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Netherflame erupted, a tiny flame Gwen cradled carefully when she lowered it to the sigil.

Violet, bright and cold, crawled across the drawing. From one symbol to the next, a cascading ignition started slow, and then picked up speed, until the whole room glowed with a violet fire. Soul deep, the glow pulse, the desire to break free and find its subjects a hunger Orpheus felt mirrored in the thrum of his blood.

Beside him, he watched the same reaction overcome Gwen, the hood of her pale eyes falling, the depth of her breath going thin.

She could feel it. Just like him.

He reached into his pocket and drew the vial of Gwen’s blood free.

“Wait—” Gwen said when he unstopped the cap. “How do you have that?”

“It’s alright,” Orpheus said, then tipped the bottle over so a drop fell from the lip.

Blood and violet, silver and flame. The blood hit the floor and the sigil erupted, cold fire rolling across the obsidian stones directly for Gwen.

“Orpheus,” she said, voice shaking. “What is this?” Then the fire reached her, and there were no words left for Gwen to say.

She screamed, fire crawling over her knees to sink into her skin. The sigil flared again, a violet light emerging beneath Gwen’s flesh, an unearthly phosphorescence that lit her up like a wick. It barely lasted a moment, spell searing through her blood until the connection to the sigil was made, then her hands hit the floor at the exact moment Orpheus bit into his scarred wrist and opened his vein.

Another drop of blood, another flare of fire. And he’d been here before, a long time ago. Under the scope of the hermit’s care, subject to an experiment he’d had no say in. The only difference was that the hermits had given him his magic and Orpheus…Orpheus was taking Gwen’s.

“My magic,” she whispered, sinking towards the sigil, “you’re taking it.”

Gwen collapsed atop the floor, inches from the sigil, fingers reaching like she might trace it. Her eyes were wet when Orpheus met them, empty of the pale blue that had marked her of the Rim, blown gray like a black and white copy, mouth opening as she struggled to breathe.

The urge to break the spell reared, but then cold flooded into his veins with an icy fever—a shivering pulse-beat that collected in his chest and made him want to cry.

There you are, he thought, closing his eyes so he could feel.

Then Orpheus lifted his hand and snapped.

Fire erupted in his palm. Not a tiny flickering ember, but an inferno that raged. Magic. His magic, in his hands again.

“Oh…oh.”

From the floor, Gwen watched the flame, eyes following its every flicker, mouth lax with words she could barely speak. Gray had replaced the violet under her skin, her flesh beginning to sink, her hair growing stiff, body decaying like an old corpse in real time. The spell was killing her, life-force stripped away alongside the magic he siphoned off like the oil Red pumped from the Wasteland, draining Gwen of the very thing that gave her life—all so he could have his magic back—the magic he’d given up willingly—that had never been his to begin with.

But it had been his, at least for a little while, and he’d never asked for it—or this—to be kidnapped and forced to confront everything he wasn’t—everything they’d made him to be—created by the hands of these same people who imprisoned him now. Ghosts from a past he couldn’t escape, though he’d tried to. He had. He’d come so close and would have done it, if these—these people—

—if they hadn’t killed Fenrir.

Tears streaked his face, hitting the sigil in a patter of hisses.

“I’m sorry.” He was. He was. He was. “I don’t have a choice!”

But you do have a choice—I do—

“I know,” Gwen whispered, “I know, I understand.”

He looked at her, and that person he thought he was—the person he thought he had to become to live—to survive—shattered under a weight of his own making, because just like with Fenrir, if surviving meant destroying the one thing that made life worth living, that wasn’t a cost Orpheus was willing to pay.

Gwen. He was hurting Gwen.

What in all hells am I doing?

Orpheus wailed, fireball evaporating into the air when he slapped his palm atop the sigil and broke the hells-damned spell.

Like a plug free to drain, cold sucked through his veins, bleeding out into the connection he’d made. The transferal spell fractured apart between them, magic returning to its source just as it had when he’d closed the damn chasm. Except, this time, the source was Gwen.