I returned to town before dawn. My cloak was torn, my face was pale, and thirteen ghost knights followed inside my shadow like blades waiting to be drawn.
Players moved away from me in the street. A few whispered. Some laughed, but less confidently than before.
Then Cole appeared on a rooftop above me, sitting on the edge like he owned gravity. He said I looked awful. I said he looked unemployed.
He grinned and told me Adrian had already replaced me. The guild was preparing for a sun temple raid. Everyone was saying my curse saved them the trouble of kicking out dead weight.
That should have hurt. It did. But pain is only useful when you spend it.
I asked Cole why he was telling me. He shrugged and said he liked watching disasters from the front row. Then his smile thinned. He warned me that Adrian was not just moving on. He was using my curse as proof that anyone who questioned his calls was a liability. The guild was getting stricter, cleaner, shinier, less human.
I looked up at Cole, and for once the joke in his eyes looked tired. I asked if he wanted me to feel bad for them. He said no. He wanted to know if the curse had made me stupid enough to seek revenge before I was ready.
I stared at him. He stared back. Neither of us said what we both knew. Cole had abandoned me, too. He had looked away. Maybe he regretted it. Maybe he did not. Either way, regret was not a potion. It could not heal the damage after the boss had already landed the hit.
So I told him the truth. Revenge was too small. Adrian had thrown me out of the sky. If I only climbed back up to punch him, I would still be playing his game. I wanted something better. I wanted every person who laughed at the curse to realize they had watched a throne being forged and called it a coffin.
Cole's grin came back, but weaker. He asked what I needed. I said moon dungeon locations. He asked what he got in return.
I looked at my shadow, where a ghost rapier slowly emerged, pointed at his reflection on the wall. He raised both hands and said friendship was priceless. I told him friendship had expired, but information could rent five minutes of mercy.
Cole gave me three locations before sunrise. I did not thank him.
The first location was a forest that only appeared at night. That sounded fake until I saw it grow out of empty plains under the moon. One moment there was grass and fog. The next, black trees rose from the ground like spears, branches twisting into claws, leaves shaped like raven feathers.
The place was called the Hollow Wood, and players avoided it because maps stopped working inside. Compasses spun. Party chat delayed by minutes. Anyone who entered without a rope trail usually came out at dawn missing levels, memories, or both.
I entered alone. Well, technically alone. My shadow was getting crowded.
The Hollow Wood did not attack immediately. That was how I knew it was dangerous. Weak monsters rush. Smart monsters let you become comfortable before they remove the floor.
My bats returned wrong. One flew in circles. One screamed my name in Cole's voice. One landed on my shoulder and whispered directions to a cliff that did not exist.
Illusion forest. Skilled.
I closed my eyes. Vision was the easiest sense to lie to. Sound was harder. Shadow was harder than that. I sent my ghost guards in four directions and counted the delay between their steps and their echoes.
The forest shifted. Paths bent. Trees moved when I was not looking.
So I stopped playing pathfinder and started playing landlord. I ordered the ogre shadow to start uprooting trees.
The Hollow Wood screamed. Not a monster scream. A whole forest scream. Every leaf shook. Branches whipped down. Roots snapped from the soil and tried to drag me under. I jumped onto the ogre's shoulder, then onto a branch, then off a bat swarm that gathered under my boots like a living staircase. If the forest wanted to move, I would move faster.
Shadow wolves came out next. Not normal wolves. These were long, sleek things with bodies like spilled ink and eyes like blue knives. They ran along tree trunks, across empty air, even over my own shadow. One bit my arm and tried to drag my darkness away from my body.
I punched it in the nose. Terrible idea. My hand went numb. The wolf looked offended.
Then I grinned, grabbed its jaws with both hands, and let it pull. For one second, it ripped my shadow halfway off the ground. Pain flashed through my skull. The curse screamed. But while the wolf was busy stealing the front of my shadow, it forgot the back. My ghost captain stepped out behind it and skewered it with the rapier.
Nocturnal predator conquered. Shadow mount formed.
The wolf rose from the ground, larger than before, with smoke leaking from its fur. It lowered itself in front of me.
I stared. I had not thought about mounts. The wolf looked at me. I looked at the forest trying to murder me.
Then I climbed on.
Ridiculous does not begin to describe what happened next. The shadow wolf launched forward so fast the trees blurred into black lines. I leaned low, cloak snapping behind me, ghost guards surfing through the shadows on either side. Bats swarmed overhead like a living storm cloud. Roots erupted in front of us. The wolf ran up them. Branches swung down. I used them like bars, flipping between attacks while slashing glowing knots in the wood.
More wolves came. I took them. One tried to ambush me from above, so I swapped places with a bat shadow midair, landed on its back upside down, and stabbed it until it agreed to a career change. Another split into three copies. I let all three bite me, because the fake ones had no weight, then head-butted the real one hard enough to crack its mask-like skull.
By the time I reached the center of the Hollow Wood, I had a pack.
The heart of the forest was a black tree with a moon trapped inside its trunk. The moon pulsed like a heart. Hanging from the branches were dozens of player shadows — not bodies, just shadows, twitching and whispering. The forest had been stealing pieces of anyone who entered.