People were talking. The defensive circle had loosened, but everyone was still wound tight.
"What in God's name was that?" Harris asked. He wasn't looking at David. He was staring at the black stone temple as if it had exhaled the attack. "One second you're fine, the next you're... that."
"Are you two alright now?" Theo's voice was hesitant. "You're standing. That's good, right?"
Rhea was just watching them, her eyes moving from David's face to Mara's and back. She said nothing.
"We're fine," David said. His voice sounded normal. Flat. "It was a leftover. From the priest. Some kind of backlash curse. It's spent now." It was technically true. The priest had been the conduit. The contact was diluted. The violent part was over.
Through the new connection, he felt a flash from Mara. It was a complex twist of emotion—recognition that he was lying by omission, a bitter acknowledgment that he was doing it again, and a cold, clear understanding that this time, he wasn't even fully lying. The curse was spent. The mark it left wasn't. He felt her hold that contradiction, her anger at him crystallizing around it, sharp and hard.
He pushed the sensation aside and looked at the world. He didn't need to channel energy to his eyes. He just looked. And he saw.
It was like a layer had been peeled back. The air wasn't empty. It shimmered with faint, drifting currents of energy—pale greens and blues that flowed from the living, grey trees at the clearing's edge, a sickly yellow-brown haze clinging to the dead ground, a deep, pulsing purple-black aura radiating from the temple that made his new headache throb in sympathy. He could see the life force of the people around him. Theo glowed with a shaky, bright orange anxiety. Corbin was a tightly contained storm-cloud grey of focused alertness. Chloe was a muted, bruised peach of fear and helplessness. He could see the demonic energy within himself as a swirling, dark red vortex centered on his chest, and an identical, smaller knot of the same energy tied to Mara. He could see the faint, silvery threads of Rhea's telekinetic potential coiled in her mind. The faint, simmering heat coming off Son where he stood, a warm orange glow. The soft, gold aura within Chloe, now dim and frayed at the edges. He could see the strange, void-like energy of the dead clearing under their feet, and the oppressive, bloody-red pulse coming from the temple itself. It was all just there, painted over the world, unasked for, like his vision had been plugged into a high-voltage line.
Jamie took a step closer. "But your eyes. They were bleeding. Is that really over?"
"Yeah," David said, not looking at him. He was watching the energy patterns shift as Jamie moved. "It's over."
Through the cable, he felt Mara's wonder at her own changed perception, her confusion as she tried to parse the new energy-sight she must also be experiencing, her fear of what it meant, her worry for herself, and beneath it all, that steady, blaming ire directed at him. He was the reason she was a thrall. He was the reason she'd drained the priest. He was the anchor for everything that had just happened to her. The connection made her resentment a tangible thing, a sour taste at the back of his own mind.
His own thoughts circled back to the enthrallment. She'd been risking his life. Continuously. Draining his energy during fights to empower herself, to ensure she survived until he'd figured it out and stopped her. It had been a zero-sum game she was playing with his life as the chips.
And he could feel Mara’s state through the cable. Not just her emotions. Her raw, confused wonder at the new cold power sitting in her own chest. Her frantic, unasked questions. Her deep, chilling fear. Her profound worry for herself. And beneath it all, a steady, resentful ire towards him, the anchor for all of this. She didn't say anything. She just stood there, bleeding from her eyes and hating him, connected to him by a cable no one else could see.
David stood in the cold clearing, the new energy sight painting the world in truths, and his mind circled the only solid thing left: the thrall bond.
It wasn’t about her. It had never been about her. It was about the chasm that opened up in David the moment he realized he could do it, and the even deeper one that appeared when he realized he would.
He told himself it was a necessity. A logical, surgical response to an existential threat. Mara was a wildfire—beautiful, elemental, and utterly destructive. You didn’t reason with a wildfire. You contained it. You dug a trench and forced it to burn where you directed it, or you let it consume everything, yourself included. That was the rationale. Clean. Cold.
But the thoughts… the thoughts were neither clean nor cold.
There was a part of him, small and sharp like a sliver of glass, that watched this rationale with disgust. It whispered: You have made a tool of a person. You have taken the chaos of her will and replaced it with the silence of your command. You did not kill her, but you buried her alive inside her own mind. Was that not a kind of murder? A murder of the self? You spoke of trenches for wildfires, but you built a prison for a soul.
