The Sablethorn Accord: How a Witchs Shadow and a Sun-cursed Thief Ignited the First Celestial Heist

By Krystal Graham and AI (Editor)

In a world where shadows are currency and light is a curse, two outcasts forge a pact that will shatter the heavens. 
Nyxara Veythra, a witch stripped of her shadow by betrayal, walks the ashen wastes of Umbrathis as a living scar, her body marked by phantom fissures where her silhouette once clung. Thalorin Veyth, a thief cursed to disintegrate at sunrise into golden motes, stumbles into her path with an offer: infiltrate the Eclipse Consortium’s celestial vaults to reclaim her shadow and cure his affliction. Together, they ignite a heist that will unravel realms. 
From the **Bazaar of Broken Hours**, where time fractures into shards and merchants hawk stolen minutes, to the **Luminous Gaol**, a prison spun from liquid mirrors that reflect the darkest sins of those who gaze into them, Nyxara and Thalorin face trials that test their fragile alliance. Nyxara bargains with starved chronophages and confesses buried truths, while Thalorin trades ribs for borrowed time, his body unraveling faster with every step. 
But the heart of their heist lies in the **Vault of Crystallized Shadows**, where Nyxara’s stolen shadow pulses with sentient malice, fused to the crown of her betrayer, Kaelvir. As the thieves’ pact frays, they uncover a deeper betrayal: the shadow itself hungers to infest Nyxara’s void, while Thalorin’s true name—a secret that could unmake him—has been whispered to their enemies. 
In a final, desperate gambit, Nyxara and Thalorin must choose: merge with their curses and risk annihilation, or let their bond dissolve into cosmic dust. Their collision of light and void will birth a new entity—a living paradox that drifts through realms, mending fractured time and whispering secrets to starved chronophages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Feb 5, 2025

Book preview

Prologue

The universe was not born fractured. Once, it breathed as a single luminous lung—light and shadow expanding and contracting in perfect rhythm. Stars bloomed in the dark like white poppies, their roots tangled in the veins of nebulae. Gods walked among mortals then, their footsteps birthing rivers of radiance, their laughter carving valleys where shadows pooled like ink. But even gods grow jealous. Even light grows hungry.

In the heart of what would become the Eclipse Spire, two figures stood where the air itself hummed with the tension of a plucked string. Nyxara Veythra’s shadow stretched long behind her, not as a mere silhouette, but as a living thing—a second self that coiled and whispered secrets only she could hear. It had always been her companion, her twin, until the day Kaelvir Satharyn laid his hands upon the Obsidian Forge.

Watch, he murmured, lifting the crown from the anvil.

It was not metal, nor bone, nor any substance that belonged to the world they knew. The Crown of Thorns pulsed with a venomous beauty, its barbs glinting like frozen starlight, its circlet woven from the breath between heartbeats. Nyxara recoiled as it drank the light from the room. Her shadow recoiled with her.

You said we’d forge a weapon, she said, her voice sharp as the edge of a dying star. Not this… this abomination.

Kaelvir’s hands did not shake. Not yet. It is a weapon. One that will unmake the Consortium’s tyranny. With this, we can tear the shadows from their grasp and—

And become tyrants ourselves? Her shadow lashed, a whip of darkness cracking against the walls. She had always been the stronger weaver, her mastery over the void unmatched. But Kaelvir had always been the cleverer thief.

He stepped closer, the crown’s thorns trembling as if scenting her rage. You told me you wanted freedom. Not just for us—for every soul crushed under their boots.

Freedom? She gestured to the crown. This reeks of their methods. You’ve stitched lies into every thread. I can taste them.

For a moment, his mask slipped. She saw the boy who’d once pressed a shard of crystallized shadow into her palm, his fingers brushing hers like a confession. The boy who’d whispered, One day, we’ll trade these trinkets for a world that’s ours.

That boy was gone.

You fear power, he said, cold now. Even as you wield it.

Her shadow struck.

It shouldn’t have been possible—shadow against shadow—but hers was no ordinary shade. It had teeth, her shadow. Teeth and claws and a voice that sang in the hollows of her bones. It tore into the crown, into him, and the Spire shook with their duel.

Light splintered.

Shadows screamed.

And then—

A sound like a thousand mirrors shattering.

Nyxara staggered, her hands flying to her face. To the cracks.

They spread fast, fissures splitting her skin as if she were a clay doll left too long in the kiln. Her shadow—her beautiful, snarling shadow—twisted in the air, ripped from her by an invisible hand. She watched, voiceless, as it poured into the crown’s waiting thorns.

Kaelvir’s scream tore through her.

The crown was alive now, ravenous, its barbs buried in his skull. Shadows boiled from it, devouring the light, the air, the very sound of his agony. Nyxara fell to her knees, her fissured hands scrabbling at the floor. Her bones—gods, her bones—they rang hollow, each movement a discordant chime.

What have you done? she rasped.

He answered through gritted teeth, blood pooling where the thorns bit deepest. What you… lacked the courage to.

Above them, the sky ruptured.

