An excerpt from page 1 of The Canon of The Makers:

“The Makers of Light created this world from nothing but the seven suns’ rays,
And when they finished their glorious work, they ascended to the Infinite Plane.
But the beaming birth of their brilliant light awoke forces dark and dour.
Thus, the Night Maker came to our world, hungry and ready to devour.
She slithers and slinks through the worst of our fears, a conniving and black parasite,
Whose existence is fueled by one simple rule: to darken the true Makers’ light.”

An annotation, written beneath the final line in the quick and cramped handwriting of Dyrial Sandsborne, former Loremaster of the All-Seeing Academy:

We’ve all heard the stories. The Night Maker is the vile corruptor of the world and blah de blah de blah.

But none of you uptight Canon writers actually know what it’s like to live with her so-called “curse” day-in and day-out. So how can you claim to have any idea what she is?

*     *     *
If Kaythe had been wearing his own face, this day might have been a little less exhausting. But Kaythe didn’t have that luxury. Not anymore.

After what felt like a miles-long climb out of the Brightstone Quarry, Kaythe set down his half-filled wheelbarrow with a too-heavy “oomph” and heaved, desperate for breath. The gems in his quarter-filled barrow, glittering with the pastel magical light stored within them, were heavier than they looked. Several experienced stonehaulers, arms and backs hardened by years of quarry work, strolled past him on their way to the orecounting houses. Their wheelbarrows were overflowing with gems and their foreheads were free from sweat. They smiled at Kaythe, politely and full of pity.

Good. Those smiles, and the dull strain he still felt behind his eyes, meant the guise-morph spell he had cast on himself that morning was still doing its job: bending the light to make him appear as a squat and pock-faced old man with worn and sagging arms. Probably about Dyrial’s age. It wasn’t his most nuanced photomancy work, but it served its purpose: concealing his face, his bookish frame, and, most importantly, the black mark that sprawled over his neck like a gnarled tree.

The thoroughfare bustled with activity. Gem-smelting mages darted between canvas-tented smokestacks and bubbling vats of molten alloys, casting minor alchemical spells and adding bits of just the right gem at just the right time. Emeralds shone from every window, every stone-carved alley, gathering the full-gloried amber light of sunsdown. At the end of the street loomed a larger-than-life statue of the Oresmith. Carved from a brilliant quartz, the statue depicted the Maker Goddess of gemstones and earth at work: her citrine eyes glowered at a gleaming diamond anvil, and her ruby-encrusted hammer was raised high above her head. The statue was even more beautiful than the books back at the All-Seeing Academy had described it. And yet, Kaythe couldn’t help but feel like the statue, inanimate as it was, somehow saw through his false face. As if it knew exactly how corrupted he was.

He tried to shake the feeling and tell himself that he was still safe. No one had seen his mark. If they had, he wouldn’t be surrounded by politely smiling people. They would be running, screaming, and Brightstone would be swarming with members of the Order of the All-Seeing by morning.

But at the thought of the All-Seers, a familiar coldness twinged from the gnarled tree mark on his neck. And then, unbidden and unwanted as ever, the Night Maker uncurled from some deep place within Kaythe, hungry to claim his body as Her own.

Her chill constricted his throat, crept into his heart, and shuddered through his lungs. As usual, it was getting harder to breathe.

They’re not actually here, Kaythe thought to the Night Maker. You can relax.

The Night Maker didn’t relax, of course. Her icy presence thrummed down his spine just like She always did when She saw an opportunity to seize control of his body. And if he didn’t stop Her, The Canon said She would consume his soul and turn him into a mindless monstrosity of Her dark bidding. Kaythe wasn’t sure he bought that theory, but he certainly wasn’t about to risk his life to test it. At minimum, he had to keep his mark hidden, and he couldn’t very well do that if She froze every muscle in his body.

No, there was only one way to entreat with the Night Maker. And Loremaster Dyrial had taught him well.

