7 - 1 [Fool] Al-Khemia Vampyrika: Philosopher’s Flame, He Became

Take heed of pleas made in the dark of night. One never knows Who May Answer thy prayers.

-Mandatos Solohmon, Holy Scripture of the Cult of the Wise-King.

The Tunnel Rat Mageling - 4th of Mead’s Tap, Year 1125 A.E.

Although he closed his eyes and let the dark nothingness take him away, sleep did not come easy.

Eiden tossed and turned, trying in vain to find comfort in the night. Too much had happened in too short a time, leaving him disoriented; lost amidst himself.

It was all too much.

Numb, yet sensitive, emotions flaring into wrath and drowning into apathy. A mess stewed inside his head, cauldron of hurt that it was.

It all just felt so wrong.

The fire of the hearth crackled still, burning and with a good amount of wood not turned to cinder and ash. Perhaps a notch or two before the eventide, Eiden reckoned it was.

A hair before the tomorrow became the today.

Slowly but surely, wishing it would all be a dream he would eventually awake from, sleep finally and blessedly came. He had been restless afore, scared of whatever machinations that Morrigain was sure to bring with slumber.

For he remembered the feverish nightmares before he awoke to the Exorcist:

Ash on his tongue; the ceaseless hunger from the very base of his spirit; the iron erupting from his nail-beds to form baleful claw that pleaded to be used.

The need for hurting another just to delight in their suffering and pain.

The call of vibrant red, pulling at him like he were iron and it a lodestone; the queer little rocks found in the depths of the Mines that attracted certain metals to them with invisible lashings.

There was no peace to be had when what awaited him was to be dragged into the skin of a monster. Yet, perhaps—just maybe—he would have some rest.

Some respite from the grief and the burden of himself.

He would commit anything to get away from the unease of hurt; from the hollow ache just below the surface of his chest; from the breathless breath of his lungs.

It was all too much.

It all just felt so wrong.

And yet, he found not any reprieve in his slumber, the torment he ran from having followed him to the realm of dream.

Morrigain had come.

He could run from them all he wanted, yet to hide from his devils was not possible.

Vatulla Folles, He Who Sought Steel in the Dark - That Accursed Night

Nightmares grappled onto his consciousness, leeches with wicked lamprey teeth suckling on his deepest fears.

Blood thrummed in his chest like a skald’s drum, heart beating in rhythmic concert with his feet as he ran.

Ran.

Ran.

Tunnels of whiten stone, black as sin and dark as lonely, Erebeian night. The breath of a beast on the back of his neck, his hairs standing on end. Lightning coursed through his limbs, nerves tingling with fulgur of fright.

The cold air of the night burned through his nostrils and throat like fire as the fetid exhale from behind froze him in place.

The pit of his stomach fell from the distance of the Heavens to the Hells.

He looked back; a maw of yellow-black teeth stared forth, waiting for its quarry to despair; the sweetest nectar there ever was, for the monster cowled in the hide of hare.

His head was engulfed by the maw of the creature, his vision suffocated in heavy nothingness.

He screamed yet he heard naught a single sound.

Yet before the dark took him away proper, he saw those neverending teeth, beginning at the threshold of the splitting mouth yet repeating row upon row unto eternity.

He was transfixed by the spectacle, the blink before he was to know no more stretching out like a thin gauze of raw silk.

There was something to be learned from that macabre sight, a whisper and shred of greater knowing that lay behind the Veil and beyond the Pale. Spiraling into the black, those teeth stood upon a foundation of unfathomable depth.

A single conviction was left behind in the wake of the sighting, a seedling arkane, the sort of knowledge no mortal man should hold. For it was a Path that would lead to either death or divinity. And at times, both were one and the same.

For how could the spirit ascend whilst tethered to the flesh and bound to the bone of the Coil?

The arkane knowledge settled on the back of his mind like a stone alighting upon the bottom of the Dark Ocean. The seedling-beyond-mortal-ken sang, its song barely heard, flirting on the edges of his awareness. Hymns of scarlet and sin like the aria of seirenes.

Such was his kennen, the knowing taken from the arkane:

There was Power for the taking in neverending teeth.

He knew no more as he was subsumed into the black of the mind. Unconsciousness took him away until another bout of blood-chilling torture was to be effectuated.

Perhaps such was why the dreams were so frightening: they did not show him his own demise, ending abruptly in darkness until there came another chase.

