The wind howled through Asael's Vigil like a chorus of ghosts. The ever-glowing amethyst crystals shimmered softly on rooftops, casting eerie shadows that stretched like claws over cobbled streets. Kael stood alone at the cliff's edge behind the village, the cold whispering across his skin. Below, the vast forest sprawled like a dark ocean, rustling with unseen life. In his left hand, the scythe of blood pulsed faintly—an extension of his will.
It had been six months since he'd begun training under Master Renarith, a former knight turned silent observer of the village's darker shadows. Renarith rarely spoke, but when he did, his words struck Kael with surgical precision.
"Emotion is a flame. Beautiful, yes—but it consumes. Channel it, or it will burn you from within."
Kael had taken those words to heart.
Now, he stood in meditation, breathing slowly, heart calm but eyes storming with focus. The air around him trembled slightly—raw mana and blood essence swirling at his fingertips. He whispered a single word in the ancient tongue:
"Threxan."
The blood scythe writhed, then bloomed like a crimson flower. Blades extended from its back end, forming a cross-like configuration, and the arcane veins within it lit up like arteries on fire. Kael slammed it into the ground. The trees below groaned as a wave of pressured mana burst outward.
Renarith, watching from a distance, didn't smile. But he gave a single nod of approval.
Back in the village, Kael walked the streets like a phantom. He spoke to no one unless necessary. His presence had become unnerving. The villagers whispered behind his back.
"That's the boy from the Vigil... the one who uses blood."
"They say he talks to himself."
"He's cursed, I swear it. There's something wrong in his eyes."
They weren't wrong. He was changing. And not just from magic.
He had begun hearing voices.
Not whispers in the dark, but complete sentences—stern, mocking, insightful, cruel. And sometimes... comforting.
They came when he was alone. When he was angry. When he bled.
"Why do you always hold back?" the voice inside him asked one day, as he trained under moonlight.
Kael grunted, wiping sweat from his brow. "I don't."
"You lie. You hesitate. You still believe there's a line you won't cross."
Kael stabbed the scythe into a training dummy. "I won't become a monster."
"Too late," the voice chuckled. "You became that the day you watched your father die and did nothing."
He spun. "Shut up."
The voice hissed softly. "You need me. I see clearly. You're still chasing her, aren't you? The girl with the kind smile. You think if you become strong enough, she'll love you back?"
"I don't need her love," Kael muttered. "Just... to protect her."
"Same thing. Admit it. You don't want to save her. You want to be saved by her."
Kael was silent. The dummy was split in half, but it wasn't enough. It never was.
Her name was Lirael.
They hadn't spoken in months.
He watched her from a distance now. At the library. At the crystal gardens. She still smiled at people. Still tended the sick. Still hummed songs as she walked the stone paths.
She was the same.
He was not.
One night, she found him.
He was leaning on a broken statue outside the Vigil's edge, staring into the void.
"You've changed, Kael."
His heart thudded. "You shouldn't be here."
"You mean near you?"
He didn't answer.
"I remember the boy who used to cry because he stepped on a beetle," she said gently. "Now… your eyes look like obsidian."
"I'm doing what I must."
She looked away. "You think you have to carry the world's sorrow alone."
"I don't think. I know."
Silence stretched. Then she said something that broke him a little more:
"I don't think I can follow you where you're going."
His breath caught. "You don't have to follow. Just... be there."
"I don't think I can do that either."
And then she left.
That night, Kael dreamed of fire.
He stood in a ruined throne room. Blood pooled at his feet. His father's crown lay shattered beside him. His scythe dripped not with blood—but black tar. A thousand voices echoed in his mind, each one a version of himself, laughing, weeping, screaming.
One stepped forward.
Identical in every way—except this Kael wore a crown of bone and smiled like death itself.
"You thought this was for justice," it whispered. "But it was always for power."
Kael awoke in a cold sweat.
He walked barefoot to the village's abandoned chapel, long since desecrated when faith died in Asael's Vigil. Inside, he drew the ritual circle he'd memorized from a forbidden tome—one he'd stolen from Azkaris long ago.
He opened the wound on his palm with the edge of his scythe.
Blood spilled into the circle. Symbols lit up. The chapel shook.
He called upon a new branch of blood magic: The Burning Pact.
His body screamed. His skin sizzled. A mark formed across his chest—an eye wreathed in fire.
"Power," he whispered, "I will endure the flame."
When it ended, he collapsed. His vision swam with afterimages of ash and wings.
The voice inside him purred. "Good. Now you burn with purpose."
The magical surveillance artifact above the village—a massive floating crystalline eye—began to change after that night. It pulsed red when Kael passed beneath it. Villagers noticed. Eldrinthian scouts arrived two days later, cloaked in veils of illusion.
They questioned the people. One by one.
When they came for Kael, he was already gone.
He wandered toward the ruins of Varethos, the former capital of Othmaris. The place of the Unbound. The last whisper of balance between mage and knight. There, he would find others like him. Others torn between magic and aura. He would make them his.
His resistance would begin there.
His revenge would bloom there.
And maybe... if the girl still lived, he'd protect her from afar.
But a part of him—buried deep beneath layers of hate and illusion—whispered:
"Wouldn't it be easier if she were gone? Then the pain would stop."
He didn't answer.
He only walked.
In his pocket was a letter he'd written to Lirael. Ink stained with blood. Words scrawled like carvings:
"I love you more than I know how to bear. But this world doesn't want people like me to be happy. I'm not asking you to wait. I'm asking you to remember me… even if as a monster."
He never sent it.
He burned it at the edge of the forest.
Because monsters don't write letters.
They write history.