A cold purpose settled over me as I pricked each of the tips of my toes one by one with my crude tool. The small stabs of pain were almost imperceptible, felt with a clinical detachment as though I were observing someone else’s ordeal. I had committed myself to this course, as imprudent as it might seem from the outside, and now, I would see it through to its end.

My ability to join a magical tradition that promises a significant amount of power upfront, is well defined and has a complete legacy behind it, with only a measure of inherited knowledge and a sharp piece of porcelain to cut myself with would make one feel as if I was going for a low-laying fruit. After all, how hard could it be if the only real prerequisite seems to be for one not to be squeamish?

One would be wrong in assuming so, however.

If becoming a blood mage was easy, the world would have been lousy with them. Instead, they are a small faction, largely hidden away from the public eye, and only seen in numbers during wars of vampiric clans.

As I finished drawing opening the tiny blood vessels in the tips of my toes, I opened my robes further and moved up my calf, double-checking every point I am to poke at with Anetta, and the map we both kept in the forefront of our minds.

This map, detailing all 211 points that must be bled for the ritual to succeed, was the first reason blood mages were so rare. The knowledge was fiercely guarded, a closely held secret passed down through the clans, known only to those who had already proven themselves, or whose loyalties have been assured. Without it, attempting the ritual would be nothing short of suicidal. Each point was a carefully selected node where the flow of life and magic converged, and to miss even one could mean the difference between gaining power and losing everything.

I was glad that I haven’t eaten before setting about doing this. As stubbornly cold as I was being about the procedure, it truly was gruesome business. I couldn’t guarantee that I could keep the contents of my stomach I have eaten beforehand.

“You know… I keep trying to figure out what I would do if a guy walked into my life, slapped my abusive caretaker with a stack of bills to secure my services as a maid of sorts, fed me, and then proceeded to sit on a bed and cut himself all over,” Anetta said. Referencing Yalla, who sat just steps away, her back to us as she ate her meal—honouring my request to take her time with it.

I huffed out a short breath, a flicker of dry amusement breaking through as I appreciated her attempt to distract me from my grisly work.

“And…?”

“I don’t know…nothing really prepared me for something that weird. Screaming seems appropriate.”

“Magic, darling, it moves the goal post for what qualifies as ‘weird’ to a whole new realm,” I said. “Besides, witches hardly have a leg to stand on if they’re trying to criticise other traditions for being uncouth or ‘too much.’ If I’m reading what you sent me correctly, a lot of their rituals include chanting and nudity in motion, despite not even requiring most of it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she admitted. “Even so, I can’t help but find the optics of everything that happened just today funny. From the moment you stepped through the gates, it’s been one oddity after another, and like you said, it’s not even quite noon yet. You seem at war with the concept of ‘ordinary.’”

‘She wasn’t wrong,’ I mused, pricking another spot just left of my kneecap. Though I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to be eccentric. I’ve simply taken what the world has thrown at me and leaned into my strengths, trying to tease out the best outcome.

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I lost track of time as I fell into a rhythmic pattern, methodically pricking each designated spot on my skin. I pulled my robes open further, eventually discarding them, leaving me in nothing but a pair of modest, old-fashioned undergarments. The tiny droplets of blood that welled up from each prick trickled down my skin, drying into grim, sinister streaks. My body was marked with a network of brownish stains, giving me a rusted appearance, while the growing pool of blood soaking into the coarse sheets beneath me only added to the macabre ambiance.

My breath grew ragged as I bled from over two hundred tiny cuts, my hands trembling with the strain. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to focus despite the growing haze in my vision. My heart pounded fiercely in my chest, its frantic rhythm echoing the rapid, uneven cadence of my breath.

Blood mages perceive the world differently. Their minds don’t dwell in their bodies, only turning to their souls when drawing and relaying the required energy for spellcasting. Detached from their flesh, they view the world from a deeper vantage point behind their eyes. They are true soul entities, puppeteering their flesh-suits and their vital fluids—a necessity for their signature magics. After all, you wouldn’t be able to do much if your spell liquifies your body or deprives it of needed blood for functioning.

