He’d increased the circulation on his demonic energy, braided it with death energy throughout his bodies veins and channels, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. he also had a thick film of heat energy spinning through his magic field at high temperatures—he wasn’t sure how well it would work as a shield, but at the very least, it would fry any obstacles thrown his way through suction.
The Level 50 demon didn’t stir. Its massive, horned shoulders were still. The giant, bloodshot eye, however, had floated back inside and now hovered in the air between its shoulders, fixed on him. It tracked his slow shuffle along the wall. He thought about that. The eye and the ice dome had only appeared after he’d first noticed them. Nobody else could see the eye. Clearly, this was somehow due to his new aspect. He hoped that pattern didn’t extend to anything he looked at in this place. He tried not to think about it too hard.
He saw the demon’s tail. The anaconda-thick appendage ended in a barbed, bony spear-tip. That tip was pinned to the floor by a glowing chain. The rest of the tail had some leeway. He eyeballed the arc it could make—its range. It wasn’t too bad, only a foot or two. He stayed far outside of that imaginary line.
Behind the demon, near the base of the wall, something glinted. A length of the enchanted chains was broken off. It shone with the same violent energy as the ones holding the beast.
He moved toward it, each step careful. The eye followed him. He reached the broken chain segment. It was about four feet long, each link as thick as his wrist. It hummed in his hand, a physical vibration of pent-up power. The glow was a painful mix of searing gold, corrosive purple-black, and that heavy, leaden indescribable iridescence. He couldn’t see what part of the larger chain had broken from. The end was cleanly severed.
He wound the chain around the bare leather handle, threading it through itself until it was tight and secure. The censer felt different now. Heavier in a way that had nothing to do with weight. He studied it.
A block of text, sharp and clear, etched itself into the air in front of him. It was nothing like the system's usual panels, but grey and somehow more present than he was used to.
The words hung in the air, sharp and final.
[Your aspect has granted you insight beyond mortals. This Aspect of knowledge bears a cost you have already paid.]
[Item: Heretics' Shackle - Fragment
Tier: Sixth Tier Equipment
Oracle: Links of a Broken Chain. Forged in the Thirteenth Eternal Pyre by a great devil in a hell dimension, these scorched chain-links are fragments of a once-whole instrument meant to bind and punish heretics of the Unlit Source. Each link was quenched in the blooded screams of a sacrificed realm, binding both flesh and soul to a single body, preventing escape, dispersal, or death. While a being is bound, the chain stores a fraction of their power within its metal. At the binder’s will, that stored power can be released in a devastating explosion, used for torture, or execution. Each use shatters one link from the chain, marking its consumption and ensuring it can never be made whole again.]
Cost? Paid? David turned the words over. He didn’t feel any lighter. He didn’t feel smarter. But a cold, quiet part of him had suspected the price tag the moment the Aspect had clicked into place in his soul. The eye and the ice cage was a disturbing reminder of a receipt he still needed to confirm.
He reread the description. His eyes were stuck on the Tier: Sixth Tier Equipment.
Tiers. So there was a grading system. Obviously it was for quality, power, and the grade of enchantment. Was six high? Was it low? Did it start at one and go up, like a shitty review system where one was ‘barely magical’ and much eleven was ‘city-killer’? Or did it start much higher and go down? One being god-slaying, six being… moderately concerning? He had no frame of reference.
But it had bound a Level 50 Soul Eater with a name and a title. That suggested six was pretty good. You didn’t use a plastic zip-tie to hold a god. You used Sixth Tier hell-forged soul-chain. Probably.
He’d have to compare it to the cursed weapons they’d found outside. See where those landed. If the cursed axe was a Tier One piece of junk, then six was a massive leap. If his mundane spear was a Tier Eight, then six was… less impressive. The numbers meant nothing without a baseline. He filed it away as a pending question.
He looked at the chain wrapped around his censer. A fragment of an instrument of torture and execution. It stored a fraction of the bound thing’s power. The thing currently bound was Thar’Zul the Devourer of Penitence. The chain around its tail was part of the same set. So this fragment in his hand… it might be rechargeable.
David looked at the chain fragment wrapped around the censer's handle. He counted the links. Eleven. He held one end and let the rest drop. It was about as long as he was tall.
