When one chose to walk the Dark Path as a warrior, there were multiple routes to gain power.
The first, and most common, was the path Tsaral had taken: approaching entities in the astral planes and striking a deal with them. A contract. Power granted in return for benefits the entity deemed necessary—sacrifices, rituals, servitude, or simply the chaos and suffering the contractee would unleash in the physical world.
This exchange could be done with different entities. Vengeful spirits. Djinn. Demons. Malicious genies. Each had their price. Each had their hunger.
Those following this approach had two choices: long-term contracts or short-term contracts.
Long-term contracts were rare. They were conducted between very powerful entities that saw potential in a mortal—someone who could consistently pay the price of power, who would follow the conditions laid out without fail. In such arrangements, the entity gained as much as the mortal did, feeding on the energy generated by the contractee's actions over years, even decades. These entities could bind multiple contractees simultaneously, building networks of influence across kingdoms.
Short-term contracts, like Tsaral's, were different. They were temporary. One-time exchanges. The mortal approached an entity, made an offering, and received power for a specific task. Once the task was complete—or the mortal failed—the contract ended. Some practitioners preferred this approach, as it allowed them to work with a variety of entities, testing different sources of power without binding themselves to a single master. But it required constant negotiation. Constant risk.
The second path was darker still.
One could gain power through an exchange with a genie—not the benevolent spirits of folklore, but cunning, malicious entities that thrived on imbalance. They would grant power willingly, eagerly even, but they would take something in return. Something the mortal would never know was missing until it was too late.
Your luck. Your health. Your connection to the Source itself.
They granted the illusion of power while destroying the practitioner's path to true enlightenment. Those who followed this route usually met terrible ends—madness, ruin, or a slow, agonizing descent into nothingness as everything they held dear crumbled around them.
And then there was the third path.
The one Teleu had chosen.
Demonic Binding and Possession.
It was the most dangerous. The most brutal. And the most powerful.
Instead of negotiating with a single entity, the practitioner opened themselves to being possessed by dozens—sometimes hundreds—of demonic spirits. Lesser entities, individually weak, but collectively overwhelming. The more demonic entities bound, the more power the practitioner gained.
But the cost was equally steep.
The more demons you bound, the less human you became. Pain became distant. Emotion dulled. Hunger—not for food, but for blood—consumed you. The demonic spirits fed on violence, on suffering, on the essence of the living. And they would never stop demanding more.
After a demonic binding and possession, control was nearly impossible to maintain. The spirits would rage inside the vessel, tearing at the practitioner's mind, his soul, demanding to be fed. Only one thing could calm them.
Blood.
Lots of it.
Either high-quality blood—mystics, practitioners, those with spiritual power—or high quantity. Livestock. Animals. Dozens of them, their life force drained to sate the endless hunger.
Without blood, the practitioner faced two fates.
The first: lose control entirely. Become a mindless killing machine, slaughtering everything in sight—enemies, allies, innocents. The demonic spirits would take over completely, turning the body into a vessel of pure destruction until it burned itself out or was destroyed by others.
The second: subdue the spirits through sheer willpower, forcing them back down into the depths of the soul. But even then, remnants would remain. The spirits would linger, rampaging at random moments, clawing their way to the surface during moments of weakness or intense emotion. The practitioner would never be fully in control again.
Only one type of person could achieve the second outcome.
Spirit-children.
Beings born with souls that existed between worlds. They had a natural resistance to the machinations of the astral plane, a spiritual fortitude that allowed them to endure what would break ordinary mortals.
But even for a spirit-child, it was not guaranteed. It was not safe.
And Teleu could not afford partial loss of sanity.
Not now. Not with his plans. Not with everything he had yet to do.
If even a fragment of madness remained, if the demonic spirits continued to rampage inside him, it would compromise everything. His clarity. His strategy. His ability to survive the war ahead.
He needed blood.
And he needed it now.
The Garden
Teleu's body convulsed, his hands slamming into the ground again and again. Blood splattered across the white stones, his knuckles split open, bones cracking with each impact.
"STAY AWAY!" he roared at Reloua, his voice layered, distorted, a chorus of demonic shrieks beneath his own.
Reloua stood frozen at the garden entrance, her face pale, her hands trembling. She had never seen anything like this. Never felt anything like this. The oppressive weight of dark energy pressing down on her, suffocating, wrong.
But she didn't run.
Teleu's black eyes snapped toward her, and for a brief moment—just a flicker—she saw something human beneath the darkness.
Desperation.
His voice came out again, broken, strained, fighting against the demons inside him:
"Livestock... where... nearest..."
Reloua's breath hitched. Her mind raced.
Livestock?
And then she understood.
He needed to feed them. To calm them.
She swallowed hard, her voice shaking. "Twenty kilometers. North of the palace. The royal farms."
Teleu's body shuddered. His head snapped back, his mouth opening in a silent scream as the demonic spirits inside him raged at the delay.
"GO INSIDE," he roared, blood dripping from his lips. "LOCK YOURSELF IN. DON'T COME OUT UNTIL DAYLIGHT."
Reloua hesitated for only a second.
Then she turned and ran.
She sprinted back toward her chambers, her heart pounding, her mind reeling. She reached her door, threw it open, slammed it shut behind her, and locked it.
Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely turn the key.
She pressed her back against the door, sliding down to the floor, gasping for breath.
Outside, in the garden, she could still hear it.
The screaming.
The Garden
Teleu forced himself to his feet, his legs trembling, barely able to support his weight. Blood poured from his wounds, pooling beneath him.
The demonic spirits inside him howled, demanding flesh, demanding now.
But he held them back. Barely.
Twenty kilometers north.
He could make it.
He had to.
Teleu's body lurched forward, and he began to move—not walking, not running, but something in between. His limbs moved in jerky, unnatural motions, propelled as much by the demonic spirits as by his own will.
He crossed the garden in seconds, his body launching over the wall with inhuman strength.
He landed hard on the other side, the impact cracking the ground beneath him, and then he ran.
North.
Toward the farms.
Toward blood.