The world went dark, shadows stretched on through the horizon. The little light that Zoe had in the lonely forest stripped away like a poison purged from her blood. The trees turned black in the shadow, yet none of the detail was lost somehow.

  She could still see the vibrant green leaves, the light brown bark, the dark knots where branches once hung. They were just all black. Like she was looking at two worlds competing for the prime reality. Flickering blackness and colour, vibrant colourful light and deep, black shadows.

  Zoe pushed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, focusing on the darkness. She watched the dark black grass wave in the faint breeze that passed through the forest. The branches crackling and bending as their hundreds of leaves caught the wind.

  There was no colour to be seen, but there was something else. A presence, within the blackness. Zoe couldn't make out its form, if it even had one. It seemed to pulse, rippling out waves of something through the shadows Zoe could see with no set origin point. Waves of whatever it was rippling through the world like a torrential downpour on a lake.

  Zoe watched the presence. It didn't seem malicious at least, insofar as it didn't leap out to attack her. She wasn't even sure if it was conscious, or alive at all. Maybe it was just beams of light striking at the shadows, bouncing around the umbral world. But somehow, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was almost familiar. That she recognized those movements.

  She shrugged. Whatever it was, it wasn't created by her class. Probably. She could see it now, but it had been there the whole time. If it hadn't done anything to her yet, it wouldn't start now.

  Instead, she turned her attention to her skill list. The beholder classes were simple, in part due to their repetitive nature. Of the ten skills she had to choose from, only six of them were even something she could experiment with. The other four were an affinity and the shared skills.

  Zoe slotted in Umbral Barrage — the skill she expected to be the simplest, and pushed mana through it. Much like her other barrage skills, a surge of umbral aligned mana rushed out of her, digging into the dirt where she'd been aiming. As an enchantment, it did exactly what she expected. A single, powerful blast of umbral mana that blew through the entire enchantment's mana in an instant.

  She shrugged, and pushed the system to give her the five remaining skills to test.

  Umbral Manipulation was fascinating — as so many manipulation skills tended to be for her. Every time she got a new manipulation skill Zoe found herself lost in the raw power they displayed. Complete control over an entire element, an entire facet of reality.

  But Umbral was a particularly fun one. Umbra was the darkest part of the shadow. The part that light didn't reach at all. The rest of the shadow, well that was antumbra. Or penumbra? Zoe wasn't sure. Some other umbra, anyway. And not at all within the realm of Umbral Manipulation.

  It was strange to see, ripping just the darkest part of a shadow away from a tree but leaving the faint dimmer ring where light could reach. Like a tiny spot of light concentrated right where the darkest part should be. In some ways, Umbral felt like it was just one component of the Shadow element.

  A stark contrast to the Luminary element which felt like a bolstered Light element. Luminary was prideful, it was potent. It was refined, and controlled. Zoe had expected something similar from Unseen Beholder.

  But Umbral couldn't be any further from that ideal if it tried. Umbral was primal, visceral. A deep, terrifying power that oozed raw, unrefined power. It couldn't control the whole shadow, like Shadow Manipulation could. It even lacked the fine control Zoe found with so many of her other manipulation skills.

  Like the shadows — the umbra she supposed, was fighting back. There was a resistance as she tried to pull the umbra away from shadows. It didn't want to be stripped away, it wanted to lurk out of the light, hidden behind trees and bushes. But what it lacked in control, it made up for in power. The umbra dug into the ground where Zoe dragged it along, tore through the tree's bark and ripped the bushes to shreds.

  Umbral Cloak was just as fascinating — though only because she'd tried Umbral Manipulation first. That raw, primal passion was lacking in the skill's obscuring form. The vibrating, pulsating power she'd grown so used to after toying around with manipulating the element was nowhere to be seen.

