Tenebres had little chance to defend himself when Kellen and his enforcers burst into his little bedcave, ropes in hand, as he was sound asleep.

Yet just an hour earlier, he'd been tossing and turning, awake and uncomfortable and unable to get any real rest.

It wasn’t his hard pallet, or his empty stomach, or the damp, stale air of his little bedcave that kept him awake. He had lived with those discomforts for so long, they had long since faded into the background.

It wasn’t anxiety that he had been caught snooping, either. He was convinced that Kellen was too arrogant to think that any of his good little sheep had stepped out of line. The cult leader would never suspect any of them of breaking into his personal chambers, much less doing so to peek through the books he kept poorly hidden in his study. Kellen’s paranoia stayed focused on the outside, towards the wardens and knights that he claimed hunted for this little cult.

After all, those claims were such a good way to ensure no one argued with their isolation in the underground compound.

Sure, Tenebres had nearly gotten caught yesterday, while everyone else was cloistered, praying futilely for the end of winter to bring with it the fall of the Realm, but Kellen’s thugs were more tough than observant. His first couple close-calls had kept him up with fear, but after months without being noticed, Tenebres knew with all the surety of a sixteen year old that the cult’s supposed leaders were far too self-absorbed to notice his little intrusions.

He wasn’t even trapped in consciousness with memories of his old life, as still happened to him occasionally. Those nights where he lay awake, tortured by half-remembered sunshine, friends whose faces he couldn’t quite recall, and long gone camping trips with his father, hadn’t quite faded entirely, but they became harder to remember with each passing month. They weren't strong enough to haunt him that night.

No, his fitful sleep tonight was brought on by dreams. Surreal, confusing, and lifelike, the boy found himself starting awake again and again, gasping in deep breaths, as if he had been submerged in those odd, distant visions and barely came up for air in time.

In one, he had been pacing back and forth in a room far nicer than any he had ever lived in–far nicer than any he had ever even seen. It must’ve been something lingering in his imagination from the storybooks he had read when he was younger, in his old life. In the dream, he was anxious, fretting about the lateness of the night, just as he was in real life, but that version of himself was kept awake by a different kind of stress. The stress of an impending deadline, of realizing he was stuck on a road and not liking the direction it was taking him.

Well. That was nothing new, was it? Tenebres had been trapped for years. But still. The dream was odd. Why would he care about something as aristocratic and pointless as a duel?

In the next, he had been strolling through the night in a village not so unlike his old home. It was nicer though, more peaceful and plentiful than Culles ever was. This version of him wasn’t nervous about being up so late. This him was eager for the adventure he had planned the next day, to somewhere called the barrens, and he knew he needed to get to sleep. But he was too busy enjoying the clean chill of the night air, the way the moon sat full and bright and clear overhead.

Was he dreaming about what he could have had, if his family hadn’t followed Kellen? No. This village wasn’t Culles. It wasn’t even Geltis, the next closest settlement he had visited once. This was somewhere else entirely, somewhere he had never been. But then, why did it feel so real?

Duels and barrens, noble worries and adventurous excitement. It was like his dreams were giving him glimpses into other people's lives entirely.

Back in his dark, dank bedcave, laying on his crooked wooden pallet, his threadbare blanket thrown aside in frustration, Tenebres shook his head, trying to dislodge the phantom dreams. It seemed to work at first, the fragments of those other selves tumbling away into the sepulchral darkness, but as soon as he laid his head back down on the bundled up tunic he used as a pillow, he was somewhere else, someone else, yet again.

This him was used to being up late. If anything, he was happier that way. The night brought peace to the bustling city outside, and more often than not, it also brought fog off the bay, covering the dirty slums and turning them into something almost mystical. Tenebres knew this somehow, within his dream, despite having never been to a city, nor having ever seen the ocean. This him lay on a soft hay mattress, and when he decided to go stalk the nighttime streets, he stretched muscles stronger and more languid than his had ever been, even before three years spent living almost entirely underground, seeing the sun perhaps once a week. Tomorrow night, he had a meeting, but tonight was all his.

In the dream, Tenebres slid off a bed that reminded him of his old home, and lit a lantern. The light allowed him to see his reflection in a small mirror across the room. But this him wasn’t a scrawny boy trying his hardest to be pretty. This him wasn’t pale and furitive and jumpy. This him wasn’t even a him.

