The cell was a tomb of shadows, its walls pressing close enough to steal breath. Moonlight filtered through a narrow slit in the stone, casting a silver blade across the floor. Aden sat cross-legged, eyes closed, the Vasco Eclipse scroll unfurled before him. Its runes glowed faintly, sickly green light pooling like poison.
In his mindscape, the void stretched endlessly, a sea of ink punctuated by pinpricks of cold starlight. Egmund lounged on a throne of smoke, his form flickering between man and monstrosity.
A spectral mimic of Egmund materialized before Aden, not with full power but enough to be just the monstrosity to train with, starlight blade gleaming with borrowed radiance.
"Tired yet?" Egmund drawled, examining his claws.
Aden ignored him. The mimic lunged, blade humming. Steel met shadow in a cacophony of sparks and whispers. Aden replicated the Eclipse's stances, tendons screaming as he bent into impossible angles.
The mimic's sword pierced his shoulder, pain lancing white-hot through his mind. He collapsed, the void shuddering.
"You'll collapse before you ascend," Egmund sneered, though his crimson eyes gleamed with something akin to curiosity.
"Again," Aden hissed through gritted teeth.
The mimic reformed. This time, Aden struck first. Shadows coiled around his blade, biting into the specter's chest. The mimic dissolved—but not before its own strike opened a gash across Aden's thigh.
When dawn crept into the cell, his eyes snapped open. His hands trembled, but his aura hummed—a coiled storm, sharper than yesterday.
Two months carved Aden into a specter of his former self. His hands were a lattice of scars, the skin cracked and leathery. His face, once sharp with youth, now bordered on skeletal, cheekbones jutting like blades beneath sunken eyes. The Black Knights no longer met his gaze.
They muttered as he passed, their bravado crumbling under the jagged aura that clung to him—a pressure that made the air itself feel heavy.
Even Ser Varek's critiques dwindled. The old warrior watched in silence as Aden dismantled training dummies with surgical precision, his strikes humming with barely restrained violence. Sometimes, Varek's eye lingered on the faint crimson hue in Aden's irises, a flicker of something unreadable in his weathered face.
But the Eclipse festered in Aden's veins, cold and inexorable. His aura condensed daily, vibrating at the threshold of Black Knight rank. At night, shadows clung to him like a second skin, whispering promises of power and ruin.
One midnight, the cell's silence shattered. Aden knelt on the floor, the Eclipse scroll burning his palms as he channeled mana through forbidden pathways. The void in his mindscape raged, a tempest of blades and teeth. Egmund watched from the storm's eye, his laughter a discordant chorus.
"You're a spark from the inferno," the demon purred. "One gust, and you'll burn out."
Aden didn't answer. The spectral Egmund's mimic charged, starlight blade raised. Aden met him strike for strike, shadows devouring the light. When the mimic's sword pierced his chest, he didn't fall. He gripped the blade, shadows surging from his wounds like black blood.
The mimic shattered. The void stilled.
"Again"