This brought me to the second, and most challenging barrier to becoming a blood mage—a profound soul awareness. Achieving this level of understanding is incredibly difficult, not easily attained through mere guidance or alchemical drafts, at least to my admittedly limited knowledge.

The Entity that sent me to this world was right in saying that I was to treasure the experience of spending time as a free soul, independent of my body. As brief as it was, it has given me something that may be impossible to replicate through any number of perception-altering drafts or magical lecturing—the intuitive understanding of how to move and exist beyond the limits of the physical form. I don’t think my approach—of fully dying and then being revived is part of any conventional training or educational method.

I gripped the crude tool in my blood-soaked hand, its handle slick with sweat and crimson. After mapping my skin with a series of tiny, bloody punctures, the tool felt heavy and cumbersome. Each mark was a precise anchor point for the soul tendrils to attach themselves, bridging the gap between my soul and body.

The only task remaining was the final, decisive cut—a wound that would bleed me to the brink of death. As I approached that critical point, my soul would instinctively flare, unleashing its reserves of aether in a frantic, uncontrolled surge to protect its vessel. My role would be to seize and anchor these threads of aether to the points I marked, making the connection permanent. I was reasonably confident in my ability to accomplish this.

The instructions made it clear: my first act of blood magic—reclaiming the lost blood—should feel as instinctive as breathing. A blood mage’s true mastery lies in controlling their own blood. After all, the entire tradition revolves around the mastery of one’s own flesh.

I closed my eyes and drew a deep, steadying breath, allowing my trembling body to find stillness. I let my mind descend into that familiar, ethereal realm where my soul resides—a place beyond the confines of flesh, where my true essence exists, independent of its vessel.

It was exactly as I recalled: a glowing, spherical core, like a small sun, surrounded by a semi-transparent aura that perfectly outlined my nearly naked form. It seemed like a blueprint for how my body should look. The soft, distant echoes of my body’s functions—breathing and heartbeat—were clear in my mind, yet they felt worlds away.

I inhaled sharply and willed my hand to move and drag the jagged piece of ceramic across the forearm of my dominant arm, slicing through skin and tearing into veins.

At that moment, an intrusive dark joke crossed my mind: How ironic would it be if I died here, all because the bits of knowledge Anetta scoured from my mental library were incomplete or unreliable?

…

Yet, nothing happened. My arm felt as though it was held in place by an invisible vice, immovable and unresponsive.

A sudden burst of warmth surged through my face, tendrils of it questing through my body before one of them brushed against my brain. As if a hunting pack that has found its prey, the rest immediately changed direction and drilled into my head.

I rushed back into full awareness and snapped my eyes open.

Yalla, her cheeks and lips smeared in my blood, was sitting in my lap, keeping a white-knuckled grip on my hand holding my cutting tool and kissing me deeply. My mind was boiling. A thousand emotions raging through it. Questions bubbling to the surface and dying with a pop. What was she doing?! Why was she doing it?!

Her silver eyes fluttered open, radiant, glowing with an inner fire.

“What the fuck?!” Anetta growled. “Wasn’t she supposed to be magically neutered by that church ritual?”

Yalla’s finger stroked my jawline with an unsettling tenderness, as though she were a lover.

“I could no longer remain passive,” she murmured, her voice a velvet caress. “The torment was too exquisite to ignore.”

Her gaze locked onto me. “Your emotions are a maelstrom of joy, love, loss, grief, and fury, poised to erupt. Yet somehow leashed and repressed. Such monstrous will…” she trailed off, shuddering in pleasure, as if high on whatever she was feeling emanating from me.

Her eyes blazed like silvery suns, their blinding light searing into me. “Set your passions free,” she decreed in a voice that seemed to be a chorus of discordant tones.

Her lips continued to move, but the sound was lost to me. Blood thundered in my ears like a relentless waterfall, and darkness gathered at the edges of my vision, pressing in like a predator hunting for weakness.