggest mistake of my life.

  Is my body laying back in Scorius’ lair a husk now?

  I’m connected to whatever this plane is. At my feet, I realize there’s a gigantic consciousness boring into my soul from the ground up. As a matter of fact, I see it.

  White eyes form around the black slivers of endless warring dark. A mouth tries to speak to me… failingly so.

  “I’ve come for the Torn Wing. If it’s you who governs this realm, Scorius, I put my foot down. Give him back.”

  Rumbling vibrates through my boots. My cuirass, dagger, sword, and cloak still wrap me. Is this a projection of what I am in reality? Or have I been transferred like the time Boeru found me in the cracked Seal—between life and death?

  “Fly, Haledyn,” a voice seeps through the cracks. “You belong here now. Fly to your heart’s content. Discover what this realm can be.”

  The voice changes and molds to something I can cling to. Hints of Layla. Jurso. Tesstalia.

  “Fly as I do, Haledyn,” a seductive voice teases me, coming from behind.

  I turn to see Renesta there, rubbing her own arm flirtatiously.

  “You can be a shade too. We can fool around in the shadows, right over Layla’s bed.”

  As enticing as being with her might be, the words concoct visceral anger. “I would never.”

  “Oh, but haven’t you already? We shared a passionate kiss on your bed. Had those pests not knocked on the door… who knows how far we would’ve gone.” She struts around me slowly, flaunting her assets.

  She tortures me in every realm she’s in.

  Mysterious, sexy, talented.

  A traitor.

  My senses return tenfold. “The Torn Wing doesn’t trust you, and neither do I.”

  “Trust?” She smiles wide, face melting. “Who said anything about trust?”

  Her form remolds into something more sinister, testing my will.

  A strong, thin muscular frame stops a head taller than me, warrior’s ponytail, and a debonair smile that disarms me immediately.

  “Kane.” My brain tells me this realm tried to fool me once before, but it feels real this time.

  “I was batch nine, five years ago. House Mother knew I was onto her. She knew I couldn’t trust the veils of the sub-tier much longer.” He looks up to the red sky. “Marched to the Sept I went. To die. I would have to…”

  His words are like a spike through the head. Am I being lied to? Am I fabricating this information myself somehow? Racking my brain, I know he was batch nine. I know Scorius called him a ghoulborn.

  “Stop,” I command. It takes everything not to listen to his story. I’m afraid if I do, I’ll fall victim to this fake realm, like Boeru did.

  “Don’t you care to know where I am now, Hale? We’re brothers.” He tilts his head the same way I remember as a kid. “Don’t you want to know… what I’ve become?”

  His face twists—eyes turning red with black veins stretching down his face like vines. Teeth grow into fangs, and his voice multiplies. “All of the other spirits help or hate what they’re attached to. But not me.” Kane’s laugh is nightmare fuel. His voice overlays with a demon’s. “We’ve become one. Indistinguishable raw power. The best war-tier has seen in generations. Mom and Dad are proud.”

  My eyes widen. “We’re orphans, Kane. Even if we have blood parents watching over us somewhere… they subjected us to this.” I spread my arms.

  Kane laughs again, spewing four jagged spikes out of each hand—fist weapons. “Oh, Hale. Would bad parents give us these?” He swings his arms in a semi-circle from the ground up, the claws ripping up waves of warring dark that twist into finely spun tornadoes. They curve and shift at the tilt of his head.

  “Warring dark mixed with high-magic wind,” I realize.

  “You’ve been studying.” Kane turns back with a wide smile. Whatever charm my brother had perverts into sadistic bloodlust. “There’s something the dark likes within us. Two brothers, bonded from spirits of the afterlife. What are the fucking chances? Oh, but what’s this?” He dips his head to inspect me. “You’ve lost your way…”

  “Kane—”

  He shoves me hard before I can get another word out, sending me sliding back.

  My heels kick up black slivers that turn into feathers teetering down into the ocean at my feet. They fall between us poetically. That consciousness beneath me enjoys the exchange—I sense a grin I can’t even see.

  “Show me your worth, Haledyn. I take down legions of Lacor with my bare claws. What can you offer?” Kane scrapes the black ground, creating visible winds blowing his hair every which direction.

  I pull out my dagger defensively.

  “Oh? But you have a rare hyrolth steel blade at your hip.” He nods. “Has little brother failed to learn its use?” He whips a tornado at me that I dash away from.

  Instincts tell me he’ll curve it to follow, so I backflip after the dash and narrowly avoid the angry black wind clawing to pull me.

  Kane opens his arms wide and dissipates the wind with an angry screech. “Not completely useless, I see. Adaptable. But what will you do now that I know?” He whips two more tornadoes, crisscrossing one another on a winding path in my direction.

