The wet cold of the down stair closed in on Otoku, every breath filled with dust, stone, and secrets gone to rot in silence. The further he descended, the more the walls closed in, as if the academy itself wanted to devour him. Torches blazed in their iron cradles, the flames dancing like restless spirits struggling to be free.
He entered the archives.
A great table filled the center of the room—its surface twisted, darkened with age, and scarred by things it would be best not to mention. Behind it stood Veyra, the High Elder of Ashveil. Her jade mask glinted in the firelight with a nearly derisive sheen, but it was her eyes—cold, razor-sharp beneath the mask—that really held him.
"Today," she stated, her voice calm and low, "you discover the price of power."
She reached down to the side of her. A cage, tiny and rusty. From it, she pulled out a rat—weak, shivering, its dull fur stuck to its body, eyes wide and knowing. The kind of knowing that only prey bore.
"Voidcraft is no gentle art," Veyra went on, pushing the creature into his hands. "It requires blood."
The rat wriggled in his hands. Otoku shut his eyes for a moment.
And the echoes came.
Flickering, disjointed visions of previous loops. Various versions of him, various ends… but the same lesson over and over in darkened iterations.
He awakened.
The oppressing silence settled itself upon his shoulders like a shroud. Cold. Unmitigated.
"Do it," Veyra instructed.
A single inhale in. One exhale out.
Void energy churned beneath his fingertips, black veins tracing from the palm, diverging like liquid ink spilled on calm water. The rat shook. Otoku extended his hand, speaking close to a whisper—but every syllable of the Codex crashed like a gong in the dark.
"By shadow's breath and night's grasp, I reshape your shape in infinite space."
The instant shattered.
Power ripped from his center, his fear, muffled and contained, escaped behind his concentration.
Alex's scream warped—twisting into something unlife—then disappeared completely. In its stead was a beast fashioned out of obsidian and glass, its form streamlined, its eyes burning with voidfire. Vile claws had curled in place of paws. The quiet that followed felt won, not taken.
Otoku's breath caught.
Alex looked at Veyra. "It's… alive."
She moved forward, kneeling beside the newborn creation. "Cuspis," she whispered. "A needle of power. A vessel of potential pain."
He paused. "What becomes of its soul?"
Her mask shifted ever so slightly.
"Soul is matter," she said. "We mold it as we do flesh. But recall this—every creation starts with destruction. Every gift takes its price."
Otoku stood motionless, watching as Cuspis took its first steps. Its glass-like paws clicked softly against the stone floor, each sound a whisper of the road ahead.
The lesson, he realized, was only beginning.