The covenant granted four pieces of vital information, one gifted from each of my new partners.

From the Sanguine Dream, I learned not only the exact process through which I could transfer Libbu but also, she taught me how to use the connection to find the others once they were reborn as humans. It would make fulfilling the second portion of the covenant easier since I wouldn’t have to blindly search Earth for them. That wasn’t all she presented though. Beneath the surface, she gave me a promise that I didn’t understand at the time and wouldn’t until much later.

Next, the Languid King imparted knowledge of ancient and alien magics. Dozens of higher-order rituals wove together in my mind creating a formation greater than the sum of its parts. Countless years of arcane calculations borne of a desire to escape had culminated in a masterpiece of magical ritual craft. Sadly, once it was completed, the Languid King had lacked the strength to enact its work; for that, it needed me. I marveled at the genius behind the formation. In truth, this was all I needed to break free the shadow’s clutches.

The Weeping Sun’s dowry amounted to a short vision. After escaping the shadow, I appeared in a sector that I recognized from the years of dreaming as one of the neighboring regions of the Astral. There, another elder behemoth of the Astral watched while the shadow devoured the Old World’s sector. It wouldn’t intervene— it rarely did— but I could use its curiosity to my benefit if I made the right offer.

Finally, the Mad Titan delivered a whisper, its voice dancing with glee, “The lurker drags its bloated gut across the razor’s edge. Entrails spilling from the heavens, it weeps but gorges evermore. Accept the tainted meat and grow strong enough to hear its Dark Truth.”

Another pang of numbness spread through a section of my inner body, alarmingly close to my core structures. My focus on the four souls had taken away from my effectiveness in warding off the shadow and it didn’t have the courtesy of waiting for the deal to finish.

It was time.

Hundreds of strands composed of psykhe surrounded Libbu’s core structures. I threaded them carefully around her, willing to sacrifice even more of myself to the shadow if it meant a safer journey for her. I even wove the protective layers and connecting strands with double the amount of psykhe that was necessary. It would make things harder later but I had a gamble to counteract the risk. Once I was done, I stretched the psykhe along the bonds created by our covenant while maintaining its structural integrity. I finished with an ironclad binding tethered to each of the souls in the covenant.

I took a brief moment to memorize the signatures of my new partners, unsure when I’d next see them or in what state I’d be in.

Then, I began consuming the uninfected portions of my body and converting them into mana. My mind grew hazier during the time it took to amass enough for the ritual. Had I not been a part of the covenant, I would have failed which affirmed my judgment that I wouldn’t have been able to escape alone. The four souls grounded my focus using their fading strength to pull me from the brink of oblivion, constantly reminding me to persevere.

More than any other, the Sanguine Dream pulled my debilitated consciousness through the haze. Somehow, she caused the fragments of Libbu’s core structures to resonate throughout the covenant. I saw memories, not my own, but Libbu’s.

They were of our earliest days before the rise of humanity when the divide between our development was still equivalent to that of heaven and earth. The memories weren’t complicated; just recollections of my growth, my triumphs in engineering new structures within my body, and my breakthroughs as I came to understand the nature of mana. Suffused through them all were feelings of happiness and pride. I recognized those emotions. I had resented them for so long.

It was exactly how she felt as she nurtured the seed of humanity’s potential; the foundation of who she became in the millennia that followed.

It had started with me.

Up until then, I had never delved into the emotions or memories locked within Libbu’s core structures despite scanning their make-up countless times. I hadn’t been willing to invade the last piece of her like that.

Was that hypocritical of me considering my conduct with mortals? Yes, but I didn’t consider myself accountable to their judgment so the thought hadn’t occurred to me.

Still, her memories proved that I had much to reevaluate.

Although I knew Libbu had intrinsically shaped what and who I became before and after her sacrifice, I never believed the opposite was true. I could not have come about without the fear of her power or the frustration at her choices driving me further down my path to perfection but I had thought she would have become the same entity regardless of my existence. Perhaps she might have made less drastic decisions toward the end but that was it, or at least, it's what I told myself.

My dependency on her presence and the void she left in her absence had elevated her in my mind. Many of my thoughts since then revolved around how I could learn from her legacy from attempting to reverse engineer her sacrificial ritual to studying the nuances of her core structures. Yet, I failed to see the painfully obvious truth.

