The cold woke him first.
Stone beneath his cheek, rough and wet. His wrists burned—rope, too tight, cutting into skin. Lucian tried to move and found he couldn't. His body felt wrong, heavy, like his limbs belonged to someone else.
Where am I?
The thought came slowly, fighting through a fog of pain. His head throbbed. His mouth tasted like copper. He forced his eyes open.
Torchlight. Shadows dancing on walls of dark stone. The smell of incense, thick and cloying, mixed with something else—something metallic and wrong.
Blood.
He was in the ritual chamber. The one beneath his father's estate, the one he wasn't supposed to know about. The one the servants whispered of in fearful tones when they thought no one was listening.
Memory returned in fragments. His father's men. The hands grabbing him from his bed. Alice screaming—
Alice.
Lucian's eyes snapped fully open. He jerked against his bonds, panic flooding through him, and there she was. Across the chamber. Bound the same way he was, her small body pressed against a stone pillar, eyes wide and wet with tears.
"Lucian," she whispered. Her voice cracked on his name. "Lucian, I'm scared."
She was sixteen. Just sixteen. And she was looking at him like he could save her.
He couldn't. He knew that already. He'd always known.
"It's going to be okay," he lied. "I'll figure something out. Just... just stay calm."
The chanting started.
Lucian hadn't noticed the figures before—robed, hooded, arranged in a circle around the chamber's center. Their voices rose in unison, words in a language he didn't recognize, syllables that seemed to crawl under his skin and nest there.
The air grew heavier. Darker. There was something in the room with them now, something he couldn't see but could feel—a presence pressing against the edges of his mind like fingers testing the softness of fruit.
And then his father stepped into the torchlight.
Count Darius looked exactly as he always did. Composed. Elegant. Cold. His robes were nicer than the others', embroidered with silver thread that caught the firelight. He didn't look at Lucian. Didn't acknowledge him at all.
He walked to Alice.
"Father." Lucian's voice came out raw, broken. "Father, please—"
"Silence."
The word wasn't loud, but it carried. Lucian felt it land in his chest like a physical blow. His father still didn't look at him.
"The sacrifice must be pure," Count Darius said, addressing the room, the hooded figures, the unseen presence that coiled in the darkness. "Two children of my blood. Unmarked. Untainted."
Unmarked. Lucian understood then. He and Alice weren't chosen because they were loved, or because they were special. They were chosen because they were disposable. The bastard son and his bastard sister, born of a concubine who'd died years ago. No one would miss them. No one would ask questions.
They were clean sacrifices.
Alice started to cry.
"Father, she's just a child," Lucian said. "I'll do whatever you want. Please. Use me. Use only me. Let her go."
For the first time, Count Darius looked at him.
There was nothing in his eyes. No guilt. No hesitation. Not even cruelty—that would have required caring enough to want to hurt him. There was only cold calculation.
"Two," he said. "The ritual requires two."
He drew a knife.
What happened next was burned into Lucian's memory forever, though he would spend the rest of his life trying not to look at it directly.
Alice didn't scream.
She tried to. Her mouth opened, her body convulsed against the ropes, but the blade was too quick, too precise. Count Darius had done this before. Lucian could see it in the economy of the movement, the practiced angle of the cut.
Blood poured down the pillar, black in the torchlight.
And Alice's eyes—
Her eyes found his. Held his. Stayed on him as the light in them dimmed and went out.
Then she was gone.
Something broke inside Lucian.
Not his heart—that would have been too clean. This was deeper, rawer, a fracturing of something fundamental that had held him together all his miserable life.
"NO!"
He thrashed against the ropes, tearing skin, not caring. Blood ran down his wrists and he didn't feel it. All he felt was rage. Rage at his father. At the cultists. At himself for being too weak to stop this.
And beneath the rage, something darker.
Everyone, a voice whispered in his mind. His own voice, but twisted, sharpened. Everyone who ever hurt you. Everyone who looked down on you. Everyone who made your life hell.
The noble children who'd mocked him for his birth.
The servants who'd treated him like garbage.
His father's legitimate sons, who'd beaten him for sport.
His stepmother, who'd smiled as she denied him food.
All of them. Every single one.
The Miasma in the chamber pressed against him, thick and hungry. He could feel it seeping into him, drawn by the hatred pouring out of his soul like blood from a wound. His vision was darkening at the edges. Not from pain—from something else. Something that wanted in.
Please, Lucian prayed. Not to any god he knew. Not to the benevolent deities the common folk worshipped. To anyone. Anyone who would listen.
I'll give anything. Everything. I don't care anymore.
Just let me have my revenge.