Kaythe glanced at the busy street around him to see if anyone was paying attention to him. They weren’t. What concern of theirs was this strange old man when there were gems to be smelted and money to be made? With an aching arm, Kaythe reached for the book in his bag, the copy of The Canon of the Makers that Loremaster Dyrial had given him. Its once white cover was now yellowed and webbed with cracks.

Kaythe opened to the first page, but it didn’t glow with the golden white light of the midday suns like the copies back at the Academy’s solariums. No, that once-glaring light had been muted into the calming violet of twilight by the copious and sharply-worded annotations Dyrial had squeezed into every margin.

What even is the Night Maker?

What do we actually know about Her?

Why are we murdering people over something we don’t understand?

As the muted light behind Dyrial’s notes flowed into him, warmth returned to Kaythe’s spine. Even though Kaythe had no idea how to answer these questions, it was helpful to know that someone as intelligent as Dyrial was asking them. His lungs were starting to warm as well, and with a few more lines, the Night Maker would be thoroughly soothed. And then, no matter how corrupted or tired he was, he could finally get this day over with and—

“You! Don’t move!”

The Night Maker twinged in his spine again as Kaythe looked up from the book to see Instructor Lythesight striding towards him. The tall, overly serious man looked exactly as Kaythe remembered him from the Academy: lanky limbs and excellent posture churning beneath golden-robed regalia. He had a reputation for voluntarily picking up extra patrol shifts to scour the Academy’s spires and solariums for any potential threat.

And now here he was, a quarter of a continent away from the Academy, wearing the same pair of citrine-coated glasses and locking eyes with Kaythe’s guise-morphed face.

“Stay where you are!” Lythesight shouted over the crowded street.

Kaythe shoved past his wheelbarrow and ran. He pushed through the crowds, ignoring the shouts and waved pickaxes of angry stonehaulers. But the progress he had made with Dyrial’s book was undone with every frost-flecked breath. The chill of the Night Maker spread further, filling his muscles with a sluggish and quivering gravity. His breath was ragged.

I get it, Kaythe thought to the Night Maker, there’s danger.

Of course, the Night Maker did not respond.

Just as Kaythe was about to turn down an alley, a band of golden-white light snapped around his ankles, pinning them together. He toppled to the street, and Dyrial’s book fell from his grasp. It landed, with the cover shut, just out of reach.

Lythesight stood over Kaythe, holding his own pristinely white copy of the Canon.

“H-how did you find me?” Kaythe said through chattering teeth.

Lythesight eyed Kaythe with disgust. The All-Seer’s eyes fell on Dyrial’s crack-covered book.

“That desecration gives off a strong signature,” Lythesight said, shaking his head. “When we discovered the first of Dyrial’s blasphemous notations, we had hoped it was some twisted joke. But when we searched the Buried Library and found the extent of the damage she’d done to the sacred texts, we knew she was beyond reaching. And we learned that she had corrupted you as well.”

“Th-That’s not true,” Kaythe said. “She protected me. If you had known the Night Maker was in me, y-y-you would have …”

The Night Maker’s chill seized his lungs and choked off the words.

Lythesight scoffed. “You have only one chance to save your life: Tell me where Dyrial Sandsborne is hiding.”

He could almost picture Dyrial. Like they were once again sitting in the safety of the damp tutoring room beneath the Buried Library. The well-earned wrinkles crinkling around her smile and the smell of musty books on her robes. Her thick, waist-length braids, mostly white with streaks of black, falling haphazardly down her back. Those braids, along with several advanced guise-morph spells, hid the black mark that ran up Dyrial’s neck and disappeared beneath her hairline. Her mark was more like a jagged spear than a gnarled tree. As far as he could tell, he had been the only person at the Academy who knew about her. And she had been the only person who knew about him.

That is, until that night over six months back when she had pounded on his door and told him between ragged breaths that the Council had found her notes in the sacred texts. That the Academy was no longer safe for either of them.