The Sundering did not come as fire or flood. It came as silence—a vast, devouring quiet that snuffed stars mid-burn. Realms folded into themselves, time frayed at the edges, and the Consortium’s towers of onyx and anguish trembled. Somewhere, a sun-god’s relic shattered. Somewhere, a shadow laughed.

Nyxara crawled toward Kaelvir, not to save him, but to destroy him. Her fingers brushed a thorn.

It bit deep.

Her blood—black as the void between galaxies—splashed onto the crown. The shadows recoiled. For a heartbeat, she saw him as he’d been: a man who loved the stars too fiercely, who’d let that hunger twist him into something sharp and desperate.

You took what was mine, she whispered.

He reached for her, his eyes twin voids. Nyx—

She closed her fist around the thorn. Now you’ll wear it forever.

The crown moved.

It sank into him, thorns piercing sinew and soul, stitching his shadow to its malice. He convulsed, his mouth open in a soundless scream, as the shadows poured into him—her shadow, their shared shadow, now a thing of teeth and vengeance.

When it was done, he stood altered.

His eyes were gone, replaced by smoldering pits. His shadow—no, hers—twisted behind him like a serpent poised to strike. The crown had fused to his skull, a grotesque diadem of bone and obsidian.

Nyxara, he rasped, but the voice was not his own. It was the voice of the void, of the thing that had taken root in her absence.

She spat at his feet. Her blood sizzled where it struck the floor. May you never know peace.

The Spire groaned. Cracks spiderwebbed through the air itself, reality crumbling at the edges. Nyxara turned her back on him—on the monster she’d helped create—and let the void take her.

Her body unraveled like smoke, the fissures in her skin glowing faintly, a map of her ruin. She did not look back. Not when the first chronophage tore through the Spire’s walls, its maw wide enough to swallow cities. Not when the mirror-demons clawed their way free of the Luminous Gaol, their forms reflecting Kaelvir’s torment.

And not when her own shadow, now wedded to the crown, began to whisper.

Soon, it hissed, though none remained to hear. Soon.

The Age of Radiance died with a whimper.

In its wake, the realms fractured. Umbrathis drowned in eternal twilight, its people trading shadows like currency. The Bazaar of Broken Hours spun into being, a marketplace where time itself could be bartered, stolen, lost. And deep within the Ashen Wastes, a child with hollow bones and eyes like cracked obsidian lifted her head—and dreamed of vengeance.

Far above, in the ruins of the Eclipse Spire, Kaelvir Satharyn knelt.

The crown whispered.

It told him of a vault hidden inside a dying star. Of a throne forged from crystallized shadows. Of a woman with fissured skin and a thief whose body dissolved into golden motes at dawn.

It told him to wait.

To hunger.

To prepare.

And in the silence between light and shadow, Nyxara’s voice echoed, a venomous promise carried on the solar winds:

I am coming.

Chapter 1: Ash and Ember

The ash tasted of burnt bone and forgotten names. Nyxara moved through the wastes like a phantom, her bare feet leaving no imprint on the ashen crust. Hollow-boned and fissure-veined, she had become a creature of the between—not quite alive, not quite shadowless. Not since Kaelvir’s betrayal. Not since the crown’s teeth had torn her second self away.

Her quarry’s tracks lay ahead: deep grooves carved by caravan wheels, already half-filled with drifting gray powder. She crouched, fingers brushing the marks. Warmth lingered in the ash. Recent. The shadow-trader hadn’t yet reached the waystation’s dubious shelter.

A tremor raced through her—not fear, but the void’s hunger. The fissures spiderwebbing her collarbone leaked tendrils of shadow-smoke, their touch colder than the dead wind. She pressed a hand to the worst crack, where her sternum split like overripe fruit. The void whispered there, in the marrow-hollows of her bones.

Feed us, it hissed.

She stood, ash cascading from her tattered cloak. Patience, she murmured, though the word felt alien on her tongue. Mercy had died with her shadow; patience she’d learned from the wastes themselves.

The caravan came into view as she crested a dune of compacted ash. A ramshackle thing, its wooden wheels reinforced with strips of void-tanned leather. Nyxara’s nostrils flared. Beneath the reek of sweat and rusted metal hung the musk of stolen shadows—oil-slick and electric.

The trader stood at the caravan’s rear, unloading crates into a waystation long abandoned to the ash. His shadow pooled at his feet, twitching. Not his own—she could tell by the way it strained against invisible bonds. A panther’s shadow, sleek and feral. Stolen from some luckless hunter in the Hollowed City’s lower wards.

Nyxara’s fingers curled. Her own shadow had been a wolf once.

She let the void rise.

Shadows erupted from her fissures, serpentine and snarling. They struck the trader mid-turn, slamming him against the waystation’s petrified wood wall. His cry echoed through the dead canyon, scattering ash-owls from their perches.

Who do you sell to? Nyxara’s voice scraped like flint on stone. The void-smoke thickened, tendrils coiling around the trader’s throat. Name the shadow-weavers operating near the Hollowed City.

The man gagged, fingers scrabbling at his pinned shadow. The panther-shape writhed, jaws snapping at Nyxara’s bonds. I—I don’t know names! They pay in time-vials, void-glass—ask the Consortium if you want answers!

A lie. She tasted it in the ash, in the too-quick flicker of his pupils. Her shadows tightened. Try again.

He choked, spittle flecking his beard. The Blackscale Syndicate! They’ve got a den beneath the Clockwork Bazaar! Now let me—

A whimper cut through the ash-heavy air.

Nyxara froze. The sound hadn’t come from the trader.

Her shadows lashed, shredding the tarp covering the caravan’s last crate. Splintered wood rained down. Inside crouched a child—nine, maybe ten—with eyes like cracked obsidian and a wrist branded by the Consortium’s eclipse sigil.

The trader seized his chance.

His boot connected with Nyxara’s ribs. Hollow bones rang like chimes as she staggered. He scrambled for the caravan’s reins, whip cracking over ash-grizzled saurians. The beasts lurched forward, vanishing into the storm that had begun to claw at the canyon’s edges.

Nyxara let him go.

The child stared up at her, unflinching. No tears. No pleas. Just that hollow defiance she’d seen reflected in every puddle, every shard of void-glass since the Sundering.

You’re one of them, the child said. Not an accusation. A fact.

Nyxara’s fissures pulsed. One of who?

The cracked ones. The shadowless. A tiny hand brushed her own fissured wrist. Does it hurt?

She recoiled. The void roared in her ears, demanding she sever this thread of weakness. One slash. One less soul for the Consortium to break.

Instead, she tossed the child a void-glass shard—jagged, palm-sized, its edges singing with the same resonance that had once birthed the Crown of Thorns. Cut your bonds. Run east. Find the fossilized leviathan.

The child caught the shard, eyes narrowing. Why?

Because surviving is the sweetest vengeance.

She turned before the void could change her mind. Before she could see the child’s face twist into hope.

The storm swallowed her whole.

Her enclave stank of old blood and older regrets. Nyxara crouched before the mirror of frozen void—a shard taller than she was, its surface rippling like oil on water. The leviathan’s ribs arched above her, ancient and pitted, their curves cradling the fragile sanctuary she’d carved from ash and spite.

The fissures looked worse tonight.

She traced the lightning-strike cracks radiating from her collarbone. Shadow-smoke seeped from each one, coiling into phantom hands that clawed at her ribs. Mocking her.

You hesitated, they seemed to sneer. You spared. You felt.

A fist-sized void-crystal glowed dully in the corner, its light leaching color from the chamber. Nyxara reached for the shadow-thread bandages she’d stolen from a Consortium outpost last moon-cycle. The fibers squirmed in her grip, alive with captured darkness.

Hold still, she muttered.

The void-smoke hissed as she pressed the bandages to her worst fissure. Binding the wound. Binding the hunger. The child’s face flickered in her mind—that awful, fragile hope—and her hands shook.

A mistake.

The bandages unraveled, shadows snapping like vipers. One lashed her cheek, drawing black blood. Nyxara snarled, seizing the tendril in both hands.

You are mine, she spat. Not Kaelvir’s. Not the Consortium’s. Mine.

She bit down.

The shadow-tendril burst into acrid smoke. She swallowed reflexively, the void’s chill spreading through her veins. For a heartbeat, the fissures stilled.

Then the pain hit.

She collapsed against the mirror, forehead pressed to its icy surface. Her reflection stared back—a woman of cracks and absences, her eyes twin voids.

Pathetic, she told the glass.

The wind shifted. A new scent wove through the ash—charcoal and rotting citrus. Void-hounds.

Nyxara was on her feet before the first howl finished echoing. Her hands found the daggers of fossilized shadow-ivory hidden in her boots. The Consortium’s trackers had come sooner than expected.

The child. They’d scented her mercy.

She slipped through the leviathan’s ribcage, ash stinging her eyes. Three void-hounds circled below, their forms shifting between substance and smoke. No riders—these were young ones, barely weaned from their mothers’ shadow-teats.

Nyxara smiled.

She leaped.

The first hound died mid-howl, her shadow-ivory blade severing its spine. The second lunged, jaws snapping where her throat had been. She twisted, driving her knee into its ribs. Hollow bones sang.

The third hesitated.

She saw the moment its pup-soft courage failed. It turned to flee—

—and impaled itself on her thrown dagger.

Ash settled. Nyxara crouched amidst the dissolving corpses, watching their shadow-smoke rise to join the storm. The void in her fissures purred, sated for now.

A sound pricked her ears—not the wind. Not the hounds.

Singing.

She followed the fractured melody to the leviathan’s tailbone. There, huddled in a nest of scavenged furs, the child sat cross-legged. The void-glass shard glowed in their hands, its edge pressed to the eclipse sigil on their wrist.

—and the shadowless shall rise, the child whispered, voice raw but steady, with cracks in their hands and fire in their eyes…

An old song. A rebel song. Nyxara hadn’t heard it since the