On EVERYONE who has ever wronged me.
He felt something answer.
Not a voice. Not a presence. Just a... shift. A weight settling on the other side of an invisible scale. A transaction beginning.
And then he felt the very core of his soul—the deepest part of him, the part that kept him alive—begin to drain away.
It was agony. Like being hollowed out from the inside, scraped clean, offered up to something hungry and patient. He was dying. He could feel it. Everything he was, everything he could have been, traded away for a prayer that might never be answered.
But somewhere, in the chaos of pain and Miasma and hatred—
Somewhere, a god was listening.
Alice's soul lingered.
She didn't know why. Didn't understand what was happening. One moment she'd been alive, terrified, watching the knife descend—and the next she was... here. Floating. Watching her own body slump against the pillar, blood pooling beneath it.
I'm dead, she thought. The realization should have been horrifying, but she felt strangely calm. Detached.
Then she saw her brother.
Lucian was still alive. Still bound. Still struggling. But something was wrong—she could see it, in a way she hadn't been able to see before. The Miasma in the chamber was moving, flowing toward him like water finding a drain. His soul was darkening, graying at the edges, absorbing the corruption even as it fought to keep him alive.
He was going to become like her. Or worse.
No.
The thought was sharp. Clear. The only thing she was certain of anymore.
Not him. Not Lucian.
Alice didn't know how she did it. Didn't understand the mechanics of what she was, or what she was capable of. She just... reached. Grabbed. Pulled.
The Miasma turned.
It flooded into her instead—all of it, everything, the concentrated evil of a hundred dark rituals performed in this chamber over decades. It was too much. Far too much. She felt herself changing, breaking, becoming something else—
But Lucian was safe.
That was enough.
In her last moment of clarity, Alice looked at her brother one more time. Watched him pray. Watched his soul drain.
Live, she thought. Please. For both of us.
Then the darkness took her, and Alice was gone.
What remained was something else entirely.
Count Darius didn't see the monster form behind him.
Neither did the cultists. All they felt was the wrongness—the pressure, the cold, the sense that something terrible had entered the room.
The first cultist died without understanding why. His soul simply... stopped. Torn out of his body by something he couldn't perceive.
The second managed a scream.
By the third, they were running.
Count Darius ran too. He was many things—cruel, ambitious, willing to sacrifice his own children—but he wasn't stupid. He recognized the signs of a manifestation gone wrong. He'd deal with the aftermath later, once he had distance and resources.
He never looked back at his son.
Lucian didn't notice him leave.
He was too busy dying.
II.
Nothing.
That was the first thing Mark became aware of—the complete and total absence of everything. No light, no sound, no sensation. Just... void. Endless, empty void.
Where am I?
The thought echoed in the darkness, unanswered.
Am I dreaming?
He tried to remember. Tried to reach back through the fog in his mind to find something solid, something real.
The street. He'd been crossing the street. The light was green—his light was green—and then—
Headlights. A horn blaring. The screech of tires.
Impact.
Oh god.
The realization hit him like a second collision.
The car. The car hit me.
Am I dead?
Mark floated in the void, trying to process. If this was death, it wasn't what he'd expected. No pearly gates. No flames. No tunnel of light. Just... nothing. Blank. Empty. Him and his thoughts in an infinite expanse of darkness.
Is this it? Is this what comes after? Just... existing in the dark forever?
Panic started to creep in at the edges. He tried to move, to do something, but there was nothing to push against. No up, no down. Just—
Then he felt it.
A pull.
Faint at first, like the gentle tug of a current. But it grew stronger, and stronger, becoming a force that dragged at him from below—from a direction that suddenly existed where there had been none before.
Mark tried to resist. Tried to fight it. But there was nothing to hold onto, and the pull became a yank, and then he was falling, plummeting, being dragged down into—
Something.
The void gave way to pressure. To heat. To the sensation of being forced through a space too small to contain him, squeezed and compressed and thrust—
Into flesh.
Into bone. Into blood and breath and a heartbeat that wasn't his.
And then the memories came.
They crashed into him like a tidal wave—eighteen years of a life he'd never lived, experiences he'd never had, emotions he'd never felt. A mother's face, blurred by time and grief. A father's cold indifference. A sister's laugh. Pain. Humiliation. Loneliness. Rage.
This isn't mine, Mark thought desperately, drowning in the flood. None of this is mine.
But it felt like his. Every memory, every scar, every moment of suffering—it resonated somewhere deep inside him, as if it had always been there, waiting.
Who was this person? Who am I now? What's happening to me?
The pain intensified. Two lives, two identities, trying to exist in the same space. It was too much. Far too much.