Kaythe had been running ever since, and he had no idea if Dyrial had made it out. But if Lythesight was asking about her, that meant she had gotten away. She was free. In that fact, Kaythe found a modicum of hope.

He wanted to say something, anything that would buy him more time, give him a chance to escape. But the Night Maker’s chill had claimed his lungs. He could hardly breathe, let alone respond.

“A pity,” Lythesight said. “In the name of the Maker Goddesses, I will free you from the Night Maker’s curse.”

Lythesight raised one hand over his head, and with the other, he flicked open his book. Golden-white midday light glared from the pages, and Lythesight captured it in a crackling orb in his palm.

If Kaythe wanted to live, he needed to show Lythesight, once and for all, that Dyrial was right. That, unknowable and corrupted as the Night Maker was, he could control Her.

He reached for Dyrial’s book, but a wave of numbness radiated down to his toes. Like the Night Maker wanted to claim him fully.

No you don’t, Kaythe thought. They don’t get to own me, and neither do you.

Unable to access Dyrial’s calming light, he looked to the statue of the Oresmith. Her ruby hammer. Her glowering citrine eyes. And then, Kaythe did something truly desperate.

Please, Kaythe prayed, Maker of gems and earth, Goddess of mountains and iron, I know I am not worthy of your light. But I beg you: offer me your protection.

Of course, nothing happened.

It had been a stupid idea. The Makers left the finite world behind millennia ago. There was only the Night Maker now. Maybe She was exactly as evil as the All-Seers said, or maybe She was as unknowable as Dyrial claimed. Either way, She was going to get him killed.

Kaythe stretched against the bands of light sizzling at his ankles and threw his last scraps of effort into a thrashing lunge. His fingertips found purchase on the spine of Dyrial’s book.

But as he pulled it towards him, the formless orb of golden-white midday light in Lythesight’s palm resolved into a gleaming dagger. The blade slashed down, and Kaythe was overcome by darkness.

*     *     *
An excerpt from page 137 of The Canon of The Makers:

“The Oresmith is a glittering goddess, Maker of gemstones and earth.
Her eyes agleam with golden flames, she carefully judges the worth
Of every mortal being who sets foot in her domain,
And those she deems unworthy know an infinity of pain.
From Her hammer of quickened ruby, Her bloodred light shines bright
To defeat the Bringer of Darkness, the Maker of the Night.”

An annotation, crawling like an unchecked vine through every spare inch of the page, written in the quick and cramped handwriting of Dyrial Sandsborne, former Loremaster of the All-Seeing Academy:

Oh come on! There’s literally zero evidence to suggest that the Night Maker and Oresmith were ever in direct conflict. If any of you Canon writers would actually open these texts you claim to value so much, you’d know just how irrevocably stupid you …

The rest of the annotation consists of angry, illegible scribbles.

*     *     *
A cool breeze brushed something gritty across Kaythe’s cheek. He sat up and found himself in the middle of a vast desert. Endless dunes of violet sand undulated in all directions, and above him, the night sky was starless. He looked down and saw his own scrawny yet young arms, their appearance no longer wizened by the guise-morph. He was still clutching Dyrial’s cracked copy of The Canon. The roots of his black tree birthmark were now apparent on his collarbone.

Am I dead? Kaythe thought. A dream?

“A dream,” he said aloud to solidify the fact.

“This is no dream,” a voice like pounded iron said from behind him.

Kaythe turned around to see the tallest woman he had ever encountered. Her face was concealed beneath a hooded cowl, and she wore a sleeveless tunic that exposed her muscled brown arms. While they were only a shade lighter than Kaythe’s own, they were easily three times as wide. The woman stood between a charred anvil and an obsidian hearth. An impossibly large hammer rested across her shoulders.

“The Oresmith?” Kaythe said.

“That is what finite beings on some worlds call me.”

“Maker of gems and earth? Goddess of mountains and iron?”

The woman nodded. “Those too.”

No, this had to be one of the All-Seeing’s illusions, some over-concocted punishment.