Eleven links. The description said each explosive blast would shatter one link. So he could point it and fire eleven times. But that was only one use. A stupid one. You turned a soul-binding relic into a single grenade, and then you had ten grenades left from a shorter chain, and then you had nothing.
The real uses were the other parts. It could bind a soul to a body. It could store a fraction of a bound entity's power. That meant it could drain his enemies. It also meant it could trap their souls.
He thought of not only the Soul eating Demon, but Mara's slumped form against the wall. She was breathing in wet, shallow gasps.
"Good thing I have a guinea pig," he muttered.
David untied the chain from the censer. He fastened one end of it to the very tip of his spear, just behind the blade, knotting it tight. The rest of the chain hung down from the spearhead.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He gripped the spear at its very end. He faced the chained demon across the room. The giant eye watched from above.
David swung the spear in a smooth, underhanded arc. The chain flew out toward the demon’s massive, shackled wrist.
The instant the chain left the spearhead, his battle sense screamed. Not a feeling. A direct command in his nerves: STOP. SHIFT YOUR STANCE SIX INCHES TO THE LEFT. ANY OTHER ACTION ENDS YOUR EXISTENCE COMPLETELY.
His glimpse of the immediate future didn’t show him an outcome. It showed darkness. A total void where possibilities should have been.
He twisted his wrist, jerking the spear’s trajectory to the left as he completed the throw.
The darkness in his future-sight vanished. The possible outcomes snapped back into view.
The flying chain wrapped around the demon’s thick wrist, just above the glowing primary shackle. The links clinked tight.
Just as he’d suspected, even soul-bound and drained, the demon still had tricks up its sleeve.
A deep, resonant hum vibrated up the chain. The metal began to glow, brighter than the surrounding bindings. It pulsed with a rhythmic light. David could feel a slow, heavy trickle of power—vast, alien, and corrosive—beginning to flow down the chain toward him. It was siphoning the demon’s energy.
The chain wrapped around the demon's wrist. It glowed. It began to pull power. A storm of power that caused David to smile stupidly with greed.
The demon's gut-maw opened. The air in the temple screamed forward. A storm of suction grabbed David and tried to drag him off his feet toward the black hole.
But David was already outside the temple; his future sight showed him the next two seconds. Standing still: probably death. Leaping straight back: definitely life. It was a thorough contingency.
He flicked his wrist to unloop the Heretics shackle from its wrist and immediately dashed to the doorway.
He fed demonic energy into his body, a hot, wire-tight reinforcement for his muscles. He braided it with death energy, a cold, locking force that made him heavier, denser, harder to tear apart—immune to pain.
From the doorway, he stepped out of the path of the suction, using the temple’s outer wall as a barrier from the pulling wind.
The demon's mouth snapped shut. The suction died.
David was about to ridicule the bound demon, but then a series of notifications appeared before him, revealing a development that had been loading the moment he had first seen the eye above the temple.
Words burned in the air in front of David's face.
[First Marking complete.]
[Time taken to complete marking: 15 minutes]
[As the oracle of the unknown, your gaze pierces all, but in return, it draws the attention of those it sees. Your gaze is both the illuminating flame and a beacon for those you gaze upon to gaze back. Your gaze has both revealed and drawn the attention of the eye of Thar'Zul the Devourer of Penitence, Lvl 50. Who has vowed to bind your soul to his faith and consume your flesh. You have been branded as his prey.]
[Without defence against marking, subsequent markings from higher beings will occur within set time frames. Should you fail to defeat the hunter before it is set, only death, predation, or a god’s blessing can remove the mark.]
Fire exploded on his collarbone. A brand—a jagged, ugly mark—seared into his skin. The burn didn't stop. It kept going, deeper, like it was trying to brand the stuff underneath the skin too.
David stood in the temple doorway, breathing hard. The brand on his collarbone felt like a lit cigarette pressed against his soul.
Prey? The word bounced around his skull. Fucking prey?
David stood stock still, a pure and irrational outrage bubbling as a cold, sharp stone in his gut. Prey.
He stepped into the doorway and pointed at the chained demon. He shot fireballs of death and demonic heat at it. They streaked across the room and slammed into its scaled hide. The bursts left charred, blackened patches on its skin. That was it. The demon didn't flinch. The eye watched.
He stopped wasting his energy. Stopped shooting—even with the chains, it was stupid to waste energy, but he was still pissed.
