Chapter 5: Home Again

The palace was a structure of pure darkness that sat at the heart of Prismatica like a bruise. Where the rest of the city glowed with diminished color, the palace absorbed all light that touched it. Lily walked through the shadow barrier and felt nothing but a slight chill, like stepping into a room with air conditioning on a warm day. Inside, the Shadow King waited. He was tall and translucent, a figure made of darkness that was not menacing but deeply, overwhelmingly sad. 'You are a child,' he said, and his voice carried the weight of someone who had been alone for a very long time. 'They sent a child to defeat me.' 'They sent a child to talk to you,' Lily corrected. She sat down on the floor of his dark palace and looked up at him. 'Fenwick told me you were afraid. You wanted to protect Luminara by closing the doors, and when nobody listened, you got angry. I understand that. I get angry when people do not listen to me either.' The Shadow King flickered. 'You cannot understand.' 'Maybe not everything. But I know what it feels like to be in a dark room by yourself and wish someone would come in.' She reached into the darkness and took his hand. It was cold and insubstantial, like gripping fog, but she held on. 'Luminara does not need to close its doors to be safe. It just needs to remember that light and shadow are both part of the same thing. You are not the opposite of what this world is. You are the part it has been missing.' The Shadow King's form trembled. The darkness around them thinned and light from the city began to seep through the walls of the palace. He did not become light again. Instead, the light and shadow blended into something new, a gentle twilight that was neither bright nor dark but beautifully, peacefully between. Lily walked home through the blue door and closed it gently behind her. She did not lock it.