  Warring dark pulses through my arms the same as in the sky against Tesstalia. My heart rate is a thundering storm. The threat is real. My brother intends to erase me from this realm.

  Then what would I become? I already drank the poison. There may be no road back. I can’t die here…

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  In a spurt of instinct, I shove the warring dark to my calves and burst forward through the intersecting vortexes. For a moment in time, I think myself insane. Spiraling black winds clash into one another mere feet in front of me, and I’m leaping to join the chaos.

  At the last second—as the competing cyclones scowl at one another—my instincts don’t betray me. The tornadoes separate just enough for me to dive through and emerge from a somersault with my chained dagger flying for my brother’s gut.

  Clng!

  He catches it in his claws and rips the chain out of my grasp, leaving it to dissolve in the ocean of darkness below us. Then with a tilt of his head, the tornadoes converge from my flank.

  “Outmatched.” He grins.

  A wind tears at me so powerfully I feel my limbs stretching into nothingness, throat scratching until the pain becomes searing hot. My skin splits, my bones dissolve. And with a final scream, I am nothing.

  My brother ripped me to shreds.

  Why?

  Awareness still persists.

  I still persist.

  But as what?

  The ocean ebbs and flows around me, propping me up, rebuilding me into something sturdier than what Kane just erased.

  “Now do you see? We are nothing but tempered blood, little brother. The dark likes what our house mother molded us into. It wants us to stay.”

  I look at my own hands in shock. They’re pitch-black with white lines of definition, a manifestation of warring dark. Slowly, the mold molts to reveal my own skin wrapping my arms once more. Pins and needles scatter throughout my body, rebuilding pain receptors and the sensation of touch. Even my light armor and weapons replenish.

  “Is this… real?” I ask more to myself than to Kane.

  He retracts his claws, the wounds from which close with shadowy stitches as the ghoul in him retreats. Soon, his features are again what I remember. My brother.

  “Now that you have been baptized… come. Explore what is ours to behold.” Kane turns his back and bends into a racer position.

  In a flash, he’s gone, skating over the warring dark ocean like he’s being carried by a thousand horses. The same trail of feathers teeters for miles in front of me.

  “By the gods.” I gape. “Can I?”

  I dare to connect myself to the consciousness at my feet. The symbiosis is real.

  With one push of my leg, I’m gliding over an ocean. Wind tells me how fast I’m traveling. Its resistance is even greater than mid-flight. I can turn and skate and leap with total control. I’m not beholden to a snarky gryphon. My wings are my own.

  Wings?

  I recall why I came here in the first place—Boeru.

  Skidding to a stop, I suddenly hear his gigantic wing flapping in the sky.

  It’s not him, though. How can it be? How can any of this be?

  Kane lifts slowly from the dark ocean once more, arms folded, evil eyes boring into mine.

  “Until we meet again, little brother.”

  A harsh slap jolts me awake. The first thing I see is Scorius’ hooked nose and golden eyes angered in a way I’ve never experienced. He throws me into an assistant’s arms I don’t recognize. “Work bliss on his mind, or we’ll lose him to the wolves,” he growls.

  “Prominent. I’m here. I’m fine—”

  A hand claws over my head, and the pressure wrapping my temples is none I’ve ever felt.

  I shout while trying to rip the healer’s hand off of me, but strength wanes faster than I can move, and soon, so does the pain.

  “Fool. Do you know what you’ve done?” Scorius’ cane taps closer.

  “Dove in to find my bond.” My voice is mostly air.

  “You drank Shade’s Milk.”

  “Is it a test? Is it your realm?” I squirm. “Send me back. My bond—”

  “Warring dark is an ocean, Dragonborn. An angry, unforgiving ocean with memory supreme. I’ve sailed the waves to my heart’s content and my enemy’s demise. It knows everyone and everything that has ever dared touch it. And now it has you.”

  ***

  I wake again with a jolt. These blackouts are getting taxing. Where the hell am I?

  Off-white sheets, off-white curtains, an archway with angelic statues—the Healer’s Wing. Right, one of Scorius’ assistants was dragging me out of his lair.

  “He wakes,” someone says from outside the room, and closer comes the nefarious tapping of my Prominent’s cane.

  Scorius waves his hand angrily as he enters, the curtain ruffling at his back like a dark angel just entered the heavens.

  “I saw feathers… the same as when you fought Broggen. It was your realm.” My vision still swims, but I desperately try to make sense of that awful place that held so much power.

  “What drove you to do it, Dragonborn?” He takes his time limping to my bed.