Thar’Zul had to die.
The marking had started the first time the eye had revealed itself, it had just taken its time to complete. Even if he had walked away the moment he had seen the eye, he would have been marked. Was this something unique to the level 50 demon? If it wasn't then his time in this dimension would be tumultuous to say the least.
David looked at the newly acquired chains of the Heretics’ shackle fragment he removed from the end of his spear, now held in his grip.
Why the hell should I blow up my energy-stealing devil chain? He thought.
He grabbed the demon-forged chain. It was still wrapped around the demon's wrist, blazing with the stolen, raw power of the Level 50. He placed his palm flat against the glowing links.
He took a breath. Not with his lungs. On a hunch, he placed a palm on the chains and pulled inward with his channels, the network of veins from his heart to his palm, and more than that; he felt like he pulled with his soul—with the part of him that was now connected to death and the demonic. His soul inhaled.
The stolen energy in the chain stirred. It moved into him. Slow at first, a trickle of corrosive, vast power. Then the flow ripped open. It shot into him, a torrent of energy so dense it felt solid. It flooded his system. More demonic energy than he had ever felt. The familiar pressure field of his demonic energy, usually a tight twenty-inch sphere around his body, violently expanded. It shoved outward, stretching to a three-foot radius. The air within that space thickened and hummed.
Twenty inches to three feet. That was thirty six inches. An eighty percent increase in his magic fields range, off just one drain.
That was… massive.
He looked from the blazing chain to the demon's unblinking eye.
"Congrats, buddy," he said, his voice flat in the charged air. "You just joined the list of things I need to kill." The statement was a vow. He was nobody's prey. It was his prey.
He let go of the chain, turned, and left the temple.
As he reached Mara, the last piece clicked into place.
The cost.
He could know things others couldn't. He could see things others couldn't. The ice dome hadn't just appeared. His gaze had summoned it. It was a reaction. The giant, bloodshot eye wasn't invisible to the others. It was beyond their perception. It existed on a frequency only he could see now. His sight was the key that turned the lock, but it was also the dinner bell.
He could find hidden treasures, uncover forbidden secrets, steal power no one else could even perceive. But the act of looking was a two-way street. If he stared into the abyss, the abyss got a good look back. It learned his address. The ice cage and its watcher were the first certified return receipt.
The next thing he looked at with this new vision might not be chained to a temple floor. It might be mobile. And hungry. Whatever he saw next could be curious about the strange little oracle who kept peeking into its world.
David's new eyes weren't just a side effect. They were the tool and the price tag. An asset and a liability, rolled into one. Every glance was now a gamble.
David looked at his hand, at the faint, residual glow from the stolen energy.
He felt the expanded field of demonic pressure around him, a three-foot bubble of corrupted air. Useful. He also felt like he'd just mailed a formal letter of introduction to something that ate planets.
His gains, powers, the enchanted censer, the Heretics shackle fragment; its powerful soul-binding chains, his abilities, they were all purchased by the sheer, ridiculous inconvenience of having a two-way relationship with cosmic horrors.
And one of them had branded him. The brand made him rage any time he thought about it.
He was going to turn the demon's scales into boots and its hide into a warm jacket. David was going to kill that thing—Thar’Zul—so thoroughly that its cousins would feel it.
He stood there for a second, looking at nothing. An old quote surfaced, fitting a little too neatly.
"If you gaze long into an abyss," he muttered, his voice flat, "the abyss also gazes into you."
He considered the words. They were accurate. They were also profoundly unhelpful. They didn't come with a manual.
"So I guess I should invest in better curtains," he said to the empty air of the ice dome.
[First Marking complete.]
[Time taken to complete marking: 15 minutes]
[As the oracle of the unknown, your gaze pierces all, but in return, it draws the attention of those it sees. Your gaze is both the illuminating flame and a beacon for those you gaze upon to gaze back. Your gaze has both revealed and drawn the attention of the eye of Thar'Zul the Devourer of Penitence, Lvl 50. Who has vowed to bind your soul to his faith and consume your flesh. You have been branded as his prey.]
[Without defence against marking, subsequent markings from higher beings will occur within set time frames. Should you fail to defeat the hunter before it is set, only death, predation, or a god’s blessing can remove the mark.]