Her joy in watching my advancement was the seed for her eventual investment in humanity. As I grew more powerful and isolated, she searched for potential and found the early humans. She had tried to share her happiness with me, to complete the cycle, but I rejected it with disdain and paranoia.

Her last words rang throughout my mind.

Something clicked inside my core structures. A personal truth cemented itself in my being, a realization borne of ancient memories and festering regrets.

Mana erupted from my core structures as I activated the Languid King’s ritual. The power rushed over my partners starting with the Mad Titan who laughed giddily and ending with the Sanguine Dream who left her words of parting.

“Remember yourself, Nascent Soul, and next we meet, please take care of me.”

***

Before the power of the ritual encompassed me, I stopped it. The plan had gone well despite all and I could escape but didn’t.

The shadow had damaged my body immensely. Although I survived its trap, its insidious influence and the sacrifices I had made to perform the ritual left me little better than the astral equivalent of a bloody skeleton with its internal organs clinging to it. Only my complex inner structures along with a few barely functioning defensive structures remained.

If I escaped as I was, I would be a shadow of my former self and the path to recovery would be long and arduous. Not to mention, I’d have to contend with the shadow’s lingering presence and any other astral beings drawn to the Old World’s sector by its presence. The ritual’s magic would shield me and the Old World from its touch for a time. However, I doubted I’d be able to do anything but hide until I recouped my lost power if I even managed to survive that long.

Meanwhile, the Old World would be torn apart by opportunistic astral beings and the lingering sickness implanted by the shadow’s mana.

I wasn’t satisfied with that future. It would all but guarantee Libbu’s doom and make fulfilling a portion of my covenant difficult at best. I needed to go beyond what I was. Luckily, the Mad Titan and the Sanguine Dream had gifted me the clues I needed to find the path of my evolution. I had to take a risk betting a guarantee of safety against the possibility of my desires coming to fruition.

I called out to the will of the ancient predator, “Let us form a covenant, unending shadow. Leave this sector and I will drain the glut that fuels your agony. Give me room to grow and I will purify your tainted essence. Allow my ascension and I will unravel the Truth that eats at your heart.”

To be honest, I didn’t believe half of the bullshit I spouted; however, I spoke into the void with conviction because I couldn’t see any other path to my ideal future, the only future I could accept. By attempting to communicate with the shadow’s will which resided in its core structures, I placed myself on a fine edge between salvation and oblivion. While communication wasn’t normally dangerous between astral beings, communicating with a hostile entity so far beyond me while in a weakened state was like asking for ruin.

Yet, I bet it all on a conclusion supported by my observations, the words of the Mad Titan, and the vision of the Sanguine Dream.

Why wasn’t the shadow’s assault on my body more aggressive? It could have simply overpowered my defenses given the power disparity and the insidious nature of its mana. Even if it hadn’t felt brute force was necessary, I doubted it lacked ability to devise a faster way to overcome my defenses.

Where was the cunning it had shown in trapping me?

Moreover, why had it allowed communication between myself and the four souls? We were within its body where its power was greatest. I refused to believe an entity as old and powerful as it was couldn’t limit the communication of beings trapped within its body.

Finally, why did its body contain so many souls when they seemingly served no purpose? Why not release those trapped into the Astral, especially if their presence caused it pain? Why not simply stop consuming things?

The answer resided in the Mad Titan’s final words. The shadow sought release from some kind of corruption rooted in its depths, perhaps even as far as its core structures. It likely retained the souls because it had no other choice. Whatever the corruption was, I knew it had something to do with the Dark Truth, the thing potent enough to destroy souls and seed terror in my mind with the mere hint of its utterance.

It was fighting an internal battle against that taint with nothing but its nature as a predator to drive its actions in the interim. That’s what I believed at least. For all its power, its behavior was that of a mindless beast, roaming and consuming with little regard for anything else.

The question was: did the shadow’s mind have the agency to accept the shackles of a covenant and if so, would it?

For one moment, my fate rested on the answer to that question. I still had the power of the ritual primed to complete but I knew that the shadow could strike faster than the magic could take effect. So, I stared into the darkness; time stretched like a band pulled taut, ready to snap without warning.

“I accept.”

