The robed figure uttered no word.
They approached one of the tables with the mechanical precision of someone who has performed this ritual countless times. Their hands, gloved in black leather, selected a thin metal tube connected to a glass reservoir filled with a liquid.
It was no ordinary liquid.
It was a substance of black, so profoundly black it seemed a fragment of solid void, a hole in reality that absorbed the light from the surrounding torch rather than reflecting it. At the tube's end, a long, cruelly fine hypodermic needle gleamed with a sinister purpose.
Uriel, immobilized on the icy slab, watched it approach.
Fear became a ball of ice in his throat, but [Unbreakable] kept his mind anchored, observing, refusing to shatter under terror.
The needle settled on the skin of his left arm, already bruised and bloodied.
There was no preparation, no disinfectant.
Only pressure, and then a cold, metallic penetration forcing its way through muscle and tendon. The pain was sharp, a line of white fire. The robed figure depressed a small piston on the tube.
The pain changed. It was not a pain of cutting or penetration.
It was as if they had injected molten lava directly into his veins.
A virulent, corrupt heat that erupted from the entry point and branched out like the roots of a poisonous tree through his arm. Uriel held his breath, his muscles straining against the restraints until he thought his bones would crack. A stifled groan escaped between his clenched teeth.
The needle withdrew, only to settle on his right arm and repeat the atrocity.
Then, the left leg. The right. Each new injection was a wave of agony added to the last, a fire spreading through his limbs, merging into an inner sea of torment.
The black liquid, that anti-light substance, flowed within him, and with it came a sensation of invasion, of something alien and voracious trying to rewrite his very cellular essence.
The final needle was placed over his pectoral, right above the heart. Uriel, bathed in cold sweat and blood, his vision blurred by pain, stared fixedly at the ceiling. The beam of grimy light now seemed blinding. The needle descended.
This time, the scream could not be contained.
It was a raw, primitive sound that tore from his throat and filled the stone chamber. The black heat, now pumped directly near the core of his being, erupted like a supernova of agony.
It was no longer just his arms or legs. It was everything. His entire body, soul, and spirit.
Every fiber, every nerve, every particle of his being seemed to be submerged in a molten furnace while being simultaneously torn apart from within. It was an indescribable sensation: the slow, meticulous combustion of his humanity, as if the dark liquid was an acid dissolving all he was and replacing it with its own consuming void.
The pain was so absolute it transcended time. Seconds stretched into hours, hours into what he believed was an eternity trapped in that hell of pure sensation. He saw flashes behind his closed eyelids: twisting black shapes, whispers in a language that froze the soul.
He felt his body rebel.
Muscles contracted in violent, uncontrollable spasms, slamming against the metal bindings. An unnatural heat emanated from his skin, which began to darken, turning gray and then pitch-black. His chest heaved with difficulty, and with each inhalation he felt an internal cracking, as if his skeleton was about to give way.
The swelling began.
It wasn't the swelling of an injury, but something grotesque and supernatural. His body, beneath the skin now black as pitch, seemed to inflate, distending against the limits of its own flesh. He felt like a wineskin about to burst, filled with a dark and malignant pressure. The restraints creaked, the metal protested. A high-pitched whine filled his ears, the sound of his own flesh on the verge of collapse.
This is the end, thought a part of him, the animal part that just wanted the pain to stop, to fade and disappear.
But in the deepest core, where the [Unbreakable] attribute resided, a spark refused to be extinguished.
It was not just passive mental defense.
It was the active, fierce, desperate will to keep being. The desire to live, not as a scream, but as a silent, irrevocable command.
His body reached the limit.
With a horrible, wet, tearing sound, the black and taut skin did not explode outward in a burst of viscera. Instead, it imploded inward, as if being sucked into a singular point in his chest. For an instant, there was only a swirling vortex of dense shadows where his human form had been, a silent vortex of blackness.
Then, from that nucleus of darkness, a new form arose.
It was not the bruised and bloodied body of Uriel.
It was a human silhouette, but composed of tangible darkness. Not a simple absence of light, but a living substance that rippled gently around its contours, like heavy smoke or liquid silk made of night. It retained his general shape, but now it was a statue of coalescing shadows. Where his eyes should have been, two points of a faint, cold, alabaster-white light ignited.
Uriel, now cloaked in and made of darkness, breathed.
It was not a breath of air, but a flowing of the shadows around him.
The agony had ceased. In its place was an expansive coldness, a serene and terrible power.
He felt the room in a new way. Through the [Darkness] attribute, he not only saw through the shadows, but felt the room through them. Every corner, every texture of the stone, the residual heat of the torches like annoying stains in his new, cold perception. And the [Spark of Darkness] in his soul resonated, singing in harmony with this new form. It was as if he had finally returned to a home he didn't know he had missed.
The robed figure had retreated several steps. The professional indifference in their hands had been replaced by a barely perceptible tremor. The assistant or scientist stared at the dark form that had arisen from his experiment table, and in their eyes, barely visible under the hood, was a mix of awe and a sudden, visceral fear.
This was not what usually happened. Subjects exploded, twisted until they died, or turned into misshapen creatures.
Uriel, the entity of darkness, slowly turned its head toward his torturer.
The two points of dark white light fixed on him. There was no rage in the movement, only a glacial curiosity and an inherent justice.
He extended what had been his arm, now a tentacle of condensed shadows that maintained a vaguely human shape. From his dark palm, without any apparent gesture, tendrils of pure blackness sprouted. They moved with supernatural speed, snaking through the cold space of the chamber. They met no resistance.
The black tendrils pierced the torso of the robed figure with the ease of a hot knife through butter. There was no sound of torn flesh, only a soft hiss and a dull crunch of shattered ribs.
The man didn't even have time to scream. His eyes widened behind the hood, surprise freezing in them before life was instantly extinguished. His body slumped, and the tendrils of darkness withdrew, cleanly, absorbing back into Uriel's undulating form.
An absolute silence filled the chamber, broken only by the distant crackle of a torch. Uriel observed his dark hand, the black energy pulsing softly beneath its surface. The canvas that had once been blank was now painted with an abyssal black. It drank the light. It drank the color. It drank the very sound from the air.
He was no longer an Aspirant waiting to be painted.
He had become the brush, the paint, and the first furious, definitive stroke upon himself.
The paint was black. And it was hungry.