The burning started at sunset.
Darian had been returning from Sethkhan's shop when he first felt it—a warmth in his blood that had nothing to do with the fading light or the exertion of walking. It began as a subtle thing, easily dismissed as fatigue or the lingering effects of his afternoon meditation. But with each passing minute, the sensation intensified.
By the time he reached the dormitory, his veins felt like channels of liquid fire.
He stood in the doorway, watching the other practitioners go about their evening routines—eating, talking, preparing for meditation or sleep—and knew with sudden certainty that he could not join them. Something was happening inside him. Something that required privacy.
Something that might be dangerous.
The stables were empty at this hour. Master Voreth had finished his duties and returned to whatever quarters the senior practitioners occupied, and the horses were fed and settled for the night. Darian slipped through the doors and closed them behind him, breathing in the familiar scents of hay and animal musk as if they might anchor him to normalcy.
They did not.
The burning spread from his blood to his bones, from his bones to his mind. His thoughts began to pulse with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat—or perhaps exceeded it, racing ahead into territories his consciousness struggled to follow. He stumbled to an empty stall and collapsed onto the straw, his hands pressed against his temples as if he could physically hold his skull together.
What is happening to me?
His wolf-blood surged in response to the question, but for once, it was not the dominant voice in his internal chorus. Something else was rising—something foreign, something that should not have existed within him. He felt it condensing in his chest, gathering like a storm cloud before lightning strikes.
The pain peaked.
And then, suddenly, it was over.
Darian lay gasping in the straw, his body drenched in sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs. The burning had faded to a gentle warmth, the mental pressure reduced to a quiet hum. He felt… different. Changed in some fundamental way that he could not immediately identify.
He raised his hands to examine them, half-expecting to find new tattoos marking his flesh.
There were none. But on the third finger of his right hand, where nothing had been before, there was now a ring.
Darian stared at it.
The ring was simple in design—a band of dark metal, almost black, with a single stripe of silver running around its circumference. It fit his finger perfectly, as if it had been crafted specifically for him. When he tried to remove it, it would not budge. When he stopped trying, it seemed to pulse faintly, responding to his attention.
A ring. A ring that appeared from nowhere. A ring that feels like…
His thoughts ground to a halt as the realization struck him.
He had seen this before. Not a ring specifically, but the principle—the manifestation of inner essence as external tool. The Ka-Forgers in the caravan, with their striped blades and bows. The warriors at the waystation, their weapons growing from their hands as if they had been born there.
This was a Ka-Tool.
But that was impossible. He was Beast-Blooded. He had awakened to the wolf line, had felt his ancestral nature rise within him, had earned his first tattoo through the methods prescribed for those who walked the Path of the Primal Self. The Ka-Forging path required different training, different awakening, a different fundamental relationship with one's inner essence.
One could not walk two paths. Everyone knew this. The scrolls said so. The masters said so. The entire structure of power in the Grey Continent was built upon this truth.
And yet the ring remained on his finger, undeniable and unexplainable.
Darian sat up slowly, his mind racing through possibilities. Could this be some effect of the strange compound he had smelled at Sethkhan's shop? Could the three-blood essence have somehow contaminated his own cultivation, awakening capabilities that should have remained dormant? Or was this something else entirely—something older, stranger, connected to mysteries he could not begin to comprehend?
He needed answers. The scroll room would be empty at this hour, the other practitioners either asleep or deep in meditation. He could research, investigate, find some explanation for what had happened to him.
But first, he needed to rest. The manifestation had drained him completely—he could feel the hollow exhaustion in his bones, the emptiness where his reserve of power should have been. Whatever had happened, it had cost him dearly.
He made his way back to the dormitory on unsteady legs, avoiding the common areas where others might see him and ask questions. His pallet welcomed him like an old friend, and he collapsed onto it without bothering to remove his clothes.
Sleep claimed him instantly.
But it was not ordinary sleep.
—————
The mausoleum stretched in all directions, vast beyond comprehension.
Darian stood on a floor of polished black stone, surrounded by columns of white marble that rose into darkness overhead. The air was thick and still, carrying the scent of dust and ages and something else—something that made his wolf-blood stir uneasily, recognizing the presence of death.
This was not a natural place. This was not a dream.
He knew this with the certainty of instinct, the way a predator knows the difference between prey and threat. Whatever space he had entered, it existed beyond the normal boundaries of sleep and waking. It had weight. It had substance. It had reality.
And he was not alone.
Two figures stood at the far end of the mausoleum, perhaps fifty paces distant. They had noticed him at the same moment he noticed them—three strangers regarding each other across a gulf of darkness and stone.
Darian's senses sharpened automatically, his wolf-blood providing what information it could. One figure was female, slight of build, dressed in white robes that marked her as someone of status. Behind her floated something that made his heart skip—a figure of light and geometry, wings folded, face obscured, crowned with a circlet bearing two gemstones that burned like captured stars.
