Darkness was not simply the absence of light in the Sunken Ruins of Aethelgard. It was a physical weight—a cold, viscous shroud that pressed into Kael's eyes, his ears, and his very pores.
He was pinned beneath a slab of obsidian that weighed several tons. His left leg, the one Sam had shattered with the mechanical trap, was a pulpy mess of bone and shredded suit fabric. The air in his diving helmet had long since turned stale, and then, as the pressure of the collapsing vault cracked the faceplate, the ocean had rushed in.
By all laws of nature, Kael Light should have been dead.
The salt water should have filled his lungs. The pressure should have collapsed his chest. The cold should have stopped his heart. But as the black water rushed into his mouth, Kael didn't drown. Instead, he felt a horrific, searing heat ignite in the center of his chest. It was as if he had swallowed a handful of live coals.
BREATHE, a voice echoed. It didn't come from the water or the ruins. It came from the marrow of his bones.
Kael gasped, and instead of water, he felt a thick, oily energy surge through his throat. The Dark God—the entity Sam had invited into Kael's soul—was acting as a parasitic life-support system. It wouldn't let him die. It needed his "White Sun" mana to remain anchored to the material plane, and to keep that sun burning, it had to keep the vessel intact.
"Sam..." Kael choked out, the word bubbling into the dark water.
The name felt like a jagged piece of glass in his throat. Every time he pictured Sam's face—the way the merchant had looked at the gold instead of him—the heat in his chest flared into an agonizing white-hot spike.
Then, the moon reached its zenith far above the waves.
Kael didn't need to see the sky to know. The curse didn't care about miles of seawater. The connection between the Dark God and the lunar cycle was absolute.
The first crack was his ribs. It wasn't a snap; it was an explosion.
Kael's body arched against the obsidian slab. He felt his ribcage shatter outward, the bone shards piercing his lungs. Normally, this would be a fatal injury, but his Healing Arts—the "Ancient Art" Elara had spent eighteen years perfecting—triggered instinctively. His internal mana core, sensing the damage, flooded his torso with golden light.
The bones began to knit. The lungs began to seal.
But the Dark God wanted more. It wanted the pain.
As the Healing Art stitched the ribs back together, the God's shadow-energy wrapped around them and snapped them again.
"AGHHH—!"
Kael's scream was a silent vibration in the abyss. The cycle began in earnest. His femurs cracked and twisted like dry wood. His spine warped, the vertebrae grinding against one another until they powdered into dust, only to be reconstituted by the golden light of his desperate cultivation.
It was a war of two infinities. The infinite life-force of the "White Sun" and the infinite malice of the "Dark Moon." Kael was the battlefield.
DO YOU FEEL IT, LITTLE HEALER? The God's presence was a cold slime sliding over his consciousness. YOUR MOTHER TAUGHT YOU TO MEND. I SHALL TEACH YOU TO BREAK. WE ARE TIED BY THE THREADS OF BETRAYAL. EVERY FULL MOON, YOU SHALL PAY THE INTEREST ON YOUR FRIEND'S WEALTH.
"Shut... up..." Kael thought, his vision blurring as blood began to weep from his pores.
Because his suit was pressurized and his body was undergoing constant, violent remodeling, the blood had nowhere to go. It began to fill the small space between his skin and the inner lining of his diving suit. It leaked from his eyes, his ears, and the base of his fingernails.
The pain was so absolute that Kael's mind began to fracture. He saw flashes of the Emerald Jungle. He saw Elara's silver hair. He felt the warmth of the morning sun on the porch of the treehouse.
"Live, Kael. Live for me."
The memory of Elara's voice was a knife in his heart. How could he live like this? How could he exist as a literal fountain of agony?
BECAUSE HE IS STILL OUT THERE, the God whispered, sensing Kael's despair. THE MERCHANT IS IN THE SUNLIGHT. HE IS EATING FINE MEATS. HE IS SLEEPING ON SILK. HE HAS FORGOTTEN YOUR NAME, KAEL LIGHT. TO HIM, YOU ARE JUST THE PRICE OF ADMISSION.
Kael's fingers, the only part of him not pinned by the slab, clawed at the black sand. The golden mana in his Stasis Ring was no longer pure. It was being marbled with violet streaks of corruption.
He didn't want to die anymore. The shock had passed, and in its place, something cold and hard was beginning to form in the center of the agony.
Revenge was a shallow word. What Kael felt was an ontological necessity. As long as Sam Willer existed in the light, the universe was out of balance.
"I... will... find him..."
Kael focused his mana. He stopped trying to heal his entire body and instead funneled every drop of the "White Sun" into his right arm. He ignored the screaming of his shattered ribs. He ignored the God's laughter.
He reached out and gripped the edge of the obsidian slab that pinned him.
The Stasis Ring on his finger began to glow with such intensity that it hissed in the freezing water. Cracks appeared on the white metal. Kael was pushing a 4-Ring High Mage's output through a 1-Ring filter.
"Primordial Art... Earth-Shaker..."
He didn't use a circle. He used his own body as the conductor. The mana surged through his shattered arm, the golden energy forced into the obsidian.
The slab didn't just move. It detonated.
The explosion of mana cleared the silt for fifty yards. Kael was thrown backward, his body a limp ragdoll of broken bones and weeping blood, but he was free.
He floated in the black void of the ruins. His suit was shredded. His helmet was gone. He was a human shape composed of golden light and violet shadow, suspended in the crushing deep.
The full moon's peak passed. The God's influence receded slightly, leaving Kael in a state of "Stable Agony." His body began to heal one last time, knitting his bones into a structure that was denser, stronger, and more resilient than any human's.
He looked up. Somewhere, miles above him, was the surface. Somewhere beyond that was a merchant with a bag of gold.
Kael began to swim.
He didn't swim like a man. He moved like a spectral shark, his mana core propelling him upward with a violent, rhythmic pulse. His blood trailed behind him in the water—a dark, toxic ribbon that made the deep-sea fish shrivel and die as it touched them.
He was no longer Kael Light, the boy who feared the Academy.
He was the vessel of a God's spite.
By the time he reached the mid-depths, the pressure began to decrease. His lungs, now reinforced by the curse, didn't burst. His skin didn't blister. He simply kept climbing.
YES, the God purred inside him. CLIMB, LITTLE SUN. THE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR A MONSTER LIKE US.
Kael broke the surface of the Azure Sea just as the sun began to rise.
He didn't gasp for air. He didn't need it the way mortals did. He floated on his back, looking at the sky. The horizon was a beautiful, mocking shade of pink and gold.
He drifted toward the shore, a pale, blood-stained ghost. He had no wagon. He had no gold. He had no friend.
He had only a ring, a book, and a thousand years of pain ahead of him.
When his feet finally touched the wet sand of a deserted beach miles from Stormhaven, Kael collapsed. He crawled toward the treeline, his fingers digging into the earth.
He looked back at the sea. The ship Sam had bought was gone. The horizon was empty.
"The merchant's promise," Kael whispered, his voice sounding like dry parchment.
He closed his eyes, the first day of his new life beginning in the dirt. He would need a new name. He would need a new face. And eventually, he would need a way to make Sam Willer feel exactly what he felt right now.
Every. Single. Bone.