The Sin of Pride sighed as the click of the door shutting pervaded the quiet afternoon.

The window was wide open, allowing the cold air and frosty raindrops to patter upon the warped floorboards. Darius threw a disapproving glance toward the open window but did nothing to seal out the weather. It mattered little. The cold didn't bother him.

He leaned upon the door with his shoulders hunched and his body rendered listless by sheer, uncompromising exhaustion. Darius considered sinking to his haunches where he stood, falling asleep without bothering to situate himself in his chair—but he forced himself to drift forward into the room's recesses. The Sin needed rest the floor wouldn't provide. He rounded the chair and blinked. 

His shadeborn was in his chair, slumped on the arm with her chin to her chest as she snored with a vengeance.

Darius quirked a brow as he lifted the girl's arm from her lap. A slender bottle slipped from her limp fingers, and the Sin caught it mid-fall. He spun the bottle, studying the opaque glass, sniffing the open mouth. The smell of wheat and salt met his inspection, dull thrums of static beating beneath his fingertips. 

Ether. An ether infusion. Where did she get this? 

The creature paused and sifted through his inflamed mind, his features hardening as he came to the only conceivable conclusion. 

"The Vytian." 

The bottle's sides crumpled in his fist. Glass shattered joined the rain on the floor—but his host didn't wake. She continued to sleep, unbothered by Darius's presence or the biting frost claiming the room's warmth. 

Shadows gathered. The Sin placed a hand on either arm of the chair and leaned forward, bending his tall frame until his lithic face was very near her own. 

"I think you like aggravating me, host," he hissed in Gehen, feeling the words crack and fizzle with potent energy upon his tongue. The diluted effulgence of his power roving inside his flesh lit her skin as well, providing color to her sallow, drawn complexion as the shadows shrank in deference. "I think you seek danger comparable to your own, my little blood-soaked hellion. Why else would you test me so? Why taunt the monster?"

Sara stirred. Her eyelids fluttered—but just before she could ascend through the final league of slumber's pull, she fell under once more with a heavy exhalation.

Her lips parted as she breathed out, issuing a single word. "Darius...."

The creature stared and listened to her heartbeat slow. As he watched, the rain continued to pour and the frost crawling upon the sill began to thaw. Darius lifted a hand from the armchair and, bringing it to her throat, traced a finger along the line of her jaw.

Her skin was cold. 

Grunting, the Sin shook himself and lowered his hand, rubbing his fingertips to dispel the lingering sensation. He crouched and hooked her arm around his shoulders, hoisting the thin mortal out of the chair and into his arms. Sara distantly protested his less than delicate treatment, but Darius was already moving, his footsteps thumping unhappily upon the hollow floor.

"Idiot," the Sin muttered as he carried his host into the bedroom. He turned his face to her neck, inhaling the scent of orchids and the humid, brackish smell of the moor clinging to her damp hair. She'd been outside again. It would explain why her skin was so cold. 

Darius lowered Sara onto the mattress and yanked the blankets over her. She immediately rolled, nuzzling the pillow as she began to snore again with her dark hair contrasting against the white of the sheets.

The Sin of Pride left the woman to her rest. He remained at the threshold just long enough to quietly shut the bedroom door, sealing her in the warm safety of the dark as he skimmed the back of his knuckles across the rough wood surface. 

Darius didn't sleep that day. He returned to the archives, to the search, once more.

My hand slipped, dumping salt on the grimy dungeon floor.

"You seem distracted today, my apprentice."

Giving an indignant huff, I ignored Cage and began scraping salt back into the pouch. The fine edges of my construct glittered in the torchlight, nearly complete.

I was distracted, though I didn't appreciate having the mage point it out. After managing to drag my unwilling body up the manor's never-ending stairs yesterday morning, I'd salvaged an extra mana pot I'd stashed beneath Darius's bed and had promptly passed out after drinking it. I distinctly remembered sinking into the old armchair by the window, but I woke in bed the next morning, plagued by hunger and a pounding headache. The mana pot's bottle had been reduced to fine glass shards upon the floor and I couldn't remember any of it. 

