“Oh,” a voice said from behind me. “But it is. Or it will be.”
I whirled around.
There stood a man. Hidden in shadow. I couldn’t make out his features, as the air around him seemed to be blurred and distorted. He was as tall as me, shoulders broad and waist tapered, but beyond that, the only thing I could make out was the smile on his face, genial and inviting.
He made my skin crawl.
“Who are you?” I took a defensive stance, digging my feet into the earth.
“Who am I?” he echoed. “I’ve asked this question of myself for longer than even you could know. I am a wizard. I am a lover. I am a brother. I am existing.” He took a step toward me. “This isn’t real,” he said, looking around, taking in the destruction behind me. I didn’t dare turn. “I dream. Now. I’m dreaming. I know this because I’ve done it for so long. How have you called me here?” Another step forward. The shadows trailed along behind him, clinging to him. There were whispers in them too soft for me to understand, though I swore I heard my name. There was a pull toward him, something that hooked itself in my chest, wanting me to step forward, to find out all he knew. I pushed it away. It was harder than it should have been.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I don’t even know you.”
“Perhaps,” the man said. “But you feel it, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Lies,” he said. “We’re connected, you and I. We dance. What is your name?”
I said nothing.
“I can see you,” he said. “Barely. You’re a boy. But you’re hidden by the light. It’s so bright. Tell me, why do you burn so brightly?”
“Why are you hidden in shadows?”
He laughed. “Of course that’s how it is. A bit hackneyed, don’t you think? A boy. Their futile hope. Me. Their inevitable future. The light and the dark. I mean, could you possibly get any more cliché?”
“Seems pretty on point to me,” I said, and there was gold and green all around me, stronger than it’d been in a very long time. It reminded me of the time on the dirt road outside of the village of the corn. The Darks and their lightning flowing through me as it electrified my heart. I swore the hairs on my arms were standing on end.
“This isn’t about heroes and villains,” the dark man said. “No matter what your narrow little view thinks it to be. It’s never going to be as black and white as that. No, I’m firmly planted in the gray. Moralistically, I could go either way, I suppose. It just depends upon how much you’ve pissed me off on any given day.”
“Gods,” I groaned, unable to help myself. “You’re just like everyone else, aren’t you?”
“How’s that now?”
“You monologue. Like the rest of them. Gods, I am so sick of you people, it’s ridiculous.”
“What do you mean by you people?”
I rolled my eyes. “You. The Darks. Every fucking bad guy that’s ever had so much as a thought come into their heads. You’re all the same. If anything’s clichéd here, it’s you.”
“Ah.” The man sounded amused. “There’s a difference between them and me.”
“Really. And what would that be?”
The smile twisted into something dark and wicked. “When I make promises, I keep them. You see, I know who you are, Sam of Wilds. I know your story. I know the choices you’ve made. The people who love you. The people who despise you. I know your life and how you came to be. The boy from the slums, brought up because of the inherent magic within you. Why, it’s a story for the ages. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of it? To have it. To hold it. To destroy it. I promise you this, Sam. Stand in my way and I will take it all from you. I am coming, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
He moved then, quicker than anyone I’d ever seen before. One moment, he was still ten feet away, and the next, he was crashing toward me, the shadows whipping around him in black tentacles as if they were a conscious being. Before I could move, before I could even think, his hand covered my face and pushed. But it wasn’t physical. It was cerebral, and I felt him in my mind, crawling through everything, filtering through memories, discarding them left and right as he pushed further. There was some kind of loop connecting us, and the images I got in return were quick and painful. There was fire and blood. Death and destruction. I heard him scream from a realm of shadows where he was dragged into the dark again and again. They tore into him, manipulating his magic, twisting it darker than it’d ever been before.
Eventually, he began to like it.
Then he found him. Found Ryan. The idea of him. The memories. My feelings. All about Ryan. And he latched on to it, took it in his hand, and said, “Cornerstones. Of course it always comes back to cornerstones. And so young, you are, having already found yours. You’re just a child. And so is he. I know his face now. He will be the first, I think.”
And I said, “No. You can’t have him, you can’t have him—”
His grip tightened on my face. He leaned forward, his cheek brushing against mine. The shadows that surrounded him crawled along my skin. His lips were near my ear when he whispered, “He is your heart. And I will rip it still beating from your chest.”
And then he was gone.