The ambiguity and unknown were enough for him to conjure spooks to harm himself as he stewed in the dark. The torture came not in the act, but in the suggestion thereof. A distorted reflection—an unseelieghast—of seduction; where what could be was more potent than what was.

For fear and lust were both often the same, easily confused as the weavings of Elaria Rel and Mortus intertwined, the Divine Whore that She was and Heavenly Betrayer that He be. Amaranth thread embroidered the blacken cloth from which all came and would return.

The train of unconscious thought brought forth further remembrance, the whispers of a passage of bardsong heard. A voice of mother’s kiss sang along, without much cadence yet nothing entirely wrong.

From whence it came, he did not know. The trail like mist in a Cyroshi vapor house; untraceable as a needle of pine amidst the straw come the reaping season.

The bleat and thrum and beat of his dread-filled heart gave rhythm to the tale told, scaffold upon which the muse sang song most cold.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that.

Rightful reward, a promise begat.

Song to song, breath to breath, and nothing more.

Destined death, a promise sworn.

A single Wheelen spoke, given gift and left bereft.

A price paid in full leaves no debt.”

The bardsong came and went, leaving him alone once again. In the black, he sat, waiting in bated breath for when he would be hunted next.

The bleat and thrum and beat of his dread-filled heart were his only companions in the blind dark of the Seifar’s Stew.

Like the light in between pails of thunder in a storm, came images he himself conjured; scar-flesh of the mind, carved into the soul with instruments fell and most foul.

Abyssal claws, pitch-black and wrought of iron dust.

Vibrant red and fumes of death.

Dry husks of skin and bone.

Piles of bloodied limbs and offal.

Eyes frozen in lifeless despair.

Sinister grins splitting faces in twain.

The smell of sulfur, thick in the air.

Rows of sawteeth and fang.

Leeches cloaked in the hide of the hare.

He came awake in the realm of dream, eyes wide in fear. Another chase ensued, desperate escape consuming his thoughts as he ran.

Ran.

Ran.

Eternities passed in a blink, forever running. Forever scrambling to get away.

He ran.

He ran.

He ran.

And then, he stopped, looking back. The creature stood taller than himself, hunching over as the tunnels were too short to contain its full stature.

The beast that had stalked him for so long was now only five span away.

Five. Fucking. Span. Away.

A bitter anger, wrought of withstanding so much undue suffering, rose like bile in his throat, burning and caustic.

It would beckon no more of this. It would not accept the circumstances that be, no matter that desire did nothing to change reality directly.

That is, usually. For one Awoken, the burning fires of the heart were enough to elicit minor breaks in the fickle bindings of causality.

Pathos was the flame by which the bending of law came as naturally as the heat waves that wafted from a mundane fire. The Flame that Warps invigorated the muscle of the will, endowing it with surging might short-lived.

Power brought to bear through the mortification of the flesh and suffering of the spirit. Scars of the soul turned into armaments fit for war.

No more, he said both to himself and the realm without; both were one and the same, twain branches sprouting from the trunk of psykosis—the Watcher behind the Veil.

He pushed against the world with his will, an effortless and sleeping effort, borne of instinct. The realm pushed back; distortions, like the waves produced by dropping a rock into a pond, spread out upon the fabric of reality.

Such is the way of the world, the slumbering will of this place chided.

No longer, he himself answered, tongue full of spite and sharp with steel.

In his voice was the surety found in death, running deep as ancient and unseen stone. In the ripples was the purest of will, whispers that would push aside all in their path, theirs a force without need for effort.

No more, the words a susurr, yet they toppled what was and made theirs the image of what be.

Fate once fated, no more.

The strongest of convictions was the quietest. For when there was no need to convince the world without, it responded to the whims of that within.

No more, the words a murmur, yet they made the Veil tremble.

There was only so much running he was willing to do. If death loomed over him, then It was best to fight back, no matter the futility.

A life spent running was not a life lived.

A man could only be weak for so long, exposed to such strife. The heart would surely harden and become like steel, scale and slag shed from one’s being to reveal something more, greater than before.

No more.

Though his spirits were even, his body was not.

His fists were clenched, knuckles bone-white. His breath hitched, his knees starting to buckle but still keeping his weight through sheer force of stubborness. His teeth clattered against each other as his eyes watered, his sight drowning in tears no matter how much he tried in vain to blink them away.