Like a dam breaking to the force of a great river, my defenses collapsed and my mind consumed by a tide of darkness. However, I maintained my sense of self amidst the rushing currents of power. A chain extended from the abyss piercing my core structures. I had less than the space of a breath to quell the mounting panic before another chain stuck. Another followed it, again and again, until hundreds of astral bindings tethered me to the darkness.

All the while, a presence observed the process. I felt its attention comb through my mind and body leaving a phantom chill in its wake. When the last chain manifested, the last dregs of my mana, my inner reserves of psykhe, traveled through the bindings into the abyss.

The covenant had been struck yet unlike my covenant with the four souls, I received no immediate boon or information from the contract. Instead, I got an ultimatum delivered by voices from the shadows.

“We are bound, you are marked. Feast on my bloat! Pick clean my wasted carcass! Digest all within my blackened heart!” The voices clamored with all the force of the uncountable souls within the shadow. My mind nearly collapsed several times as it spoke. Only through sheer force of will did I maintain my sanity. Its last words to me resonated with the foundations of my being. “Fail and you will be consumed by the hunger. Fail and your home will drown in the dust of its decay. Fail and your heart will suffer in the torment until the end comes for all…”

Before I could formulate the beginning of a response to its words, the feast began.

The chains of our covenant rattled and along its length, millions of souls converged on my core structures seeking an escape from their dark purgatory. I barely managed to collapse the last of my outer structures for mana before they were upon me. They clawed like rabid animals at my essence looking for a way into my core. The pain was beyond anything I had ever known.

I used the remaining portion of Libbu as my anchor taking comfort in its feeling. Thanks to the robust layers of psykhe that protected her, the desperate souls could do her no harm. I wondered what she would say if she saw my struggle at that moment.

I braced through the agony of their assault and wove a single strand of psykhe. With it, I punctured the center of a single soul breaking through its tattered sense of self and anchoring to its foundations. From there, I offered a simple ultimatum.

Submit all you are to me or be cast back into the void.

It chose submission immediately. None of the souls trapped in the shadow had the willpower to weather the darkness of their prison. All except the four with which I had formed a covenant had been reduced to little more than base entities seeking a reprieve from the madness.

I took the soul into my grasp using my strand of psykhe to peel away the little fragments of the individual that remained until I had nothing but a pure soul. Then, I absorbed it into my core structures. Unlike the shadow, I wasn’t tainted by any foreign influence and more importantly, I had studied the Truths of the soul to develop my core structures as opposed to Truths of darkness and death. So, when the soul entered my core structures, it began to merge with the Truths embedded within them changing the structures in the process

I repeated this process over and over until I lost myself in it. The millions of souls were replaced by millions more as a seemingly endless number continued to ascend from the shadows. I started to change, not just mentally but on an existential level. I knew that I was becoming something else as the who and the what of my being submitted to the why.

I was doing something experimental improvising on a plan I hadn’t finished for Libbu’s core structures. It bore my hope of one day bringing her back. I was attempting to turn my core structures into a soul.

To Know is to Be… I repeated the Sanguine Dream’s words over and over. The simplicity of them helped center my thoughts even when Libbu’s memory didn’t. One of the most frightening moments of my life happened during this period. At one point, I gazed at the fragment of Libbu and I couldn’t remember who she was. I understood that the fragment belonged to someone important but couldn’t summon the memory no matter how hard I tried. The absence of the memory nearly broke my concentration which would have doomed me.

Thankfully, before I could lose myself to rampant emotion, another memory came to mind. It was Libbu’s memory, the one unlocked by the Sanguine Dream. It helped me remember. I’ll admit, the gratitude I felt at that moment trumped any I’d felt or would feel for years to come.

Eventually, I stopped feeling emotions altogether. I acted automatically according to the pattern I had established. I couldn’t tell you how long passed as I merged with the lost souls within the ancient astral being; only that once the process finished, the devourer of star systems and prowler of primordial darkness had no more souls to give.

It was over and I was spent, stronger and weaker than I had ever been.

***

I still don’t remember how I got out of the shadow’s body. I have hypothesized that it had maintained the Languid King’s ritual while I underwent my transformation and completed the magic once I finished subsuming the souls within its body.

The next thing I knew, a powerful force gripped my essence dragging my awareness from the brink. Its voice was smooth, almost soothing yet detached.

“What are you?” it asked.

I answered in the only way my frayed consciousness could.

I am the Nascent Soul.