A Seraph. Second gem. This woman walked the path of the Crowned.
The other figure was male, perhaps a year or two younger than Darian, with the refined features and bearing of nobility. He wore clothes of fine make—dark fabrics with golden trim—and in his right hand he held a knife that gleamed with inner light. A single stripe ran along its blade.
A Ka-Tool. First stripe. This one walked the path of the Forgers.
Three practitioners. Three different paths. All present in a place that should not exist.
For long minutes, no one spoke. They studied each other with the wariness of wolves meeting at the boundary of their territories—not yet hostile, but prepared for hostility should it arise. Darian could feel their gazes taking his measure, assessing his threat and his potential.
He did the same. The woman held herself with rigid control, her posture perfect despite the strangeness of their situation. Fear lurked behind her composed expression—he could smell it, faint but present—but she refused to let it rule her. The man was harder to read, his noble upbringing providing armor against scrutiny. But something in his eyes spoke of darkness, of secrets, of questions that troubled his sleep.
Finally, the woman spoke.
"I am Seraphina of Solaurex." Her voice was clear and steady, trained for public speaking despite her obvious youth. "Who are you, and why are you in my dream?"
Solaurex. The capital of the First Empire, the Aurelian Imperium. City of the Burning Crown, seat of the Church of the Radiant Crown. This woman came from the very heart of Seraphic power.
The young man responded before Darian could gather his thoughts. "I am Khaemon of Ankhara." A slight hesitation, as if the name cost him something to speak. "I was sleeping too. I did not choose to come here."
Ptah-Ankhara. The capital of the Second Empire, the Khemric Dominion. City of Eternal Forges, home of the great Ka-Forging families. This one came from equal heights of a different power.
Both of them turned to Darian.
He swallowed, suddenly conscious of how rough his clothes were compared to theirs, how provincial his accent would sound next to their refined speech. But he was here, somehow, in this impossible place with these impossible companions. That meant something. That made him their equal, at least for this moment.
"Darian of Mithrakesh." He straightened his spine, refusing to be cowed. "I was sleeping in the dormitory of the Fang of the Lesser Moon when I found myself here."
Seraphina's eyes narrowed slightly—parsing his words, his accent, his appearance. Placing him in the hierarchy of the world as she understood it. He saw the moment she dismissed him as insignificant, a thin-blooded practitioner from a minor training school.
Then her gaze dropped to his hand, and her eyes went wide.
"That ring." Her voice lost its composure, cracking with something that might have been hope or fear. "Is that… have you awakened two paths?"
Darian looked down at the ring on his finger—the Ka-Tool that should not exist, that contradicted everything he knew about how the world worked. When he looked up again, both Seraphina and Khaemon were staring at him with an intensity that made his skin prickle.
"I don't understand it," he admitted. "I awakened to the Beast Path a month ago. But tonight, this appeared. I don't know how. I don't know why."
Seraphina let out a breath that was almost a laugh—but there was no humor in it. "Then we are three of a kind."
She raised her left arm, pushing back the sleeve of her white robe. There, on the pale skin of her forearm, was a tattoo. A stylized wing, black as ink, rendered in the unmistakable style of the Beast Path.
"It appeared three weeks ago," she said quietly. "I have hidden it from everyone—from my family, from the Church, from the masters who train me. If they knew…" She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to.
Khaemon had gone very still. Slowly, with the air of a man revealing a condemned secret, he set down his knife and pulled back his own sleeve. On his wrist, barely visible in the strange light of the mausoleum, was a mark that made Darian's breath catch.
Not a tattoo. Something else—a shadow that moved, a darkness that writhed beneath the skin like something alive.
"The knife is my Ka-Tool," Khaemon said, his voice hollow. "It manifested when I was fourteen, as expected for my family line. But this…" He gestured at the shadow-mark. "This came later. It whispers to me sometimes. It hungers."
The fourth path. The one that could not be named. The one that Corvax had warned him never to speak of.
Three young practitioners. Three different empires. And each of them bearing signs of multiple paths—paths that should have been mutually exclusive, that should have been impossible to combine.
"By what mechanism have we come together here?" Darian asked, looking around at the vast mausoleum. "This place feels real, but it cannot be. We are hundreds of miles apart, sleeping in different cities."
"I have been researching," Seraphina said. "Secretly, in the restricted sections of the Church's libraries. There are references—old references, fragments from before the Sundering—to those who walked more than one path. They called them the Fractured, or sometimes the Convergent."
"What happened to them?" Khaemon's voice was sharp.
Seraphina's expression darkened. "They went mad. Every account agrees on this point—those who awakened multiple paths lost their sanity by the time they reached the fourth level. Their powers turned against them, consuming their minds, leaving them as empty vessels or raging beasts. The records suggest this is why the paths were separated in the first place. Why each empire specialized in different methods. Why mixing is forbidden."