His gut felt so cold and numb, like the creature’s claws had been rummaging around his bowels.

He wanted to heave and run.

Yet he stood. In spite of the fear that thrummed in his heart like a fish-bone stuck in the throat, prodding at his flesh with but a single command: cower. In spite of the half of him that were as prey, skittish and forever bound to running.

Courage was the complement of fear, for only those who have felt its fetters and broken apart its shackles could be deemed worthy of the heart that beats in their chests.

A man who was fearless could not be courageous, for he was a fool that did not know the extent of the chains that bind.

He stood in spite of his doom; And the Wheel turned.

A burning conviction howled in his heart, borne of the arkana of vengeful flame:

There is Power in neverending teeth.

The words seeped into the fabric of the realm of dream, making it dance to the whims of the seedling arkane; that which sang scarlet song and hymns of sin.

The White of his courage gave way to the Black of his smoldering wrath.

There was balance to all things. No single entity could be only one, but were instead forevermore a gestalt of many; a grey mosaic wrought of shards black and white.

There was a half of himself that was not prey, but instead predator. And with the impending confrontation, it was called to. From his heart of hearts came power, intoxicating like strong liquor and stupefying like the smoke of peace-weed.

Insanity made manifest; Power of the Eld.

It was water cupped in the hands of his soul, collected like dew upon leaf. Yet, this was no pure liquid, but instead a festering vitriol.

Blade not bright, brimming with the dark, for he had looked into the depths of his own demise, and taken ahold of Power, haft and hilt and all. No damascene of the Seven did he wield, but instead brimstone of the Nine.

He sought steel in the shadow of his death, blind to the edge that would cut him. A single drop of scarlet fell atop the blade of his Power, vaporizing into hissing, sulfuric fumes.

A fool that sought steel in the dark could blame no one but themselves for wounds to their wayward fingers.

His sclera darkened and his iris congealed into blood-red. Twin orbs of burnished crimson stood amidst roiling seas of abyssian black; portals into his heart of hearts that they were, though he wished it were not so.

Only frothing-mad malice was to be found beyond the threshold that stood between sight and soul.

His pupils sharpened into slits, the muscles of his eyes clenching like a fist. The darkness turned bright as day, his sight unimpeded by the black, never to be led astray.

His teeth turned entirely into fang, canines wrought of iron dust protruding from his mouth, saliva dripping from his jaws as he could no longer close his lips, what with the veritable tusks that emerged therefrom.

His fists unclenched, fingers elongating as his bones burst out into claws coated in a blacken substance, the hue and texture of bismuth crystal yet without its feyen luster; corruscating, fungal growth bound to the shine of oily metal.

The fires of his soul cooked him from the inside out, fell flame blistering his skin and boiling his bones. Jagged veins of scarlata incarnata wound their way between his limbs, making them spasm and twitch, his body a puppet dancing to the sway of fulgurous wrath.

The creature looked at him, confusion radiating from the skin of its spirit.

He stepped forth, or tried to. His body, brimming with the Eld, was much faster and stronger than it used to be. He blurred forth, a skittering ghast whose form was like smoke from a smothered flame.

A single step took him four strides forth, his physique infused with Power.

He emerged standing a span away from the beast, his sight directed at its chest. Creak by creak, he brought his head up to look the creature in the brow.

Eyes of sire and sired met, one full of hatred and the other bemusement.

Whispers came into his thoughts then, insidious things borne in the dark, and born from the depths. The voice like his yet feminine. Seductive even, lulling him into the embrace of the Eld with song most lilting, aria of seirenes that it were.

“See the wolf beneath the skin.

Flay the flesh and seek the bone.

So without, as within.

Make the sinner reap what they hath sown.

A price paid in full, as the Devil’s baleful cull.”

It was a hand given forth; a gnarled and unfruitful olive branch extended.

In his heart of hearts, he heard name of this charitable patron.

Liliyyoth the Diabblein Tree.

Their visage was like that of a willow tree, yet with leaves wrought of crow feathers and bark of dried leather. The fruit that hung upon Their unholy boughs was plump and grand, the size of a grown man’s head. The skin was the hue of bruised amaranth with veins of scarlata incarnata. Bumpy as if a veil were laid upon the surface of a whole bunch of grapes.

A being dwelled within the shadows of the Tree, eyes of yellow observing him. It screeched then as it flew and snatched a fruit, depositing it upon his hands before it returned to its abode.

