Kai opened his eyes. For a moment, it seemed as if he’d awakened from a dream.
The manor’s massive wooden doors stood before him. He felt like it had been forever since he’d seen them, but the reason eluded him. The dim candlelight flickered against the stone walls within. He exhaled, running a trembling hand through his silver hair, his breath still unsteady from whatever had just happened.
"What? I could’ve sworn... I was...?"
His gaze snapped back toward the ruined city.
A cold, unshakable feeling settled in his chest. Something else was out there, watching. Not the dead that now answered to him, not the silent ruins or the ever-present veil of necrotic energy suffocating the city.
Something else.
A shiver ran down his spine as he clenched his fist, fighting back the rising paranoia.
Raltia stood nearby, unmoving, her ever-present gaze locked on him.
Kai found her presence both comforting and unnerving at the same time.
The sigil on her forehead still pulsed with faint energy, the echoes of his repeated failures lingered in his mind. She felt different now.
More aware.
More powerful.
He wanted to believe it was a success, but something in him hesitated. Had he truly understood the meaning behind the sigil? Or had he changed her in ways he couldn’t yet comprehend?
A low growl rumbled from Voltis, the arcane wolf. He jumped out of Kai’s shadow for the first ever time without prompting, hackles raised, staring beyond the ruined city as though sensing something just beyond the veil of reality.
Kai turned sharply, searching the shadows. A flicker, something shifting just at the edge of his vision. His instincts screamed danger. Not a mindless undead, not a ghost, but something that did not belong in this world. Then, a whisper of sorts, low, distorted, and filled with something ancient.
A language he did not understand but felt in his bones.
As the feeling faded from his mind and body, he crossed the threshold of the manor.
A surge of mana exploded around him.
Colourful specks of magic burst into existence all throughout the entryway. The specs swirled around the room like a storm of coloured lightning. The air hummed with mana, and from within the chaotic display, Orlin appeared, stepping out as though he had merely walked through a door rather than emerging from a rift of energy.
The surrounding magic moved unnaturally. Not just a heap of raw mana, but something more refined and structured. For the briefest moment, scarred hands clawed at the edges of his portal. As the rift shrank, the hands pulled away, lest they be severed as the thread between two worlds closed.
The old man grinned. "A wonderful job, Kai Tensen. I expected that to take you a year, but it only took twenty-three weeks, four days, six hours, eleven minutes, and some seconds."
Kai, exhausted but victorious, turned to him with a blank stare. "You were counting?"
"I’m always counting. Every second of every day. Helps keep my mental faculties."
Kai frowned. "I thought it was crazy that you counted how long you waited for me to come back from those adventurers, but that’s insane."
"No, Kai Tensen," Orlin corrected, his tone eerily calm. "I do it to prevent insanity."
Kai hesitated. He wasn’t sure if the answer made him feel better or worse.
Then, Orlin’s expression shifted into something more serious. "Now, my disciple..." A sharp grin spread across his face. "Your real lessons begin."
Orlin led Kai to the depths of the manor’s underground chambers. He walked slowly, as if admiring the lamplight keeping the stairs dimly lit, the cobwebs in the rafters, and the corrupted mana in the air. The deeper they went, the more the walls seemed to breathe, pulsing in response to their presence. The corridor smelled of dust, old parchment, and something distinctly arcane.
They passed remnants of past failures, shattered glass vessels, faded inscriptions in dead languages on stone slabs, and skeletal remains of those who had tried before and failed. Kai swallowed, forcing himself not to look too closely at the empty eye sockets staring back at him.
’Am I not the first one Orlin has brought here?’
At the chamber’s centre stood an ornate pedestal. Upon it rested a gemstone of deep violet, swirling with unknown power. It gleamed under the dim light, not reflecting, but absorbing the illumination around it.
"Sit," Orlin commanded, motioning toward a stone-carved bench. "This will be your first real trial."
Kai sat, his instincts screaming at him to be cautious. "What is it?"
"This," Orlin gestured to the gem, "will hold your life essence. You must draw it from yourself, thread by thread, without tearing it too quickly or too much at once."
Kai hesitated. "And if I do?"
"You die. Or worse."
Kai swallowed. "Right. Of course."
"Do you still wish to continue?"
"Will this help me survive?"
"Yes."
"Then why question it?"
Taking a deep breath, Kai reached inward.
He felt for the energies inside himself. Life essence, mana, and something else. A soul, maybe.
The life essence in particular felt warm and full of energy. Like the very pulse of existence.
He imagined drawing it outward, like pulling loose cotton from clothing.
The moment he did, pain flooded his body and mind.
Kai’s body convulsed, every nerve burning like melting sand.
He held his breath as he clenched his teeth so hard they might crack. His vision blurred and a sensation similar to static electricity crept along his skin. For the briefest second, he saw himself, an outsider looking in, like his soul was being yanked from his vessel too quickly.
He barely heard Orlin’s voice over the roaring in his ears. "Slowly, Kai! Control it! If you let too much go, it will not return! You will never return!"
Through gritted teeth, Kai forced himself to slow down, to channel the pain into precision. Thread by thread, he siphoned his life essence into the gem. The violet crystal pulsed, absorbing the energy greedily, and the moment his connection to it solidified, something inside him changed.
Minutes felt like hours. When it was over, he collapsed to the ground, chest heaving.
Orlin chuckled. "Congratulations. You are now a little bit harder to kill. Anything shy of divine magic can wound you, even render you powerless, but cannot kill you. As long as this vessel exists, you cannot recklessly drain yourself. A safeguard, if you will."
Kai barely had the strength to nod.
But something was wrong.
He felt... different. His undead hesitated, their connection to him shifting in some way he couldn’t yet define. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the smooth surface of the pedestal—his eyes held a faint, eerie glow.
Orlin studied him carefully, his smirk never wavering. "As I said, though," he continued, "if this vessel, or phylactery, as you may call it, breaks, the effects will be irreversible. You will either die instantly... or become something else entirely."
Kai’s breath was still ragged, but he managed to rasp out, "Something else?"
Orlin’s grin widened. "I suppose you’ll just have to make sure that never happens. It wouldn’t be pleasant, I assure you."
A cold chill ran through him. He wasn’t sure if he was still fully human anymore.