2. Rotting Regrets

This chapter contains minor references to violence!

~The Warlock~                                                       Day 1, 7th moon, 120th alignment

I woke up bleeding.

Not from battle. Not from any sword.

From time.

My left hand—speckled. Veins purplish. Skin crinkled like aged parchment. I re-sigil the spells over and over, but they no longer hum. No glow. No heat. Only nothing. The spell is dissipating.

I knew immortality had a price, but I thought I paid it.

The marrow of thirteen beings. My brother's soul. My name torn from the book of death.

It should have been enough.

Why isn't it enough?

Today, I saw myself. I aged. A day, maybe two — but I saw. The other apprentices do not voice it, but I can see their eyes. They can smell it on me. Rot. Decay. Fear.

Old wounds start to sear with pain as I walk down the corridors. Everything hurts. Just thinking about it makes me sick with dangerous panic.

Did I miss a word in the spell?

Did the demon lie to me?

Did my soul shatter?

I do not know how much longer I am to exist. My hair is thinning. My fingers tremble. I felt hunger for the first time in centuries. I had forgotten what it is to need.

The students watch me closer these days, and rumors of a prophecy travel from kingdom to kingdom.

It’s no good.

And the fact that I feel that one BEAST of a student staring daggers into my back infuriates me.

Maybe I’ll kill him.

Today I go back to the vault.

I'll utter the outlaw vowels.

I'll bleed again if I must.

I'll trade all my remaining humanity for the cost, so long as death hangs always just out of reach.

I am not yet ready to be a mortal again.

Not now. Not yet.

-Corvin