Beyond the Arcane Heights, past the last floating tower, the sky begins to change.

Blue fades to lavender.

Lavender deepens to violet.

And eventually, day and night become so tangled together that neither seems particularly interested in winning.

There, beneath an eternally eclipsed moon, lie the Umbral Ruins. Most travelers avoid them.

They tell stories of strange lights drifting between broken towers. Of shadows that move when nothing else does. Of ancient magic sleeping beneath the stones.

They also tell stories of a Warlock. 

This is Umbri.

Most of the stories about him are nonsense. Umbri does not summon terrible creatures from beyond the veil. He summoned one.

Once. And technically, Phase summoned himself. Umbri considers this an important distinction.

Phase does not.

Phase is a small creature made almost entirely of shadow.

He has enormous glowing eyes, tiny paws, one crooked horn, and a remarkable ability to occupy precisely whichever part of Umbri's cloak Umbri is currently trying to use.

No one knows exactly what Phase is.

The first time Umbri met Phase, however, he was considerably less calm about the situation.

Umbri had been young then, newly arrived among the Warlocks of the Umbral Ruins. He had already discovered that his magic was different.

Other Warlocks summoned violet flames. Umbri's flames occasionally whispered. Others commanded shadows. Umbri's shadows followed him home.

Umbri began to worry. What if something was wrong with his magic?

So, he became careful. Painfully careful. He practiced only the spells he knew. He never reached beyond them. When strange magic stirred inside him, he pushed it down.

And when the darkness whispered...

Umbri refused to listen.

Then one evening, something beneath the ruins whispered back. Umbri was practicing alone when he noticed a tiny shadow beneath a broken arch.

It moved.

Umbri stopped.

The shadow stopped.

Umbri stepped left.

The shadow stepped left.

Umbri stepped right.

The shadow stepped right.

Umbri narrowed his eyes.

The shadow produced two enormous glowing eyes.

Umbri screamed.

The shadow screamed.

Umbri's magic exploded. Purple fire erupted around the courtyard. Stones lifted from the ground. The eclipsed moon seemed to flicker. And the tiny creature suddenly became enormous.

Shadow poured upward until it towered above Umbri. Horns curled from its head. Great claws formed from darkness. A mouth opened, filled with far too many glowing teeth.

Umbri stared upward.

The creature stared downward.

Neither moved.

Then the creature sneezed. Pfft. It deflated slowly.

Where the towering monster had stood was once again a tiny black blob with enormous eyes.

Umbri blinked.

The blob blinked.

Umbri took one cautious step closer.

The creature backed away.

And that was when Umbri noticed something.

It was trembling.

"You are afraid of me."

The creature made a tiny noise.

Umbri looked around at the scorched stones, floating rubble and violet flames.

"Ah."

He lowered his paw. The fire disappeared. The stones settled. The little creature stopped trembling.

Umbri sat.

For a long while, neither moved. Then Umbri held out one paw. The creature approached. Very slowly.

One tiny step. Then another. It sniffed his paw.

And bit him.

"OW!"

The creature vanished beneath a rock.

Umbri stared after it.

"That was extremely unnecessary."

Two glowing eyes appeared beneath the stone.

Umbri sighed.

"Fine. Perhaps slightly necessary."

He waited.

Eventually, the creature emerged again. This time Umbri did not reach for it. He simply sat beneath the eclipsed moon. After several minutes, the creature sat too.

After several more, it shuffled closer. By midnight, it was sitting against Umbri's paw. By morning, it was asleep inside his cloak.

Umbri had absolutely no idea what to do about this. So naturally, he went to the library.

Umbri searched every book he could find. He found creatures made of smoke. Creatures made of dreams. Creatures made of forgotten spells.

He even found a particularly unpleasant thing called a Gloom Maw, which he sincerely hoped never to meet.

But nothing looked like the creature sleeping in his hood.

The other Warlocks offered suggestions.

"Send it back."

"Bind it."

"Contain it."

One suggested destroying it before it became dangerous.

Umbri looked down. Two enormous eyes stared from beneath his cloak. The little creature pressed closer against him. Umbri remembered the monster beneath the arch.

The horns. The claws. The terrible teeth. He also remembered something else.

It had appeared only after he had frightened it.

So Umbri did the only sensible thing he could think to do, he brought the creature home.

The first few days were difficult. It ate one slipper. Umbri still does not know why. 

But the strangest thing about the little creature was that he never seemed to stay the same for very long.

When someone knocked unexpectedly at the door, the shadow grew tall, sprouting enormous horns and claws as though he intended to personally defend the entire Umbral Ruins.

When thunder rolled across the twilight sky, he became so small that he could disappear completely beneath Umbri's paw.

When he wanted something from a high shelf, he stretched himself upward until he was long and thin enough to reach it.

And when he was sleepy, which was often, he became little more than a warm puddle of shadow with two enormous eyes.