It was a girl that looked back from that mirror, a powerfully built girl, her body blending strength and softness into a beauty Tenebres had never imagined. Her skin was a deep purple, her eyes a brilliant violet that glowed slightly in the dim room. Suddenly he knew this was someone else, someone real.

The girl grinned, maybe at her own reflection, but it was like she was looking at him, and she winked playfully, and the dream fell once more to tatters…

But this time, Tenebres didn’t wake up. He finally fell asleep, a small smile on his face, and his last thoughts were of that girl.

Is this what a good dream is like? he thought as he drifted off.

And so he had no chance to notice when the little curtain of his bedcave was pulled aside only moments later to reveal the angry rictus of Kellen's face.

#

Tenebres struggled against his bonds, but he knew it was futile. He was scrawny for his age, but even if he wasn’t, it would take a powerful gift to break free of the coarse, thick ropes. The chanting continued unabated around him. The cult members were used to their sacrifices trying to struggle, and they knew its futility just as well as he did. He was already on the ritual altar–if he hadn’t broken free when they were carrying him here, he wouldn’t succeed now.

All his writhing succeeded in doing was turning him on his side, pointing his face towards two of the cultists standing near the chanting circle. They clearly weren’t high level enough to participate in the ritual itself, so they stood with the other low level cult members, their eyes downcast and their hoods covering their faces. Still, Tenebres recognized them. The shapes of his parents, even under the loose robes, were engraved in his soul as clearly as any gift.

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If he wasn’t gagged just as thoroughly as he was tied, Tenebres might have called out to them, pled for them to help him. But deep down, he knew that would be a waste of time. It wasn’t that they couldn’t see the desperation in their son’s eyes–they just didn’t care. The cult had taken everything from his parents in the course of their induction. What little worldly possessions they had. Their home. Their name. Their will. And now, apparently, their son. If they hadn’t fought then, they certainly wouldn’t now.

Tenebres grimaced and squirmed more intensely as he felt the magic in the air around him begin to shift and warp, reacting to the cult’s chants. His thrashing threatened to bring him to the edge of the flat stone slab he had been placed on, and he began to try to writhe towards it, every muscle in his skinny body flexing with the effort. He could tell, from the crushing weight of the magic as much as from the increasingly impassioned voices of the chanters, that the ritual was reaching its peak. Perhaps, if he could get off of the altar just as the ritual concluded, he could spoil the magic. A hard sprawl on the rock floor would hurt, but it would be better than being sacrificed, right?

No luck. All his thrashing did was earn him the attention of the cult’s patriarch. Rough hands grabbed the boy by the shoulders and flipped him onto his back, once more in the center of the crude stone altar.

“None of that, boy,” Kellen’s voice was rough, and reeked of the pungent tack he was constantly chewing. The patriarch was not an impressive man under his vestments, his face as sunken as his body was sallow, but he boasted the gift of might, and his thin arms were like bars of iron slamming down on Tenebres’s shoulders. “It’ll only hurt a moment. And just think. You’ll be part of something truly great!”

“HMMHUMFOUU!” Tenebres made every effort to cuss the man out through the disgusting rag stuffed in his mouth. The result was unintelligible, but he could tell that Kellen understood from the way the chief cultist’s eyes went hard.

“Well enough. Get it all out, boy,” Kellen growled through a rictus smile. He leaned lower, so his oily whisper didn’t carry beyond Tenebres’s ears. “This is what you get for poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

The chanters were practically screaming the sybillant words of their unnatural ritual now, and even to Tenebres’s unenhanced senses, the weft and warp of the magic in the air was sickening. The boy made every effort to choke back the nausea it inspired–the last thing he wanted was to die choking on his own vomit.

Oh, who was he kidding? The last thing he wanted was to die at all, but that choice had been taken out of his hands. Tenebres was sixteen, old enough to receive his gifts, but no Divine Archetype had yet carved their power into his soul. He hadn’t even been able to get a relic. Kellen and his cohort carefully controlled the distribution of gifts among the underlings of the cult. Couldn’t risk a sacrifice being able to call up a gout of flame or conjure a weapon to escape, now could they?

Bastards.

