But the Castle of Nigh is endless. The tight corridors and dark staircases run under and over each other like they are a tangled spool of the cords my mother used to use to make the wicks of her candles. They are an ever-dizzying maze that feels impossible to make sense of, but also too alluring to turn away from.
I work my way deeper into my hopeless lostness and into the castle, forgetting all notions of whatever turmoil I’d walked away from in the dining hall and instead giving myself over to the opportunity for exploration. The same thrill that used to overcome me as a child as I roamed the forests invigorates me now as well. I discover rooms stacked high with leatherbound books, atriums where flora blooms despite the darkness that surrounds the exotic flowers.
When I find the classrooms where I assume we will do our studies, I try to take a mental note of its location, but without my bearings of the sun, it’s no use. I need to find a window so I can see the shadows on the ground outside and figure out if I’m facing north, east, south, or west. Only then will I be able to find my way back.
The farther I explore, the more deserted the hallways and lounges become. Even though lunch had been served, when I was still within the proximity of the dining hall, a few Crusaders had still roamed the hallways on duty or were performing their respective tasks: carrying armor to the launders, sweeping the hallways. It didn’t go past me that we would be spending our days here doing much the same. How else would such an expansive place be taken care of?
But as the sounds of the dining hall faded, as the candlelight flooded the deeper halls less and less, I’ve become keenly aware of my isolation.
The corridor I turn down next is draftier than the others. Not a single torch is lit on either wall, so I hold the lantern I’d taken from one of the lounges up higher.
The darkness breathes against me, making the flame flicker and the hairs on my arms stand on end.
My stomach fills with fluttering moths. I tell myself I should turn around, but the more sensible side of my inner voice tells me I’m being ridiculous. I already know what lays behind me and it isn’t my dormitory. If I’m ever to find it, I need to keep exploring, keep pressing on.
I suck in a breath and start walking down the black hall. My lantern flickers, casting shadows all around me and making it seem almost as if the hallway is twisting right out from underneath me.
Unlike the other corridors, the doors in this section are closed, making the hall appear even longer and narrower than it really is. Something tells me not to open any of the doors here, but I also know I can’t just stand here and hope for the dormitory to appear out of nowhere. Any of these doors could lead to the corridor that will finally lead me back to my warm cot, and so, I have no choice but to try them all.
The first iron doorknob doesn’t budge.
Frowning, I got to the next one to find that it, too, is locked.
I hold my lantern out to see farther down the hallway. Now more than ever I want to turn back. Now more than ever every sense of my being is telling me that something is wrong. I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be and that could end very badly if the wrong person found me.
But my light catches on something up ahead that I can’t pull away from, a vague mass that I can’t quite make out.
I tell myself that I’m just going to go as far as the vague mass ahead and then turn back, just far enough to see what it is that’s drawing me forward, and then I’ll return to the dining hall and ask for help if I have to—if I can find my way back there.
I take a shaking step forward, the lantern trembling in my grip. My boots echo through the eerily quiet with each cautious step.
Finally, I find what I’ve been staring at.
Cherrywood chairs are stacked on top of one another. Not in the organized fashion of someone who had wanted to store them for the next large banquet, but in a manner that looks more like they were thrown down the corridor to be used as the base of a bonfire. Dozens of them, cast aside to create a feeble wall that separates this part of the complex from the next. Almost as if someone was trying to build a wall out of them.
Only, it’s not a perfect seal…
Some of the chairs have been torn away, blown apart until all that was left are shattered chair legs and splinters.
Dread thunders in my chest.
I hold the lantern up higher. Blackness touches everything on the other side of the barricade. The flowers in the tall vases have withered where they stand, if they still stand at all. Glass from the mirror on one wall is shattered over the runner carpeting this corridor, the color of which I can’t tell, even with the light. There’s too much darkness. Farther still, the floor has caved in, the wallpaper tearing and curling like it’s been singed off the walls in a great fire. But the air does not smell charred here. No, the air smells cold and earthy.
Worst of all, I swear I hear the hissing whispers of the fiends who are sure to be lurking in the darkness.
I realize with sinking horror that I’ve stumbled onto the Blighted section of the castle, the one I’d spotted earlier as we were approaching the gates.
I take a stumbling, hasty step backward, lantern still extended high. I keep moving, keep walking backward with my eyes trained on the dark, gaping holes between the chairs, not daring to glance away, but wanting to leave this dreadful place as quickly as I can.
For the first time, I realize my boots are crunching beneath me like the rug is crisp, not soft as a rug should be, and it’s all too obvious that I have inadvertently stumbled into the Shadowthorn itself.
The Blight must’ve crept farther since whoever fortified this section of the castle. I wonder if anyone knows yet about the gaping hole in their barricade.
Suddenly, my back slams into something solid. I stiffen, my heart hammering its way up into my throat.
I can’t swallow; I can’t breathe. Fear has sunk its claws too deeply, rooting me to the floor.
Like a hawk diving through the sky, my hand darts for my dagger. My fingers grip around the hilt and tear it free, but just as I’m about to spin around and drive my blade into the fleshy mass behind me, someone gasps.
“Whoa, hold on there,” the young woman says as I snap around to face her, the dagger gleaming in the space between us while I hoist my lantern overhead. “I-I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought you might need some help finding your way back.”
I don’t recognize her voice, but I don’t need to for warm relief to flood through me. Human. She is human, all the way from the roots of the dark, coarse hair that cascades in waves down her back, to the caramel tips of her fingers, to the black leather boots that match the rest of her Crusader armor.
Her smile is pleasant and warm. “You looked lost,” she says, smiling sympathetically. “My name is Eparah. You’re one of the new recruits who arrived today, right?”
I don’t respond. The dagger in my hand refuses to return to its hilt and instead remains pointed at the seemingly harmless woman before me. But the image of that demon-man comes to mind. Though he hadn’t been able to disguise himself completely, I could no longer say with certainty that such a thing was impossible.
My skeptical gaze wanders up and down the woman who called herself Eparah. I take note of the sigil on her chest, purple like most of the Crusaders I’ve seen, but with a black mountain peak standing stark behind the white phoenix. If she is real, it would make her a captain, another member of the Shadow Crusade who outranks me and someone whom I should therefore not be pointing a blade at.