The damp chill of the descending stair pressed in on Otoku, each breath laced with the scent of dust, stone, and secrets left to rot in silence. The deeper he went, the tighter the walls seemed to draw, as though the academy itself sought to consume him. Torches flickered in their iron cradles, flames twisting like agitated spirits eager to escape.
He stepped into the archives.
A long table dominated the center of the chamber—its surface warped, darkened with time, and marred by things best left unnamed. Behind it stood Veyra, the High Elder of Ashveil. Her jade mask caught the firelight with an almost mocking gleam, though it was her gaze—cool, razor-sharp beneath the mask—that truly held him.
"Today," she said, her voice steady and low, "you learn the cost of power."
She reached down beside her. A cage, small and rusted. From it, she lifted a rat—frail, trembling, its dull fur clinging to its frame, eyes wide and knowing. The kind of knowing that only prey carried.
"Voidcraft is no gentle art," Veyra continued, pressing the creature into his hands. "It demands blood."
The rat squirmed in his grip. Otoku closed his eyes briefly.
And the echoes came.
Faint, fragmented glimpses of past loops. Different versions of himself, different outcomes… but the same lesson repeated in shadowed variations.
He opened his eyes.
The weight of silence draped itself across his shoulders like a cloak. Cold. Absolute.
"Do it," Veyra said.
A single breath in. One out.
Void energy stirred beneath his skin, dark veins threading from his palm, branching outward like ink dropped in still water. The rat quivered. Otoku raised his hand, voice barely above a whisper—but each word from the Codex struck like a bell in the deep.
"By shadow's breath and night's embrace, I reshape your form in endless space."
The moment cracked.
Power surged from his core. His fear, caged and silenced, slipped behind his focus.
The rat's scream twisted—bending into something unnatural—then vanished altogether. In its place lay a creature sculpted in obsidian and glass, its frame sleek, its eyes flickering with voidfire. Claws curled where paws had been. The stillness that followed felt earned, not given.
Otoku's breath hitched.
He met Veyra's gaze. "It's… alive."
She stepped forward, crouching beside the newborn construct. "Cuspis," she murmured. "A needle of power. A vessel of potential pain."
He hesitated. "What happens to its soul?"
Her mask tilted ever so slightly.
"Soul is matter," she replied. "We shape it as we do flesh. But remember this—every creation begins with destruction. Every gift extracts its price."
Otoku stood motionless, watching as Cuspis took its first steps. Its glass-like paws clicked softly against the stone floor, each sound a whisper of the road ahead.
The lesson, he realized, was only beginning.