That was it. That was when Tenebres gave up. He couldn’t escape on his own, not without the very power Kellen had denied him. His parents certainly wouldn’t help. They had given up long ago, even before they first met the charismatic man who asked them to come to a meeting in the woods. Even if the ropes disappeared at that moment, Kellen still stood over Tenebres, boasting the power of an Initiate, a level no one else in the cult could match. The magic continued to stir around Tenebres, thick and oily, like he was immersed in a pool of slugs, all sliding against his body.

He felt it when the magic finally violated him and began to sink into his skin. There was no need for Kellen to bother with something as crude as the ritual knife Tenebres had seen him use with other sacrifices. This was an important ritual, an artificial thinning of the impermeable barrier between the Realm and the Void. Tenebres wasn’t supposed to know that, of course, but that had never stopped him before.

Ever since he was young, Tenebres had a hunger for knowledge. Prior to his parents giving up their lives to a backwoods, idiotic cult, he had planned to one day take the Mage’s exams. It didn’t matter how poor you were if you had a gift for alchemy or artifice. He could’ve provided for his family, given them comfortable lives. Instead, they listened to Kellen’s bullshit. After they moved into the reclusive, half-buried commune the cult inhabited, Tenebres sated his thirst of knowledge the only way he could–by sneaking in the chief cultist’s rarely used study to read through his books himself.

Not that any of that mattered now. The books were thick and complex, but from Tenebres’s understanding, the ritual was an attempt to beckon the power the tomes referred to as the Void. The energy of it already filled the subterranean ritual chamber, and it was even now working to consume his soul and the vast magic inherent to all living humans. The ritual called for a very specific sacrifice, an unalloyed soul, one strong enough to bear gifts but that had not yet received any. He’d die, consumed by the energy of the Void, but in his place would be… something. Some remnant of the Void. Tenebres hadn’t parsed out the book fast enough to learn exactly what, but it couldn’t be good.

He could feel it happening, the corrupted magic seeping into his blood and flesh and bone like hot tar. Finally, he screamed. And screamed, and screamed, his gag unable to muffle the depths of his pain. Across the cavern, unnoticed, his parents flinched–but still, they took no action. As the burning, searing pain rampaged through his body, Tenebres felt the magic changing him. His once olive skin became tinged with an unnatural gray, even as his hair bleached to a dead, bone white. His eyes began to glow with a blood red light, startling enough to make even Kellen take a step back in surprise.

Finally, the pain began to coalesce in his chest. His body ravaged, the magic began to consume his soul. Tenebres was past screaming now, his back arched into an unnatural bow from pain that felt like it would never end. He began to long for the embrace of death, the cessation of that horrible, soul-rending agony.

And then, just like that, it stopped.

And Tenebres was still alive.

His body dropped down to the slab, every muscle giving out at once. He tried desperately to draw breath, his body screaming for air, but the gag kept him from the deep gasps he needed. Sweat beaded on his skin, emphasizing his ghoulish pallor and matting down his mussed white hair.

For a long moment, the ritual chamber was silent but for his ragged breaths. Even Kellen had no idea what happened. That confirmed what Tenebres had always suspected, that the patriarch didn’t fully understand the magic he was trying to abuse anymore than Tenebres did.

Kellen had bound him only with rope, not wasting time with any ritual or item capable of dampening gifts. After all, Tenebres did not have any gifts.

Or at least, he hadn’t, not until the cult had engraved the gift of the void onto a soul that had somehow survived the process. The pain had receded, leaving behind a vague sense of potential, of power. Gifts were, by and large, supposed to be intuitive to use due to their connection to the souls they were carved into. Tenebres reached for that power instinctively, and it responded to his thoughts.

[Void Invocation] activated

The next screams in the little stone room did not come from Tenebres.

#

Leagues away from that underground sacrificial chamber, sitting under a broad oak tree, a tall, slender man looked up sharply from the book he was reading. His eyes, an eerie shade of yellow, locked on some distant point in the sky. There was a problem, visible to his senses like a knot in a carefully sewn bolt of cloth, though few others in all the Realm would be able to perceive such a thing.

“Something’s changed.”

The empty air around him did not respond. His eyes were a warm hazel when he stood, snapping his book shut with a sigh. He suspected he would not have another chance to read it for a long while.

Then he began to walk.