Then the other voice spoke, the one forged in the heat of near-death, the one that remembered the taste of fear and the sight of her reckless eyes moments before another disaster: And what was the alternative? Let her run free? Let her whims decide who lived and who died next? This was not a philosophical salon. This was the edge of the abyss. When someone was a loaded weapon, spinning in a crowd, you disarmed them. You took the weapon. Was it so different?
But it was different. A weapon had no consciousness. A weapon did not have moments of startling clarity when the enthrallment wavered, and for a second, he saw her looking out from behind her own eyes. Not the destructive force, not the weapon—Mara. Confused. Terrified. A prisoner in her own skull. And he was her warden. In those moments, the disgust rose like bile. He had become the architect of her living nightmare.
The most treacherous thought of all, the one he could barely glance at: Was this power not the ultimate corruption? He had condemned her for playing with lives, for treating people as means to an end. And now he held her will in his hands like clay. He had reduced her to a pure means. His survival, his safety, his control—all achieved through her subjugation. The hypocrisy was a perfect, mirror-polished sphere. He looked at it and saw his own reflection, twisted.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Perhaps the true horror wasn’t what he had done to her, but what doing it had revealed in him. He had believed in a line he would not cross. He discovered now the line had been drawn in sand, washed away by the first true wave of terror. He stood there, on this new, barren shore, holding her leash. He told himself it was to protect the innocent. He told himself it was temporary. He told himself it was the lesser evil.
But in the quiet, where there was only the sound of his own breathing and the silent scream of her captivity, he knew the truth: he had chosen to live with a specific, intimate kind of damnation. He had traded the fear of her for the terror of himself. And he didn’t know which one was more monstrous.
Like most emotions too complex to bear, David bagged it, tagged it, and buried it deep in his subconscious, right next to ‘existential fear,’ ‘paralyzing grief,’ and ‘all-encompassing dread.’ His life on earth had taught him heroism and morality came with a price too steep to pay, so instead, he buried himself in the vapidity of survival. It was an ethos that had never betrayed him.
Was it punishment? Maybe. Was he protecting others? That too—at least, that’s what he told himself. The truth, he knew, was that it had been a side-effect. The rest was beside the point. He told himself he felt no guilt. Guilt was for people who could afford it, a luxury, a quaint idea left over from a world with police and supermarkets.
What he felt instead was the solid weight of the decision. Heavy. Real. Unavoidable. It had been the right move. The necessary move. She was dangerous. She was useful. Now she was controlled.
He’d enthralled a dangerous person to utilize her power and ensure she didn’t get him or anyone else killed, the same logic he’d used to enthrall Corbin. The hypocrisy was apparent—he was controlling her to prevent her from becoming exactly the kind of self-serving threat he might have become in her place.
The hypocrisy didn’t matter—he told himself that, too. That they were both doing what they had to do. The difference was he had just come out on top—won the exchange. She had been willing to sacrifice him. That was the only line that counted now. He hadn't willingly sacrificed anyone. Yet.
He looked at the temple, at the swirling, hostile energy around it, and knew his true moral standing would one day be truly tested. The difference between them, he knew, was probably paper thin.
Corbin finally lowered his gun, though he didn't holster it. "If it's over, we need to move. This spot is worse than bad." He glared at the temple. "That thing is practically humming."
David nodded, pulling his gaze away from the mesmerizing, awful aura of the place. "Yeah. It definitely doesn't say 'welcome' in the brochure."
David wiped the crusted blood from his eyes and cheeks. "Let's move. Get more distance from the obvious temple of doom and bad vibes."
After they'd taken the first step, David pulled up his status and looked at the list.
It had become more than just skill names. Thanks to his new… Aspect, if he focused on a skill, each one had a description, a little insight, a gray ashen oracle of explanation he'd never seen before.
[Skill: Battle Sense]
He focused. The gray text unfolded.
[You have brushed against the flow of conflict itself. Movements, intentions, weapons—threads of combat reveal themselves before they occur. Your body moves with premonition; your mind reads battle as if it has already happened. Level 3.]
“Brushed against it,” he mumbled. The feeling was more about knowing where to be than being fast. The description was more than he needed. Level 3 meant it could level up. He’d get a longer preview of his own ass-kickings. Helpful.
