The darkness didn't bother Callum anymore.
That should have concerned him. Should have felt wrong. But standing there in the absolute black of shaft seven, three hundred feet beneath the surface where no light had any right to exist, Callum found that the shadows felt... different now. Less like the absence of something and more like the presence of something else.
Like they recognized him.
Like they'd made space.
Before—just minutes ago, though it felt like years—the darkness had been oppressive. Suffocating. The weight of three hundred feet of uncaring mountain pressing down, stealing the light and air until there was nothing left but the slow certainty of death.
Now it felt almost welcoming.
Death qi pulsed through his veins with each heartbeat, cold and steady and utterly alien. He could feel it moving inside him, following paths that shouldn't exist, flowing through the cracks in his shattered meridians like water finding new channels in broken stone.
It felt good. That was the terrifying part.
"Don't just stand there admiring yourself," Morrigan said. Her voice cut through his thoughts like a blade through silk. She was leaning against the tunnel wall—or at least giving the impression of it. Now that he looked closely, he could see that her form didn't quite touch the stone. Occupying space without mass, presence without substance.
Bound to his soul. Whether he liked it or not.
"You're still trapped in a collapsed mine with limited air," she continued. "Being Stage One doesn't mean you can breathe rocks."
Right. Escape first, existential crisis later.
Callum turned his attention to the rubble blocking the tunnel. Tons of it. Maybe more. The collapse had sealed off this section of shaft seven completely, transforming what had been a passage into a tomb. The other miners—if any had survived—wouldn't be coming back. They'd assume everyone in this section was dead.
They'd be mostly right.
"Can you...?" Callum gestured vaguely at the rocks, then felt stupid for asking. What was he expecting? That she'd wave her hand and move a mountain?
"Use my vast cosmic power to move some rubble?" Morrigan's smile was sharp enough to draw blood. "No. I'm bound to your soul, which means my strength is your strength. And you're Stage One. Barely."
"Helpful."
"I'm not here to do things for you. I'm here because I have no choice." She pushed off from the wall, drifting closer in that unsettling way she had. Like gravity was a suggestion she'd chosen to ignore. "But I can teach you. And lesson one is this: you need to hide what you are, or you'll be dead before sunrise."
Callum looked down at his hands.
They'd changed. Not dramatically—not yet—but enough to notice. The skin had taken on a faint gray tinge, barely visible in the darkness but definitely there. His fingernails had darkened, the beds taking on the color of old bruises. And when he concentrated, he could feel the death qi coiling around him like smoke. Invisible to normal eyes, perhaps, but any cultivator would sense it immediately.
Death qi. Forbidden. Hunted. Killed on sight.
I'm a walking target, he thought. The moment I step out of this mine, every cultivator in the Wastes will know what I am.
"The Ash Cloak," Morrigan said, circling him slowly. Studying him like a sculptor studying marble, deciding where to make the first cut. "It's an old technique. Very old. From before the Covenant System, when cultivators had to be... creative about their survival."
She stopped in front of him, those ancient ember eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
"Death and ash are cousins," she continued. "Fire burns, ash remains. Death is just the end of burning—the final stage of transformation. You wrap your death qi in the memory of flame, and to anyone looking, you're just another fire cultivator. Weak. Unremarkable. Harmless."
"That easy?"
"That hard," she corrected, and there was something almost sympathetic in her voice. Almost. "It takes concentration. Constant, unwavering focus. Slip for even a moment and someone will sense what you really are." Her eyes flared brighter. "But it's that or die. Your choice."
Some choice. Live as a fugitive or die as a target.
"Show me," Callum said.
Morrigan's expression shifted. The ancient weariness was still there, the exhaustion of fifteen thousand years, but beneath it flickered something that might have been approval.
"Close your eyes," she instructed. "Feel your death qi. Not just the power it gives you—the nature of it. What it means. What it is."
Callum closed his eyes. Not that it made any difference in the absolute darkness, but it helped him focus inward. The death qi was there, pulsing through his broken meridians like a second heartbeat. Cold. Patient. It didn't rush or flow like normal qi would. It seeped. Waited. Inevitable.
It tasted like the moment his mother's hand had gone still in his. Like the silence that came after someone took their last breath. Like endings.
"Good," Morrigan said quietly. "Now think about ash. Not fire—fire is too alive, too hungry. Think about ash. What's left when the burning stops. The memory of heat without the heat itself. The ghost of flame."
Callum tried.
The death qi resisted immediately. It wanted to stay what it was—cold and final and absolute. Asking it to become something else felt like trying to convince stone to become water. Fundamentally wrong.
But Callum had spent twenty years forcing his body to do things it didn't want to do. Forcing his mind to accept truths it shouldn't have to. Forcing himself to survive in conditions that should have killed him.
This was just one more impossible thing.
He pushed. Gently at first, then harder. Imagining heat that had cooled. Fire that had died. The gray aftermath of burning.
The death qi... shifted.
Not much. Just a fraction. Just enough to feel different. Less like ending, more like aftermath. Still cold, but a different kind of cold. The cold of dead embers instead of the cold of the grave.