The second memory had been more taxing than the first. I'd lost two days—two days I could have spent practicing my constructs or delving into my research, and I had nothing to show for that loss of productivity. The memory had told me nothing. To be precise, the memory had told me many things—and yet all of the information I'd plucked from the nightmarish vision was worthless to my goals.

I cleaned up the last of the errant salt and tossed the pouch aside. Sighing, I looked to Cage for further direction. Inside his cell, the mage had joined me on the floor and was sitting cross-legged with his hands upon his knees. Again I noted how particular he was in the placement of his hands. I could have held a ruler up and the spaces between each of his fingers would have been exactly the same.

Before me was a construct I'd first seen outlined by Anzel. The two circles and the salted lines were the same—though done on a miniature scale with a vial about as big as my pinky finger in the middle intersection of the construct. When I'd asked Cage if I could create my own ether infusions, he had repeatedly assured me that a construct and a bottle the size Anzel had used were far beyond my abilities, but I may be able to manage this. 

I might never be able to create pots at Anzel's level. The mage was adamant in explaining how such creations were not nearly as simple to create as the Vytians made them to appear.

Nevertheless, I needed to learn how to conjure my own infusions. I couldn't ask Anzel or Elias to help any longer. I'd relied on them too easily, and too quickly. I couldn't let myself do so again.

Cage cleared his throat. "If you're ready, get yourself situated." 

After wiping perspiration from my brow, I set my hands inside the opposing circles with my palms flat to the gritty floor. Anzel's circles had been the size of car tires while mine were smaller than dinner plates.

"Tuck your thumbs in, girl. Splaying them in such a way distributes the energy unevenly."

I tucked in my thumbs without a word, waiting.

"Relax and concentrate on the buildup of your power, on the steady thrum of magic within your veins. Remember the echo of it you held within your hands. Push it outward from yourself, into the floor. It will find your construct on its own."

His instructions were more easily given than understood.

Every time I'd created a suitable construct, this was the part where I inevitably failed. I was told the application was the easiest part, but I struggled to recreate what was supposed to be an innate ability. I equated my difficulties as something similar to learning a new language as an adult as opposed to learning it as a child. Children learn new languages with terrific ease, their minds malleable and open to new interpretations of words and sentence structures, whereas adults are more set in their ways and don't adapt as quickly as children.

I felt the thrum of energy Cage spoke of—but it was just so alien to me, I couldn't properly attune myself to its usage. If Anzel's magic was a wildcat leaping forth from the underbrush like a graceful predator, mine was a fussy kitten tumbling out of its mother's bed.

I shut my eyes, willing the energy to manifest and pour forth. My magic pooled beneath my hands but was reticent to move farther. It crept like condensation upon a glass as it condensed and refused to flow.

My fingers dug into the hard floor as my arms trembled with exertion. A bead of sweat welled and dripped from my temple. I willed for something—anything—more to happen, willed it with every strangled breath escaping my lungs. I had all my weight on my hands as if I could physically push the power out of myself.

The shadow perpetually haunting the anterior of my mind began to unfurl in lazy increments. I froze as if petrified when the shadow ascended into my awareness, feathering my skin with a silken, heated touch. It followed the trails carved by my magic and extended outward, winding about my left arm.

Red tinged my vision. My hand ached, the nails darkening until they were almost black.

I gasped.

The sensation had begun gradually, but it receded all at once, like lightning flashing only to disappear seconds later, leaving the sky blacker than ever. When the shade withdrew, it took my magic with it. It reabsorbed my mana with brutal, instant efficiency. That sudden lack of energy unbalanced the construct—and me. Light flared and I shouted when my back hit the wall. Smoke rose in misty clouds.

"Apprentice!" Cage coughed, wafting his hand in front of his face as the dust settled. "Are you still breathing?"

I grunted in answer as I held my sore hand against my chest. My magic, and the blasted shade, were both gone. "For now. Are you okay?"

"Fine, fine—." The mage coughed again as the dust began to thin and I studied my left hand. My nails were fine, pale with my anemia but otherwise just as they ever were. My palm was red and sore, though I attributed that to the construct's malfunction and the surge of heat. Had I imagined the shade's behavior? Was I seeing things?

