The Whispering Deeps' "contained anomaly" was a jar of smoked glass, cold to the touch. Inside, a formless pulse of sickly violet light throbbed against the walls. It wasn't a beast; it was a condensed thought-form, a psychic parasite that fed on hope and left behind the frozen dregs of despair.
The test was held in a warded courtyard behind the Deeps delegates' quarters. The two Mind-Flayer Adjutants stood like pale statues, their hoods back, black eyes unblinking. Factor Jaxom and a few other curious Vale lords observed from a safe distance, their breath pluming in the suddenly chill air. Kael and the Tower disciples lurked in an archway, watching with predatory interest.
Damien stood alone in the center, the jar at his feet. He wore his Void-Weave clothes, the Oculus a cool weight on his brow. His instructions were simple: neutralize the leech without physical contact, using only a frost-construct, and without allowing its psychic emissions to escape the courtyard.
"Begin," the lead Flayer intoned, its voice a dry rustle in the mind.
One of the Flayers made a subtle gesture. The jar's lid vanished. The violet light erupted—not upward, but outward, in a silent, psychic scream. Damien felt it immediately. It wasn't sound, but a feeling: the gut-wrenching certainty of failure, the memory of his brother's blood-scent, the sterile dread of the Moros tubes. The leech wasn't attacking his mind; it was regurgitating his own private despair and feeding on his reaction.
A lesser cultivator might have faltered, drowned in sudden, amplified sorrow. Damien acknowledged the feelings as data—painful, but familiar. He let them flow into the frozen vault of his memory, where they crystallized and lost their power to harm.
His hands didn't move. His Conquered Frost Avatar materialized beside him, not as a dramatic spectacle, but as a natural extension of his will, like drawing a breath. To the observers, it was a marvel. To Damien, it was like flexing a muscle he'd spent months building.
The Avatar knelt, placing its translucent hands on the stone flags around the jar. Frost spread, not in a sheet, but in intricate, branching patterns—a fractal tree of ice that grew with shocking speed, creating a complex, three-dimensional cage around the pulsing violet light. But this was no simple prison.
Damien wasn't trying to contain the emotion. He was giving it a shape.
The psychic wail, the despair, hit the fractal ice-cage. Instead of bouncing back, the intricate geometry channeled it. The frost, animated by Damien's will, began to resonate with the leech's frequency. The violet light stuttered, confused. It was used to causing chaos; this was order of a terrifying kind.
The Avatar's hands tightened. The fractal cage contracted. As it did, the resonant frost-frequencies multiplied, creating a harmonic feedback loop. The psychic scream was forced back in on itself, compressed, and—following Damien's ruthless command—frozen.
The violet light didn't go out. It solidified. In the heart of the ice-cage now lay a perfect, fist-sized crystal of deep amethyst, its inner light stilled, trapped in a moment of absolute stasis. The psychic pressure vanished. The air felt clean, empty.
The courtyard was silent but for the crackle of frost settling.
The lead Mind-Flayer stepped forward, its large black eyes fixed on the crystal. It reached out a long, pale finger but did not touch. "Fascinating," it hissed, this time aloud. "You did not destroy. You imposed… narrative arrest. A story frozen mid-sentence." It looked at Damien, a hint of something like respect in its alien gaze. "The map will be delivered."
As the Flayers collected their frozen anomaly, a commotion broke out at the courtyard's edge. A guard was arguing with a ragged figure. "I don't care if you're freezing, beggar, you can't—"
The figure, a young man maybe a few years older than Damien, shoved past the guard. He was whip-thin, dressed in patched furs that were too thin for the mountain cold. His face was pinched with hunger and a desperate, calculating intelligence. He didn't look at the lords or the Flayers. His eyes, a sharp, unsettling grey, locked onto Damien.
"Warden," the young man said, his voice rough but clear. "You took a blighted mine and made it breathe silver. You just turned a soul-sucker into a pretty rock." He took a step closer, ignoring the guards leveling spears. "I can be of use."
Jaxom scoffed. "A street rat? Remove him."
Damien held up a hand, stopping the guards. He studied the young man with his Oculus and Soul-Sight. His aura was faint, muddied by hunger—a basic 1st Order, maybe 2nd Rank. But there was a sharp, resilient core to it, and no fear. Only assessment. This one saw power and was calculating how to get close to it.
"What use?" Damien asked, his tone flat.
"The kind no lord thinks they need," the young man said. "I know every crack in Ferros Keep's lower levels. I know which guards gamble, which stewards skim, which merchants trade in information. I hear things in the shadows. You see the big patterns." He tapped his temple. "I see the cracks they make. You need someone who can move in the places your frost can't reach, who hears what your… specter cannot."
He was offering himself as a spy. An informant. A shadow.
[Analysis: Subject: Unknown. Cultivation: Negligible. Traits: High observed intelligence, survival instincts, low moral flexibility. Probable skills: infiltration, eavesdropping, urban tracking. Threat to host: Low. Potential utility: High.]
[Suggestion: A tool requires maintenance and clear parameters. Define boundaries.]
"What is your name?" Damien asked.
"Silas," the young man said. "Just Silas."
"Follow me, Silas." Damien turned and walked from the courtyard, not looking back. After a moment, he heard the soft, nearly silent footfalls behind him. The guards and lords watched, bewildered, as the Frost-Warden acquired his first, ragged retainer.
Back in his barren cell, Damien faced the young man. "You seek power. A patron."
"I seek not to freeze to death in a gutter," Silas corrected, his eyes taking in the room's starkness without judgement. "And I recognize a rising tide when I see one. You're not like the lords. You don't care about banners or bloodlines. You care about results. So do I. Let me get you the results you can't get yourself."
Damien considered. He needed eyes and ears. He needed someone who understood the human squalor and intrigue that his mountain-forged perspective missed. "You will be my agent in the shadows. You will report everything you see and hear that pertains to threats against me, or opportunities for advancement. You will not act without my direct order. In return, you will have a place, silver, and," Damien reached into his pouch and tossed Silas a small, rough shard of Glacial Silverite, "this. Learn to draw the energy from it. It will keep you warm, and make you stronger."
Silas caught the shard, his eyes widening at the pulse of cold power. He gripped it tight, a flicker of something like avarice in his gaze, quickly schooled to neutrality. "Understood, Warden."
"Go. Get warmer clothes. Find a room near the lower kitchens. Listen. I will find you when I have a task."
Silas melted out of the room with a thief's grace. Damien was alone again, but the calculus had changed. He had secured a path to the Heavenly Flames. He had gained a tool for the shadows. And he had demonstrated a power that was no longer seen as a glitch, but as a formidable, specialized art.
He looked at the map the Mind-Flayer had delivered—a piece of treated leather showing a route deep into the Sun-Scorched Expanse, to a place marked "Emberfall Canyon - Where Fire Forgets to Burn." The next step in his conquest was clear.
But first, he had to survive the rest of the Conclave. And his new shadow had just given him an idea. It was time to learn what the Tower disciples were really planning in their private quarters.
"Silas," he murmured to the empty air, knowing the boy was already slinking through the keep's underbelly, "your first test begins now."