Dragoslav had been living by the blade since he could hold one firmly in his hand. The countless wars and battles he survived earned him coin and cut in abandon. Hundreds of scars crossed his limbs. And his very spirit was stained red with the blood of others. But, that did not weigh him down. If anything, he felt stronger for each foe he felled. Each cut from his blade gave him the energy to continue fighting. He could not imagine another life.

But today, the bloodthirst etched onto his spirit was nothing compared to the thing in the dark tunnel in front of him. A pulse of white light like a wave alerted him to the dark. Two orbs, the color of frozen sky, stared back at him. The cold seeped into his bones like the specter of death. The Pull of the Pale had come for him, cruel sickle and cold scythe in boney hand ready for the reaping.

Was his blade sharp enough to cut Death Himself?

Eiden scurried through the tunnels under Arvenpyre like a seasoned veteran of a rat.

Where Arvenpyre atop was a town, below was a city. Tunnels upon tunnels and caverns upon caverns, they connected in a chaotic fashion. And, perhaps, there was a method of the madness known as the Undercity.

Huh, I have actual spare coin. What a concept.

Eiden had his claws tightly wound around the coin purse inside his lower coat pocket. The force he exerted through the transfigured hand was starting to bend the slightly angular coins made of copper and iron.

With a hesitant breath, The young exorcist released his grip, his blackened hand still hidden inside his coat pocket.

Eiden approached a stall in one of the pockets dotting the Shallows of the Undercity. The Shallows were the closest to the surface, containing merchants of various kinds, be they sellers of ore, stone-cut furniture, or coal.

“How much for the skewer, ma’am?” Asked Eiden, pointing to an assortment of meats impaled upon thin wooden stakes. Questionable in origin, but never asked aloud, the providence by which they came to be was not something to be disclosed.

The middle-aged woman, her skin glazed by Solaria Herself, looked at the young man in front of her. Up and down, her eyes went. Confusion did not reach her dark brown orbs, but the skin of her spirit was more forthcoming. Though the feelings were subdued, Eiden could still read them.

Pale skin.

Tunnel rat.

Untouched by Solaria.

No words were expressed through the empathic bond, but Eiden could very well hear them. In the way her eyes seemed to look down at him while their height was the same. The way her lip ever so slightly asymmetrical constricted in disgust—the language of hatred.

In the waves of hatred that bled from her spirit, Eiden felt a part of him resonate with the vitriol he felt from the merchant. Though he still thought she was a bitch.

Another set of emotions came through the bond. Confusion and doubt. And a little bit of guilt.

Sickly kid?

Merchant’s son?

Bastard?

Eiden’s current attire was a world’s difference from the stereotype of a tunneler. A rich, dark coat that was at the level of noble’s attire in the Four Corners. Too many pockets, straps, and decorations. Not simple enough to be a merchant’s.

The rest of his clothing wasn’t as eye-catching, but nevertheless, was still respectable in quality.

“Twenty copper… Mysir?” The vendor let her speech trail off in a question.

Eiden smiled a sickly saccharine smile. His voice was lilting and pausing like he was talking to a child.

“Here you go.” Said Eiden, ignoring the question as he handed two large coppers to the lady.

She did not notice his profane hand, a quick burst of aura sending her gaze to something at her side.

“I swear I heard or saw something…” Mumbled the vendor.

She handed Eiden a wooden skewer thickly coated in meat, her confusion dispelling any thoughts of the undeserving and forgotten by the gods.

“Thanks.” Eiden sent another burst of emotions through his aura.

The lady twirled around, trying to find the source of the trickery that was being played upon her once more.

The pale-skinned tunnel rat laughed a scoffing laugh.

Eiden explored the Undercity, using his newly acquired control over his aura to distract, confuse, and trick. Though he did not steal anymore, he did not need to, he still had the habits of a thief.

He could force intent upon his aura, creating all sorts of emotions and feelings. It worked upon the primitive and underdeveloped magical senses everyone had to an extent. Or so he thought. Eiden wasn’t so sure of it himself.

What would a mage feel? Would it be stronger? Weaker?