He saw naught but a streak of something dark and great; the yellow eyes watched him with interest from the host of the black.

In his palm lay Power. All he need do was to consume it.

He took upon the Black fully then, accepting the accursed boon given freely.

The skin of the fruit was wet and firm as his fangs punctured through. It tasted of raw muscle, its pulp and juices like a mixture of wormwood drink and bludmead; bitter and acerbic and metallic.

The mushy flesh of the fruit was ridden with yellow maggots, purple slugs and red leeches, yet all was swallowed whole nonetheless. For in subsuming the gift, he would have its Power.

He drank from Her chalice and ate from Her sacrament, so that he would become as She Who Dwells Underneath the Crow-Feathered Willow.

He would do anything to take from that which took from him.

No more, the thought unraveling into the screeches and inane rambling of a madman-turned-beast.

The maggot-ridden fruit burned like flame at the pit of his stomach, catalyzing the reaction that was to be. He became an alchemist’s crucible, his body rendered unto basal material by undergoing nigredo; melanosis and decomposition.

Transmutation of the flesh and soul ensued.

Where before the Eld had been a lingering taint, a middling affliction, it was now properly entrenched unto the marrow of his bones, and core of his core.

From the base substance of massa confusa, his body and spirit were reformed, achieving rubedo; iosis and xanthosis, crystallization arising from the sea of a solution.

He had been molded no different than clay, the potter that was his Patron warping him in Her terrible and awful image.

Wrath erupted along his form, scarlet flames scraping upon his skin and boiling it away to bare muscle and naked tendon.

His hide cracked at first, like a tree struck by lightning and burned inside out. Then, it peeled back, separating and turning black, the noise like the chittering of locusts sent down by the cruel gods.

The devils of his heart were set loose upon himself, no longer confined to the flesh within. His blood no longer boiled, for it had entirely been turned to flame, cowling him in a veil of crackling pyre.

His veins felt oh so hollow and empty; begging to be filled. Needing and wanting for what coated the insides of another.

In his heart thrummed nothing, deflated and spasming like a balloon fish out of the sea and craving for water.

It hurt oh so much, yet the pain was middling to the incessant need of fulfillment that was left in the wake of his hollow heart.

His face contorted in a macabre smile, all teeth and thirst. His eyes large and monstrous as they no longer had eyelids to sheath his sight, leaving bare those orbs and the muscles that bound them to the sockets of the skull.

His vision would never again be blind to the dark, a blessing. And curse, for he could no longer close them. There was no rest for the wicked, theirs an eternity of torture in the Nine Abyssal Hells of Baator.

His skinned muscles bulged, the fibers rending themselves from tendon and bone, writhing like worms in the air. Like the chicks of birds striking out with long and sinuous necks in search of sustenance.

He was transformed by the Devil Fruit of the Crow-Feathered Willow.

His bones were the unburnt coal left behind and his skin the ash.

His eyes be the stigma wrought by the branding of cinder.

His muscles, questing tongues of fire.

He, the conflagration.

His voice, a roaring inferno, without word yet a tangible incarnation of the element that was fire. That which would devour all and leave naught but ruin in its wake.

Philospher’s Flame, he became.

He was given Power and left bereft of his fear in return. Hollow was his bones of any semblance of dread, leaving him as they; empty.

Sliver by sliver, the skin of sheep had been shed.

All that was left was more beast than man.

More monster than person.

A fool without fear that knew not the extent of the chains that bind.

The creature’s eyes widened in horror, seeing another of its kind barring fang. It felt the sheer amount of smoldering wrath and vitriolic hatred that dwelled inside those baleful eyes; a shiver went down its spine.

Kindred kind though its ilk may be, patricide was not uncommon.

The creature ran, bolting on four legs. Craven that it was, what with its prey being only that which could not properly resist. The stake that would drag the beast back into the cold waters of the Pale River would be its own cowardice.

It would reap what it had sown, as the Devil’s baleful cull: a price paid in full.

The progeny it had sired, the prey it had slaughtered, and the boy it had scarred. They would all have a hand in the felling of the beast, doom planted by the seed of its own sins.

Eironeia—irony—the foundation upon which all curses were cast.

It felt breath on the back of its naked neck, the whiten corpse-flesh writhing in fear. The air was hot like a forge, cinder burning its skin and ash providing a seeping chill.