Cage studied the burnt construct from his position behind the bars, his face mottled with soot and dirt. "Ah," he sighed as he reached through the lowest rung of the bars to touch the gray salt. He dragged two fingers through it and tested the consistency against his fingers. "Your shade unbalanced it. You must've been hemorrhaging mana and it reacted to protect you from yourself."

So, I hadn't imagined it. The shade remained so ephemeral, having its presence confirmed by Peroth and Cage did little to convince me of its actual existence. It flitted beneath my conscious mind, there but not there, a shadow being cast beyond something vivid and attention-grabbing. Like light pouring through a crystal, my eyes would chase the rainbows but never glance toward the shadow hunched behind the crystal's stark edges.

"Cage...." I asked as I held my arms against myself, wincing at a sudden stinging pain in my side. I ignored it as I questioned the mage. "You...know what I am?"

"Naturally." He moved his hands in precise rapid motions—and suddenly a brush and dust pail appeared. Cage stuck them through the bars without pause. "Take these then, girl. Clean up the mess."

Wary, I held onto the brush and pail and stared at him. "How do you know what I am?"

"How do I know you're shadeborn?" The mage shrugged, then gestured toward the floor to indicate that I should clean the ruined salt. "It'd be stranger if I hadn't noticed. My magic may be black, but I am an exceptional mage, if I do say so myself. You've a second soul inside of yours. It leaves signs of its presence, if you know what to look for."

I swept the useless granules into the pail as the charged static crackled under the rough bristles. "I don't understand why it ruined my construct." I sighed as I traced the edge of the scuffed chalk. It'd taken me an hour to draw the damned thing, but I'd finally gotten it right. Now it was useless.

Cage hummed as he took the pail and brush from me. He again twisted his fingers in precise motions, causing both items to disappear. "You were trying too hard—like an athlete who doesn't mind his pace, and winds up overexerting himself."

"And it knew that?"

Cage nodded. "Oh yes. I haven't the foggiest idea which of them to made you into a shadeborn, but the mechanics are the same. It sensed an injury—or, in this case, an imminent injury—and acted to protect you."

I flexed my hand and wiggled my fingers as I hunted for the shadow in my mind, finding nothing. I exhaled, and my cheeks flushed with irritation. "It's never done something this...brazen before."

"It's getting stronger."

My eyes flicked to the older mage in silent question. The way he answered was casual, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. His voice had dropped in timbre. It was a slight but perceptible change.

"Hmm...how to explain...." He thumped the side of his foot on the floor as we continued to sit cross-legged only a few feet away from one another. "Souls are a bit like plants, if you can imagine that. They're living, in a sense. They can flourish, they can wither. Trimming a piece from it can kill the plant—and, if taken properly, that trimming can survive. You can graft that trimming onto another plant if you were so inclined, but typically either the host plant would be overcome by the foreign entity or the trimming would simply wither."

The mage's smile was quite odd. His eyes were glazed, allowing the torchlight to waver upon their glassy surface as he guffawed under his breath. "But in very rare cases, the two come together in symbiosis. It's a beautiful thing, really. They make each other stronger, they make each other...something else."

I attributed the orange gleam of his irises to the lighting—but something about his voice, something about the deepening of his cadence and the sudden stress he placed on different consonants raised the hair at the nape of my neck.

"Cage." I spoke his name—whispered it—and the mage stirred, straightening with a soft inhalation. His eyes were their normal, warm brown.

"Sorry, wasn't myself for a moment." He chuckled and swept a careless hand over his chin, then adjusted the ribbon about his throat. "My mind wanders sometimes. Being down here for so long can be...testing."

I nodded, uncertain of how to respond. His reaction had been off-putting, and yet I couldn't identify why. Outwardly his appearance was the same. I'd thought his eyes had blazed with molten color, but they were only brown and perhaps a touch tired.