Eiden went deeper into the ivory darkness of the tunnels, the place where ore and coal were extracted en mass. Through his spirit’s senses, he felt a unique aura, one more lively than before.

It belonged to a wiry man suited in a brigandine shirt, sturdy boots, and a short-blade strapped to his side with a shield at his back.

No insignias, no noble’s stamp. Sellsword.

The sellsword had a face marked with scars, one diagonal over the brow, the other stretched across the side of his lip.

The mercenary stood close to a merchant, an old and rotund man with a girl at his side. The girl had a remarkable resemblance to someone Eiden had once loved, even their ages were similar enough, around seventeen full cycles of winter.

The sellsword’s aura was wrung heavy with the smell of iron, but not the kind found in veins under the earth. The scent sent Eiden’s mouth aflame with saliva, his peculiar nature causing him to react in ways that unnerved himself. The ever-hungry mass of leeches, that was his spirit’s center, writhed in anticipation.

Eiden shook his head, trying to dispel the untoward thoughts and the sickening bloodlust.

The combined efforts of the Flux, Trace, and Empathy gave him a troubling visage of his own aura; it turned from a smooth flowing river of magical energy into a staccato current of aggression. The skin of his spirit burned like a fire, wisps of ruby-red starting to emanate from Eiden’s body.

No. Shackle it. Control it.

Eiden turned back into an empty dead-end tunnel, the darkness not impeding him in the slightest. The Trace confirmed the distance to the white walls, and the Flux told him of the lack of warm, delicious bodies. Gods, no. No.

Eiden sat, legs crossed, and descended into the Empty Breath.

In and out.

In and out.

Slowly, the awareness of his body vanished like smoke into the night.

When he felt back in control, Eiden opened his eyes to the darkness of the tunnel around him and set off after the mercenary.

Eiden stalked the mercenary whose aura was tinged in the essence of slaughter.

Is he a mage? Why hasn’t he sensed me yet? What aura senses does he have? The Sight? Can’t be more than one.

Eiden pulled back his aura closer to his true skin like a blanket. He did not yet create an auric shroud, less he emit light like a beacon. He followed the mercenary guarding the fat man and the girl.

At a closer look, the fat man was well-dressed, but with subdued colors of gray and green. Exactly like the lord Arven. The girl, dragged along by her wrist, had sunken cheeks and numb orbs in place of her eyes.

A blaze of red heated Eiden’s steel heart, spilling heat throughout his bodies, ethereal and corporeal. No. Instead of falling into the anger, Eiden simply observed it like he was outside looking in. And like being inside the eye of the storm, he was in control.

The mageling continued on, scurrying between shadows and far away from the lamplight produced from the richly dressed rotund man. The men turned a corner.

After a few heartbeats, so did Eiden.

They were gone. All that stood in front of the Eiden was a marble wall.

Damn it.

Eiden closed his eyes, forsaking his mundane sight and senses. He opened the senses of his spirit, focusing on the mana around him.

The Trace detected only the barest drops of blood mana that were too faint to track anymore.

The Flux had been a dead end. He had already been using it to fumble his way around the dark.

Empathy did not care for walls. It was a hunter of minds, barriers be damned. The faint pressure of minds in the psychic blanket of Eiden’s aura senses was quickly thinning. But, that little tug was enough to get a direction.

The men were straight below Eiden.

How? And how in the Nine Hells am I supposed to burrow through stone?

A spark of red strained against Eiden’s steelborn heart once more.

Eiden let out a strained, frustrated breath. And then pounded the floor with his blackened fist, leaving behind a spider web made of cracked stone.

After the release of anger, Eiden continued prodding the walls around him with his aura. But it was for naught. There was nothing he could sense. The walls were too thick, and his aura senses too newborn.

The minds of his quarries left the range for Empathy.

I need to break through this thing. Now.

Eiden removed his exorcist’s coat, throwing it just before the bend into the dead end.

Eiden focused on his spirit, opening the steel core at his center. Mana flooded into him, straining his channels to the brink as his leech core sucked the air dry.