"Better," Morrigan said, and he could hear the approval in her voice now. "Now hold it. Make it natural. Make it so you don't have to think about it every second."
Easier said than done.
The death qi kept trying to slip back to its true nature, like water running downhill. Keeping it wrapped in the memory of ash felt like holding water in cupped hands—possible, technically, but exhausting and ultimately futile.
Sweat beaded on Callum's forehead despite the cold. His concentration wavered.
The death qi snapped back to its natural state like a released bowstring.
"Again," Morrigan said.
Callum gritted his teeth and tried again. And again. Each time, the qi resisted. Each time, it slipped away after a few seconds. His head started to pound, a dull ache building behind his eyes.
This is impossible.
"This is impossible," he said out loud.
"It's necessary," Morrigan corrected. "Again."
"I need to get out of here first—"
"You need to be able to hide first, or getting out won't matter." Her voice went flat. Cold. Final. "The overseers will kill you the moment they sense death qi. Not arrest you. Not question you. Kill you. And they'll be rewarded for it. Again."
Callum tried again.
This time, he held it for almost a minute before his focus finally cracked and the death qi slipped free. Progress. Marginal, painful progress, but progress nonetheless.
"How long did it take you to learn this?" he asked, gasping.
"I didn't need to. I walked the path of ash naturally." She paused, and something flickered across her ancient face. A memory, perhaps. "But I've taught it before. To others who needed to hide. Most of them got it in a few hours."
"Most?"
"The ones who lived."
Fantastic.
Callum tried again. And again. And again. Time lost all meaning in the darkness. Could have been ten minutes. Could have been an hour. The only measure was the growing ache in his skull and the slow, incremental improvement in his control.
Eventually—finally—the Ash Cloak started to feel less like drowning and more like breathing with a weight on his chest.
Uncomfortable. Exhausting. But possible.
"Acceptable," Morrigan finally said. "You won't fool anyone who looks closely, but from a distance, you'll pass for a weak fire cultivator. Maybe."
"Your confidence is inspiring."
"I've been alive fifteen thousand years," she said dryly. "Optimism died somewhere around year three thousand." She gestured at the rubble blocking their escape. "Now. You need to get out of here. And you need to eat."
Callum's stomach twisted. Hunger gnawed at him—when was the last time he'd eaten? Yesterday morning, probably. Watery gruel that barely qualified as food. But there was nothing down here. Just stone and darkness and—
He stopped.
Morrigan was looking at him with those ancient, knowing eyes. And Callum suddenly understood what she meant.
"No."
"Yes."
"There are people buried in that rubble."
"Dead people," Morrigan corrected. "And you're a death cultivator now. This is what you signed up for."
Callum's stomach turned. "I can't just... they were my—"
"They were slaves who would have watched you die without losing sleep over it," Morrigan cut him off. Her voice was brutal. Honest. "You want to survive? You eat. You want power? You consume. That's the path you chose."
"I didn't choose this. I chose not dying."
"Same thing." She drifted closer, her voice dropping to something quiet and dangerous. "Listen carefully, Callum. You're weak. Stage One is nothing—barely more than a mortal with slightly better odds. A stiff wind could kill you. You need to grow stronger, and quickly, or the first real cultivator you meet will gut you for the bounty on your head."
She let that sink in for a moment.
"So you have two choices," she continued. "Consume the dead and become strong enough to survive. Or die with your principles intact, buried in this hole where nobody will ever find you. Which sounds better?"
Callum stared at the rubble. Somewhere under there were the miners he'd worked with for years. Men who'd shared their meager rations when he was too sick to work. Women who'd taught him how to spot unstable supports, how to survive the deep shafts. People who'd shown him small kindnesses in a place that didn't reward kindness.
People.
Dead people now.
His mother's voice echoed in his head, soft and insistent. Survive. Promise me. Survive.
She hadn't said survive cleanly. Hadn't said survive with honor. Just survive.
"How?" Callum asked quietly.
Morrigan's smile was sharp enough to cut stone.
"I'll show you."
They found the first body twenty feet into the rubble.
Callum had to dig for it. His new strength helped—rocks that would have been immovable yesterday shifted with effort now, his Stage One body capable of feats that would have seemed impossible before. But it still took time. Still made his broken ribs scream with every movement. Still left his hands torn and bloody.
The miner's name had been Torrin.
Young. Maybe sixteen. Callum had known him—not well, but enough. The boy hadn't been in the pits long. Still had that dangerous thing called hope in his eyes when he talked about his plans. Saving up enough money to buy his freedom. Maybe becoming a merchant. Getting out of the Wastes.
Hope was for people who could afford to be wrong.
I'm sorry, Callum thought, kneeling beside the corpse. Torrin's eyes were still open, staring at nothing with the particular emptiness that only death could bring. But I need this more than you do.
"Place your hands on his chest," Morrigan instructed, her voice clinical. Professional. "Channel your death qi into the body. Feel for what's left—the spiritual remnant. Everyone leaves something behind when they die. Even mortals. Especially those who die with hope still in their hearts."
Callum placed his hands on Torrin's cold chest. The body was already stiffening, rigor mortis setting in. He pushed his death qi into the corpse, feeling it seep into dead flesh.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then he felt it.