  The system, somehow, stripped that agency away from the skill. Or maybe it overwhelmed the primal presence with sheer force. However the system did it, the Umbral Cloak wrapped her in a sheen, pitch black cloak that melded with the shadows around her. Useless in the light, but with even the faintest of shadow to hide in she was nigh invisible. And as an enchantment, it was no less potent. The small rocks she enchanted vanishing as she tossed their pitch black forms into the shadows around her.

  Next on her list was Gloom — Unseen Beholder's scrying ability. It was, in a word, underwhelming. Much like Stargazing, the skill was incredibly powerful if the conditions allowed. But unlike Stargazing which required the light from a star which was abundant, Gloom required the presence of Umbra — the very darkest part of a shadow, which was far less abundant.

  The view the skill gave her of the world was broken and stilted. Each towering tree casting no more than a few inches of viable shadow for her to peer through. As she entered caves, the skill became far more useful. The dark, lightless caverns a veritable gold mine of umbra.

  Until she lit a light, cast a skill that let out any light or found another entrance with starlight bouncing through. The faintest source of light tore through all of the Umbra, ripping her control away. And as an enchantment, the skill was yet another copy of Scrying.

  The only real benefit was how incredibly mana efficient the skill was. It's range was even further than her Stargazing, though required her to find the presence of Umbra somewhere so far away to begin with so she could even use Gloom.

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  Enshroud was a simple skill. A pulse of mana, and light was stripped away from an area about five feet away from her in every direction. No flames or Light enchantments could pierce through it, though with enough mana she was able to cast a faint light within the sphere of darkness with her Luminary skill.

  But what was really interesting about Enshroud was its use as an enchantment. The enchantment mimicked the effect of the skill on a much smaller scale, though with far better control given over the effect. Even her most powerful enchantment she could manage only reached about a foot diameter around the object. With the right combination of skills to control the flow of mana to various parts of the enchantment, she could even control just how dark the area got.

  Which wasn't available to her at all as she used the skill itself. Regardless of how many times she tried, the skill always created a pure black sphere that rejected every speck of light it could find.

  And the last skill was Umbral Shielding, which felt much more like the Umbra she'd been manipulating before. The skill coated her in a dense layer of that pulsating, violent umbra that ate away at anything that touched her with hatred and despair. Just brushing up against a tree the wrong way ripped large chunks of bark off, tearing them to tiny splinters in an instant.

  The enchantment was just as potent, layering violent umbra over the object that tore through anything that touched it. For projectiles it didn't seem particularly powerful — a projectile needed an instant, potent effect. Or something that lingered at the very least, like her shadow tendrils. This would vanish the moment the projectile exploded on impact, adding only a small corrosive element to her projectile at the cost of quite some complexity.

  But for shields, for defensive walls, the skill seemed quite potent. Though its complete lack of discretion made it just as concerning. The skill didn't seem to care whether it was a tree or rock that touched it or Zoe's hand. The pulsating presence within lashed out at everything all the same.

  Zoe stored the skill away in the back of her mind. Maybe if she ever needed to lay down an enchantment that didn't need discretion.

  The mana that made up the skills was just as primal. Most skills Zoe copied were explicit. They were intentional and organized. Even if at first it seemed chaotic, there were patterns to find, order that lurked within the chaos.

  But Umbral Manipulation lacked anything that Zoe could consider a pattern. It almost seemed to be the very embodiment of chaos itself. Dense threads of mana reaching out, rippling waves of energy pulsing through the skill and tearing through whatever shred of order Zoe thought she could find.

  Frustrating was an understatement.

  Weeks flew by as Zoe studied the mana patterns — if they could even be called that. She knew they could. It only made sense that there would be order within the skill. That was how the system worked, that was the entire basis of how Zoe understood the system. It was order, forced on the chaotic natural mana.

  Umbral would be no different. Somehow, the system had tamed it. Somehow the system had defined it. She just needed to find it, and recreate it.