“What do you want with me?”

The image of the Oresmith laughed as if She had stumbled across a harmless rodent. “Do not be afraid. I called you here to my workshop on the Infinite Plane. You are safe for now, though you cannot stay. This place is not meant to sustain beings made of finite matter.”

“You brought me here? Why?”

“To protect you. As you requested.”

His prayer at the foot of the statue. There was no way it had actually worked. Now he knew this was a trick. Plain and simple.

“Why would you,” Kaythe spat, “a Maker Goddess, protect someone who is so deeply corrupted by the Night Maker?”

“But what is the Night Maker?” the mirage asked him.

There it was. Dyrial’s question again. Kaythe still had no idea how to answer it, so he didn’t say anything.

The mirage Oresmith shook her head, sloughed her hammer from her shoulders, and placed it delicately in the sand as if it was no heavier than a twig. She knelt so her head was level with his and placed her hand upon his shoulder. It was surprisingly cold.

With an unexpectedly gentle motion, the Oresmith pulled back her hood to reveal a face that was soft and welcoming. She smiled at him with a friendly, almost loving pride. Kaythe’s first instinct was to run away from this deception as quickly as he could.

But then he saw the Oresmith’s eyes. Or rather, the immeasurable blackness where her eyes should have been. Like the space between stars on midwinter nights.

The Order of the All-Seeing would never and could never create something so perfectly dark. Whatever this was, mirage or dream or pre-death hallucination, it was not the work of the All-Seeing.

“Your eyes,” Kaythe said.

“I have no eyes,” the Oresmith replied. “I have no need for seeing. Light is a property of the finite worlds, and my craft calls me to work in a medium beyond the finite.”

She motioned to Her anvil, upon which floated a small dark cloud, no larger than the palm of Kaythe’s hand. It was as black as smoke.

“What is that?” Kaythe asked.

“It is what finite beings on some worlds call a soul.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

The Oresmith laughed again, but this time it was dry and mirthless. “Why is it that when you see darkness, you see corruption?”

“Because souls are derived from the light of the Makers. Anything that corrupts that light—”

“Is the vile work of the Night Maker and must be destroyed?” There was a hiss of steam in Her voice, and She nodded down at the copy of The Canon in Kaythe’s hands.

A terrible thought popped into Kaythe’s mind.

“Are … are you the Night Maker?”

The woman ran Her hand through the black smoke. It played at Her fingers, clinging to them as if Her presence was something it had long searched for.

She shook Her head.

“I have many names across many worlds, but I am what the All-Seeing call the Oresmith, Maker of gems and earth, Goddess of mountains and iron. And I am telling you: there is no such thing as the Night Maker.”

“That can’t be right,” Kaythe said, holding up the book that described, in excruciating detail, the infinite battle between the Night Maker and the Makers of Light. “The Canon shows that—”

The Oresmith reached out a hand and stopped him.

“The All-Seers only see what they choose to.” She picked up Her hammer and pointed towards the smoke flittering above the anvil. “Look. Tell me you see what they do not.”

Kaythe studied the dark cloud. No fire birthed it, and it did not float aspirationally towards the sky. It wriggled as if full of some unseen energy, and on second look, it was actually darker than any smoke Kaythe had ever seen. A deep, impossible black like … like …

Like the pristine absence of the Oresmith’s eyes. Like the starless expanse of sky above.

“It’s everywhere,” he said.

The Oresmith smiled as if She was relieved. Or proud. She nodded towards the smoke.

“Go on,” She said.

Kaythe approached the anvil and slowly reached out his hand. He didn’t even touch the smoke before he felt the familiar prickling chill. It numbed his fingers and thrummed in the gnarled tree on his neck before sending a chill through his lungs. And then, something strange happened. The chill settled within Kaythe, in some unnamed place deeper than his marrow. And it felt ... right.

He pulled his hand back.