Just before he shattered completely, Mark woke up.
III.
Screaming.
That was the first thing he heard. Screaming, and running footsteps, and the sound of something impossibly large moving through stone.
His body felt wrong. Not the wrongness of pain—this was different. Like wearing a suit that didn't quite fit. Like driving a car with unfamiliar controls.
I'm Mark, he thought, clinging to the name like a lifeline. I'm Mark. I'm—
But another name was there too, layered beneath his own. Lucian. Eighteen years of memories that felt as real as anything he'd ever experienced. A mother who died young. A father who never loved him. A sister who—
Alice.
He forced his eyes open.
The ritual chamber was in chaos. Torches had fallen, setting parts of the floor ablaze. Bodies lay scattered—cultists who hadn't escaped in time. And in the center of it all, where Alice had died—
The monster.
It was massive. Larger than any living thing had a right to be, made of shadows and wrong angles, a shape that hurt to look at directly. Eyes covered its surface—too many eyes, all different sizes, all moving independently.
All of them hungry.
Mark couldn't move. His body—Lucian's body—was too weak, too drained. All he could do was watch as the thing that had been his sister tore through the remaining cultists like paper.
That's her, he thought, and the knowledge was devastating. That's what's left of her.
She'd saved him. He understood that somehow, through the tangle of memories and emotions. She'd absorbed the Miasma to protect her brother.
And this was the result.
Grief hit him like a physical blow—not quite his own grief, but real enough to steal his breath. Lucian's soul, still tangled with his, was screaming.
And then light exploded into the chamber.
IV.
They appeared from nothing.
One moment the chamber was empty except for Mark and the monster; the next, four figures materialized near the entrance, weapons already in hand, already moving.
"Contact! We have contact!"
"Eyes on the Blight—gods, look at the size of it!"
"Spread out! Don't let it flank!"
Three of them broke left, circling wide. Their movements were confident but cautious—they'd done this before, but perhaps not against something like this. Their weapons gleamed in the torchlight: a sword, a spear, a curved blade that Mark didn't recognize.
The fourth hung back.
He was older than the others, his face weathered, his eyes calm. He carried a lantern—an old bronze gas lantern that looked almost ordinary against the chaos of the chamber. He watched the fight unfold with the patience of a man who had seen a thousand battles.
The monster that had been Alice turned toward the three fighters and moved.
It was fast. Faster than anything that size should be. The fighter with the spear barely dodged in time, stumbling backward as shadow-claws raked the air where his chest had been.
"It's too quick!" he shouted. "Can't pin it down!"
"Stay focused!" The woman with the curved blade flanked left, looking for an opening. "Keep it contained, give the Captain time to—"
The monster whirled on her. She brought her blade up, but the impact sent her skidding across the stone floor.
"Damn it!" The swordsman pressed forward, trying to draw its attention. "This thing's absorbed way too much Miasma. It's saturated!"
The older man—the Captain—finally moved.
He stepped forward, lifting the bronze lantern, and twisted something at its base. The flame within flared, growing brighter, larger, until it was no longer a flame at all but a torrent—fire pouring out of the small lamp in quantities that should have been impossible.
And then he released the lantern.
It floated.
The bronze lamp hung in the air beside him, flames still streaming from its opening, a floating furnace of spiritual power. The Captain extended his hand toward the fire and spoke.
His voice was low, rhythmic, old. The words weren't any language Mark recognized, but they carried weight—the weight of ritual, of practice, of power earned through decades of use.
"Ignis aeternum, formare, vinculum!"
The fire obeyed.
It poured from the floating lantern and shaped itself—long, sinuous chains of living flame that whipped through the air and wrapped around the monster. The creature shrieked, that awful sound that bypassed the ears entirely, but it couldn't escape. The chains pulled tight, binding its limbs, and then they anchored—driving themselves into the stone floor like stakes, pinning the monster in place.
"It's holding!" the spearman called out. "Captain, now!"
The Captain raised his hand again. More fire streamed from the lantern, condensing, compressing, forming into a sphere of blazing light that hovered before him. He spoke again, different words this time, a different incantation:
"Ignis iudicium, formare, iaculum mortis!"
The sphere elongated. Sharpened. Became a spear—a perfect weapon of pure flame, burning with a light that hurt to look at directly.
The Captain drew back his arm.
The monster thrashed against its chains, all those wrong eyes fixed on him, mouth opening to scream—
He threw.
The spear crossed the chamber in an instant. It struck the monster dead center, and the creature burned. Not with destruction, but with something else. Purification. The shadows that made up its form peeled away layer by layer, dissolving into particles of light that drifted upward and vanished.
