Mirabel forced me into armor, white plates encasing my chest, shoulders, arms, and legs.
She also, quite annoyingly, handed me her sword and took mine, leaving as abruptly as she had arrived.
Her actions spoke volumes. She did not trust me, and, truthfully, she had every reason not to.
I leaned back against a dying tree. The bark cracked under my weight, splintering like brittle bone as the sky darkened above me, widening across the horizon like a wound that refused to close.
Magic is the act of giving form to mana, shaped through means far beyond my understanding.
To use it, I must align myself with the spell I wish to cast. Dark Alter is not a spell, yet it still hungers for mana with a thirst that feels ancient and cruel.
The danger was simple. If I tried to draw power from any other source, that being physical, spiritual, or mental, I would die instantly.
Mana is the refinement of all three. Distilled into pure energy, it becomes the substance of reality itself, bending the world to the will of the attuned.
Monsters draw mana directly from the environment, unhindered, casting without cost. People like me draw it from within, paying in pain, in life, in existence.
This sickness I carried twisted magic into punishment. Existing alone felt like a burden that grew heavier with every breath.
This power took more of my potential with each use, so it was never wise to fully unleash it without limits.
Each movement strained my body. My nerves dulled, my pain numbed, but one cruel benefit remained. The mana within me was so potent it burned away any poison before it could take hold.
Blood meant to infect failed as if my body denied contamination.
Perhaps, had I cultivated differently as a child, this illness would not have festered into such a curse.
I smiled faintly and raised my sword. Before me lay over three hundred corpses, monsters sent to kill me.
Only now would I truly need magic.
I stepped forward, ignoring the shrieks in the sky, humming a quiet, hollow tune beneath my breath.
The river was my destination. I would return before dawn. I would rest. Then I would come again.
To carry constant pain is to cultivate growth. My illness, in its cruel way, acted like a muscle.
I would tear it, rebuild it, and perhaps turn it into strength. Even then, the goal remained distant.
The future was irrelevant for someone like me.
Snow began to fall. Soft as ash, flakes clung to my skin, chilling and cloying as the world dimmed beneath a thickening haze. The veil blurred truth and lie alike.
Then I heard it. A rhythm stitched from despair, arranged with intent to unsettle, the sound of something trying to imitate life.
I had been waiting for this.
A Black Death.
They are creatures consumed entirely by the Darkness.
They earned their name for nearing full evolution. When they evolve, they laugh. Not as monsters, but as humans.
Now, it laughed behind the snow. Its rhythm circled me like a curse whispered far too close to the ear.
My blade trembled in my grip, not from fear, but from the overwhelming instinct to survive something I should not be seeing.
The world answered with layered sounds. Footsteps. Screams. The thin cry of a child that should not exist. All of it woven into a lure. A trap for mind and body.
Then I saw it.
Eyes white as chalk. Skin black as pitch. A humanoid shape so smooth and so wrong that existence bent subtly around it.
Its grin stretched wider than any face should allow.
A song followed. Sewn with death, its notes twined around my mind as the creature skipped lightly through the snow, laughing as though it had marked me long before I ever sensed it.
This monster was happy. It had found its first prey of the hour.
[Faced with death made flesh, Nicholas reached beyond instinct. He called it safety.]
I tightened my grip instead of speaking, drawing mana into the blade until it hummed like a trembling vein of light.
The grin twitched. Then twisted. Its hand darted toward my face.
Light detonated from its eyes.
I bent backward, narrowly avoiding the beam, pushing it aside with my palm as the air cracked. My pupils burned, laced with the afterimage of white fire.
Another flash. Too quick, too sharp. I threw myself into a backward arc, steel carving through the cold as a lance of light hissed past my cheek.
Another beam. Then two. Then countless more. My blade snapped through the air in frantic parries, scattering pale sparks that vanished before they touched the snow. Each strike outran the last.
"Such a fast attack, breaking down the laws this world so desperately aims to uphold."
Light magic was not necessarily the fastest magic, but it did have an innate speed someone like me could barely react to.
Every movement shredded my nerves. Agony splintered through my vision, yet I could not look away.
Beams lanced around me. Left. Right. Above. Forcing my body into contortions no sane swordsman would attempt.
Once, I thought I dodged. Heat grazed my shoulder.
Once, I thought I was struck. Only instinct saved me.
The Black Death laughed. Its delight grew with every tremor of strain it sensed from me.
My blade found its body. Shadow tore. Bone cracked. But the wounds sealed before the swing even finished.
A kick hurled me into the air. A punch buried me in snow. My lungs seized under the freezing impact.
In its palm, light spiraled. A tiny sun swelled and pulsed, unstable and eager to consume. When it hurled the sphere, reality vibrated.
My veins hammered. My bones rang. I barely lifted my sword to intercept.
Its hand clamped around my neck. The ground rose hard beneath me as it slammed me down. Then its mouth opened.
Black light poured forth. Brighter than white. Sharper than time. Wrong in every direction.
For one suspended moment, I believed the world ended there.
I forced mana to erupt. Dark Alter fractured open and swallowed my breath. I staggered back as the beam turned the snow to glass.
The Black Death wagged its finger, amused that I still lived.
Blood streamed from my eyes. Crimson drops dotted the frozen ground. But I refused to blink. I refused to surrender sight.
It lunged. Light erupted from its chest, its palms, its eyes. A storm of beams crashed around me.
I twisted. Rolled. Dropped to a knee. Leapt skyward. My body sluiced between the radiant lines, moving as if terror itself guided each motion.
Each evasion carved another wound into my nerves. My vision dripped with stars. My breath burned.
Still, I held on.
The creature's laughter spiraled into something almost human.
I slipped behind it. Water curled from the air in a trembling sphere. With all my strength, I hurled it into its back.
The creature skidded across the ice and carved a trench through the snow.
Yet the beams did not cease. The laughter did not fade.
My sight blurred, but I did not look away.
It staggered back, preparing another attack.
I breathed.
My body trembled a little more, it was a mistake.
A burst of mana whipped into its flank, breaking its stance. I dropped low, steadied myself, and lifted my hand toward the sky.
Water spiraled. A thin stream coiled around its heart like a serpent tightening its grip.
The creature laughed. Even bound, it released a beam that tore through me and threw me into the frozen ground beside the river.
Through the haze clouding my vision, I let out a thin, breathless laugh.
Until its foot pressed lightly against my neck.
It tilted its head. Curious. Patient. Studying me as if I were a puzzle missing a piece.
Then its attention shifted. Its grin faltered.
The river beside us, once clear, had turned the color of pitch.