A shiver ran through the wet floor.The seals carved into the stone began to glow—imperceptibly.
Kael kept his eyes closed.His breathing stayed slow, but his body vibrated.
Beneath him, the Magia boiled.As if his vow had awakened more than a simple echo.
A dull pulse went through his bones.Then another.Ancient rhythm.Forgotten beat.
In that saturated silence, Kael understood.
Thana's words finally made sense to him.
It wasn't an abstract warning.Nor some distant fear.
The demonic Magia… he could feel it.Present.Vivid.Like a parallel current, crouched in the heart of his veins.
Part of him called to it.An instinctive, brutal affinity.As if his very blood were demanding that echo.
Kael set his jaw.Thana's words weighed heavier still.
— You carry it in your lineage.
He inhaled.Long.Forced his breath to hold steady.
One thing snagged in him.Subtle.Impossible to ignore.
It wasn't mere compatibility.Not a veiled affinity.
He understood.
The demonic Magia wasn't around him.It wasn't some foreign force waiting to be absorbed.
It was in his blood.Literally.
Every pulse.Every heartbeat.Carried that dark current with it.
As if his blood itself served as a channel.As if the very circulation of his life—veins, arteries, fibers—drove that Magia through him.
Kael went still.A shiver climbed his spine.
It was no metaphor now.It was biological truth.An inheritance etched into his flesh.
He drew a deep breath.Steadied it.
Then began, first of all, to withdraw the Magia of putrefaction—the one fouling the other two streams.
His fingers barely trembled on his knees.His veins pulsed beneath his skin, as if ready to burst.
Thana, perched a few centimeters from his face, did not even blink.Her halo vibrated with an icy intensity.
— Slowly, she murmured.Do not rush.The smallest misstep… and that poison slips into your blood.
Kael dipped his head a fraction.His eyelids stayed shut.
He pictured the three currents.Black Magia.Demonic Magia.And the rot—interlaced, perfidious.
His senses twisted under the density.Every fiber of him screamed.
But he moved forward.One step at a time.On the brink of a gulf.
Guided by Thana's firm voice.
The goal was simple.Draw the Magia in through the mouth.Let it circulate.Then expel, through the nose, the putrefaction and the demonic together.
A cycle.Controlled.Repeated.
Under Thana's voice.
— Inhale… hold… exhale.Let nothing cling.Not a trace.
Kael obeyed.Or tried.
The black Magia entered.Dense, heavy, saturated.He felt his lungs flood with icy flame.
Then he expelled.A long, controlled breath.
The Magia of putrefaction left him.Thick, foul, almost viscous.His nostrils stung, his sinuses burned.
But the demonic… remained.
He should have cast it out.Driven it out with the rest.
And yet.
At the instant of expulsion, an unexpected feeling swelled in him.Wholeness.As if a missing piece of his being had slid back into place.As if that dark current flowed where it belonged—natural, rightful.
His chest tightened.And he understood.He had not rejected the demonic Magia.He had kept it.
Thana went rigid.Her tiny eyes flew wide.Her halo shook with a furious light.
— Kael… stop.
But he no longer moved.Motionless.Breath suspended between two worlds.
Kael's eyes suddenly flared red and black.A dark flame spun within them, feral.
Telluric lines broke across his skin.They coiled along his cheeks, etching searing patterns, almost incandescent.
His jaw shifted.Two long, tapered fangs pierced his upper lip.Sharp.Ravenous.
At first glance, a vampire.But not only.
Thana knew it instantly.This current wasn't hers.Nor a simple vampiric legacy.
Kael vibrated with something else.An impure blend.Unique.As if several lineages—several curses—had fused in his blood.
Her halo trembled.Her pupils widened with shock.
— That's… not possible…
She grasped one thing, glacial:He was not only vampire.And what he was—she could not name it.
A single beat of hesitation,and the demonic breath devoured more ground.
Thana clenched her fists.She had to find the answer.Now.Or Kael would sink beyond return.
Thana hauled in a breath.A sharp idea cut through her.
This was no outer curse.No possession.
It was his demonic Magia.Too pure.Too voracious.It had overwhelmed his body, unchained his blood.
Then… if Kael burned it dry,he would return.
But to do that, she had to make him use it.Make him burn it.Make him devour it from within.
Thana gritted her teeth.Her tiny eyes fixed the monster he had become.A vampire… and something else.Unknown.Unpredictable.
— Kael…
Her halo hardened into a blade of light.
She knew what she had to do.Provoke his fury.Irritate him—force him to draw faster from that demonic stream.
Risk him striking her.Risk him wounding her.
But it was the only path.
Thana straightened on his shoulder, her tears already dry.Her voice cracked like a lash:
— Is that all you are?A puppet who can't master his own blood?
Thana's voice lashed him.Kael lifted his head.His red-and-black eyes blazed, veined with throbbing strands.
A deep growl shivered in his throat.His fangs gleamed.
He flung up his hand.The shadow of his clawed fingers swept within centimeters of Thana.
But he halted—snapped short, as if an unseen chain had seized his wrist at the final instant.
A spasm warped his face.His eyes flickered, flashing gold… for one heartbeat.
Then the black flare swallowed it again.
— Raaaahh!
His cry made the walls hum.The seals brightened, as if the Tower itself reacted to his frenzy.
Kael smashed his fist into the floor.Stone split.Shards flew, lacerating his hand.But he had not touched Thana.
She stared at him, unmoving—halo trembling, resolve unbroken.
Again, he lunged for her.Fangs bared to snap shut.
And again, at the final breath…he twisted aside.His teeth clashed on emptiness, a hair from her.
His whole body shook.As if two wills, at war, tore his fibers apart.
— Kael… you're fighting—I see it.Then burn it!Devour it to the last breath!
Thana screamed.She was not afraid.She knew he heard her in those shards of clarity.
The ground quaked under him.His veins ignited, swollen with the black roar that would not stop.
Kael howled.A bestial cry, strangled, broken.As if every fiber of him were bursting at once.
His red-and-black eyes blazed—then split with a golden flare.Only an instant.But enough.
He sank his fangs into emptiness, his fists into stone.The demonic Magia burst out of him.Not rejected.Not controlled.Consumed.
Burned at a ferocious pace,as if his very blood had turned into a black brazier.
The telluric lines on his face began to sizzle.They melted, tore under pressure.His body thrummed at the edge of implosion.
Thana clenched her fists.Her halo flickered, ready to intervene if his heart failed.But she knew—This was the only road.
— Yes… Kael… keep going!Burn it!
Each inhalation ripped his chest.Each exhalation cast a dark smoke—heavy, rank.The Magia of putrefaction, scoured.And behind it, the demonic—consumed by the torrent of Death he had embraced.
Until the hall itself began to tremble.The chains chimed in unison.A muffled, ancient roar rolled from the depths.
Then, suddenly—
Silence.
Kael collapsed to his knees.His eyes returned to gold, dimmed with fatigue.His fangs withdrew.The lines on his skin went dark, as if they had never been.
He panted.Face slick with sweat.Arms shaking.
But he had survived.
Thana watched him, frozen.She could scarcely believe her eyes.
— You… you did it…
She dared say no more.Because deep down she knew:he had not merely burned it.He had tasted it.
Kael remained on his knees.His fingers locked against split stone.His ragged breath filled the underlevel, mingling with the far-off chime of chains.
His golden eyes wavered.Reddened.Wet.
He turned away, unable to meet Thana's gaze.His voice snagged—hoarse, broken:
— … I'm sorry.
A tear slid down his cheek.He let it fall, made no move to wipe it away.
— I should have listened to you…
Silence fell.Thick.Unyielding.
And for the first time in a long time, Kael lowered his head.Not before the Tower.Not before his enemies.Before her.