A flicker. Faint, barely there, like the last ember of a dying fire trying desperately not to go out. Torrin's spiritual remnant—the ghost of who he'd been, the echo of a life cut short.
"Pull it out," Morrigan said. "Draw it into yourself."
Callum pulled.
The remnant resisted. It was weak—almost nothing compared to what a cultivator's remnant would be—but it still fought. Still clung desperately to what little existence it had left. Like it knew what was coming. Like it understood what Callum was about to do.
Callum pulled harder.
The remnant came loose with a sensation like tearing cloth. Like ripping away something that was never meant to be separated.
It flowed into him.
The effect was immediate. Warmth spread through Callum's body—not much, just a trickle of spiritual energy. But it was real. Tangible. His Stage One cultivation base deepened slightly, like pouring a cup of water into a bucket that desperately needed filling.
And with the power came the memories.
Fragments. Broken pieces of a life. The last moments—the tunnel collapsing, the sudden terror, the desperate hope that someone would come. The slow, crushing realization that no one was coming. That he was going to die here, alone in the dark, all his dreams of freedom dying with him.
The fading light. The cold. The ending.
Callum gasped and jerked his hands away, his heart hammering.
"It gets easier," Morrigan said. No sympathy in her voice. Just cold, simple fact. "The first few times, the memories hit hard. Eventually, they become background noise. Part of you, but quieter. Manageable."
"He was sixteen," Callum said, and his voice sounded hollow even to his own ears.
"He was dead," Morrigan corrected. "Now he's useful. That's more than most corpses can say."
Callum wanted to throw up. Wanted to scream at her, at himself, at the world that made this necessary. Wanted to rage against the unfairness of it all.
Instead, he stood up and started looking for the next body.
Because Morrigan was right. Torrin was dead. And Callum wasn't.
That was all that mattered.
By the time he'd consumed five corpses, Callum felt different.
Stronger. Not much—they were all mortals, barely any spiritual energy to take—but enough to notice. The hunger in his stomach had shifted from ordinary hunger to something else. Something colder. Something that whispered about power and growth and the endless consumption that death cultivation demanded.
His hands were shaking. His head was full of ghosts—five people's final moments playing on repeat like a performance he couldn't stop watching. Five sets of fear and regret and desperate, futile hope.
Five deaths that were now part of him. Forever.
"That's enough for now," Morrigan said. "Too many at once and you'll lose yourself in their memories. The contamination builds if you consume too quickly. You need to digest what you've taken. Let it settle."
"Does it ever stop?" Callum asked quietly. "The memories?"
"No." Morrigan's voice was gentle. As gentle as someone who'd lived fifteen thousand years could manage. "They fade, but they never disappear completely. Everyone you consume stays with you forever. Their deaths become part of yours. That's the price of power on this path. You carry their endings until you reach your own."
Callum looked at his hands. Blood-stained. Gray-skinned. The fingernails dark as old bruises. Shadows clinging to his fingers like they belonged there.
Twenty years as a slave. Twenty years of being nothing. Less than nothing. Property.
Now he was something. Something terrible. Something monstrous.
But something.
"How do I get out of here?" he asked.
Morrigan smiled, and there was something almost fond in her expression. Almost.
"Same way you got in. Dig."
It took hours.
Hours of moving rocks with his new strength, his Stage One body making the impossible merely difficult. Hours of ignoring his broken ribs and bleeding hands. Hours of maintaining the Ash Cloak, feeling it slip and catching it again, over and over until his head pounded like someone was driving nails through his skull.
But eventually—finally—he broke through.
Fresh air hit him like a physical blow.
Not actually fresh, of course. This was the Blackvein Pits—"fresh" meant coal dust and volcanic ash instead of pure suffocation. But after hours buried in the collapse, breathing air that tasted like death and stone, it felt like paradise.
Callum crawled out into shaft six on his hands and knees, every muscle screaming in protest. Emergency glowstones cast everything in sickly yellow light, making shadows stretch and twist in unsettling ways. The tunnel was empty. Abandoned. The other miners had evacuated hours ago, leaving their dead behind.
Standard procedure.
He was alone.
Callum stood up slowly, every movement an exercise in pain management. His slave clothes—already worn and patched—were torn and bloody now. His face was covered in coal dust and dried blood. He looked like he'd crawled out of his own grave.
Not far from the truth, really.
"Now what?" he asked.
Morrigan materialized beside him, her form solidifying slightly now that they were out of the collapse. Still bound to him. Still watching him with those ancient, knowing eyes.
"Now you decide what kind of death cultivator you're going to be," she said. "The kind that hides and survives by staying small? Or the kind that takes what they want?"
Callum thought about Overseer Kaelen. About the Blackvein Consortium and their casual cruelty. About every person who'd ever looked at him like he was dirt. Less than dirt. A thing to be used and discarded.
He thought about power. About freedom. About never being property again.
About making them regret every moment they'd treated him as less than human.
"I'm going to survive," he said quietly. "And then I'm going to make them regret it."
Morrigan's grin was all teeth and old violence and the promise of things to come.
"Good answer."