"People wrap themselves in steel. Races grow plates and scales and hardened skin. All of it is done in the hope that pain will never reach them. They believe feeling pain is a weakness to be solved. They are wrong. Pain is information. Those of us who are able and willing to accept it gain access to a library that no teacher can recite for them."
The distortion around his hand collapsed inward with a sudden, suffocating pull.
"Use it," he said. "Or remain ignorant."
The spell ignited.
[Covenant of the Bleeding Sense]
The world lurched.
Something unseen settled over the ground, a wrongness that rearranged cause and consequence, as if the rules governing sensation had been quietly rewritten.
Quinlan felt it immediately, a pressure behind his eyes and along his spine, a subtle insistence that every impact, every strain, every error would now be fully acknowledged, whether his flesh agreed or not.
Dragnar vanished.
