The salt-heavy air of Port Marrow was a physical weight, thick with the scent of rotting kelp and cheap rum. In the back room of The Silver Needle, Lowen watched her sister, Miri, hunched over a heavy oak cutting table. Miri wasn’t working with silk or linen anymore. Instead, her shears snipped at the floorboards, catching the lingering darkness where a merchant’s shadow had rested a moment too long.
The shears didn’t make a metallic click; they made a sound like a stifled gasp. Miri dragged the stolen gloom upward, its fabric flickering like trapped smoke. Lowen reached out to steady her sister, but her hand slammed into an invisible wall. It wasn’t cold, but it was there—a hum of energy that vibrated against her palms, pushing her back with the gentle, firm insistence of a tide.
Miri didn’t feel the damp chill of the shop. To her, the room was bathed in the glorious, honeyed light of the Guide. It hovered just by her ear, a tiny golden orb that sang in a frequency only she could hear—a sound like distant harps and the promise of a peaceful sleep.
“Don’t mind Lowen,” the Guide whispered, its glow pulsing in time with her heartbeat. “She doesn’t see the danger. She doesn’t see the men on the docks dreaming of fire. She is blind to the wolves at the door, Miri. Only you can build the wall.”
Miri looked at the floorboards. To Lowen, they were just wood, but to Miri, they were covered in discarded velvet. The shadows of the villagers weren’t just darkness; they were heavy, luxurious fabrics that the owners didn’t even appreciate. Why let a fishmonger waste such a fine, dark cloak on a muddy street?
With a smile, Miri snipped. The “fabric” felt like cool water between her fingers. “I’m making us safe,” she murmured to the orb. “A patchwork of peace.”
Miri’s head was tilted, her eyes fixed on a point in the air just beside her ear. She was nodding, whispering to nothingness. “Yes… Yes, I see. A thicker stitch for the mane.”
“Miri, there’s nothing there,” Lowen said, her voice trembling. She shoved against the empty air, but her weight did nothing. The space between them felt like thickened glass. “You’re talking to the wind while you tear the town apart.”
Miri didn’t look up. Her needle, threaded with spun cobwebs and ink, dipped into the void. As she worked, a massive, leonine head began to take shape on a frame of nothingness. Lowen watched in horror as a creature of pure, stolen shade began to knit together. She couldn’t see what was directing Miri, but she could see the effect—the way Miri’s hands were pulled and guided by an unseen force, like a marionette dancing for a silent master.
“The Black Galleon is docking tonight, Lowen,” Miri whispered, her eyes glazed. “The men with the scarred hands… the ones who took the tailor’s daughter. They’ll come here, and they’ll look at us. But we’ll have a guardian. He doesn’t feel pain. He cannot be broken.”
Miri began to graft a second head onto the lion’s neck—a female goat with horns like curved daggers, its eyes wide and vacant. Finally, a serpent’s head was added, fashioned from the shifting darkness of the port’s narrowest alleys.
“Miri, stop!” Lowen cried, slamming her fist against the invisible shield. The vibration rattled her teeth. “The people in the market… they’re waking up without their shadows. They’re hollow. You’re taking parts of them that don’t belong to you!”
“It’s a fair trade,” Miri muttered, her needle flying with a frantic, rhythmic pace. “Their comfort for our lives. Why should they walk in the sun while we live in terror?”
The orb flared with a sudden, beautiful intensity. “She calls them ‘people’, Miri, but they are just raw materials. They would not sacrifice a copper to save you from the pirates. Why should you hesitate to take their shadows?”
The orb drifted lower, hovering over the hollow chest of the great beast Miri had built. “It needs a tether,” the light sang. “A heart of the same blood. A shadow that knows your name. Only then will it truly obey.”
Miri looked at Lowen. Through the golden haze, her sister looked grey, tired, and frail. Poor Lowen. She was so unprotected. She needed a sturdy cage to keep her from the world’s sharp edges.
“It needs a heart,” Miri whispered, her needle poised.
The creature was nearly complete, standing seven feet tall and pulsing with a stolen vitality. To Lowen, the beast looked like a hole in the world, a three-headed nightmare that absorbed what little light remained in the shop. She watched Miri reach out and cup the air where the creature’s chest would be, her face illuminated by a glow Lowen couldn’t see, but could feel as a searing heat against her skin.
The invisible barrier suddenly expanded, shoving Lowen back against the wall. The air grew thick with ozone. Lowen realised with a jolt of terror that whatever Miri was talking to wasn’t protecting them. It was using Miri’s fear as a tool.
“Is it enough?” Miri asked the empty air.
The creature—Shadow—shook itself. Its fur bristled. The lion’s mouth opened, releasing the collective sigh of a hundred stolen souls. It stood between them, its three heads pivoting in unison toward the shop’s heavy wooden door.
“See, Lowen?” Miri said, a hysterical edge to her laughter. “We’re safe now.”
But Lowen looked at the beast, then at the empty air where Miri’s “guide” supposedly lived. The invisible shield hadn’t vanished; it had shifted. It was no longer protecting them from the world outside. It had formed a circle around the three of them, pinning them in the room with a monster made of theft. The creature wasn’t looking at the door. It was looking at the sisters, its goat-head bleating a sound of pure, unadulterated hunger.
Lowen reached for her sister, but the air between them had finally hardened into a cage.
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