  The weeks turned to months, book after book strewn around the rocky cavern floor Zoe found herself calling home for the time being. Each one filled with diagrams and notes about how the mana looked. Threads of order she thought she'd found, only for them to be ripped apart.

  It felt like staring at the ocean, trying to define how each fish within its vast depths chose to move. How every parasite clung to the animals within, how every wave rippled across its surface.

  Was there sense, in there? Of course, Zoe knew. The fish were following their schools, their schools were following something, she imagined. The currents, maybe? The currents followed the wind, heat and tides. It all made sense, in the big picture.

  But staring into the void, and knowing how each fish would move at any given moment? Predicting how it would look from moment to moment? It felt impossible.

  Zoe sighed. It wasn't the first time she'd felt something was impossible, and it wouldn't be the last. The system had done it, or whoever created the system had at least. And if they could, so could she.

  So the months continued to drag on, with more notebooks piling up on the floor around her until she found her first thread to pull on. A constant, throughout all of her notebooks. A tiny speck of mana that coursed through the violent chaos in a steady pattern. Always hidden away in pockets of dense mana, pulled along the currents of fury.

  Progress began to come after that, slowly but surely. First, after weeks. And then after days, pieces of the chaotic puzzle pulled together. Waves of power that obscured that first point she saw — the origin, she'd come to call it. Tendrils of mana that stretched out and hid it as it crested out of a dense packet.

  The whole pattern was hiding that one speck of mana deep within its bowels. Carrying it along its winding path while keeping it away from the light, from any would be observers. Each time it cycled around, new tendrils grew out, reaching through the dim light bouncing around Zoe's cavern.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Umbra general skill.

  Zoe felt the familiar tingling sensation of the System poking around in her soul, and a moment later crumpled on the floor as it forced something new into her.

  Ding For mastering the primal Umbra, you have been awarded with the [Aspect of Umbra] feat.

  Zoe gasped for air, feeling the shadows crawling down her throat as she did. They clung to her body, grasping at her limbs and tugging at her hair. She closed her eyes, and tried to calm down, with slow, controlled breaths. Each one eerie and strange as it felt like her lungs were being flooded with pulsing, violent rage.

  Several hours passed before the feeling subsided, and that eerie feeling of foreign rage faded to the background. She pulled up the description of her new feat.

  [Aspect of Umbra]

  You are a denizen of the Umbra, one who lurks in the shadows. Most cower from the depths of Umbra, the unfettered rage of the night. But you aspire to join it, to grasp at the Umbra as a beloved friend. You claim the Umbra as your own, and the Umbra welcomes you in. All classes gain a bonus to Umbral affinity. Be one with the primal Umbra.

  Zoe clicked her tongue, her mind still battered by that feeling of rage as the shadows clung to her body and lungs. Did she want to be one with the primal umbra? Was that even a good thing?

  What did it even mean?

  She opened her eyes and looked around. That pulsing presence within the shadows almost felt calm, now. Like it had been nervous before, shivering with anxiety but now felt comfortable. Faint pulses of power raced through the shadows still but they were controlled. Calm. Friendly.

  Zoe reached out to the darkness, and her hand sunk into the shadow. Inside felt almost like sludge, as though she were reaching into a deep puddle of mud. She'd been in shadows before — had skills of her own that moved her through the shadows and had been dragged through them by friends and dungeon creatures alike many times. But this was different. Like she'd only ever skated along the surface of the shadows before, and now could enter deep within their depths.

  She ripped her hand out, and rubbed away the strange sludgy feeling. Were there living creatures inside the shadows? Demons and wanderers that lurked under the surface even up here, above the deep valleys? Something else that hid away within the umbra? Dragons or other beasts that had been welcomed in like her?

  Zoe shuddered at the thought, and then did her best to shove it to the side. Whether there were, or weren't, they weren't there because of her new feat, she reminded herself. She could explore the depths of the umbra another day, when she had more classes to work with. More skills, and most importantly, more mana.

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