Giving the matter more thought, I decided it was as if the shade in my thoughts had intuited some quirk of Cage's behavior that I hadn't been able to decipher. The sensation was unsettling, as if a voice were murmuring warnings into my ear and I couldn't see the danger. I didn't know which way to run.

The mage cleared his throat. "Anyway, I only meant to say that as a shadeborn, the soul you play host to subsists upon your mana and the energy it provides. Given that you appear to be in a proper balance with the entity, it wouldn't—shouldn't—ever take more than you are willing to give, but it will tend to be...selfish? Greedy?" He tugged at a ribbon loop in contemplation. "Unless you're in danger, it'll try its damnedest to thwart miscellaneous mana expenditure."

Great. "So you're telling me even if I can get the stupid magic to flow like it's supposed to, it might fail because I'm shadeborn?"

He shrugged, a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. I didn't see what was so amusing. The mage was telling me I'd probably keep failing at magic when I desperately needed to learn how to wield it.

All the while I stared at him because something about this conversation wasn't plausible. How did Cage know I was shadeborn? How did he even know what a shadeborn was? That wasn't information the Sins spread through the masses. I highly doubted a Sin would have ever told Cage any information that could possibly be used against them in the future.

He glanced at the watch on his wrist and shifted beneath my suspicious glare. "Hrm. It's been a few hours. You'll be missed upstairs."

The mage was right. The longer I stayed in the dungeon, the longer I tempted fate—fate being a pissed off demon named Darius. Thinking about the red-eyed creature caused me to frown as I scrubbed away the last vestiges of the chalk construct and forgot about Cage's behavior. It'd been too long since I'd last seen the Sin.

I stood—and swayed. My vision wavered like a camera's shutter, heat rising through my neck into my face. My hand shot out and grabbed the cell bars for balance, but I immediately retracted it and used the wall for leverage instead. The man may be my magic instructor, but he was also an incarcerated black mage. I didn't want to stick my limbs into the lion's cage.

On the floor, Cage cocked his head as he observed my sagging posture and leaned back upon his arms. He'd seen my hand go through the bars and had watched me yank it back. "Alright, Sara?"

"I'm okay," I snapped, knowing my rudeness was unwarranted but I was unable to stop myself. My hands trembled and my bones ached with a hungry, empty throbbing. I had to still be feeling the after effects of the vision's mana sickness. I'd drunk the only spare ether infusion I had. If I couldn't learn to make my own, I'd end up having to beg the Vytians to make them for me.

I sneered into my hand at the thought, away from Cage's line of sight. I wouldn't beg. I wouldn't. I refused to be reduced to such a state. I was better than that.

"I'll get going," I told the mage, picking up my books. It'd taken awhile to find them after waking from the vision, but I had discovered them on the parlor's table, where I normally kept them. I couldn't fathom how they'd gotten there, but I was grateful I hadn't lost the priceless tomes.

"Remember to keep your practice theoretical, my apprentice." Cage wagged a finger for my benefit, not put off by my waspish tone. "No supervision, no casting. It's a good rule of thumb when spells are, ah, unpredictable."

"I'll remember," I grumbled. I left before he could conjure up another restriction for me. To be truthful, I was worried the mage may repossess my texts for what he perceived to be my own good. I may continue to fail all attempts to create a functional construct, but if studying magic wasn't the answer I sought then I didn't know what was. I didn't know what else I should do.

The possibility of losing my purpose was terrifying.

I was nearly free of the dungeons when I recalled Cage's metaphor about souls being similar to plants. I snorted as I walked, swiping dusty cobwebs from my hair and shoulders. I was inclined to dismiss the metaphor as yet another example of Cage's ramblings, but the black mage's fervent tone resounding in my ears gave me pause.

They can flourish, they can wither. Flourishing meant getting stronger, and withering meant getting weaker. If a soul or soul fragment could become stronger, they were conceivably capable of going beyond what was their natural, original state. They could change.

Had Cage meant to imply that souls—even just a piece of one—could grow?

"He couldn't possibly mean that," I muttered to myself as I parted the beaded curtain shrouding the dungeon's entrance. The foyer beyond lay desolate and dark, undisturbed by passersby. I began to cross the room, my worn shoes silent on the herringbone wood.