Even though its internal anatomy was too diverged from its base form that was a mimcry of man, the beast felt the trappings of terror that came with inhabiting the flesh. It had no guts, no stomach, no spleen, no liver. For the beast’s spirit had turned into its digestive tract, wrought entirely and only for consumption.

Yet still, the creature felt a similar sensation of having the pit of one’s stomach fall. Though its flesh were no longer arranged in the structures of specialized organelles, its spirit remembered well enough what fear was.

For how could the creature ever forget? Such was the most sought after nectar by those cowled in the hide of hare.

It looked back; teeth neverending, spiraling into the gullet of unfathomable black.

Jaws, bisected and without cheeks like a serpent, opened up fully. And then closed; twin-twain canines, the size of daggers and wrought of abyssian black, punctured through the creature’s neck.

Its head was ripped from the rest of its body in a single bound. The spine hung onto the decapitated head and flailed, the vertebral column held together by thin lashings of flesh.

A centipede trampled beneath the heel.

So very scary and frightening, yet when confrontation came, it would be ground down no different than any other insect—take heed of the fangs and wear a wooden-soled pair of boots; and thus, the creature is neutered.

Its unbound skull was left to fall atop marmon floor, the spine wounding around it like some sort of unholy serpent nursing its clutch of eggs.

Underneath the articulation of the bones lay meaning most hidden of things beyond the waking world.

The sight branded itself unto the mind’s eye of He Who Sought Steel in the Dark. Like staring at the accursed sun for far too long, a ghastly after-image was left behind:

It was stigmata arkana; the sighting of the arkane distilled, made simple and pure in the form of rune. A scar upon the skin of psykosis—tatau ho’omana.

A circle, twin and concentric spirals making their way from the confines to the center where another circle lay. It repeated into the depths, forever the same, spirals unto circle, circle unto spirals.

There is Power to be had in teeth neverending, the rune whispered and the fool that took upon the maggot-ridden fruit listened.

It was the voice of his soul, the fool understood, feeling so within the core of his core and unholy marrow of his bones. Its surface once White had been marked with the Eld, scarred and transfigured, made different; made alien.

Made dark divine, a blacken godling of wretched wrath and rapacious retribution. Through nigredo and subsequent rubedo, he had been reborn.

Such was the equivalent price for his barter, exchange made in desperation:

Fell Power taken from monsters to slay them in vengeful wake. And as it was from their essence that he took, he became as they; monstrous.

Eironeia—irony—the foundation upon which all curses were cast.

The creature was still alive as its bones were toyed with, and would be so to witness the consumption of its own flesh.

To witness the birth of a monster greater than it.

For what was scarier than that which preyed upon the predator?

Bone by bone, he cracked them open and with a tongue a full span long and sinuous with muscle, he sucked the marrow dry.

Nigredo; decomposition and decay.

Yet his mouth did not get to feel the sweet sucor of meat and marrow. All turned to ash on his tongue as his navel festered with the maggot-ridden boon.

Forever hungry.

Naught would truly make him content.

All that he tried to consume would turn into ash, making his mouth drier and drier still, his thirst increasing with each morsel of meat he tried to swallow in vain.

Each time, he was left with a throat full of dust and earth and bitter grey.

A hollow harvest fit only for the Dead, the Aspect of Famine boundless.

Yet still he toiled and toyed with the creature’s corpse.

The fruits of his work, the smeared and quickly drying blood and slivers of broken bone, their pattern and placement containing greater truths—knowing of the arkane and the eld—was a thing to behold.

Rubedo; crystallization and condensation.

In them, he saw that it was good; virtue borne in the dark and born from the depths.

And that scared him.

Realization came upon him. The same sort that would come upon a black-heart suddenly given a conscience, for the heavy stain of blood on the soul was no easy burden.

It would break a man with barely any morals, much less a beast endowed with the accursed gift of the kennen of sin.

No more, he said, voice wavering like a rotten branch in a storm. In them, there was no conviction, but instead the need to convince.

In spite of his transfiguration, he sat down, arms cradling his flayed skull as he rocked himself to and fro—a babe in the womb of its own making.

No more, he begged, tears of tar streaming from his bare eyes. He tried in vain to close his sight, to be away from all that he had done. Yet no respite would he have, wicked that he was.

He was to witness what he had wrought.