[Skill: Calm Mind]
[Your mind has touched absolute quiet, resisting psychic attack, chaos, and fear. Thoughts sharpen, focus hardens, and mental intrusion falters. You survive where others break. Level 1.]
Psychic attack.
The two words just sat there.
A cold, sharp feeling, different from any monster’s growl, went through his gut. The threats had become more than things that could just rip your body apart. Something could get inside your head. Scramble your thoughts. Make you see shit. Turn you into a puppet. That was a different battle. One where you lose before you know you’re in it.
This Calm Mind… it was armor. For his fucking brain. He had a helmet for his thoughts and never knew he needed one. That explained why it hadn't leveled despite its constant use. ‘You survive where others break.’ The Aspect made it sound like his sanity was a stubborn rock. He’d take it.
[Skill: Energy Affinity]
[You are drawn to energy itself. Fire, spirit, arcane, infernal—all pulse through your body as though you were part of their lattice. Your form adapts and resonates with every force it encounters. Level 3.]
Your form adapts.
There it was. The reason for everything. His body was a copycat. See a new energy, learn to make it. The priest’s hell-blast was a tutorial. Fire, life-force, demon juice—his system treated it all as a lesson. The description said every force. If a sword swing was kinetic energy, then his body could probably get the gist of that, too. He could learn how to hit back with the same force that hit him. The potential was so big it was almost funny. He was a sponge for how the universe decided to be violent.
[Skill: Demonic Energy]
[The Infernal Seed. You generate the essence of demons themselves, a phenomenon beyond human inheritance. Lesser beings can wield fragments; you create them. The Hells have whispered of this singular rupture. Level 4]
“‘The Hells have whispered,’” he said to the empty air. His mouth was dry. So he was a fountain of demon stuff. A ‘singular rupture.’ He’d become a talking point in hell. An event. Something had noticed. The fact that he wasn’t already surrounded by hellspawn meant they knew what he was doing rather than who was doing it. For now, that was the only silver lining.
[Skill: Demonic Energy Mastery]
[You control infernal energy at will. Tendrils, fire, and corruption obey your thought, bending reality itself to your design. Few mortals can survive the touch of what you command. Level 6]
Bending reality. That’s what the black fire was. A local edit to the rules. The level was high. The description was a warning. Few mortals can survive the touch. So his best weapon was also a thing that killed most people just by being near it. Handy for clear-cutting problems. A real social liability for making friends.
[Skill: Portal Magic]
[Tear in the Hells. You manipulate space to create rifts between locations and planes. Portals cling to anchors unless mastered; missteps are fatal. The uninvited can damn the living. The abyss trembles where your portals open. Level 1]
Level 1. So he was terrible at it. ‘Missteps are fatal.’ ‘The uninvited can damn the living.’ His Aspect had a way of making everything sound like a liability. He’d made one portal. It felt like tearing wet cardboard. The thing had tried to suck the light and heat out of the clearing. He’d shut it fast. Now he knew why. He could open a door, but he couldn’t control what might be waiting on the other side, listening for the hinge to creak.
He scanned down to the last one.
[Skill: Infernal Thrall]
[You captivate, mesmerize, and permanently bind beings to your service. Resistance is impossible; servitude is eternal unless broken by your will. The essence of your power warps all it touches. Level 1]
Mara’s face flashed in his mind. The dazed look, the hollow obedience. ‘Resistance is impossible.’ ‘Servitude is eternal.’ The skill was more than a suggestion. It had become a fact he’d imposed on someone. The Aspect stated it plain. He’d put a chain on another person’s will. He hadn’t asked. He’d just done it because he needed the advantage. The essence of his power warps all it touches. He looked at his hands. They looked the same. They were no longer just his hands.
A branch snapped in the forest behind him.
The status screen vanished. His head came up, his body turning, feet settling on the leaf litter without a sound. His hand found the grip of the knife he’d taken from the crash.
“Showtime,” he breathed, the word leaving no trace in the still air.
He sent the order to Mara through their link:
An intense wave of resistance came back through the connection. It wasn't a word. It was a sensory blast—the taste of iron and ozone, the feeling of her jaw clenching so hard his own teeth ached, a flash of heat across his skin that was her anger. It was her emotions and sensations, and they were practically his own. The surrounding undead each took a single, halting step.
Then they stopped and moved no further.
David raised an eyebrow. "Excuse moi?"