And as it died, the Captain spoke one final time. Not an incantation this time—a prayer. His voice was quiet, reverent, carrying the weight of countless repetitions.
"By the light that fades and the dark that remains, I release you from the chains of this world. Moon God, Keeper of the Threshold, Open the gate and welcome this wanderer home. Your suffering ends. Your journey continues. Go now, into the quiet dark."
The monster convulsed.
And then, slowly, it began to dissolve. The chains faded. The fire dimmed. And for just a moment—
Mark saw her.
Alice. The real Alice. A girl of sixteen with tear-stained cheeks, looking at her brother one last time.
Thank you, her expression seemed to say. Live.
Then she was gone.
The chamber fell silent.
The floating lantern drifted back to the Captain's hand, its flame reduced to a gentle flicker. The other three fighters were picking themselves up, checking for injuries, exchanging glances that spoke of relief and exhaustion.
Mark sat against the pillar, still bound, still unable to move.
"Captain." The spearman pointed. "There's a survivor. He was watching the whole fight."
The Captain turned. His eyes—dark, revealing nothing—found Mark's.
"You saw it," he said. It wasn't a question. "The creature. Before we arrived."
Mark managed a nod.
The Captain's expression didn't change. "Normal people can't see Type Bs. They're invisible." He crouched, bringing them eye to eye. "What's your name?"
"L—" The word caught in his throat. The name felt strange. Wrong. But it was the only one this body had. "Lucian."
"Lucian." The Captain tested the word. "And what happened here tonight? Why were you in a ritual chamber surrounded by dead cultists and a Blight that should have been too strong for a fresh manifestation?"
Mark told him. Not everything—not the transmigration, not the borrowed memories—but enough. The sacrifice. His father. Alice.
When he finished, the Captain was silent for a long moment.
"Usually the case," he said finally, "finding them this strong in places like this. Ritual sites concentrate Miasma. And Count Darius." His eyes sharpened. "That's your father."
Mark nodded.
"Then you can't go home." The Captain stood, the lantern swinging gently at his side. "Come with us. Back to our barracks. You can rest. Eat. Sleep." He paused. "Tomorrow, we'll talk about what comes next."
It wasn't really a choice. Mark had nowhere else to go.
"Okay," he whispered.
The Captain turned and walked toward the chamber's exit. One of the fighters—the woman with the curved blade—cut Mark's ropes as she passed.
He stood on shaking legs, looked one last time at the spot where his sister had been, and followed them out.
V.
The barracks of Squad 8 were unremarkable.
A stone building on the edge of a city Mark didn't recognize, filled with cots and weapon racks and the smell of oil and metal. The Captain—Aldric, the others called him—showed Mark to an empty bed and told him to sleep.
Mark was exhausted. His body—Lucian's body—had been through hell. Every muscle ached. His wrists were raw from the ropes. His soul felt scraped clean, hollowed out by that desperate prayer in the ritual chamber.
He collapsed onto the cot and was asleep within seconds.
He dreamed of darkness.
Not the peaceful darkness of rest—this was different. Aware. Present. He could feel his body sleeping, feel the slow rhythm of breathing and heartbeat, but he was also... awake?
What—
He tried to move. Tried to lift his arm, turn his head, something.
The body didn't respond.
But something else happened.
A separation. A sliding-apart. Like two sheets of paper peeling away from each other. One moment he was inside the sleeping body, and the next he was elsewhere—above it, watching from somewhere near the ceiling. He could still feel the cot beneath him. Still feel the weight of exhaustion pressing down.
But he could also see. From up here. From outside.
Two perspectives. Two sets of senses.
Mark looked down—but he didn't have a body here, not really. He was just awareness, just perception, floating like smoke in the darkness of the barracks.
What am I?
He focused on the body below. On the face that was his and wasn't his. And slowly, he began to understand.
There were two souls in this body.
One was bound to the flesh—Lucian's soul, the original owner, technically dead but still attached. It was what kept the heart beating, the lungs breathing. The biological anchor.
The other was him. Mark. The consciousness that had arrived from elsewhere. Unbound. Unanchored. Held in place only by... what? Will? Circumstance?
He was a lingering soul.
The realization was cold and clear.
I'm the kind of thing that becomes a monster.
Just like Alice.
Mark tried to return to the body—and found that he could. The transition was strange, like squeezing into clothes that were too tight, but it worked. He blinked awake in the darkness of the barracks, heart pounding, covered in cold sweat.
He lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling.
It wasn't until dawn that he finally got up.
VI.
"There's a public archive three blocks east," one of the Squad 8 members told him when he asked. "Might want to eat first, though. You look like death."
