Chapter Summery: Kluke's point of view when they swallow the Light Spheres and gain their Shadows on the Flying Fortress.
"Here it goes!" Shu said confidently as they each held a glowing blue-white Light Sphere in a hand.
Kluke saw Jiro swallow his Light Sphere and closed her eyes as her own reached her mouth. The Light Sphere went down like nothing, like cold air, for a moment before it hurt.
"Augh!" Shu cried out, "It burns!"
"I'm dying…" Jiro choked out.
"It hurts…" Kluke could feel the Light Sphere burn, spreading, sand-storm raging inside her. "I don't think this was such a good idea."
She had never thought it was a good idea but they'd been desperate. It hurt but she forced her eyes open because her friends were hurting too. She could see it burning through them. Their faces twisted in pain, hands around their throats and skin gone yellow.
Glowing yellow.
She was glowing too, shining paper-lantern bright with yellow light and it hurt, like burning, like grief and fury and paper-walls holding back a fire-whirl.
Something dark was growing, spreading behind Shu, then another behind Jiro. Cold began to spread from her feet. Kluke looked over her shoulder. A dark shape was stretching out behind her.
"What?" Shu gasped, "My shadow—"
"Mine too!" Jiro called.
"What's going on here?" Kluke asked as her shadow began to glow, a deep, dark, blue. The yellow faded from her, the burning fading with it. Instead replaced by a soothing, reinvigorating feeling as her shadow's light bathed her skin blue.
The Shadow stretched behind her, no longer seemed her own, feathered wings spread. Then it was rising. A rounded dark head with feathered crest. Claw tipped wings lifting from the floor. Well defined and solid seeming but such a dark, dark blue.