The weight of her words settled over them like a shroud.
"Fourth level," Darian repeated. "And we are all at first or second."
"We have time," Seraphina said, and there was a desperate edge to her voice. "Time to find answers. Time to discover if the madness can be prevented."
"How?" Khaemon demanded. "The records you speak of are thousands of years old. The knowledge has been lost, or hidden, or destroyed. We cannot simply—"
"We can try." Seraphina stepped forward, her Seraph drifting behind her like a luminous shadow. "This meeting—this place—it happened for a reason. Something connected us. Something brought us together. That means there is hope."
"Or it means we are cursed together," Khaemon said bitterly.
"Perhaps both." Darian spoke without thinking, and found both of their gazes turning to him. "In my village, the elders tell a story. A wolf born with two hearts—one of fire, one of ice. The other wolves feared him, drove him out, said he was an abomination. But the two-hearted wolf survived where others died. His fire kept him warm in winter. His ice kept him cool in summer. What should have been his weakness became his strength."
Seraphina tilted her head, studying him with new interest. "A children's tale."
"Sometimes children's tales remember truths that adults have forgotten."
Silence stretched between them. The mausoleum seemed to breathe around them, its darkness pulsing with ancient secrets.
"We need to meet again," Seraphina said finally. "To share what we learn. To help each other survive what is coming." She looked at each of them in turn. "Can we do that? Can we trust each other enough to try?"
Khaemon's laugh was humorless. "Trust a stranger from an enemy empire? Trust a… whatever he is?" He gestured at Darian with something that was not quite contempt. "We have no reason to—"
"We have every reason." Seraphina's voice hardened. "We are alone, all of us. If our secrets are discovered, we will be executed as heretics or imprisoned as research subjects. No one else can understand what we face. No one else can help us."
"She's right." Darian met Khaemon's suspicious gaze without flinching. "I have no love for the First Empire or the Second. But right now, you two are the only people in the world who share my burden. That makes you… not enemies. Maybe not friends. But something."
Khaemon was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Something," he agreed. "For now. We will see what the future brings."
Seraphina relaxed slightly—not fully, but enough to suggest she had been bracing for refusal. "Then we are agreed. We meet here when we can. We share what we learn. We find a way to survive."
"How do we return to this place?" Darian asked. "I don't know how I arrived."
"Neither do I," Seraphina admitted. "But I suspect it has something to do with our shared condition. Perhaps if we meditate before sleep, focusing on this space, on each other…"
Pain lanced through Darian's skull without warning.
He gasped, staggering, his vision blurring at the edges. The mausoleum was fading around him, its stone walls becoming transparent, its columns dissolving into mist.
"What—" Seraphina started, but her voice was growing distant.
"I think I'm waking up," Darian managed through gritted teeth. "I've used too much… something. Power. I can't…"
The pain intensified. The mausoleum shattered.
—————
Darian's eyes snapped open to the familiar darkness of the dormitory hall.
His head throbbed with a vicious ache that seemed to pulse behind his eyes. His body felt wrung out, emptied, as if he had run for miles without rest. The ring on his finger was cold now, inert, whatever power it had possessed fully depleted.
But his mind was racing.
Seraphina. Khaemon. The mausoleum. Multiple paths. Madness at the fourth level.
It was real. All of it was real. He had met two others who shared his impossible condition—two strangers from enemy empires, both awakened to paths that should not have coexisted with their primary abilities.
He was not alone.
The thought brought a comfort he had not expected. For hours, he had been carrying a weight he could not share, doubts that would have destroyed him if revealed. Now, suddenly, there were others who understood. Others who faced the same dangers. Others who might—might—help him find a way through.
But there was fear too. The madness Seraphina had spoken of. The fate of the Fractured, consuming themselves before they could reach true power. If the old records were accurate, then his time was limited. Every advancement on his paths brought him closer to an end he could not escape.
Unless they found another way.
Darian lay back on his pallet, staring at the ceiling as the headache slowly faded. His wolf-blood was quiet now, exhausted from whatever effort the dream-meeting had required. The ring on his finger remained inert, waiting to be fed more power before it would awaken again.
Two paths. Maybe three, if he counted whatever connection had brought him to that mausoleum. Too many questions and not enough answers.
But for the first time since leaving Varketh, he had something more than vague hope.
He had allies. Strange ones, unlikely ones, separated by hundreds of miles and centuries of imperial rivalry. But allies nonetheless.
Tomorrow, he would search the scroll room for any reference to the Fractured. He would train harder, push his limits, try to understand the nature of the ring that had manifested on his finger. He would find a way to contact Seraphina and Khaemon again, to share what he learned and receive what they discovered in turn.
Tonight, he would rest.
The tight path had grown narrower still. But Darian no longer walked it alone.