Page 90 of Shadow Kissed
REYA
Arkynn has sent a message letting me know there’s a rebel meet up tonight and asking me to meet him at the secret tunnel. I’m sitting in Shadow History and Culture class with my fellow Shadow Kissed. Today we are learning about the Night Borne. Their history has always intrigued me. Because we have such limited knowledge of them the Asen’s rarely talk about the Night Borne.
“So, I’m hoping we all know all our history on Gaia and her sons, and the creation of the four realms?”
Saveya shoots her hand up in the air and waves it frantically. “Yes, Saveya?”
“Gaia is the Mother Goddess. She created Asen and filled it with her beloved crystals, each one given magical properties. She birthed three sons. Arawn god of the shadows, Aster god of the night, and Aelius, god of the sun. As the sons grew up, they grew jealous of their mother’s realm and wanted realms and creations of their own, so they each created their own worlds and competed to create the strongest and most abundant realm,making their beings, stronger, faster and more powerful. Arawn created the Shadow Realm, Aster the Night Realm, and Aelius the Flame Realm. Gaia was angry with her sons for their deceit and the power they had given their creations that could threaten the sanctity of her people on Asen, so she enthused three crystals with the power to harm their creations.”
Master Aven throws Saveya a celestite sphere as a reward. “Perfectly recited. So, the Night Borne feed and gain strength from the fears and nightmares of others. They live under an eternal night sky full of stars and they worship their creator, Aster. The Shadow Borne wield shadow magic and they worship their creator, Arawn, and then we have the Flame Borne who wield fire magic and worship their creator, Aelius. When Gaia cursed each realm with a crystal that could weaken and destroy them, little did she realise that by doing this she would cause a war that would last for hundreds of years.” He pauses and looks out at us all expectantly. “What do we think caused the great war?”
A girl from the south wing raises her hand to ask a question. “Greed?”
“Fear,” Melara from the north shouts out.
“Jealousy,” Tyria adds into the mix, and Master Aven nods his head in agreement.
“It resulted because of all of these. The Flame King saw the Night Realm as a threat to their existence. The Night Realm landscape was full of vast mountains of sunstone and selenite. Sunstone could help them take down the Shadow Borne but the Night Realm was also rich in selenite, which weakened those borne of flames. With control of the Night Realm, the Flame King knew he could eviscerate the threat to his own people whilst mining sunstone in substantial quantities and win the war against the Shadow Realm. After centuries of war and signs of dwindling resources in the Flame Realm, they brokered a peacedeal and married the niece of the Flame King to the widowed king of the Night Realm. For a short time, peace prevailed.”
I look around the room and everyone sits in complete silence, soaking up the story of the great war. I raise my hand. “What caused it to end?”
He grimaces. “All the same things that started the war in the first place: greed, fear, jealousy. It is well documented that the Shadow Realm was not happy when the Night King wed the flame princess and, on the night of the feast of Aster, they invaded the kingdom, poisoning the king as he celebrated and staked him in the heart. No one understands quite what happened, but the death of the king brought about the death of the entire realm and all its people.”
There are puzzled looks around the room at this.
“So, when the king took his last breath, they all died, everyone in the realm?” a girl from south dorm asks.
“Many believe that to be the case. From that night onwards, nightmares stopped existing, and no one ever saw or heard from the Night Borne again. No one has ever accessed their realm since.”
Just because no one has seen or heard from any Night Borne doesn’t mean that they don’t still exist, though. Maybe they found a way to close off their realm to all others and they are happily living their lives under the stars. But if that were the case, then wouldn’t they need the nightmares to feed from and sustain their realm?
“Okay, homework for next week, I will assign you a point of view—either night, shadow, or flame—and you will write an essay arguing why the war began from your kingdom’s perspective. Okay, we’re done for today, ladies. Off you go.”
I leave class with more questions than answers. When the Night Realm perished, it caused the war to come to our doorstep. Somehow the end of their realm enabled gatewaysinto Asen and saw the arrival first of the mutts first, and then of the Shadow Borne, and now we are the realm stuck in the middle of this war, sacrificing our young men and women. And why had the Mother Goddess not intervened? This realm was her creation. She nurtured and loved it for centuries. None of it made any sense.
After our evening meal in our dorms, I retire early, using the excuse of menstrual pains and needing my bed. Orna asks me if I need anything and fusses over me, but I tell her I just need a good night’s sleep and ask that I am not disturbed until morning. As soon as it is dark enough, I sneak out onto my balcony and take the same path I had done a few weeks back. I make it to the meeting point without being seen, and I smile when I see Arkynn sitting on a rock of Onyx, waiting for me.
“No issues?” he asks me as he takes a quick look around us and uncovers the hatch down into the tunnels.
“Nope, I snuck out in-between the patrols of the perimeter. You?”
He smirks. “Of course not. I’ve always been adept at sneaking out.” He lifts the hatch open and gestures for me to climb down. He isn’t wrong about that. We’d often sneak out after bedtime to watch the stars or study the mutts beyond the wall. It’s hard to keep it from Ark that I have been home and seen my brothers and his family, but Raegal swore me to secrecy. Plus, I’m not ready for the grilling I’ll get from Arkynn about why the Lord Commander took me home. Even I’m still confused by his actions.
We walk in single file along the narrow tunnel with Ark leading the way. It will take us about ten minutes to reach the village just outside of the valley, so I use this time as an opportunity to ask Ark more about the rebellion.
“Hey, Ark. I’ve been meaning to ask; how many rebellion members are there across Asen?”
Ark looks back over his shoulder at me and shrugs. “I don’t have exact numbers, but they stretch to their hundreds and with more joining every day.”
“And who is the big leader? Who is in charge?” I ask, curious to learn how and when the rebellion began.
“The principal leader wishes to remain anonymous. Only a select few get to speak with him, but he finances our cause and helps us with strategy and intelligence.”
I frown so they don’t know who their main leader is? This concerns me. “What if it’s all a big trap? What if the leader is a Shadow Borne posing as a rebel?”
Arkynn scoffs in front of me like my suggestion is nonsense. “He isn’t a scath, Reya. His intelligence and supplies have already claimed shadow lives. Do you honestly think they’d sacrifice their own people to bring us down?”
It’s my turn to shrug my shoulders. “Perhaps some may see it as a necessary evil. So, he’s Asen then, the big leader?”