The room was quiet, save for the soft creak of the floorboards as Silas shifted his weight. The air inside held that stagnant chill of stone walls and silence. Outside, the dim world pressed on as always, unmoving and eternal.
Silas sat cross-legged on the floor beside his bed, the book from the abandoned city laid open in front of him. Its leather binding cracked when touched, and a faint scent of mold clung to the edges of the pages. The script, though ancient, had been scribbled with a kind of manic clarity—lines underlined twice, sigils sketched hurriedly into the margins, diagrams that looked like they were drawn mid-rush.
He read:
"Before the Scholar rank, the use of multiple effigies is of questionable benefit. The soul's capacity is too limited, too fragile. Yet I pursued this path anyway, for necessity gives no rest to reason."
Silas exhaled through his nose, slowly turning the page.
"The secondary effigy must align with your own path. Introducing a divergent soul will fracture the vessel—or the user. This is not a metaphor. Death is the result."
"To prepare: acquire a beast of your path. Trap it inside a three-ring soul circuit alongside your prepared effigy base. The soul of the beast will resist. It must be consumed, overwritten. This can be done by forcibly injecting one's own soul into the vessel and crushing the beast's presence. If successful, a new effigy is born"
A hand-sketched ritual diagram took up half the next page. The outermost ring pulsed with dense glyphs—some Silas recognized from refinement, others were unfamiliar. And beneath all this, in small, cramped writing, the author had added:
"Note: This is highly dangerous. Proceed only if necessity outweighs sanity."
Silas stared at that line longer than he meant to.
The dimness around him seemed to stretch, the corners of the room blurring into shadow. His original effigy—the only one—stood in its corner, unmoving. Still cloaked in dull dark sigils, still waiting. Bound. Familiar.
"Would I even survive splitting again?" he muttered to himself, eyes fixed on the next diagram.
His fingers hovered over the page. The thought—no, the temptation—had begun to root itself. Another effigy. Another vessel. Another piece of himself broken off.
He remembered the soul beasts during his refinement. The pain. The blood. The fear.
But he also remembered what it felt like to overcome it.
The silence in the room was heavy. His mind buzzed with what-ifs. If he used a blood-path monster—could he gain something beyond normal reach? Could he store different kinds of spells in different effigies? Could he mask his true abilities by using different forms?
Would it make him stronger? Or kill him?
He didn't know. But the seed had been planted.
He shut the book with a soft thump, staring at the cracked cover.
"Not now," he whispered. "But maybe… soon."
Outside his window, the distant city lanterns flickered in steady rhythm—breathing life into a place that never saw dawn.