Shadow Readers

He didn't sleep—not really.

Spandrex lay awake long after the dormitory fell into silence, the candle at his desk guttering into darkness. The blanket felt heavier than iron, pressing him into the mattress as if the world wanted to grind him into the shape it expected: small, broken, silent.

But something stirred beneath the weight of shame and grief.

A flicker.

By the time the third bell of night rang—a hollow chime that echoed down stone corridors—Spandrex was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his bag.

He reached inside and pulled out the damaged rune book. The cover was cracked where Remiel's boot had struck it, the pages inside wrinkled with dried ink. But the runes were still there—faint and whispering.

His fingers traced the glyph for Vehrash, the shadow-binding seal. It was a rune that required more than precision; it needed stillness of mind, control of breath, and a willingness to surrender to silence.

Spandrex had nothing but silence.

He turned to his desk and lit the candle again. The flame trembled as he opened the spellbook to the right page and dipped a salvaged quill in what remained of his ink. Slowly, with careful pressure, he began redrawing the rune—over and over on a worn piece of parchment until the strokes no longer trembled.

An hour passed.

Then two.

And then, when he felt the pattern etched behind his eyes, he whispered the incantation.

"Vehrash nal'othen."

The flame in the candle dimmed. Shadows around the room bent inward, as if pulled by invisible strings.

The rune pulsed faintly, and then—flickered out.

Spandrex didn't smile.

But he felt something click inside him. Not power exactly, but presence. Something waiting to be claimed.

A heartbeat later, the candle snapped back to full flame. The shadows fled to the corners.

And Spandrex finally exhaled.

The next morning, the Academy returned to life with a vengeance.

Students filled the corridors like a flood—robes flowing, familiars darting underfoot, the scent of spell-ink and charm wax lingering in the air. For Spandrex, it was another day of dodged glances and whispers barely held back.

But he walked straighter now. Shoulders higher. The night had done something to him—not healed, not fixed, but settled something.

"Move, mudblood."

Jastin brushed past him hard in the hall.

Spandrex stumbled but caught himself. His hand twitched toward his satchel—but not in fear. The rune he had practiced lay folded within it, faintly pulsing.

He didn't react. Not yet.

The afternoon found him in the north wing, where shadow classes were held in rooms with no windows. The professor—Mistress Kael—was a short, sharp woman who rarely spoke above a whisper, and whose lessons required quiet more than answers.

"Shadow is not absence," she said as she passed behind the rows. "It is presence you have not yet earned the right to see."

The class was tasked with forming minor shadow sigils—glyphs that would cling to their arms like smoke, shifting with movement. Most were fumbling with the alignment of glyph-strokes and incantations, their wrists barely tinged by grey shimmer.

Spandrex sat alone again.

His quill hovered over his parchment. The shape of Vehrash danced in his mind.

He closed his eyes.

Not absence. Not silence.

Invitation.

He whispered the incantation.

The sigil didn't flicker—it etched itself into his skin like black ink drawn by invisible hands. It curled up his wrist like a serpent of smoke, delicate and alive. The room felt colder suddenly.

Mistress Kael paused beside him.

Her gaze lingered on the mark. Her head tilted slightly—not in disapproval. Something like curiosity.

She said nothing. Just moved on.

But Remiel noticed.

His eyes narrowed from three desks away. Myra leaned toward him and whispered something, but he didn't laugh this time.

That evening, Spandrex returned to his dorm and shut the door behind him. He looked at the sigil still faintly visible on his wrist. It hadn't faded. Most beginner glyphs lasted minutes, maybe an hour.

His still pulsed.

He pressed a finger to it. It didn't burn. But it throbbed with something more than magic.

Recognition.

He didn't know what he was becoming.

But for the first time since entering the Academy, Spandrex didn't feel lost.

He felt… watched.

Not by peers. Not by professors.

But by the shadows themselves.

And they didn't mock.

They waited.