Night fell like a shroud, and with it came the obligation to perform my vile task. I moved through the academy grounds, a ghost in the deepening twilight. Every step towards the remote patch of lawn where they practiced felt like a step deeper into my own personal hell.
I found a new hiding spot, a dense thicket of shadow-oaks about thirty yards from their makeshift training ground. The trees themselves seemed to drink the moonlight, creating a pool of perfect, natural darkness. It was an ideal position for a mage with a shadow affinity to conceal himself. The irony was a bitter pill.
From my vantage point, I watched them. The mood in their small group was already somber. Leonidas and Mara were trying to buoy Thomas's spirits, but their encouragement sounded forced against the backdrop of his palpable anxiety. He was going through the motions, but the spark of effort from the other day was gone, replaced by a deep-seated fear of failure.
My orders were to use a Shadow Veil spell. A full Veil would be a swirling vortex of darkness, an obvious and overt attack. That wasn't the goal. Damien wanted subtlety. Psychological poison. I had to deconstruct the spell, to strip it down to its barest, most insidious components: a flicker of visual distortion and a whisper of unnatural cold. This required a level of fine mana control the old Lucian could never have dreamed of. It was a test of the very skills I had been honing in secret.
I waited, my heart a cold, heavy stone in my chest. I watched as Thomas took a deep, shaky breath, his hands trembling as he began to form the gestures for his simple wind spell. Mara placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You can do this, Thomas. Just like we practiced."
This was my moment.
Closing my eyes, I drew upon my Mana Core. I didn't pull a torrent of power, but a single, fine thread of shadow mana, as thin and delicate as a spider's silk. I channeled it with painstaking care, guided by the visualization techniques from my Mana Breathing practice. I imbued it with a single, simple intent: flicker and chill.
I extended my will, casting the thread of mana across the distance. It was like trying to aim a needle in a hurricane, the ambient magic of the world threatening to tear my fragile spell apart. But my control held.
Just as Thomas's spell was about to manifest, my whisper of shadow arrived.
In the air directly before him, a patch of reality seemed to shimmer and warp for a fraction of a second, like a heat-haze made of darkness. A sudden, localized drop in temperature made the air crackle with a faint, unnatural chill.
Thomas yelped, a sound of pure shock, and stumbled backward. His own spell imploded, backfiring into a harmless puff of displaced air. He stared at his hands, his eyes wide with terror.
"Did you... did you feel that?" he stammered, his voice trembling. "It felt cold. My mana... it felt wrong. It felt dirty."
Leonidas and Mara rushed to his side, their expressions a mixture of confusion and concern. "What are you talking about, Thomas?" Leonidas asked, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "It was probably just a breeze. You're in your own head."
"No!" Thomas insisted, pulling away. "It wasn't a breeze. It was... it was something else."
From my hiding place, I felt a wave of nausea. It had worked perfectly. They were trying to solve the wrong problem. They were trying to reassure his mind when I had attacked his very magic.
I knew I had to do it again. A single occurrence could be dismissed as imagination. A second would cement the fear.
Thomas, encouraged by Mara, agreed to try one more time. He was visibly terrified, his face pale in the moonlight. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating with all his might.
As the mana began to gather in his palms, I sent a second thread. This one was slightly stronger, slightly colder.
The flicker of darkness was more pronounced this time. The chill was sharp enough to raise goosebumps. Thomas cried out, a raw, guttural sound of pure panic, and collapsed to his knees. He wasn't looking at his hands anymore; he was clutching his chest, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"It's inside me!" he wailed, tears streaming down his face. "My Core… it's tainted! It's cold. I can't control it!"
He was having a full-blown panic attack, utterly convinced that his own magic, his own soul, had become corrupted. The trust between a Weaver and their own mana is sacred. I had just violated it.
Leonidas and Mara were no longer confused; they were genuinely frightened, kneeling beside their friend, trying to calm a terror they couldn't see or understand. The training session was over. Their morale was not just broken; it was shattered.
My mission was a resounding success.
I slipped away from my hiding spot, melting back into the deeper shadows of the campus. The image of Thomas on his knees was burned into my mind. The feeling of his raw, unadulterated terror, which I had felt so clearly through my Soul Resonance, was a screaming echo in my own soul.
I didn't go back to my dorm. I went to my own secret courtyard. I stood in the center for a long time, looking at my hands. They were the source of the magic that had just broken a boy's spirit. The Shadow Affinity I had inherited felt less like a gift and more like a curse.
When I finally began my Mana Breathing, it was with a new, desperate urgency. I wasn't just trying to gather power or refine my Core. I was trying to cleanse myself. I drew in the pure, neutral mana of the world, trying to flush out the feeling of corruption, the stain of my own actions.
Damien wasn't just forcing me to act like a villain. He was forcing me to use my own innate nature, my affinity for shadow, in the cruelest way imaginable, twisting my own power against myself. It felt like he was methodically tainting my very soul.
The question that haunted me as I meditated under the cold moonlight was no longer simply, Can I survive?
It was, Who will I be if I do?