Sudden weakness in my legs almost brought me to my knees. I wobbled to a stop, my brows cinching together with confusion as I glared at the lower half of my body. I noticed a sticky black stripe on the outside of my pant leg. Testing the stripe, I tried to think of what the substance was—but my mind was foggy, my reasoning somewhat soft and sluggish.

The substance left tacky marks on my hand. I held my soiled fingers before my eyes and was alarmed by how blurred my vision was. Had I sat in something in the dungeon? It wouldn't have surprised me, considering how fetid the underground passage was. I brought my fingertips together, then broke them apart, testing the substance's consistency.

"What...?"

The foyer wasn't dark. The chandelier was burning bright, the glare glistening upon the dark liquid now saturating my hands. My vision had grown dark as my eyes were blinded by expanding black spots blooming like gothic roses within my vision. I hadn't sat in anything. The substance was blood, as it was leaking in copious streamers from my side, leaving a crimson trail of stumbled footprints in my wake.

"The construct," I whispered as I grappled at my shirt's hem to yank it upright so I could inspect the wound. The bandage was sodden and peeling away from the bruised flesh, baring the incision and ripped stitches. I had ripped the temperamental stitches when the construct had backfired and I had hit the wall.

"Shit!" I wheezed as I clamped my cold hands to the injury, but I was too late. I had lost too much blood and hadn't noticed. I was so accustomed to the random pangs and aches emanating from my side that I'd ignored the sting of the stitches tearing.

Red blood welled between my pale fingers and spilled in unremitting ribbons. I stared at the thin pool forming beneath my feet and wanted to deny it, but I couldn't. "No...."

Balthier's wound was worse. I had known it would continue to deteriorate, that the liminal magics imbued within the incision would eventually kill me—but I hadn't prepared myself for this eventuality. I whispered dull platitudes and apologies to no one, to anyone, wishing I had looked down while in the dungeon, that I hadn't rushed from Cage, that I had just another minute to say—

But I was too late.

To my credit, I didn't fall. I hooked an arm around the newel at foot of the stairs and hung from the railing, refusing to hit the floor. I continued to bleed, unable to muster the strength to clamp the wound shut. If I was going to die, I wouldn't be on my knees.

A small meow yanked my attention downward. Lionel was at my feet, nosing the drenched cuff of my ruined pants. My ears were ringing as if I stood in a wind tunnel and I could barely see, but I nonetheless recognized the Druid.

I released the wound. Thin patters of blood struck the hardwood in a rain-like chorus. "Lionel," I muttered, extending my red hand to the curious calico. "Help...."

The cat disappeared. A wind stroked my numb face, replacing the cringe-worthy smell of copper with the invigorating scent of mint. Where my Druid had stood just seconds before was a man of intermediate height and slim build. The rest of his appearance was lost to the obscurity of my oncoming demise. I dimly recognized a halo of flame colored hair and the outline of narrow, elven ears.

My arm loosened from the newel and I sighed as I fell forward. I think he caught me, but I felt nothing now. No pain. No sensation. The darkness was all-consuming, and I had become its unwilling prisoner. I told the shadows I couldn't leave yet. I'd left too much undone. I hadn't ascertained Darius' safety. I hadn't found a way to save him yet—but the waiting darkness didn't care. It formed its grip tight upon my consciousness and wouldn't let go.

No! I frantically thought, struggling against the solid arms folding about my person. No! Give me more time! Give me time to find what I need!

You hold everything you need to save your contemptible little creature. Everything, The Cassandra mocked in the swollen oblivion of my thoughts.

Once broken, you can never truly be whole again, Peroth mourned above his broken bits of angel.

It's a beautiful thing, really. They make each other stronger, they make each other...something else, Cage crooned with eyes like dying suns burning into my own.

What? What did it all mean?

"Not yet," spoke a more immediate voice I didn't recognize. I was drifting. I felt like a boat crossing the black abyss toward my end and the voice was following along in the rolling waves. "It's not yet your time, little one."

I could have sworn the voice purred.