The biting wind of Windblade City didn't cleanse the blood. It merely spread it in thin scarlet threads across the white marble of the Whisperers' Courtyard, where Edric Skywhisper lay broken. His elder brother, Eaegar, adjusted the silver-embroidered sleeves of his mantle, his expression as cold as the currents sweeping the peaks.
"Not a spark. Not a wisp. Nothing." The voice of Eldrin Skywhisper, Archmage of WindBlade and Edric's father, echoed like a final sentence, without looking at his fallen son. "A Skywhisper who cannot wield mana is a stain upon the name he bears. A stain upon the name of the great Elphia Skywhisper."
Edric tried to swallow the taste of iron – his own blood – but a kick from Eaegar doubled him over, stealing his breath. "Disgrace," his brother spat, the wind compressing into an invisible whip that cracked against Edric's ribs. "You devoured resources like a parasite that could have made me an Archmage sooner."
Pain was a hurricane within him. Not the physical kind – he knew that well – but the pain of contempt. Fifteen years of failed attempts, prayers to silent heavens, training that left him nothing but bruises... and nothing. The mana, the life force of Crystalia, and the wind, the power of the skies, the strength of his glorious lineage, ignored him like a grain of dust.
"Take him away," ordered Eldrin, turning his back. "To where he cannot shame this name again."
The grey-cloaked guards dragged Edric like a sack of bones. Through the swelling of his eyes, he saw the Skywhisper banner fluttering proudly: a silver harpy against an infinite blue sky. Freedom. Nobility. Power. Everything he would never have.
The journey was a nightmare of darkness and jolts. When the carriage doors opened, the smell was the first blow: rotten earth, ancient mold, and something more... a cold that gnawed at the bones. The Abyssal Ruins of Veridian. A cursed place where, centuries ago, demonic legions had been driven back into the abyss. The graveyard of heroes and monsters. The place of his abandonment...
"Survive if you can, trash," laughed a guard, shoving him cruelly into the rocky ravine. Edric tumbled over sharp stones, the impact wrenching a hoarse cry from him. He heard the horses retreating. The silence that followed was worse. A heavy, hungry silence.
Night fell like a tombstone. Pain became a symphony of needles in his bones. Hunger and thirst were lesser demons gnawing at his insides. But worse than all of it was the fear. A primal fear that filled his mouth with bile. Fear of dying there, forgotten. Fear that his family was right. Fear of never meaning anything.
Edric had always been cared for by numerous servants, combat tutors, and magic theory instructors. He had never been alone before. As he tried to stand and looked around, searching desperately for something or someone to cling to. When suddenly he heard.
"You are afraid..."
The voice didn't come through the air. It came from within the shadows around him. Whispered, like silk dragging over bones.
Edric paled. "Wh.. Who...?"
"So much fear..." The whisper was now in his mind, cold and intrusive. "They abandoned you. They broke you. They laugh as you rot..."
Images invaded his thoughts: Eaegar smiling as he watched him fall; his father turning his back; the Skywhisper banner burning while unknown voices guffawed. His own face, pale and dead beneath the stones.
"STOP!" Edric shouted, covering his ears, but the voice came from within. It was the echo of all his terrors, given form and venom.
"Do you want to live?" The whisper became an icy blade in his soul. "Do you want to make them feel fear? To make their very soul and spirit tremble at the sound of your name...?"
A presence materialized before him – not a body, but an absence darker than night, with two points of red glowing like cursed embers. "Hello, fearful one..." The shadowy deformity stared at him with hungry eyes.
"I am Kael. The Demon of Fear, drawn to the feast of terror and despair you are providing me. Heh heh..."
Edric was paralyzed. His heart hammered so hard it hurt, his muscles locked like ice, on the verge of fainting. Part of him thought it was all a delusion, and the other, that this being, or whatever it was, could help him escape the despair fate had placed him in.
As he processed everything that was happening, Kael snapped him out of his brief stupor. "Answer me quickly, fearful one, do you want the power to subjugate others and make your name strike fear into people?"
"Ye.. Yes!"
Kael emitted a dry sound, like crushed bones.
A chill ran down Edric's spine as he broke into a cold sweat. A force from within him was being drained. Gathering at the tip of his right index finger, like a point of darkness.
"Remember those who scorned and abandoned you. Remember the fear you felt alone in that castle. Come now!! Pour your fear into my shadow, and receive my power!"
Edric bit the tip of his finger and let three drops black as ichor fall onto Kael.
Cold flooded through him like a deluge. Shadows leapt from him, solidifying into sharp claws that tore through the air. A bestial howl echoed through the ruins – a corrupted beast drawn by the blood. Kael moved like a bolt of darkness. Claws of pure shadow ripped the monster from top to bottom, reducing it to steaming strips of flesh and bone before it could roar again.
Burning with pain, Edric fell to his knees. Something had changed inside him. A cold spark where there had only been void before. A hungry black core spinning where his mana should have shone.