In the next moment, he roughly released me, then with a flare of his midnight-blue magic, my vision was obscured.
The dreamscape slipped away.
Reality came crashing back.
Panting,my eyes snapped open, and I frantically scanned my surroundings.
The Ruminat hut.
Of course.
That was where I’d been before I’d given myself over to his pull on our Spiral Thorn-induced connection and allowed him to drag me into that dreamscape.
Everyone thought I came here to magically meditate and recenter, recalibrate, as was the purpose of performing a Ruminat for magic-wielders. They even thought I’d been doing it more often because of my training where I’d touched high-level power.
But the truth was, I’d been coming to the huts here to conduct research.
Each hut was warded to account for magical eruptions even up to Celestial power levels, and I’d then added my own illusion spell, along with a new concealment tactic I’d developed recently thanks to a combo of my training with Dad and Mom, then also stuff I’d learned in myGrimoire Creationclass. I called itNull Mirage.It basically enabled me to pull on the essence of what I was, a magical oddity, an existential anomaly—death but not dead, straddling the line between those, yet not fully part of either—and create a null energy field that meant I couldn’t be felt on the outside all the while I had it erected, like I wasn’teven here on the plane. It had enabled me to carry on with my experiments into Ruxnoth’s magic, the connection he’d forced between us, all of that, without anyone feeling it.
It was easier for my dad to conceal all his experiments because, yes, he had way more experience than me, but also because he could invoke massive power to create illusions and wards and whatnot to hide what he was working on from the world outside, and people wouldn’t freak out. In fact, given his role in the supernatural world, him unleashing great power was expected.
Not fordeath incarnate, though. Me—the one they were all scared of.
He’d been investigating Ruxnoth’s power. He’d also managed to go beyond just determining how many necromancers were down there with that fucker. Dad had told me during our last training session that he’d even managed to figure out each one’s specific power levels, too. Knowing what I did about Ruxnoth and how he operated, it really seemed like he wanted to guide Dad in that direction. Because why else allow that intel to be discoverable? He wanted Dad to try to siphon them. Because he knew it would kill him.
But he also didn’t want me distressed. So that was the nuclear-option. Why have that at all? There was only one reason. Ruxnoth must’ve discovered that Dad had a means to stopme.Given what I’d invoked during Risen Reckoning, I really doubted that involved our power clashing directly. There was something else to it. I knew Dad wouldn’t hurt me like that, but there was still something in play there that I wasn’t privy to—some fail-safe concerning me. Something that could ruin Ruxnoth’s plans for me, for us.Urgh,us.
Whatever was in play, I couldn’t allow it to be invoked. Because the way to destroy Sanctus was by my hand. Only once Ruxnoth transferred the weight of holding it up to me, likehe’d wanted this entire time due to my everlasting nature. And I’d found a way to do it without hurting the necromancers. It would give us the chance to see if any of them could be saved. And even if they couldn’t be, they didn’t have to die. I mean, I knew well what it was like to be manipulated by Ruxnoth. If that was what’d happened to them, they were victims, and they deserved a chance to recover from that. They deserved care and understanding, not being wiped out. And it would also take a massive weight off Dad finally. He’d no longer be considered The Last Necromancer, the one all of that fell upon. He could have some peace. Even with me now trained, we all knew I’d never be accepted or trusted to take his place in that respect. But otherpurenecromancers, those who weren’t unkillable like me, could be.
As for Ruxnoth himself, I stared at the shimmering shard of midnight-blue and amber power that I’d been testing earlier before I’d been pulled into that dreamscape. And despite my whole body being ice-cold and shuddering due to the asshole denying me that warmth—and making me fucking need it physiologically—I smiled.
Because not only had I discovered a means toward ending this upset to my death-cold normal, I’d also found a way to end him. It involved me dragging him into the Valley of the Dead, death tethering him, but then breaking it the same time that I undid his ability to warp things. Because he could technically fuck with the Valley and alter things currently, that could severely destabilize it. But not if I reverse-engineered that ability.
Something I was close to doing.
But I also needed his blood. And an expert spellwriter.
I’d managed to isolate the properties, the bits and pieces involved in both theliving warmth spellthat he performed on me—even those that he’d tried to hide with his transmutationconcealment, making them appear as something else within my own fucking body.
But I didn’t understand how to weave the different threads involved, or how exactly they came together in what precise configuration in order to essentially… move the pieces around to my liking and transcend their intention—to unweave that ability of his in real-time, to nullify it.
I’d just been able to extract all the pieces in a sort of random way, because as I’d done that, they’d… lost their shape, in a sense. So piecing it together, yeah, that sort of nuance and intricacy, the depth of very specific knowledge involved… I needed an expert. Somebody used to complicated spellworkandsomebody who had dealt with the complexities of Celestial power and its different forms.
Either Ketheron or Kai Hunter.
I hid the shard away with my Wraith frost again, then snapped my fingers and brought my new grimoire I’d fashioned just for this Ruxnoth research into being. I used my amber magic to scrawl my latest findings, determinations, and next necessary steps across the pages. Then I dematerialized it as well.
With a shaky sigh, I rose to my feet in the Ruminat hut.
That awful cold feeling…fuck, it was really doing a number on me.
I needed… I needed to get to Ketheron.
He was the one I’d seek out.
Kai was… complicated. His close relationship with Dad was worrying—there was no way he’d keep this off his radar. Not to mention, his connections to so many beings in supernatural governance. As if I could risk that.
Ketheron was different. And so was Ambrose, who’d no doubt be with him.
