Selphira stood over the fallen elf a long moment, crimson robes whispering as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. Atlas had been taken from her; the Goddess had walked away with him. Pride and panic warred inside her, but panic sharpened into calculation almost at once.
Temporary, she told herself. Until I take that power. Until I bind it. Until I reclaim what makes me more than rumor and robes.
She drew a small silver phial from beneath her sleeve — a single vial kept for the temple's most private rites. Inside, a thin thread of Atlas's blood still shimmered like liquid garnet.
The blood had already been tested, refined, poured into chalices for nobles and priests; Selphira had kept this fragment back for an emergency. It smelled of iron and something older, a faint hum under the scent that tugged at a person's bones.
Selphira set the vial carefully on the floor, as if handling a jewel. She knelt and extended her left palm. With the tip of a jeweled stylus, she pricked her hand and let a bead of her own blood mix with Atlas's in the phial. The two mingled, the liquid pulsing brighter. Then she touched the stylus to her skin.
She drew first upon herself.
The Master symbol she etched was precise, almost elegant — a small, open eye framed by three concentric spirals; beneath the eye, three short vertical bars stacked like a tally. Around the eye's outermost spiral she carved two tiny crescent hooks facing outward.
The design looked almost like a sigil of awareness and command: the eye to see, the spirals to draw threads, the bars to measure control, the hooks to hold.
When the stylus lifted, the inked wound glowed faintly. Selphira whispered a short string of words in the old tongue — not a prayer so much as an instruction. She cupped her other hand over the symbol and poured mana into the mark. Her aura swelled; the symbol burned with a cold white light that spread across her veins like frost.
The Master sigil sank into her skin, a delicate black-and-gold tattoo that hummed with restrained authority. She could feel, once the sigil took, a new filament of control coiling in the space just behind her sternum, ready to unspool.
Then she turned to the elf.
Selindra lay pale and still, a perfect shape of the kind trouble can break. Selphira pressed her fingertips to the elf's exposed stomach and drew the Slave symbol — it was not a mirror of the master's mark, but a complement.
The Slave symbol was a closed crescent cradling a descending teardrop, pierced by a single vertical line. Around the crescent's rim were tiny teeth — not teeth of violence but hooks, to be latched. Where the Master's sigil spoke of vision and command, the Slave sigil spoke of reception and tethering.
Selphira opened the phial again and, with a practiced flick, let a slow bead of Atlas's blood fall onto the center of the slave mark. The red spread like ink in water, soaked into the stylus she used, and she traced over the lines one last time.
The blood soaked the curves, the teardrop gleamed a deeper, uncanny crimson. She murmured the binding syllables — short, clipped sounds designed to point Fate like a needle.
Then she poured mana.
Not a small spill but a controlled, steady current. She laid both palms over Selindra's stomach and pushed. Atlas's blood in the design drank the mana and ignited.
The slave sigil flared first a dull red, then a fierce, deep ruby. Threads of light — pale, almost translucent — unspooled from Selphira's palm-mark. They snaked through the air as if drawn by a magnet, and one by one the filaments threaded themselves into the slave mark on Selindra's belly.
There was no screaming: Selindra slept on, unconscious, but the air around her trembled with something like the sigh of fate shifting. The filaments tightened, like delicate cords of glass.
Selphira let the flow complete. She closed her eyes briefly and whispered, softer than before, the final clause of the pact. "By this blood, by this sign, our fates are tied. Master sees. Slave follows. Where I call, you answer. Where I bind, you remain."
The temple air tasted of ozone. The Master symbol on Selphira's palm pulsed in time with the slave mark on Selindra's belly. For a breath, the two marks shone the same hue of hard red.
Selphira felt it immediately — a faint tug, a directional pull from the elf, as if a remote knot had been fastened inside another's heart. She smiled, small and sharp.
Enough, she thought. A small twist of Fate is all that man requires. This blood changes destiny only slightly, but that is all I need to make her useful.
She tested the bond. A tiny motion of her hand, a thought of drawing the filaments tighter, and she felt a faint echo inside — as if something within Selindra had shifted, an internal lock turning. Nothing monstrous, not yet; the slave remained whole.
But now there was a connection: Selphira could sense Selindra's presence like a warm thread, could pull to draw attention, could nudge, could compel small obediences. The pact would not instantly crush the elf's mind, but it tethered her will for as long as Selphira chose.
Selphira rose, the Master sigil visible on her palm — an elegant, cruel jewel of ink and light. The slave sigil on Selindra's abdomen was darker now, the blood setting into the lines like dried lacquer. Around Selindra's body the magic hummed quietly, a sleeping engine.
"This is temporary," Selphira said aloud, to no one but the empty chamber. "Until I can still that power, until I learn how the Goddess gave it. But with this… you will be mine to use. And you will lead me to that strength."
She touched the crown of the unconscious elf's head with a final blessing that tasted faintly of command. Selphira's grin widened. She slid the phial back into her robe and turned away, already plotting her next steps: study the bond, probe the elf's dream, map the tiny ways Atlas's blood shifted Fate — and then, when it suited her, to use that knowledge to seize more.
Selindra did not stir. For now, the pact waited — woven, sealed, and ready. The Master and Slave marks glowed faintly in the dim light of the temple room, twin sigils that tied two lives together with a single drop of enchanted blood.