The Voss Manor had been silent for three months before the villagers finally dared to ask for help.
Thessaly, a broad-shouldered human paladin clad in burnished golden plate, rode at the head of the group, her dark braided hair pinned beneath a crested helm she’d pushed back to scan the estate. Her warm brown skin caught the last orange light of dusk as she drew up at the iron gate, its hinges strangled with black vine. “Three months,” she murmured, “and not a candle in a window.”
Beside her, Vexrin picked at one of his small curved horns — a habit he had when something unsettled him. The tiefling warlock’s crimson skin was muted in the fading light, his silver-streaked black hair loose over the shoulders of his rune-etched robes. “There’s something wrong with the shadows here,” he said quietly. “They face the wrong direction.”
Kaelindra dropped silently from her horse and crouched to examine the gravel path. The wood elf ranger’s auburn hair fell around her face as she touched the dark stains on the stones — not mud, something oilier. She rose without a word and drew both short swords. Only Grundol the dwarf cleric seemed unmoved. He trudged forward in his silver chain mail, red braided beard freshly oiled, warhammer resting on his shoulder like a walking stick. “Lord Aldric was a good man once,” he rumbled. “That’s why this will be harder than it looks.”
Lord Aldric Voss met them in the entrance hall, and at first, he seemed perfectly fine. He was tall, pale, dressed in deep burgundy velvet that had seen better decades. His handshake was firm. His eyes were clear. He offered wine and apologized for the state of the tapestries. He laughed at Grundol’s jokes. But Kaelindra’s twin swords had not returned to their scabbards.
“You’re watching something,” Vexrin murmured to her, staying close. “His shadow,” she replied. “Look at it.” When Lord Aldric gestured toward the fireplace, his shadow moved a fraction of a second too late — and in the wrong direction entirely. When he stepped toward the table, his shadow stepped sideways. And when he turned to pour wine, the shadow turned to look directly at Thessaly. “Lord Aldric,” Thessaly said, her hand moving to the holy symbol at her throat, “who else is in this room with us?”
The lord went very still. Then he smiled — and the smile was wrong in a way that was impossible to describe, like a word you recognized but couldn’t read. “No one,” he said. “Not anymore.”
The shadow peeled free of him like a second skin. It grew — billowing upward to the rafters, a shape of writhing darkness with hollow burning eyes, shadow-tendrils slamming across the doors and snuffing the candles. The real Aldric Voss collapsed like an emptied sack, barely breathing, his face the grey of old paper. “It’s been wearing him,” Vexrin snarled, eldritch energy blazing violet between his fingers. “For months — feeding on his memories, learning how to be him!”
Thessaly was already moving. Her holy symbol blazed with warm golden light, and the shadow recoiled, shrieking in a voice that sounded horribly like Lord Aldric’s own. Grundol slammed his warhammer against the floor and called on Moradin, a shockwave of silver radiance rippling outward, forcing the darkness back. But the creature was clever. It dove into Thessaly’s own shadow — and suddenly her movements slowed, as if she were wading through deep water. “It’s in mine now,” she gritted through clenched teeth, golden light blazing from her gauntlets in a desperate internal struggle. “It’s trying to learn me — to copy me—”
“Then stop being predictable,” Kaelindra said flatly — and drove both short swords through Thessaly’s shadow on the floor. The creature screamed. Not with pain exactly, but with something like surprise — and in that moment of shock, Grundol brought the warhammer down with a prayer on his lips, and Vexrin’s eldritch blast tore the shadow apart at its center. When the light returned, the room smelled of cold ash.
Lord Aldric Voss woke three days later. He remembered almost nothing of the past three months — only fragments, voices he didn’t recognize, faces he’d been made to wear. He wept quietly, and no one said anything about the silver in his hair that hadn’t been there before. Thessaly knelt by his bedside for a long time after the others had gone to sleep. She didn’t know if what had been taken from him could ever be fully given back. She didn’t know if it was only one manor — or if other shadows, in other estates, were already learning to smile.
She stared at her own shadow on the candlelit wall for a long time that night. It moved when she moved. Exactly when she moved. Probably fine, she told herself, and blew out the candle.
💬 If your shadow started moving wrong — would you notice before it was too late? What would your party have done differently? 👇