Mark ate mechanically, barely tasting the bread and cheese. His mind was elsewhere.
The library was old, dusty, and quiet. He pulled books from shelves at random—history, theology, natural philosophy—and something strange happened.
As he read, memories surfaced. Lucian's memories. The education of a noble child, buried beneath years of abuse and neglect. Names he hadn't known he knew. Concepts he hadn't realized he understood.
He wasn't learning new information. He was remembering.
The reading triggered everything. By the time the sun reached its peak, Mark had assembled a picture of the world—and his place in it.
Power in this world ran on a simple equation: Life Force plus Spiritual Power equaled Miracle.
Theurgists were humans who could wield this power. Some had bonded with spirits—entities that provided Spiritual Power in exchange for Life Force. Others used Spirit Items—objects imbued with spiritual energy.
But there were dangers.
Blights were corrupted souls. Humans who absorbed too much Miasma—a dark, pervasive energy drawn to negative emotion—transformed into monsters.
Type A: Living humans who transformed. Their bodies twisted into nightmares. Visible to everyone.
Type B: Dead humans whose souls lingered, refused to pass on, and absorbed Miasma. Invisible to normal people. Only Theurgists could see them.
The Creed was an organization dedicated to hunting these threats. Squad 8 was one of their units.
Mark closed the book.
His hands were trembling.
I have two souls.
Lucian's is bound to this body. It keeps me alive.
Mine is the lingering one. The kind that becomes a Type B.
The implications unfolded like a nightmare.
If Lucian's soul absorbed too much Miasma, the body could transform. Type A. A physical monster, visible to everyone.
If Mark's soul—the lingering one—absorbed too much, he could transform. Type B. Invisible. Spiritual. Like Alice.
What happens if one turns? Does the other follow? If my soul becomes a Blight, does the body transform too? If the body transforms, can my soul survive on its own?
He didn't know. The books didn't say. No one had ever been in this situation before.
And there was another problem.
The Creed hunts Blights.
They see the invisible.
If I walk around with a lingering soul attached to me—if they look too closely—
They'll think I'm a threat.
They'll kill me.
Mark left the library with a plan.
He found a quiet place—an abandoned building near the edge of the city—and focused.
Separate. Like last night. Split apart.
It was easier this time. The two souls slid away from each other, and Mark found himself floating outside the body, watching it stand empty-eyed in the ruins.
The connection remained. He could feel the heartbeat, the breathing. But he was outside.
Okay. I can do this.
He would keep his soul hidden. Whenever he was around The Creed, he would leave it somewhere else—a rooftop, an alley, an empty building. They would see Lucian's body with Lucian's soul, and nothing more.
The lingering part of him would stay invisible. Stay safe.
Mark returned to the body, felt himself slot back into place, and started walking back to the barracks.
His other self stayed behind.
VII.
Captain Aldric was waiting when he arrived.
"Feeling better?" the Captain asked. He was sitting on a bench, cleaning his lantern with a cloth, working oil into the bronze.
"Yes." Mark hesitated. "You mentioned talking about what comes next."
Aldric set down the lantern. "I did. You have options, Lucian. Not many, but some." He studied Mark with those unreadable eyes. "You have a gift—you can see things most can't. That's rare. Valuable. The Creed could use someone like you."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you walk out that door and survive on your own. No training. No resources. No protection." A pause. "Your father is still out there. If he learns you survived..."
He didn't need to finish.
Mark thought about the abandoned building where he'd left his soul. About the precarious balance he would have to maintain. About the monster sleeping inside him that might wake at any moment.
And he thought about Count Darius.
About revenge.
"I want to join," he said.
Aldric nodded. No surprise. No ceremony.
"Training starts tomorrow," he said. "Don't die."
That night, Mark lay in his cot and stared at the ceiling.
His body was here. Safe. Surrounded by people who hunted monsters for a living.
His soul was somewhere else entirely—watching the city from the roof of an empty building, seeing the world through borrowed eyes.
Tomorrow, he would attach it again. Let himself be whole for a while. And then, whenever he was around The Creed, he would separate. Leave the dangerous part of himself hidden away.
It was exhausting. It was precarious. It might not work forever.
But it was the only choice he had.
Two souls, Mark thought. Two chances to become a monster.
The Creed hunts Blights. If they ever find out what I am...
He closed his eyes.
I'll just have to make sure they never do.
Outside, the moon rose cold and bright over the barracks of Squad 8.
Somewhere across the city, a lingering soul watched the night pass.
And in the darkness of the barracks, a monster in training began to dream.
END OF CHAPTER 1