In the violent quiet, he stewed. The unease washing over him like heavy and battering waves, the sails of his spirits ragged and without the direction of the winds.

Lost amidst himself. And, in the sea that he drowned, was relief found.

Yet it was not in the surface, nor the middle waters. No, his reprieve lay at the bottom of the abyss, the weight crushing yet reassuring; the world itself embracing him in a blanket of suffocating black.

As the encroaching cold came and claimed, dousing the scarlet of his fires, so too were the fires made stronger. Not in quantity, for their volume was much smaller than before. No, such was a qualitative change.

Caeredo; lazurosis; compression of the redden rock into sapphire stone. The weight and color of the sea impressing its likeness upon the alchemic process to create not something greater, but instead refined. Depth rather than breadth.

The roaring flame was drowned and gone, yet stubborn ember remained, longer than the short-lived pyre from which it had been sired. The azure cinder, the flickering remnant of once-roused fire, retreated into the hollow and sunken cavity that was his heart.

For lasting fulfillment came not from without but from within.

The ember spoke, the heart of its coalstone core so hot that it burned cold and pure.

No more, said his soul, the sound emanating from the depths of his chest, ringing out like the toll of a colossal bell.

The Wheel turned as a calm knowing lay still in his heart, borne from the arkana of guiding wind:

There is surety in the Power of deep, unquarried stone.

The Black of his smoldering wrath gave way to the White of his cruxian self.

From his heart of hearts came power, comforting like a mother’s embrace and waking as the cold of iron left in the night. It was the Fire of the Righten Hand, that which stood small yet unshakable, the ember that lasts longer than the flame.

Eudaimonia unsought yet found; Power of the Genn.

In a flash of sea-blue flame and cerulean cinder, his form was cleansed, turned into a fourtten-winters-old child.

Left bereft of Power, yet now possessing the fear to know the extent of the chains that bind. No longer fool was he, though spawn of Her he be.

The coagulated, bloodborne taint of Lilithu was purged, reduced to ash and returned to the Eld beyond the Veil by the winds.

In its place was darkness made bare, that which was already there yet now lay unveiled. In every heart stood the Black, for no soul borne of mortal womb could be pure of either of the Two.

The Fire of the Righten Hand had left its semblance upon the bare-skinned core of his soul. A circle burned itself into being upon the sight, lines radiating from the band to form an octagram within its confines.

A spiral like the questing tongue of a scholar’s candle was etched with cold flame upon the center of the sigil, bound by the octagram and further fettered by the circle.

The lines of the sigil were white like chalk and salt yet smoldered with the ember-that-lasts-longer-than-the-flame. The brand whispered of forgiven transgression and washed away original sin; the inherited eld borne of the blood.

Albedo; leucosis; cleansing of impurity.

No slave was he, though spawn of Her he may be.

He had taken only that which was offered and freely given, not which was bound. With no contract to bind him to She Who Tempts With Maggot-Ridden Fruit, Her influence was crippled, left as a hollow thing without substance.

His soul was scarred by the Taint of the Eld, yet still his own. The Gennen White marking threshold between stigmata arkana and unsullied core of unseen stone.

There was balance to all things. No single entity could be only one, but were instead forevermore a gestalt of many; a grey mosaic wrought of shards black and white.

From predator to prey, from prey to predator, the cycle continued.

At times, he was a middling boy of no more than fourtten winters, pampered and without want. At times, he was seventten cycles old, a wryness and cunning to his mind born from strife. At times, he was monster that preyed upon his own ilk; kin and kith of Lilithu.

Once, twice, thrice.

A thousand-thousand times over.

Neverending, a serpent suckling its own tail, unbeggining.

A soul that tortured itself, punishing sins not commited by its own hands. A soul that both accepted the Taint of the Liliyyoth—the Diabblein Tree—and fought tooth and nail to purge the foreign dark.

A balancing act, a leaden weight of Elden Black.

A vicious fight, a shielden wall of Gennen White.

The Wheel Turns forevermore.

A soul drowning in its own blood; sulfuric truth of Kennen Arkana.

A soul suffocating yet full of breath; arsenic axiom of Hydan Eld.

The Wheel Turns forevermore.

Inheritance of monstrum; accursed Power borne of wayward wish.

Merit of man; blessed boon wrought of strife unsought.

Awoken from eternal and uncaring sleep, to walk in the wake of the Soap-Maker’s Feast.