“It is in you,” She said. “Just as it is in every living thing. It is the reason life exists in your finite world. Beings like me shape it and share it freely with you. We have done so for eons, time that would make the existence of the Order of the All-Seeing appear as a single grain of sand in a desert.”

With Her sightless eyes, the Oresmith gazed up at the black sky and then back down to Kaythe. The soft smile on Her face made it seem as though She beheld the same beauty in both.

“But,” Kaythe said, “I’m corrupted. I’m cursed.”

Once more, the Oresmith shook Her head. “Your body simply contains a bit more than most. Aside from that, you are no different from any other. You are exactly as you should be.”

Kaythe looked into the Oresmith’s empty eyes, then down at his trembling fingers. He focused on the coldness quivering in his veins, feeling for any sign that might prove this was simply some elaborate trick of his own mind.

The coldness felt no different than before, and yet, coupled with the Oresmith’s words, it was changed entirely. In it, he felt a fluttering hope. Something he had only ever experienced in glimpses during his sessions with Dyrial. The possibility that these hands and this body and all it contained were not broken.

But then, just as Kaythe was struggling to find the right words to say, a cool and coarse breeze rose. Kaythe watched as his fingertips began to disintegrate, blown away by the wind to join the infinite desert.

“What’s happening?”

“Your time here is spent, and I must send you back.”

Instructor Lythesight. The bands of light. The midday dagger.

“He’s going to kill me.”

The Oresmith nodded. “He’s going to try. But I have a favor to ask of you upon your return: My fellow Makers and I do not frequently intervene in the worlds we create. We attempt to convince ourselves that these finite matters are beneath us, but we … I …”

Her voice quavered, and She tightened Her grip on Her hammer. For a moment, She simply stared down at Kaythe with Her sightless eyes as if She did not know how to say the rest.

After a deep breath, she continued.

“I have watched the All-Seeing slay countless beings in the name of the Makers. And for too long, I have done too little. The warning surges I send are not enough to keep you safe. I have been wrong in my inaction. Kaythe, reader of tomes, wearer of many faces, one who is so much more than he knows, I beg you: show the All-Seeing just how little they see.”

She struck Her hammer on the anvil, and as the shrill ping rang throughout the infinite desert, Kaythe’s vision was once again overcome by darkness.

*     *     *
An excerpt from the final page of The Canon of the Makers:

“The Night Maker thrives on weakness and fear, and for our souls She lusts.
If we cannot staunch Her ravenous will, She will surely devour us.
So we must study hard to wield the light and burn Her back.
For if we fail this simple task, the world will be bathed in black.”

Two simple words, scratched in bold letters beneath the final line in the quick and cramped handwriting of Dyrial Sandsborne, former Loremaster of the All-Seeing Academy:

So what?

*     *     *
Kaythe opened his eyes to a band of midday light sizzling towards him. He rolled out of the way and sprung to his feet in time to see another band crackling between Lythesight’s palms. The final amber and violet rays of sunsdown lit the now-abandoned smokestacks and scales of the thoroughfare. They were alone now; either people had fled or Lythesight had ordered the street evacuated. Emeralds blinked to life in every window, releasing the light they had spent all day storing.

“What sort of black magic allowed you to escape the bands of containment?” Lythesight demanded. In one hand, he held his pristine book. In the other, he gathered an orb of formless golden-white midday light from the pages. “Where did that cloud of shadow take you?”

Cloud of shadow? Kaythe thought.

So it hadn’t been a trick or a dream. He had been to the Infinite Plane.

Which meant he had a chance to survive, after all. He simply needed to tell Lythesight what he had seen, what the Oresmith had said about the All-Seeing, and things would be different. All Kaythe needed to do was find the right words to explain that there was no curse, no Night Maker.

“It’s not what you think,” Kaythe called, glancing down at the yellowed and cracked cover of The Canon in his hands. “It wasn’t me. It was—”

“Stop!” Lythesight shouted. He stretched the light in his palms, lengthening it like a rope. Behind his citrine-coated glasses, his eyes gleamed with a terrible certainty as he swirled the light in an ever-growing circle over his head. The light grew into a massive column that tainted the young night sky with an unnatural and blinding glare.

