The days bled into a grueling rhythm of ascent and exhaustion. The air grew thin and sharp as broken glass, and the wind howled through the stone spires with a voice that promised oblivion. Lys struggled, his small body fighting the altitude, but he never complained. He simply followed, a pale, determined shadow at my heels, his newly awakened Spark a flickering silver ember in the vast, oppressive gloom.
The compass in my chest was a constant, demanding pull, a lodestone drawing me upward into the heart of the jagged peaks. We were close. I could feel it in the thrum of the stone beneath my boots, in the way the very air seemed to crackle with latent power.
During our rests, I pushed Lys's training. The theoretical "listening" was set aside for something more tangible.
"Your Spark is a well," I told him as we huddled in the lee of a massive boulder, sheltering from the biting wind. "You have spent days sensing the world outside. Now, sense the power within. Find its shape. Its nature."
He closed his eyes, his blonde brows furrowing in concentration. He was so slight, dwarfed by the massive landscape and the immense potential locked inside him. Minutes passed, marked only by the whistle of the wind.
"I can feel it," he whispered, his voice taut with effort. "It's... a pool. A pool of something cold and quiet."
"Good," I said. "Now, don't try to drink from it. Just... dip your fingers in. See what happens."
He nodded, his face a mask of intense focus. I watched him, expecting a flicker of light, a whisper of heat, some minor thaumaturgical effect common to novice mages.
What happened was nothing I could have anticipated.
Lys let out a soft gasp. His eyes flew open, and for a moment, they were not the clear blue of a faded sky, but pools of solid, liquid darkness. The silver glow of his soul didn't brighten; it seemed to deepen, to become the silver of moonlight on a still, black pond.
He looked around the sheltered alcove, his head turning slowly. "I can see," he breathed, his voice filled with awe. "I can see everything."
It was full night, the moon obscured by scudding clouds. To my shadow-sight, the world was clear as day. To any normal human, it would have been an impenetrable murk. But Lys was staring at the intricate cracks in the boulder, at the individual pebbles scattered on the ground, his gaze sharp and unerring.
He was seeing in the dark. Not with the aid of light, but with the absence of it. He was perceiving the world through the lens of shadow.
A cold shock, entirely separate from the mountain air, washed through me. This was not a random manifestation. This was a direct echo of my own power.
"Croft," I said, my voice low and sharp.
The raven, who had been observing from a nearby rock, hopped closer. His dark eyes glittered as he studied Lys, who was now tentatively reaching out a hand, marveling at the clarity with which he could see his own fingers in the profound dark.
"Fascinating," Croft murmured.
"Explain this," I demanded, a unfamiliar thread of alarm in my voice. "He sees as I see. This is no simple Spark manifestation."
"It is not," Croft agreed, his tone one of clinical interest. "A Spark, when awakened, is a raw potential. Its first manifestations are often shaped by the nature of the awakening itself. You did not strike a flint to his tinder, Cassian. You sharpened his stillness with a whetstone of shadow and negation. You are a shard of the God of Death. It appears your... essence... has left an imprint on his soul."
I stared at the boy, at the shadow-sight that was so clearly a lesser version of my own. "You are saying I have... contaminated him?"
"Not contaminated. Influenced. Guided." Croft tilted his head. "Think of it as a dye cast into clear water. The water remains water, but it now carries the colour of what touched it. He will likely develop an affinity for shadows, for silence, for the spaces between things. These will be the channels through which his power flows most naturally."
I processed this, the implications settling heavily upon me. I had not just awakened a mage. I had created something new. A mortal touched by the essence of an angel of death.
"Will he develop my other abilities?" I asked, the thought both intriguing and terrifying. "The negation? The soul-sight?"
Croft was silent for a long moment. "I think not. Those are not merely powers, Cassian. They are functions of your divine office. The negation is the application of your will upon the fundamental state of being. The soul-sight is the perception granted to a reaper. They are intrinsic to what you are. The boy is mortal. He may learn to walk in shadows, but he will never command the void. He may see in the dark, but he will never perceive the light of a soul unless it is manifested as a simple glow. His is an affinity, not an inheritance."
I looked back at Lys. He had let go of the power, his eyes returning to their normal blue, and was now blinking rapidly, the world once again plunged into darkness for him. He looked up at me, a mixture of wonder and fear on his face.
"I could see," he repeated, as if he couldn't quite believe it.
"You have an affinity for shadow," I told him, my voice returning to its usual calm. "It is a tool. A useful one. We will cultivate it."
He nodded slowly, absorbing this. He did not look contaminated. He looked like a child who had just discovered he could do a magic trick.
But as we prepared to move on, the cold knot in my stomach remained. I had set out to reclaim the pieces of a dead god. I had not intended to create a legacy. This boy, with his hair like forgotten sunlight and his soul now touched by eternal night, was my responsibility in a way I had never anticipated.