The abandoned district of Luminast breathed like a corpse. Buildings leaned into one another, their facades cracked and leprous, windows gaping like empty eye sockets. The air hung thick with ash, the residue of a thousand forgotten fires. Kael's boots sank into the soot as he led Aria through the skeletal remains of a marketplace, its stalls reduced to charcoal ribs. Even the Veil seemed to avoid this place; the fractured light that plagued the city dimmed here, smothered by the weight of silence.
Aria stumbled, her hand clutching at her collarbone. The fissure's corruption had slowed, its poisoned roots now encased in a lattice of blue-tinged ice—Veyis's temporary salvation. But the cost lingered in her hollow stare. I can't remember Mother's voice. The words gnawed at Kael, sharper than any Fleshspawn's claw.
"We should rest," he said, gesturing to a collapsed watchtower. Its stones formed a jagged crescent, half-buried in ash.
Aria didn't argue. She slumped against the rubble, her breaths shallow. Her fingers traced the edge of the Godclimb, still tucked in her belt. "You're going to try it, aren't you?" she murmured. "The storage method."
Kael didn't answer. He unstrapped the book, its leather binding searingly cold. Tier IV: Crucible. The pages hissed as he turned them, revealing diagrams of human anatomy, veins glowing like molten ore. The instructions were clear—and suicidal.
Focus until all you can feel is yourself.
Kael sat cross-legged in the ash, the Godclimb open before him. The Bloodprice's embers churned in his chest, a caged star. He closed his eyes, willing the world to dissolve.
The first step was isolation. Not of the body, but of the mind. He envisioned his consciousness as a blade, severing ties to the rot-scented wind, the grit beneath his palms, the ragged sound of Aria's breathing. Slowly, the outside faded. Only the pulse remained—the thud-thud-thud of his heart, the sear of power in his veins.
Now, the gaps.
The Godclimb spoke of seven voids in the circulatory system, forged by the Bloodprice's excess. Kael sought them, probing inward. There—a hollow behind his ribs, black and yawning. He guided the embers toward it, a river of fire funneling into a well.
Agony.
His muscles writhed as if flayed. The energy resisted, thrashing like a hooked leviathan. Kael gritted his teeth, sweat mingling with ash. Morph it. Cold. Then heat.
He imagined the molten power hardening, crystallizing into something brittle. Frost spiderwebbed across his skin. Then, fire—a conflagration that should have vaporized his bones. The contradiction tore a scream from his throat.
Aria lurched forward. "Kael—!"
"Don't." He held up a hand, veins blazing crimson. A droplet of blackened blood oozed from his wrist, hitting the ash with a hiss. Expulsion. The waste product of defiance.
The sigil on his forearm pulsed. Six debts. Now, a seventh flickered at the edge—a jagged rune shaped like a broken chain.
"Did it work?" Aria whispered.
Kael flexed his hand. The air around it warped, as if reality itself recoiled. "For now."
Aria watched him, her own fingers brushing the unburned letter Veyis had left behind. Burn your fear. The alchemist's words slithered through her mind. She had already sacrificed a memory. What was one more?
She waited until Kael's breathing steadied, his body slumped in exhausted sleep. Then, she crept to the tower's edge, the letter clutched like a lifeline.
Erase the outside world.
Closing her eyes, she envisioned the plaza's cold flames, the way her mother's face had dissolved into ash. Fear coiled in her gut—fear of the rot, of becoming another Huskstalker's prey. She seized it, feeding it into the void-energy Veyis had described.
A tremor. The air around her split, not a rift, but a... fold. Energy seeped from the crevice, silken and hungry. It coiled around her, seeping into her pores.
Focus on yourself.
Her consciousness splintered. Seven fragments, each a shard of her mind: courage, doubt, rage, love, guilt, hope, fear. The energy demanded a sacrifice. One.
She reached for fear—
—and screamed.
It wasn't a memory this time. It was a presence, ancient and ravenous, peeling back layers of her soul. Her body convulsed, veins threading with silver. When she opened her eyes, the world had shifted. The ash glowed faintly, and Kael's sleeping form radiated heat like a forge.
But her hands... translucent. Flickering.
The ground quaked. Not a Veilquake—this was deeper, wetter, as if the earth itself were drowning.
Kael jolted awake, dagger drawn. "Aria—?"
She stood at the tower's edge, her silhouette wavering. "Something's coming."
From the ash rose a stench of brine and decay. A shape emerged—a colossal eel-like creature, its scales oozing black mucus, eyes milky and pupilless. Chains dragged behind it, each link carved with weeping faces.
"Veliwarden," Kael hissed. "No—worse."
The creature's maw split, revealing rows of human teeth. It sang, a dirge that liquefied the ash into slurry.
Aria gripped the Godclimb. "The Bloodprice method—can you use it again?"
Kael's sigils burned. Seven. The Huskstalkers would be hunting. But the creature advanced, its chains slithering toward them.
"Stay back!" he roared, activating the Bloodprice.
Power surged, but different now—tainted by the storage ritual. His veins blazed blue-black, the expelled energy crystallizing into jagged shards around him. He hurled one at the beast.
It struck the creature's eye, ice and fire erupting in tandem. The thing recoiled, screaming.
Aria moved without thinking. Channeling the void-energy, she tore a fragment from her mind—doubt—and flung it. The air rippled, a invisible blade shearing through the creature's chains.
But the cost was instant. She collapsed, blood trickling from her nose. The world dimmed, her body flickering like a guttering candle.
They fled, the monster's wails echoing behind them. Kael half-dragged Aria into a crumbling chapel, its altar defaced with the same red paint: MONSTER.
Her voice was a ghost. "What... am I becoming?"
Kael had no answer. The Godclimb lay between them, its pages open to an illustration of a man split into seven shadows, each defying a celestial chain.
Step One: Defiance of Flesh.
Step Two: Defiance of Memory.
Aria's fingers brushed the page. "How many steps until we're more than just monsters?"
Outside, the sky cracked. A new rift oozed ichor, and something watched from the void—a crown of drowned coral, eyes like drowned stars.
The Thrice-Drowned King had taken notice.