"Before you go, test it."
I drew in a breath. It came easier despite the stale air. My lungs felt larger. More efficient. Like they'd been rebuilt for channeling energies that would have burned out my old body.
"Try something simple," The Voice suggested. The voice was clear now, no longer the whispered echoes from before, though I saw no one.
I raised my right hand and whispered the incantation for basic healing. The spell I'd cast thousands of times, light appeared in my palm but it was wrong. The color, sickly green instead of warm gold as it pulsed like an infected wound.
The magic felt hungry like it wanted to consume, not restore.
I let the spell fade. "What did you do to me?"
"What you asked for. Power. Did you think it would come without change?"
I tried a ward next. The simplest barrier spell in my repertoire, instead of a clean shield of force, thorn chains erupted from the ground. They writhed like living things, seeking something to bind.
My support magic hadn't just changed, it had been inverted. Healing became corruption, as protection became imprisonment. Everything I'd spent years perfecting had been twisted into its opposite.
"You wanted power," The Voice said "Power has teeth."
I clenched my fists. The chains dissolved into smoke. "Can I control it?"
"Eventually. Emotion triggers transformation now. Stay calm, and your magic behaves. Lose control..."
It didn't need to finish. I could feel the potential for destruction coiled in my chest like a sleeping dragon and one wrong surge of anger or fear, and I'd tear this chamber apart.
I tested my physical changes next as I pressed my palm against the stone wall and pushed. Cracks spread from the point of contact. I wasn't stronger exactly just denser. Like my bones had been replaced with something harder.
My reflexes had sharpened too. When a piece of rubble fell from above, I caught it without looking. The motion felt fluid, natural like my body anticipated threats before my mind processed them.
But the manna reserves were the real surprise. Where before I'd had a shallow pool that emptied quickly, now I felt an ocean. Deep and dark and barely contained as each spell left burn marks on nearby surfaces. The raw power had nowhere to go.
A memory surfaced without warning. Valen's golden armor catching the light as he turned away, the sound of the teleportation glyph sealing shut. Five years of loyalty discarded like a broken tool.
Rage bloomed in my chest. The chamber walls cracked. Stone dust rained down as my magic lashed out in all directions.
"Control it," The Voice cut through the fury. "Or it controls you."
I forced myself to breathe slowly, in, then out. The cracks stopped spreading and the magic pulled back, but reluctantly. Like a weapon that wanted to be used.
"First lesson," The Voice said. "Your old life is dead. The man who served heroes and asked for nothing in return … he died in that corridor. What you are now doesn't serve anyone."
I looked around the chamber, at the melted stone, at the burn marks and the evidence of power that defied everything I'd been taught about magic.
She was right, Caelum Thorne had bled out on the Spire's floor. Whatever I was now needed a new name, a new identity.
I searched a knight's remains scattered near the entrance. His armor was scorched but intact. The breastplate fit almost perfectly, as if it had been waiting for me and stripped off my tattered mage robes and burned them with a thought. The cloth turned to ash without smoke.
From his belt I took a simple ring, iron worked with basic protective runes, guess he was unprotected at his final moment. I held it up and traced new symbols into the metal with my fingertip, the iron glowed white-hot, then cooled.
"Kale," I whispered, reading the name I'd carved. Simple. Forgettable. The kind of name that belonged to a hedge mage or traveling sellsword and nothing like the formal Caelum Thorne that had been spoken in royal courts.
I slipped the ring onto my finger and it felt right.
Caelum Thorne was dead. Kale was what crawled out of his grave.
Cold air hit my face as I climbed, not the stale atmosphere of tombs and forgotten gods.
The forest floor was covered in fresh snow. My footprints filled in behind me as I walked, erased by falling flakes. The cold didn't bother me anymore. If anything, it felt comfortable as if my body was built for harsher conditions now.
Through the trees, I could see distant lights. The capital city of Solmaris sprawled across the horizon, its towers lit with celebration. Banners flew from every spire. Even from here, I could make out the crowds gathered in the main squares.
Victory celebrations. The Hero's triumph over the Demon Spire would be the talk of the Empire for months as ballads would be written and Children would grow up hearing tales of Valen's courage.
No mention of the support mage who'd died saving him.
I tested my new senses. Each living thing in the forest registered as a warm pulse in my awareness. Rabbits huddled in their burrows, deer moving between the trees, an owl hunting in the canopy above.
All of them gave me a wide berth. Whatever I'd become, animals wanted no part of it.
My eyes adapted to the darkness without effort. Night vision that let me see every branch, every snowflake, every track in the snow. The normal human limitations were gone.
I wasn't human anymore. Not entirely.
The main road curved around the base of the mountain, wide enough for merchant caravans and military columns. Fresh wheel ruts showed recent traffic, probably supply wagons returning from the Spire campaign.
I pulled my hood over my glowing eyes and stepped onto the packed earth. Snow crunched under my boots. Behind me, the Demon Spire rose into the clouds, dark and broken. Ahead lay the capital and whatever came next.
"Time to see what the world made of my death."