Eiden shackled his leech core, bounding it tightly in steel. He condensed aurai on top of his claws—white mist turning into jagged-sharp iron. He focused on the ruby red in the veins of his spirit, willing them into his hand.

Eiden’s blackened hand turned further monstrous, its coal nails turning into long stakes made for piercing and rending. Blood seeped through his pores, mana making its way through flesh and spirit both. Needles dug into the skin of Eiden’s left arm, his bones aching under the strain. The aqueous blood congealed atop his arm, solidifying into a second set of muscles with flailing, errant and malformed fibers like worms.

Eiden touched upon the Crown of Order in the depths of his soul. The added mental strain felt like a pick-axe to his head. He touched the Facet of Wind, its knowledge bringing him to the brink. He became the seat of tempest and the eye of the storm with a whirlwind flooding out from inside his spirit, turning him dry.

This was his limit. But to the hells with it, he had everything to give. Everything to not be a victim anymore. His desperation mixed into his magic, fueling it like oil to a flame.

Eiden’s chant came in a whisper. It ended in a spit-flinging shout.

“From the ruby blaze of life, you came. To the fire of blood, you shall return.

“Scarlet Flames.”

The wind turned red with misty lifeblood. Red flame danced like the plague, feeding off the mist.

With an arm made of bulging, exposed muscle, and a wicked claw, Eiden plunged his hand into the marble. It dug until the forearm with a thud like a hammer cracking a boulder. Eiden pulled, taking with him a large chunk of marble floor about a head thick. Eiden threw it to the side and dove into the darkness.

Eiden’s fall was short-lived, more of a tumble. He found himself inside a tunnel, his aura prodding at the walls like a blind man.

Exhaustion seeped into Eiden’s being, his head going woozy for a few moments. The mageling quickly siphoned his lifeblood back into his body, causing another bout of excruciating needles to dig at his arm. But the pain barely registered, the splintered bones in his left arm proving to be the greater focus of his mind.

His left arm was left mangled, splintered bones poking through the skin like needles in a tailor’s pin-cushion. But, he dared not scream. He had things to do. The pain was of lesser concern.

Fueled by an eerily calm heartbeat, Eiden continued onward, following the pull of minds. His quarry had stopped, the beacon of minds growing stronger. Stumbling through the pitch-black tunnels felt like an eternity and yet an instant. And now it was over. He approached a large cavern dimly lit in firelight. He wished it wasn’t.

Bodies.

Pale husks that were once humans were gathered in piles like mountains of drained flesh. Though flesh was ubiquitous inside the cavernous pocket, the essence of blood was strangely muted.

Eiden followed the Trace, its familiar rope tugging his sight towards the left. Barrels made of blackened wood and bound with silver metal were bathed in blood mana. It wasn’t a strong odor to the Trace anymore. It was a wail, thousands of death screeches and bellows. In between the cracks of the wood, a dull red glow like candle-light poured like blood.

Eiden turned his sight to the tug of his Empathy.

The two men and the girl were to the right of an altar.

A slightly tilted bed made of marble was at the cavern's center, a human-shaped depression wrought upon its surface. Channels were carved into the bed, converging into a basin in front of the altar. The indentations were stained brown—old blood.

Eiden had been careful when approaching the cavern, keeping his aura retracted and tight against his skin. The mageling breathed in deeply, his mind still screaming with all he had seen and with the dangling arm at his side.

He couldn’t use his blood magicks. He felt half dead as it was. Any more, and he would become another husk to be strewn atop one of those piles.

He had to use his innate magic. He had to don the Crown of Order.

Eiden descended into the Empty Breath. A moment later, he entered his mind, stepping atop grey water in the darkness. He wanted to scream. His mind was on fire and numbly cold at the same time. Inside the mental planescape, the pain was carved onto his form, cracks forming in his skin of winter.

Eiden summoned the marble throne, its stone-carved oak likeness spearing through the waters of his mind. A single, glowing white crown spun in the air atop the seat. It looked illusionary compared to other times he summoned it like a hollow thing waiting to be filled.

His finger-tips brushed the incandescent edges of the oak-bound circlet. A sound like a chime resonated throughout the dark, and Eiden knew what it meant—it was the beginning of a choice. And he picked cruel, apathetic cold.

