Teleu's lips began to move.
The words came out in a whisper at first—slow, guttural, wrong. A language older than Nubia. Older than the kingdoms. A tongue spoken only in the deepest layers of the Dream Cycle, where the boundary between thought and madness dissolved.
Tsaral froze mid-step, his blade suspended in the air.
His instincts—honed by decades of killing—screamed at him.
Danger.
The air around Teleu began to shift. The temperature dropped further, frost spreading across the blood-soaked stones. The wraiths that had infested his wound suddenly recoiled, their forms flickering erratically, as if sensing something far more powerful approaching.
Teleu's chanting grew louder. His voice layered, multiplying, as if a dozen throats spoke in unison. The garden trembled. The trees groaned, their branches bending unnaturally inward, as if the world itself was being pulled toward him.
Behind him, the astral plane shuddered.
And then it tore.
Not a small rift. Not a crack.
A chasm.
From the depths of the Dream Cycle, far below the surface layer where lesser wraiths dwelled, something darker stirred. Hundreds of them. Thousands, perhaps. Not mere wraiths—demonic spirits. Entities of pure malevolence, born from the darkest corners of the astral, formless and ravenous, drawn to the scent of fresh blood and living flesh.
They poured out like a flood—shrieking, wailing, their voices a cacophony of hatred and hunger. The garden was flooded with darkness so thick it became physical, pressing down on everything, suffocating the moonlight.
Tsaral took a step back, his confident expression cracking. "What are you—"
Teleu's head snapped up.
His eyes were still human. Still aware.
And in them burned something terrible. Not madness. Not desperation.
Choice.
His voice came out quiet, steady, almost serene:
"Of course. It's only by reaching into the darkness that one survives."
And then he opened the vessel.
The Binding
It wasn't a spell. It wasn't a ritual learned from a master.
It was something primal. Instinctive. The kind of knowledge that existed before language, before thought—written into the soul itself.
Teleu's body became a gate.
The demonic spirits didn't attack him. They didn't swarm him.
They entered him.
SLAM.
The first wave hit like a battering ram. Teleu's body convulsed, his back arching violently as his mouth opened in a silent scream. Black smoke erupted from his lips, pouring out in thick, choking clouds.
But the smoke didn't dissipate.
It reversed.
The demonic spirits dove into his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his wounds—every opening in his body became a doorway. They poured in, one after another, compressing, squeezing themselves into the spiritual vessel he had created within his soul.
Their forms were grotesque—twisted, horned shadows with clawed hands and eyes that burned like embers. Some had mouths full of jagged teeth. Others were faceless, their bodies writhing masses of darkness. They shrieked as they entered him, their voices merging into a single, terrible chorus.
Teleu's veins turned black, dark lines spreading across his entire body like a web. His skin took on an ashen hue, and his eyes—his eyes—turned fully black. No whites. No pupils. Just emptiness.
But he wasn't gone.
He was still there.
More demonic spirits came. And more. And more.
Tsaral watched in horror as the flood of spectral entities—dozens, hundreds—poured into Teleu's body without resistance. His own connection to the vengeful spirit showed him the truth: Teleu wasn't just binding them.
He was absorbing them.
Creating a spiritual vessel capable of holding a quantity and quality of demonic energy that would tear most practitioners apart from the inside.
Tsaral had bound one entity—the vengeful warrior spirit—and even that required careful rituals, preparation, and the spirit's cooperation. His body could barely handle the strain.
But Teleu was binding hundreds of lesser demonic spirits simultaneously. Forcing them into submission through sheer will.
The garden died around him. Every flower, every blade of grass, every living thing within ten paces of him withered instantly, turning to ash and crumbling away. The fountain water turned black, bubbling and hissing as if boiling.
Dark smoke poured from Teleu's skin like steam, and within the smoke, faces flickered—demonic visages screaming, laughing, weeping. Their mouths stretched impossibly wide, their eyes hollow and burning. Horns and claws pressed against the smoke from within, trying to tear free.
His wounds didn't close. Blood still dripped from the gashes across his body—but now, the blood glowed. A sickly red light pulsed from every cut, every tear, like a heartbeat made visible.
His aura became a storm. A roiling mass of shadow and blood-red light that twisted and writhed like a living thing, tendrils of darkness lashing out at the air, each one tipped with clawed hands.
And then Teleu moved.
Not smoothly. Not gracefully.
But with power.
His head snapped toward Tsaral, and his lips pulled back in a slow, wrong smile. A smile that didn't belong on a human face. Behind his blackened eyes, something else looked out—hundreds of demonic spirits staring through a single vessel.
In the Ethereal Drift, far beyond the garden, in a distorted cabin that existed between layers of reality, the vengeful warrior spirit sat motionless.
Its true form was massive—far larger than the projection it had sent to aid Tsaral. Armored in blackened spectral iron, its body was covered in ancient battle scars that glowed faintly with residual malice. The cabin around it was warped, the walls breathing like living flesh, the floor littered with the bones of forgotten victims.
The spirit's burning hollow eyes—twin flames of hatred that had endured for centuries—suddenly narrowed.
Through its connection to Tsaral, it could see the garden. See the boy. See the transformation.
And then it felt it.
The presence.
Not human. Not entirely.
The spirit leaned forward in its seat, the ancient wood creaking under its weight. Its skeletal fingers gripped the armrests, claws digging into the decayed material.
It studied Teleu through the astral connection, peeling back layers of his soul, reading the threads of his existence.
And then it understood.
"A spirit-child," it rumbled, its voice echoing through the cabin like distant thunder. "What potential."
Its eyes burned brighter, hungrier.
This wasn't just a practitioner. This was something rare. Something that existed between worlds. A soul born with one foot in the physical realm and another in the astral. A vessel capable of holding power that would shatter ordinary men.
The spirit's mouth—hidden behind the cracked bone mask—split into a grotesque grin.
It didn't want the boy's death.
It wanted his heart.
Not the organ. The essence. The core of what made him a spirit-child. If it could consume that, absorb it, the spirit could transcend its current form. Perhaps even break free from the Ethereal Drift entirely.
Back in the garden, Tsaral felt the shift.
The vengeful spirit's presence surged through their connection, flooding him with renewed power—but also with intent. A command. A desire.
Capture him. Wound him. Bring him to the edge. But do not kill him.
Tsaral's hands trembled on his blades. For the first time in years, he felt something he had long forgotten.
Fear.
Not of Teleu.
But of what the spirit would do if he failed.
Teleu took a step forward.
The ground beneath his foot cracked, spiderwebbing outward. Dark energy radiated from him in waves, oppressive, suffocating. The demonic spirits inside him howled, their voices escaping through his lips in a distorted chorus.
His voice came out—layered, distorted, a chorus of the damned:
"Your turn."