“I know exactly what you are,” he said. “You are cursed. You are corrupted. And you must be burned away.”

The column surged with a terrible heat that caused several nearby canvas tents to burst into flame. As the column bore down on Kaythe, the Night Maker’s prickling chill twinged from the black tree mark on his neck and surged through his veins.

He ran.

“Not this time,” Lythesight called.

The column descended in front of Kaythe, blocking his path with a blinding wall of white. The Night Maker swelled in his ribcage and filled his torso.

He wheeled around, scrabbling for an escape, but the wall of light bent and encircled him. It began to constrict.

The stone street beneath Kaythe began to bubble. His vision was choked with heat, and he could see nothing except for an ever-shrinking window to the night sky that framed the looming statue of the Oresmith. As the wall of light crushed in closer, ever closer, Kaythe saw the citrine boulders in the eyes of the Oresmith’s grimacing face glowing like miniature suns.

And he knew this was wrong.

There was not supposed to be light in those eyes. He had seen it himself. The perfection that lived there, that lived within him.

His breaths were ragged and shallow now as the Night Maker reached Her icy tendrils into his lungs. As if She wanted full control of his body. As if She needed to let something out.

Instinctually, Kaythe cracked open The Canon, flipped to a heavily annotated page, and began to read the gentle flickering light behind Dyrial’s annotations. He could not let the Night Maker have control. If he didn’t stop Her now, if he let Her wash over him entirely, then … well …

He realized he had no idea what would happen. Visions of a corrupted monster, a dark leviathan tainting the world with its very presence, flashed through his mind.

But there was something else beneath those visions. Something unnamed.

Hello? Night Maker? Are you there? Kaythe thought as the light crushed in around him.

The only response was the frigid pulsing within him.

In that moment, he found himself wondering where Dyrial might be and what freedoms she might have found away from the constraints and fears of the Academy. And he knew then that there were no words in her book that could help him now.

He snapped the cover shut, tossed the book away, and watched Lythesight’s light incinerate it.

And then, Kaythe welcomed the prickling chill that rushed through his torso and into his limbs. He did not struggle to contain the shivers that wracked his lungs and clacked his teeth, nor did he fight the scream that clawed up through the gnarled tree birthmark on his throat. Whether it was a scream of terror or rage or joy, Kaythe would never know, because when he opened his mouth, no sound came. Instead, something vast and unknowable poured from him.

Kaythe could not tell if his eyes were open. Engulfed by an unassailable cloud of darkness, he saw nothing. Tentatively, he reached out his hand. The oppressive heat of Lythesight’s column of light was gone, replaced by something pricklingly cold that wisped at his skin like smoke.

Kaythe looked out into this strange new darkness. No, not new. This darkness had always been there, writhing within, but Kaythe had never seen it. Not because it hid, but because every time it had called, he had wrestled it down, shushed it with the calming words written in Dyrial’s book.

Kaythe noted that, for the first time in a long time, his breaths came easily. The coldness within him matched the coldness without.

Through the dark, Kaythe heard Lythesight’s labored breathing and the desperate swish of robes as the All-Seer tried to summon another column of light.

“Why can’t I … what have you—”

Lythesight’s words were cut off by a tight-throated fit of coughing.

“W-what is this horror?” Lythesight managed to say. But they were his last words before another fit of wheezing choked the air from his lungs.

There it was: that same question yet again, just spoken with different words.

Kaythe wished he had something to say to Lythesight, some final quip or rage-filled diatribe for this man who claimed to see all. But as Kaythe stood amidst the cloud of darkness, breathing easily, Lythesight’s heaving breaths devolved into nothing but shallow sucking sounds. Before long, they stopped altogether.

In the silence that followed, Kaythe finally found an answer to Dyrial’s question about the Night Maker.

No words could do it justice.