Winter bled into the hollow crown, crystallizing it into shards like stained glass found in an Orianthian church. It took on jagged edges like the facet of a gem atop a lady’s bosom, glittering like a pale sapphire.

The connection between Eiden and the Facet of Winter had solidified.

He opened his eyes in the dark.

The man with the bloodstained spirit had his gaze set onto the two ice-blue orbs glowing in the darkness.

Cold seeped into the cavern, as did a thousand voices spliced into one.

“The unyielding cold and apathetic hoarfrost are mine.”

Fin woke up with a start. The various thin veils of magic around him were set dangerously like a fly struggling in a web. He felt the vibrations of death in the threads of Fate that were bound to his soul.

The Exorcist looked around the room. Eiden was nowhere to be found.

Fuck.

Eiden stumbled forward one step at a time, his body numb with cold. He felt inches away from death, true order taking hold over his spirit.

Step by step, he got closer to the grim-faced, bloody mercenary and the quivering fat man and hollow girl. So close to her, Eiden finally saw her expression. What before was a numb visage was now a hollow face. The girl barely looked any different from the dried husks piled atop each other with glazed-over eyes.

The sellsword interposed himself between the boy with icy, cruel eyes and the rotund man and hollow girl. The mercenary held his blade at the ready, his body angling toward Eiden diagonally to minimize himself as a target. The sellsword’s bloodstained spirit burned like a scarlet flame.

Eiden’s aura was fog made of the essence of cold. He willed it to manifest physically, tinging the air in apathetic hoarfrost. He pulled at the skin of his spirit, bounding it tight into an auric shroud. Blue fog condensed into a bubble around his body. The bubble hardened into crystal at the edges, creating a shell of ice over Eiden.

Eiden entered the range of the sellsword’s arming sword; a sharp blade chopped down at the ice, slicing a diagonal cut over Eiden.

His aura took the cut instead, the blade sliding harmlessly over the ice. Cracks like spider-webs spread over Eiden’s auric shroud. Another one or two more hits, and his shell would be gone. He didn’t believe himself capable of scrounging any more mana to create another.

There is no honor in a fight. There is only living or dying. Fight dirty.

The shell of ice took another hit, cold glass falling to the floor. The wayward shards bled their essence into the air like smoke.

Eiden waited for another chop from the sellsword like wood waiting for the axe. Before the blade came down on his armor, Eiden repelled at the crystallized barrier, sending his auric shroud forward like a wave. He touched upon another facet of the crown, and it felt like the death of his mind. Wind and winter, negentropy and pressure built up and drowned him from the inside.

A wave of jagged and needle-like light-blue ice crashed upon the mercenary, staggering him and cutting his exposed skin. His eyes became blinded, downing in blood from cuts on his face.

For a second, Eiden felt detached and dissociated from himself like an outsider looking in. Such was the power of the wind over his mind.

Eiden recomposed himself and entered the Empty Breath, clearing his mind of the arcana of apathetic cold and tyrannical wind. His steelborn heart thrummed in his chest like a hammer met steel. A pulse of white light snapped atop his head, hollowing out the Crown of Order.

Cold steel is mine.

He focused on the arcane thread that wound up into his soul, pulling at it. He stroked the neglected coals of anger that burned in his psyche with the memory of the hollow girl’s glazed-over eyes. Those eyes were his. The same ones he had taken upon himself when he accepted his death. That boy was now dead, and in his place was something else.

An azure fire burned in his heart, spreading out into his spirit. A small cerulean ember appeared atop his hand. Eiden poured his mana into it, stoking it into a conflagration contained within a shimmering orb. He applied his will to the azure fire, containing it, compacting it. The sheer, unimaginable pressure he put upon the flame to keep it contained was like the weight of the world. Arrogance from the Facet of Wind flooded his psyche.

Ember and stalwart flame are mine.

He stepped forward, plunging his undamaged hand into the sellsword’s chest. The orb expanded in a blue corona before collapsing back into a tiny sphere. Lines of cerulean light etched themselves onto the sellsword, branching out from the impact with the flames. He fell to the ground like a puppet with his strings cut before bursting into blue flames.

