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Chapter 3: Lightning
There are shadows, and then there are shadows.
Some shadows you can see easily; darkness created by an obscured sun. Others live only in the fear of your mind, hidden in the deepest trenches of your soul.
Most terrifying of all are the shadowkeepers who wield both. They wield them like weapons, to manipulate, horrify and control. They are not a large number.
But they exist.
Or so the girl told herself as she sat in the middle of an empty house in the forest, stirring a pot and whispering soft, arcane words.
Her voice had a singsong quality, rising and falling in measured intervals. She took a deep breath before each new line, a shallow one whenever she had to add ingredients. A great sigh escaped her lips when she reached the end of the incantation.
“For thus I swear, and thus I curse, their life together in a hearse,” the tune made no sense, yet as she finished, there was the crack of thunder, and a flash of lightning. The fire under her stirring pot went out, and she felt chills on her spine.
Soon there was nothing left in the abandoned house, not even the tiny light of an ember.
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