The room was silent after the guardian left. Not the kind of silence that comforted, but the kind that lingered after a storm, heavy and watchful, as though the walls themselves remembered what had just happened.
The broken chair near the corner had been uprighted, the overturned table set back where it belonged.
Jude sat on the side of his bed, his small hands resting on his knees as he drew slow breaths, forcing calm into his chest.
There was no triumph in him. No pride. Only clarity. The fight had ended, but he knew exactly why he had won.
Slowly, he lifted his hands, turning them over, examining his fingers, his palms, the faint red marks still tracing his skin. His body was small, eight years old, yet the feeling inside his muscles was unfamiliar—not strength born of natural growth, nor the product of physical training alone.
During the fight, when Vin's fist had come down too fast, and when Vex's knee had aimed for his ribs, his body had responded before his thoughts had finished forming.
He had used magic—not spells, not chants, not something dramatic or visible. Just a thin layer of reinforcement, a subtle enhancement threaded into his muscles and bones.
Enough to steady his balance. Enough to sharpen his reaction. Enough to let his blows land without shattering his own hands. He hadn't even thought about it. The body had simply obeyed.
Jude exhaled through his nose and stood, stretching his arms slightly. There was no pain. Just heat, lingering like coals beneath the skin, slowly fading. As he moved to adjust the blanket on his bed, something shifted at the corners of his vision.
The shadows.
At first, he thought it was his candle dying. But the flame still burned steadily. The light hadn't changed. Yet along the floor, near his feet, the darkness began to thicken—not grow darker, deeper.
The wood beneath his soles disappeared, like a reflection sinking into black water. Mist crawled outward from his heels, rising around his ankles in soft, silent curls. His heartbeat slowed, not from fear, but from a strange familiarity he couldn't explain.
The shadows did not rush him. They moved with intention, slow and deliberate, like they were making sure he was watching.
Then they swallowed him.
There was no falling. No sense of direction. One second he was in the estate room, and the next, the world had vanished entirely. He stood weightless in a boundless void.
No floor.
No sky.
No walls.
Only darkness.
But it wasn't empty. It felt thick. Vast. Alive.
Jude didn't panic. His instincts told him he should, but something deeper held him still. He turned slowly, though there was nothing to turn toward, only endless black ahead and behind.
"Who… or what are you?" he asked.
His voice did not echo. It simply vanished, swallowed like everything else. For a moment, nothing answered. Then presence descended. Not footsteps. Not movement through air. Just… arrival.
A pressure settled over the void, not heavy, but undeniable. As though the very space itself was acknowledging something far above him. The darkness nearby folded inward, gathering, twisting into depth and form.
A figure emerged. Not fully solid, not fully mist. Tall, immeasurable, its shape draped in flowing shadows that moved as though they were alive separately from it. No face as mortals understood one, only a suggestion of features beneath waves of darkness.
Where its eyes should have been, two faint glows lingered, like distant stars swallowed by night. Jude did not bow. He did not step back either. The being looked down at him, and when it spoke, the void itself seemed to recognize the authority of its voice.
"I am Morthos," it said. "God of Shadow and Death."
Jude's lips parted slightly. A God. Not a spirit. Not a summoned entity. Not a trick of the mind. A true God. The kind that shaped nations through contracts, whose whims shifted the balance of history, whose names were spoken with reverence or fear depending on which lands you stood upon. And this one stood before him.
"You have been chosen," Morthos continued, his voice neither kind nor cruel, only vast. "You interest me."
Jude swallowed. His thoughts ran wild, but his voice remained steady. "Why?" he asked. "I have no special talent. I don't have aura. I don't have recognition. I was just beaten, and I just beat… two boys. That's all." For a heartbeat, the void was silent again.
Then the shadows around Morthos shifted, like a slow breath. "Have you not used my blessing already?" the God asked.
Jude froze.
His mind snapped backward,the artifact. The moment, the light,his master's trembling hands and his own desperate wish. The relic that had bent time itself for him. His nails dug into his palms as realization settled in.
That artifact… belonged to Morthos. Questions flooded his thoughts, sharp and countless. How had his master found it? Why had he given it to him? Why had a God's artifact been in the hands of a dying sage instead of locked behind divine seals or ancient temples? But Jude knew.
He wouldn't get those answers here. Instead, he exhaled, steadying his racing mind, and lifted his gaze back toward the towering being before him.
"And what," he asked evenly, "will I gain for becoming your contractor?"
The void seemed to shift, as though the question had pleased the one who heard it. The darkness beneath them stirred.
"All shadows stem from me," Morthos said. "Every darkness cast by flesh, flame, mountain, or moon. They exist because I exist. You will gain my authority.
"Shadow. And Death."
Jude's breath caught, not with fear, but with something deeper—a quiet shock. Authority. Not power. Not a fragment. Authority. The very concept of command over an aspect of existence. Not spells.
A domain.
He didn't fully understand what that meant yet, but even he, at eight years old, knew the weight of those words.
No one in House Avernus had ever been chosen by a God. Not his father,not his uncles,not the previous heads whose swords rested at the Garden.
They were built on steel and discipline, not divinity. Yet here he stood, an outcast child among his own bloodline, facing a God who called him chosen. The contrast almost made him laugh.
Almost.
"What do I give in return?" Jude asked. Morthos gazed down at him, the shadows around it curling in endless motion. "Interest," the God replied. "Faith. Continuation. You will walk as mine in this world. You will use what I grant you. In return, I will watch.
" A strange deal."
No worship demanded. No kneeling. No endless devotion. Just existence acknowledged under a divine eye.
Jude looked down at his hands. Small. Bruised. Scarred by a fight that no one else wrote down or rewarded. He thought about his future. The family that discarded him. The path he once walked and the one he now remembered.
And then he looked up again. "I accept," he said.
The void reacted. Not with light. Not with sound. But with stillness. A pact sealed beyond mortal understanding. The shadows beneath Jude surged once, like a tide acknowledging its moon, then began to withdraw.
The darkness folded away from his body, sliding like liquid mist away from his limbs. The sense of divine presence receded, not leaving, but retreating to a place beyond ordinary reach. "Remember," Morthos said as his form blurred into the void. "Shadow does not disappear. It waits."
And then—Jude woke.
His eyes snapped open to the dim ceiling of his room. The candle was still burning. The furniture still stood where he had placed it.
The faint smell of wood and dust filled the air. But something had changed. The room felt heavier. Not with danger. With potential. He slowly sat up, his heart still beating, though steadier now.
The shadows around his bed were no longer ordinary. They felt… aware. Not moving, not speaking, but present, like silent witnesses that had always been there, only now acknowledging him.
Outside the room, distant footsteps echoed along the corridor. The house guardian. Jude didn't know what was happening beyond his door yet. But he knew this much: while he stood still, while he had returned to being an eight-year-old boy in an isolated estate, the world beyond him had already begun to shift.
The house guardian walked swiftly through the estate halls, his armor faintly clinking with each step, his expression unreadable. He didn't enter another room. He didn't waste time on questions.
He only headed to the stables, mounted his horse, and rode. Not toward the outer city, not toward the knight barracks, but toward the main family grounds. Toward the heart of House Avernus. Toward the Patriarch. Because for the first time in generations…something had happened among the children.
And whether they realized it yet or not, the balance inside their bloodline had just begun to change.