Every surface had been tended. Nothing left to chance. The room waited, expectant.
Bare feet pressed to cool concrete. The bakery was silent, emptied of its day. Ovens exhaled their last warmth, a low hum through the walls, animal and alive. Sugar and yeast clung to the air, but beneath it, something sharper. Bleach, and the memory of magic, soaked deep into the bones of the place.
Candles circled him, flames low and unwavering. Not for light. Anchors, Qhall had said. For a mind about to slip where it should not go. Chalk sigils between the candles, lines clean and spare. Not the tangled diagrams from old books. These marks guided. They did not bind.
Qhall stood just outside the circle.
Tentacles gathered, held close. Stillness, deliberate. The tablet rested in his hand, screen dark. It would not be needed.
Jolk waited by the door, arms crossed, gaze sharp. No words. No jokes. He was the witness. The one who would step in if the world split open.
Jared swallowed and flexed his fingers.
“Are you ready?” Qhall asked, with the tablet's voice.
Jared nodded, then whispered, “As much as I can be.”
“I will not hurt you,” Qhall stated.
Jared believed him. The way he believed Adrian would never hurt him. Still, his body braced, heart thudding. The thought of another mind brushing his own, he could not help it.
“I know,” Jared said. “It’s just hard to shake off the fear of it.”
The words startled him, but they fit. Qhall needed the reassurance as much as he did.
He shook out his hands. Nodded. A nervous laugh escaped him.
Qhall’s presence hovered, warm above his skin. Not touching, but there. He asked for permission, careful. Explained what it would mean. Where he would stand. How far he would go.
Jared had agreed.
Consent and violation—no thin line between them. He felt it in every boundary Qhall honored, every moment the pressure could have grown and did not.
I am here, Qhall continued gently. I will not lead. I will only steady you.
Jared nodded once. “Okay.”
Qhall raised one elegant hand. Begin when ready. Speak the incantation aloud. The Dark responds better when acknowledged in multiple ways.
Jared closed his eyes.
The incantation was brief. That surprised him. He had expected something tangled, syllables knotted to force the universe to listen. But Qhall’s words were simple. Intimate. A declaration, not a command. A call, not a leash.
He breathed in, spoke. The air shifted. No thunder. No power to shake the candles. Subtle. The room receded, walls stepping back, space opening around him.
The Dark answered.
It always did.
He moved toward the abyss inside. Not a gesture, not a thought. Surrender. Boundaries loosened, the ones that said he was singular, contained, important. The Dark rose, vast and patient. In its presence, self shrank to a guttering candle at the edge of endlessness. Awe, sharp and cold. He touched something older than stars, something that would never notice him. Measured, found irrelevant. Fears and hopes flickered, warmth in infinite cold. Yet in that smallness, peace. The Dark did not judge. Did not hate. Did not care. It simply was. For a breathless moment, he was allowed to be part of it.
Easy, Qhall’s voice murmured in his mind, steady as a lighthouse beam. Do not descend. Extend.
Qhall pulled him back, held him at the edge. He could look down, not fall. Not dissolve. He slowed his breath. In. Out. Not falling, not sinking. Kneeling at the rim of something vast, reaching down, careful.
The Dark lapped at his awareness.
No one ever explained this part. The Dark was not a place. It was a state. A resonance that stripped away the brittle edges of self. For a moment, he loosened. Name, body, pain. Blurred at the edges.
He was not alone.
Hold to yourself, Qhall cautioned softly. But do not quest. Think of it as holding a door open for someone you trust to walk through.
Trust.
The word echoed strangely in the Dark.
He reached further, not weapon, not shield. Invitation. The call shaped itself: Come home. I am ready.
Something moved.
He felt it first. Not with eyes, but with that sense between thought and soul. A shape, small, distinct, coiled in the Dark. Bound to him. Tethered by a thread he had never named.
And it was waiting.
Recognition hit him like a punch to the chest.
The voice.
The presence that had whispered to him in moments of stress and silence alike. The one he had feared, resented, and argued with in the lonely hours of the night.
That is it, Qhall confirmed, awe coloring his mental tone despite his control. You are not pulling something foreign from the Dark. You are calling what is already yours.
Jared reached.
This time, he did not hesitate.
Awareness brushed fur. Soft, impossibly dark. Light vanished into it, a living night. Emotion pulsed. Feline, unmistakable. Curiosity edged with caution. Affection, tightly wound around its own freedom.
I’ve got you, Jared thought, the words forming instinctively. I won’t let go.
The Dark pressed back.
Not violent. Not cruel. The Dark tested, as it always did. Pressure built, a reminder of how easy it would be to let go, to unravel, to dissolve into endlessness.
Vision blurred. Knees shook.
Now, Qhall said, his presence firming, wrapping gently but securely around Jared’s core. Pull back. Bring it with you. Qhall helped him pull back from the Dark, hauling up the small creature that he clutched to his chest.
Jared anchored himself to the physical world. The cool concrete beneath his feet, the scent of baked sugar, the sound of Jolk’s breathing by the door. He drew his awareness inward, gathering the thread, guiding the shape along it.
The Dark receded reluctantly.
With a sensation like surf breaking against the shore, something came through.
The candles flared.
A gasp. Weight in his arms: solid, real, warm. He staggered, cradling it close.
A black cat blinked up at him.
Midnight fur, glossy and dense, swallowed the candlelight. Eyes, green-gold, too knowing. Jared’s chest ached. Not large. It fit against him, paws on his arm, tail flicking with lazy certainty.
The room was silent.
Then the cat opened its mouth.
“Hello.”
The voice was unmistakable.
Jared’s breath hitched sharply. “You.” His throat closed. “You’re the one.”
The cat’s ears twitched. “Well. Yes. I was wondering when you’d figure that out.”
Jared laughed, a raw, disbelieving sound that bordered on a sob. “You’ve been in my head for years.”
“Technically,” the cat said, settling more comfortably in his arms, “you’ve been in mine. Semantics.”
Qhall exhaled slowly, a sound that might have been relief. He withdrew his telepathic presence with care, retreating to the edge of Jared’s awareness rather than vanishing abruptly.
It is done, he said. You did exceptionally well.
Jared barely heard. All his attention on the cat. The weight, familiar. The voice had never been a stranger.
It had been waiting.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jared asked softly.
The cat regarded him with an expression that was far too knowing for any mundane animal. “You weren’t ready to listen. And I wasn’t ready to be like this. It’s very small.”
He nodded. Of course. His life moved by rules he could not read, written deep in the world’s fabric.
He folded to the floor, cross-legged inside the circle. The cat leapt down, settled before him, tail curled tight.
For the first time in a long while, the silence in Jared’s head was complete.
Not empty.
Complete.
And for once, the Dark did not feel quite so lonely.
