Volume 1 Part 2 Chapter 5
The Shadows Learned Him
Kagen didn’t tell the critters what he felt.
He didn’t tell them how the light felt harsher now, like it scraped instead of warmed. How his skin prickled under the sun, nerves buzzing as if exposed. He didn’t tell them how his thoughts kept circling back to the hatch beneath the bridge, looping with the patience of something that knew it would be answered eventually.
But Fin noticed.
He noticed the way Kagen flinched from brightness, the way his eyes stayed lowered even on clear days, tracking shadows instead of paths. He noticed the stiffness in Kagen’s shoulders each night as he walked toward the bridge, the careful, deliberate set of his steps—like a man bracing himself against something invisible.
Fin followed at a distance at first.
He perched on fence posts and railings, wings tucked tight, watching Kagen disappear down the ladder and reemerge hours later with his expression reset into something sharper, quieter. Sometimes Kagen stood very still afterward, staring at nothing while the shadows around his boots stretched and pooled in ways that didn’t match the light.
Fin did not intervene.
Not yet.
The Engine’s chamber glowed brighter each night.
Kagen returned to it again and again, feeding it pieces of himself he didn’t know he was giving—anger folded neatly into focus, loneliness refined into resolve, the old, familiar hunger to matter distilled into something purer and more dangerous. Each visit left him clearer. Each departure made the world above feel thinner, less substantial.
Sleep stopped being rest.
Kagen began to dream while awake.
He would blink and see the chamber instead of the path ahead—the fractured plates rotating, the pulse syncing to his breath. Sometimes he heard it calling, not in words, but in pressure, in certainty. Sometimes the shadows around him shifted in response, leaning closer, stretching upward like they were listening too.
Once, Fin watched Kagen’s shadow lift its head before Kagen did.
That was when Fin started getting closer.
At first, he only tugged gently at Kagen’s pant leg, a familiar, grounding habit. Kagen barely reacted.
“Not now,” he muttered once, brushing Fin aside without looking.
Fin hovered next time, wings fluttering nervously, blocking the path with his small body, eyes wide and bright in the dim light beneath the bridge.
Kagen stopped.
Sighed.
“Go,” he said quietly. “I need you out of the way.”
Fin didn’t move.
The Engine pulsed below them, low and insistent.
Kagen stepped around him.
After that, Fin began to squeak—loudly, sharply, a sound too big for his small frame, heart pounding like it was trying to escape his chest. He barked once, fierce and desperate, planting himself squarely in Kagen’s path.
Kagen halted.
Just for a moment.
His jaw tightened. His gaze flicked downward, not unkind—but distant.
“…I don’t have time for this,” he said.
The Engine pulsed again.
Kagen exhaled slowly and did what he’d learned was easiest.
He ignored Fin.
He passed him without another word, boots echoing against stone as he descended, leaving Fin hovering in the half-light, wings trembling, watching the darkness swallow Kagen whole.
Later, Fin would sit at the edge of the paths, eyes tracking the shadows as if expecting them to move on their own. He watched Kagen from afar now—closer than before, but quieter—learning the rhythm of his absences, the way he returned changed each time.
Waiting.
The tension coiled tighter with each night.
And Fin, small and stubborn and terrified, began to understand that watching was no longer going to be enough.
Play the audio book podcast from Spotify here:
