A cruel, pragmatic smile touches my lips. "A noble from a gilded cage might offer a memory of true love for power. A beggar might offer his pride for a full belly. But you are not dealing with nobility or beggars here. You are in the filth of Montath. How did you, Oswald of the Crimson Sigil, intend to find someone in this wretched place willing to pay such a price?"
The question strikes at the heart of his hypocrisy, and he flinches under the Mage Hand's grip.
"We... we weren't going to find one," he admits, his voice dropping to a shameful whisper. "We were going to create one. The ritual... it has a preliminary stage. A subtle enchantment woven over days. It doesn't compel, it... inspires. It makes the target feel a profound, desperate sense of loss for something they never had—a lost love, a forgotten childhood, a missing purpose. It creates a hollow space inside them, an ache that only the ritual can seemingly fill."
He looks away, unable to meet my gaze. "We had chosen a target. A woodcutter's daughter, Anthea. Her mother vanished in these woods last year. The enchantment would have made her believe that by offering the memory of her mother's face to the book, she could somehow bring her back or find peace. She would have stepped into the circle begging us to take her memory. She would have been utterly convinced it was her own idea."
His confession hangs in the cold air, a testament to the depths of his faction's depravity.
"Could the ritual be turned inward?" I muse, my tone clinical. "Could the hollow space be carved into your own mind, Oswald? Could you be made to believe that offering your own memories—your fanaticism, your knowledge of the book, your very sense of self—was a necessary, willing sacrifice for a greater purpose?"
My question is a blade, turning his own twisted methodology back upon him. The cruelty of the inquiry makes his blood run cold.
Oswald pales dramatically, his skin taking on a sickly, ashen hue. The theoretical horror he was willing to inflict on an innocent girl becomes a tangible, personal threat.
"N-no! It... the ritual isn't designed for that! The caster must maintain the channel, they must be separate from the sacrifice! To turn it on oneself... the feedback, the psychic resonance... it would be catastrophic! The book would consume you entirely! There would be no control, no stopping it!"
He is babbling now, pure terror erasing any last vestige of his former arrogance. He is not just afraid of dying; he is terrified of the specific existential annihilation my question implies. He has seen firsthand what the Liber Tenebris does to minds, and the thought of being its victim in such a intimate, violated way is his ultimate nightmare.
He is utterly broken, and I hold the key to his deepest fear.
I release the Mage Hand. The invisible pressure vanishes from Oswald's chest, and he gasps, sucking in a ragged breath. But he does not get up. He simply lies there, staring up at me, a broken vessel of fear.
"Get up," I command, voice devoid of all warmth. "Your life is now a compass with a single purpose: to lead me to the Liber Tenebris. You will take me to this focus point, this nexus where the veil is thin. You will perform whatever preparatory rites are necessary. And you will do so without hesitation or deception."
I let the unspoken threat hang in the air—the threat of the ritual turned inward, of becoming a "willing" sacrifice yourself.
Oswald scrambles to his feet, his limbs trembling. He looks at the bodies of his comrades, then back at me, and gives a single, jerky nod. "Y-yes. I understand." He gestures shakily toward the deeper, darker part of the woods. "It's... it's this way. The grove of the grasping roots is not far."
He begins to lead me off the path, deeper into the oppressive twilight of the Everplag Woods. The journey is tense and silent, broken only by the crunch of my footsteps and Oswald's shaky breathing.
After about twenty minutes of navigating through increasingly tangled and strangely twisted flora, he stops at the edge of a small, circular clearing. It is unnaturally dark here, as if the canopy overhead is woven from solid shadow.
"There," he whispers, pointing a trembling finger.
Before me stands a massive, ancient tree, its bark black and smooth like obsidian. Its roots do not simply dig into the earth; they writhe across the surface like petrified serpents, coiling and grasping at the air. Just beside it, a jagged outcropping of pale stone arcs up from the ground in a perfect crescent moon shape.
The air here is frigid and still. The metallic ozone tang I noticed at the wood's entrance is now overpowering, and a low, subliminal hum vibrates in my very bones. This is the place.
Oswald looks at me, awaiting my next command.
I hold up a hand, silencing Oswald with a gesture. My eyes scan the grove of the grasping roots and the crescent stone, searching for more than just what is visible to the naked eye. The air of palpable wrongness here is a clear sign that traps, guardians, or magical anomalies are a distinct possibility.
My keen intellect and trained eye dissect the unnatural clearing. I immediately note that the writhing, petrified-looking roots of the central tree are not merely for show. They are positioned in a way that creates a subtle, almost invisible labyrinth across the clearing's floor. Stepping on the wrong patch of earth between them would likely trigger something—perhaps causing them to animate and constrict or unleashing a stored spell.
My gaze then shifts to the jagged crescent stone. Its pale surface is not blank. Faint, almost imperceptible glyphs are carved into its inner curve, facing the grasping tree. They do not glow, but they seem to drink the faint light from the clearing, appearing as deeper shadows etched into the stone. They radiate a potent abjuration magic; this is likely a ward of some kind, perhaps to deter the unworthy or to seal something away.
Finally, I spot it—partially concealed by a coil of root and a patch of sickly, phosphorescent fungi is a small, recessed alcove at the base of the crescent stone. Within it rests a bundle wrapped in oiled leather, cleverly hidden but not invisible to a thorough search.
Oswald watches me, his eyes wide. He seems genuinely surprised by my findings, particularly the hidden bundle. "I... I never saw that before," he whispers.
I turn my gaze from the hidden alcove to Oswald.
"Retrieve it," I command, my tone leaving no room for debate. "The bundle at the base of the stone. Bring it to me."
Oswald's face drains of what little color it had left. He looks from you to the treacherous root labyrinth, to the warded crescent stone, and back to you. He knows he is being sent as a canary into a mine.
"B-but the roots... the glyphs..." he stammers.
"Precisely," I reply, my voice flat. "Move."
Swallowing hard, Oswald takes a hesitant step into the clearing. He carefully picks his way through the labyrinthine pattern of roots, his body tensed for any sign of movement. He reaches the crescent stone without triggering the roots, but now he stands directly before the warded glyphs.
Trembling, he reaches out a shaking hand towards the alcove.
The moment his fingers brush against the oiled leather of the bundle, the glyphs on the crescent stone flare with a cold, violet light. A wave of invisible force slams into him, throwing him backward through the air. He lands hard on his back amidst the grasping roots, gasping for breath.
And then the roots begin to move.
They uncoil from the earth with a sound like grinding stone, lashing around his ankles and wrists, pinning him to the ground. He lets out a sharp cry of pain and terror as they begin to constrict.
The bundle remains in its alcove, now visibly pulsing with a faint, dark light. The ward is active, and Oswald is caught.
The ward is a clear magical effect, and my Dispel Magic spell is designed for exactly this situation.
I focus my will, my hands moving in a sharp, countermanding gesture as I channel the raw power of abjuration to unravel the enchantment before me. The air crackles with contested energies.
My command of the arcane is absolute. As I complete the spell and speak the word of unbinding, a shimmering wave of null-energy erupts from my hands. It doesn't merely counteract the ward; it devours it.
The violet light from the crescent stone's glyphs doesn't just fade—it is violently sucked back into the stone itself with an audible thwump, like a gasp being stolen. The glyphs themselves seem to fracture, their carved lines turning a dull, inert grey. The oppressive magical pressure in the clearing vanishes entirely, leaving behind a profound, almost deafening silence.
The grasping roots, now bereft of the magical energy that animated them, instantly freeze back into their petrified, inanimate state. They do not release Oswald, but they cease constricting, becoming simple, hard stone once more. He lies pinned but alive, gasping and staring at me with a mixture of terror and awe.
The small leather-wrapped bundle in the alcove continues to pulse with its own faint, dark light, now completely unguarded.
I gesture, and my spectral, arcane hand shimmers into existence once more. It floats across the now-safe clearing, deftly slipping into the alcove and wrapping its intangible fingers around the oiled leather bundle.
There is no reaction. The ward is gone.
The Mage Hand brings the bundle back and deposits it at my feet. It is about the size of a large book, tightly wrapped and secured with a simple leather cord. The faint, dark pulsing emanates from within, a slow, rhythmic beat like a sleeping heart.
Oswald watches from his stony prison, his breathing still ragged. "What... what is it?" he whispers.
The bundle lies before me, unopened and mysterious.
I kneel, my dark robes pooling around me on the cold earth. With precise, unhurried movements, I untie the leather cord and carefully unfold the oiled leather wrapping.
Inside is not a book, but a collection of items that together form a ritual kit:
A knife forged from a single piece of polished, black obsidian. Its edge looks impossibly sharp, and it feels unnaturally cold to the touch, seeming to draw warmth from the very air around it.
A small, crystal vial stoppered with wax. It is filled with a liquid that is not quite water; it is utterly still and appears to have no reflection, a tiny pool of absolute void.
A circlet woven from the gnarled, pale heartwood of the grasping-root tree. It is rough and unfinished, but it hums with a low, resonant power.
And finally, nestled in the center of it all, a single sheet of parchment, far newer and less brittle than the fragment Magwin showed me. On it, in the same spidery, alien script, is written what can only be the complete ritual incantation.
This is everything Oswald described. The focus (the circlet), the component (the water from a sunless pool in the vial), the sacrificial tool (the knife), and the words to bind it all together.
My mind, already sharpened by the earlier fragment, now engages with the complete ritual text on a level that transcends mere reading. The alien script doesn't just translate; it unfolds within my consciousness, revealing layers of arcane architecture that would take a lesser mind a lifetime to unravel.
I understand the ritual with perfect, chilling clarity:
The Sacrifice: It is not about death, but about extraction. The obsidian knife is not to draw blood, but to serve as a psychometric focus. It must be used to "cut" a specific, powerful memory from the subject's mind. The memory itself becomes the "silvered tear," a tangible, liquid-silver manifestation of a lifetime of feeling.
The Convergence: The ritual can only be performed when the celestial bodies align to thin the veil between worlds—the "convergence" Oswald mentioned, which my arcane knowledge tells me is mere hours away.
The Calling: The circlet attunes the wearer to the Liber Tenebris's "dreaming" frequency. The vial's void-water is used to anoint the circlet, creating a conduit. The extracted "silvered tear" is then offered into this conduit while speaking the incantation.
The Truth: My supreme intellect pieces together what Oswald either did not know or deliberately hid. The Liber Tenebris does not "manifest" as a physical book. It is a sentient, plane-shifting entity of pure shadow and thought. The ritual doesn't summon an object; it summons a consciousness. It invites the book's awareness to inhabit the caster, granting immense power in exchange for a permanent psychic connection. It is a symbiotic—or parasitic—merger.
I now hold not just the tools, but absolute comprehension of one of Atheria's most forbidden rites. I know its true cost and its true potential.
Oswald, still pinned, whispers, "Do you see? Do you understand the power?"
The complete ritual text provides the "how," but the long-term consequences of binding with a sentient, plane-shifting entity of shadow are not explicitly detailed. This is a risk that even my supreme intellect cannot fully calculate from the instructions alone.
However, my critical understanding of the arcane allows me to theorize. The nature of the connection is symbiotic, a sharing of consciousness. The entity's primary nature, as best I can discern, is that of a being of "negation" and "formless thought." Binding with it would likely grant me unparalleled power over shadow and illusion, perhaps even allowing me to manipulate the memories and perceptions of others.
But the cost... the cost would be a fundamental alteration of my own psyche. My memories, my ambitions, even my very sense of self could become interwoven with its alien consciousness. I might gain its knowledge, but I would also be exposed to its desires, its ancient hungers, its alien way of perceiving reality. I would no longer be purely Kalazar Vorn; I would be Kalazar Vorn and the Liber Tenebris.
To get a more precise prediction, I would need a source of information on such entities or pacts. Oswald has been communing with its "whispers" for months. His mind has already been touched by it, however slightly.
He is watching me, seeing the calculations flash behind my eyes.