THE LAST KING OF EMBERWYLD : THE DYING LIGHT
Chapter 6: The Shadow Self
The darkness was not empty.
Kaelen had expected silence. Stillness. The absence of everything. But this darkness was alive—breathing, pulsing, watching. He could feel it pressing against his skin, sliding into his lungs, curling around his heart like a cold hand.
He walked forward.
His footsteps echoed.
The darkness did not part. It simply… shifted. Made room for him. As if it had been waiting for him to arrive.
“Hello, Kaelen.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It was his voice. But deeper. Rougher. Older. The voice of a man who had seen too much and done too much and regretted too much.
“Show yourself,” Kaelen said.
The darkness coalesced.
A figure stepped out of the shadows—tall and broad, wearing armor that Kaelen recognized. It was the armor he had worn as a soldier, black and dented, scarred by blades and arrows and the passage of years. The helmet was off, and the face beneath was his own.
But wrong.
The eyes were black—depthless, hungry, empty. The mouth was curved in a smile that held no warmth. The hands were stained with blood that would not wash away.
“Hello,” the figure said again.
“You’re me.”
“I’m what you could have been. What you almost became. What you still might be, if you make the wrong choices.”
“I’m not a killer.”
“Aren’t you?” The figure looked at its hands. At the blood. “I’ve killed more men than you can count. Soldiers. Innocents. Friends. I killed because I was ordered to. I killed because I was afraid. I killed because I didn’t know any other way.”
“That’s not me.”
“It is. It was. It will be again, if you let it.”
The figure walked toward him.
Kaelen did not step back.
“You’re not real,” he said.
“I’m as real as you are. More real, perhaps. I’m the part of you that you’ve been trying to bury. The anger. The grief. The hunger.”
“The hunger?”
“The hunger for revenge. For justice. For meaning.” The figure stopped in front of him. Their faces were inches apart. “You want to save the world because you couldn’t save your mother. You want to be a hero because you couldn’t be a son. You want to close the door because you can’t close the wounds in your own heart.”
Kaelen’s hands curled into fists.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know everything about you. I am you. Every secret you’ve kept. Every lie you’ve told. Every sin you’ve committed. I was there when you killed the boy at Thornwood. I was there when you left your mother’s bedside. I was there when you walked away from Lyra and never looked back.”
“I looked back.”
“Once. And then you kept walking.”
The figure reached out and touched Kaelen’s chest.
Its hand was cold.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” it said. “In the darkness. In the space between. In the place where dreams become nightmares. I’ve been waiting for you to acknowledge me. To accept me. To become me.”
“I will never become you.”
“You already have. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Kaelen shoved the figure’s hand away.
“I’m not a monster.”
“Monster is a word people use to describe things they don’t understand. You understand me. You’ve always understood me. Because I am you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
The figure’s eyes blazed.
“Look at yourself, Kaelen. Really look. At the blood on your hands. At the grief in your heart. At the hunger in your soul. You are not a good man. You are not a bad man. You are a man who has done terrible things for what he believed were good reasons.”
Kaelen looked at his hands.
They were clean.
But he could still see the blood.
The figure smiled.
“There it is,” it said. “The truth. The one you’ve been running from.”
“What truth?”
“That there is no difference between us. That I am you and you are me. That the only thing separating us is time.”
Kaelen shook his head.
“There has to be a difference.”
“There is. I’ve accepted what I am. You haven’t.”
“Accepted what?”
The figure stepped closer.
“The hunger,” it said. “The need. The desire to burn it all down and start over. You feel it too. Every time you look at the Blight. Every time you see a child die. Every time you hear the king’s empty promises.”
Kaelen’s throat tightened.
“I feel it.”
“Then stop running from it. Embrace it. Use it. Let it make you strong.”
“Or what?”
The figure laughed.
It was his laugh. But wrong. Crueler.
“Or it will consume you. And you will become me anyway. Just slower. More painfully.”
Kaelen drew the Duskblade.
The blade blazed—not with light, but with hunger. It pulled at the darkness, drank it in, grew stronger with every passing second.
The figure looked at the blade.
Its black eyes widened.
“You would kill me? You would kill yourself?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“You can’t kill me. I’m part of you. If I die, you die.”
“Then we die together.”
The figure laughed again.
“Brave words. But you won’t do it. You’re too afraid. Too weak. Too human.”
Kaelen raised the blade.
The figure watched.
Waiting.
The blade trembled in Kaelen’s hand.
He thought of his mother. Of Lyra. Of the boy at Thornwood. Of all the people he had failed. Of all the people he still might save.
He lowered the blade.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
The figure smiled.
“I know.”
The darkness shifted.
The figure stepped back.
“You have passed the first test,” it said. “You have acknowledged me. You have not killed me. You have not embraced me. You have simply… seen me.”
“What happens now?”
“Now you keep walking. Keep facing the doors. Keep confronting the memories. And when you reach the end, you will have a choice.”
“What choice?”
The figure’s black eyes were unreadable.
“To become me. Or to become something else.”
It vanished.
The darkness lifted.
Kaelen was standing in the hallway again.
The woman in white was waiting.
“You did well,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You saw your shadow self and did not flinch. That is more than most.”
“What happens if I fail the next test?”
The woman looked at the endless line of doors.
“Then you become like the guardian. Trapped. Waiting. Hoping for someone else to save you.”
“I don’t want to be saved.”
“Everyone wants to be saved. They just don’t always know it.”
She opened the next door.
Beyond it was a throne room.
A king sat on the throne.
Not the king of Valdris.
A different king.
Older. Harder. His eyes were black, and his crown was made of thorns.
“Your father,” the woman said. “The man you never knew. The man who abandoned you before you were born.”
Kaelen’s blood went cold.
“He’s dead.”
“Is he?”
The king on the throne looked up.
His eyes met Kaelen’s.
And he smiled.