  I want to blurt out so many things, like how his bond tampering nearly got me killed in Battle Riders class. Not having Boeru on my shoulders means I’m blind to subterfuge. He’s taken so much!

  Though I can say none of it. Each reason is a secret. Tess must remain in the shadows.

  He waits for my response with a vicious gaze. “You do not trust my process? Perhaps I should assign you another—”

  “No,” I interrupt but refuse to elaborate. “Answer my question, Prominent. Please.”

  He leans forward, brow relaxing slightly. “When you answer mine.”

  “I need my dragon. I’d be dead without him.”

  His eyes narrow. “Yet you appeared fine in our last class. Something changed. Something drastic if you went to such lengths as to break into my chamber. What are you hiding, Dragonborn?”

  “Why does it matter?” I try to lift to my elbows, but it feels like all my insides are jelly sloshing around at my back. In fear, I lay back down.

  “Stay still. You are in bliss stasis. Your body is unharmed, but your mind connection is temporarily incapacitated.” He grabs my arm to inspect it. “You had to drink the whole gods-damn vial, didn’t you?” he snarls. “It matters because the warring dark preys on your desires. I must know what drove you to drink the Shade’s Milk, and how you broke in.”

  I shake my head. I’m not giving him anything. My word to Tesstalia is important… now more than ever. I need those mythos tomes from Izfael’s chambers. I have to find out about that realm.

  “Prominent.” I get to my elbows again, fighting the jarring feeling of blood pooling into my back. “If I let you fight my battles for me, I’ll never be worthy of the war-tier.”

  I mean what I say.

  This isn’t something he can help with… even though he caused it. I have to find Boeru myself and lament our bonded duality.

  We stare at each other for an eternal moment. I don’t back down. He has to understand this is an issue only I can figure out.

  He shakes his head, but behind that scowl is a held-back smirk. He approves, even if he can never show it. “If I lose an awakened cadet to madness, I will bury you myself, Dragonborn. Is that clear?”

  My jaw tenses. I wouldn’t take that threat seriously from any other war-tutor. With Scorius, however… he means it.

  “Once the bliss wears off, you will experience echoes. The warring dark will call you back.”

  “So this isn’t something you concocted?” I ask.

  “Far from it. A dense concentration of bonded blood—my blood—mixed with sedatives and Havana mist. One whiff sends you to a window—to perceive the cunningness of the dark. One sip anchors you… dangerously so. It will identify the visitor and latch on. What you’ve done?” He shakes his head again. “You dove in head first, and you will suffer for it.”

  I struggle to sit up a little more as he turns his back on me. “Prominent?”

  “You are to remain grounded. No Battle Riders class or war activity until further notice. You may attend class as a spectator.” He stamps his cane when I go to speak, shutting me up before saying a word. “I will work with the Healer’s Wing to understand the state of your condition, and will inform your Proctors that we are undergoing an intense amplification of your bond. They will concede, as will you.”

  I swallow past a lump in my throat.

  Shit. Did I just set myself two steps back?

  “Who did you see in there?” Scorius demands. “Be specific.”

  I bite my lip, filtering through the hazy memory. “Some of my marked. One by one.”

  “Those are your immediate connections. Perhaps the dark didn’t have a chance to fully latch—”

  “My brother. Kane Winbridge,” I admit, the memory rushing back vividly.

  Scorius’ head jerks sideways like a hawk. “In what form?”

  “Ghoulborn. His face altered with his bond, claws coming out of his hands. He claimed that his bond is neither symbiotic or antagonistic. He’s simply, one. Everything was so clear…”

  Scorius says nothing, which makes me nervous.

  “Prominent?”

  “What did he do?” Scorius remains with his back to me.

  “Attacked me. Killed me. Then the dark spat me back out like nothing had ever happened. He called it—”

  “A baptism,” Scorius says.

  My breath hitches. Something in his tone is grave. “Y—yes. What does it mean?”

  “You are no longer a borrower, Haledyn. You are now latched, forever fighting a dark harbinger who wants nothing but conflict. Fool.” He knocks my candle off the dresser, which hisses on the wall. “You were far from ready.”

  The tension in the room skyrockets. For some reason, though, I’m not worried about the warring dark. When I felt it latch onto Boeru’s fire, it felt right. I’m supposed to wield it. I was already latched then. And I prevailed.

  I’m not afraid.

  “Wasn’t that the whole point of stripping Boeru away from me?” I say. “You want to push things along in extreme ways. Perhaps I just helped the process.”

  He scoffs. “We will see, Dragonborn. For now, the next time you find yourself in that plane, resist whatever is thrown at you. Thereafter when the echoes subside, your punishment will be legendary.”