What It Does
A shape in the dark, held — the dark is the absence that holds the shape, and the shape is the one who is not there, and the not-there is the whole argument. It is the dark school's answer to the fear god's threshold: the shape does not require a caster, the shape requires only that someone has seen it, and the one who has seen it is the one standing next to someone else.
The Cost
Circle 3 · Dark · Exchange: breath — casting time one round. On the ladder in The Veil, the breath rung is the price.
The Failure
The shape is held a beat too long, and the dark keeps the tension — the shape is the one who is not there, and the one who is not there is the one the camp has to stop believing in, and the stopping is the one who breaks.
In Stories
The journeyman's dark spell; the one the camp casts when the shape is the argument and the threshold is the one who has to hold.
The door's scale anchor is Shadowveil — the dragon casts it without thinking, which is how a reader learns the shape of the thing.