Eiden stepped forward, condensing another ember of blue flame. It turned a deep purple with a red core, his reserve of blue flame dimming out. If he didn’t finish it soon, he would have to fight with his scarlet flames. He could not risk it, being so close to so much vibrant red.

The rotund man took a quivering step back, his plump face bathed in sweaty terror. Damn it, if he runs…

The man turned to run. Eiden shot out the purple ember, willing it into a bolt of flame. It missed. He had thrown it too hard, and the shimmering amethyst orb bounced off into the floor.

The fleeing coward ran toward a wall, his determination dogged. Eiden knew the man had some sort of trick to get through the marble. He would use it again.

Eiden stood over the mercenary’s corpse, putting his hand over the man’s back. The small azure wisps of flame did not burn his hand. They were his.

Eiden focused on the man's dying spirit, pulling at it and searching through it for what he needed. The rummaging inside the spirit was wholly unpleasant, like searching through a body, but more personal. It felt... profane.

Eiden took the threads of mana that bound the spirit to the man's body. Blood essence flooded into him, empowering him— his sclera was painted black. His iris turned carnelian. The cold was banished from his body.

The blue flames had turned red.

A cruel smile made its way onto Eiden’s lips, his mind starting to change under the increasing influence of the corrupted crown. The arrogance from the wind and the bloodthirst from the cruor took hold.

The Exorcist held a black exorcist’s coat in his hands. One he had given to his apprentice. There was a hole in the ground next to an illusionary wall that led to dark stairs.

The Exorcist felt the Aether writhe in agony. Its power had been taken in a manner most foul. It had been ripped out to fuel some magic, creating an area of intense magical deficit. Casting by use of the Aether here would be impossible.

Opening his sorcerer’s sight, Fin got the complete picture. Blood mana still hung in the air, sucking it dry like a leech. If left alone, voracious blood spirits would form in a fortnight.

Fin tapped into Fate, blue light washing over his body like a nimbus. His eyes turned a blue-tinged white. There was no sclera nor iris. Only the light. He took the threads of Fate and bound them around the neonescient blood spirits.

“My word is Fate. And thy Fate is death.”

“Fate bind thee.”

The ethereal leeches burst like bubbles, their will turning nonexistent and their mana bolstering the weakened Aether. The Exorcist would have to return to fix this schism, for he had prey to track. He hoped that it wasn’t too late. Gods, he hoped.

The Exorcist didn’t believe his senses, magical or otherwise.

The Exorcist stood in an open pocket of cavern. Barrels of red spirit-coins bled scarlet light to his left. Piles of human husks dotted the floor. And a sacrificial, bloodletting altar stood in the center.

Eiden, or what was left of him, stood over a bloody, gory mess. His skin turned pale, his hair and face were slick with blood. His eyes were feral like a beast’s. They were dull and unintelligent. His sclera was dark grey, and his once brown eyes were now rusty red like dried, old blood. His left arm was covered in ivory splinters, his claws black with blood.

Eiden gnawed on a human femur. It cracked and splintered, spilling marrow into his mouth.

A girl curled in terror and hollowness sat near the entrance to the cavern. Eiden gave her no attention. His sight was set on his feast.

Fin’s mind reeled. He had never felt so much despair in such a long, timeless life. In all the threads of Fate, he never imagined this.

His voice came resolute and grim like the cold silver in his hands.

“Per Tria, quod ligare, audient vocem, et desperatio.”

[By the Three, that bind, hear the call, and despair.]

Eiden’s feral visage turned on Fin. Even to the uninitiated, Fate was felt in the soul.

“My word is Fate. And thy Fate is chains.”

The leech bound up and bolted towards the Exorcist, its mangled left hand growing sharp. It wore Eiden’s face, bloody black canines barred in the desperation of a cornered beast.

“Fate bind thee.”

Eiden’s body stopped like the air around him had turned solid.

The Chain-bound Prayer: Seventh Page, Chapter Twelve had been enacted.