The lesson did not continue in the blight-chamber. Kaelen led her back up the spiraling stairs, through the labyrinth of the keep, to a part of the fortress she had not seen. It was a tower, separate from the main spires, accessible by a slender, enclosed bridge that felt like walking on air over a chasm of swirling indigo mist.
His personal study.
It was not what she expected. There was no ostentatious throne, no trophies of war. It was a workspace, vast and organized with a terrifying precision. One entire wall was a lattice of dark wood holding thousands of slender, bone-white scrolls. Another was dominated by a map of such complexity it made her head spin—continents she didn't recognize, shifting ley-lines painted in luminescent ink, regions marked with symbols of caution or danger. A massive desk of petrified black wood stood before a window that looked out over the endless, twilight forest. And everywhere, there were artifacts: strange crystals humming with captive light, intricate models of celestial orbits, weapons of elegant, minimal design resting on stands.
It was the lair of a ruler who valued knowledge as much as power.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to a heavy chair carved from a single piece of obsidian before the fireplace, where a low, smokeless fire of amethyst flame burned.
She sat, the stolen energy from the blight still humming in her veins, a discordant song that both energized and sickened her. The hunger was a sated beast, sleeping, but she could feel its edges, the vast emptiness ready to wake.
Kaelen did not sit behind his desk. He leaned against it, facing her, arms crossed. The scholarly intensity from the chamber below had settled into a focused calm.
"Your question," he began, "is the right one. What happens when a Siphon takes in too much? History—what little I have—suggests two outcomes. Dissolution, or corruption."
Elara's fingers tightened on the arms of the chair. "Explain."
"Dissolution. The Siphon's own void, overwhelmed by the influx of foreign power, turns inward. It consumes the Siphon's own life force, their mind, their essence. They become a shell, then dust." He said it with detached clinicality. "Corruption. The power taken is not fully broken down. It retains its nature and twists the Siphon from within. A Siphon who feasts on fire becomes a living conflagration. One who drains a mind-mage becomes a psychic vortex. You consumed a weapon designed to corrupt magic. The risk is… significant."
A cold dread pooled in her stomach. "So every time I use this… I risk destroying myself or becoming a version of the thing I'm fighting."
"Yes." He didn't soften it. "Control is not a luxury. It is your only path to survival. What you did downstairs was instinct. A reflex of your hunger. We must replace instinct with discipline."
"How?" The word was a plea.
He pushed off the desk and walked to a glass case, retrieving a small, smooth stone. It was a dull grey, inert. He placed it on the low table between them.
"This is a ward-stone. It holds a tiny, simple charge of protective magic. Harmless. Stable." He looked at her. "Your task is to take the magic from it. Not a violent pull. A gentle drawing. A single sip. And you will stop the moment the stone goes dark."
Elara stared at the unassuming rock. It seemed so simple compared to the pulsating horror of the blight. But that was the point. To learn control, she had to start with something that wouldn't fight back, wouldn't poison her.
"Focus on the stone," Kaelen instructed, his voice assuming the steady, relentless tone of a tutor. "Feel for the magic within it. It is a shallow well. Visualize a thread connecting your core to that well. Then, imagine that thread tightening, drawing a single drop up."
She closed her eyes, trying to quiet the echo of the blight's power in her system. She reached out with her senses. It was difficult. The stone's magic was a faint, cool shimmer, like the last glow of a dying ember amidst the roaring bonfires of power that were Kaelen and the keep itself. But she found it.
She visualized the thread. She imagined the gentle pull.
The hunger, drowsy but alert, reacted. It wasn't a thread. It was a yank.
A torrent of cool, clean energy ripped from the stone and slammed into her. It was a shock of pure, unadulterated power—simple, bright, and overwhelming after the toxic blight. The stone didn't just go dark; it cracked with a sharp pop, crumbling into grey dust.
Elara gasped, her eyes flying open. The magic flooded her, a cool rush that made her skin prickle, her vision sharpen to painful clarity. It was too much. The void within her churned, trying to process it, but the influx was sudden and disorienting. A faint, silver light bled from her pores for a single, terrifying second before being swallowed.
Kaelen watched the dust that had been the ward-stone. "Too much force," he stated, no reprimand, just observation. "You opened a floodgate when you needed a needle's eye. Your power is a reflex of need. You must learn to act from intention, not desperation."
He fetched another stone, identical. "Again."
And so it went. For hours that felt like days. Stone after stone crumbled to dust. She destroyed a delicate crystal that held a captured sunbeam. She unraveled a minor ward on a book until its pages yellowed and brittled. Each failure was a lesson in the brute, hungry nature of her power. It was a wild animal on a frayed leash.
Frustration built into a hot, sharp knot in her chest. The stolen energies swirled inside her, a confusing cocktail of blight-corruption and clean magic, making her feel jittery and nauseous. "I can't," she snapped after the tenth stone disintegrated. "It's like trying to drink the ocean with a thimble. The thimble is the ocean."
Kaelen, who had been observing with infuriating patience, finally moved. He crouched before her chair, bringing them to eye level. His proximity was a sudden, shocking intimacy.
"You are thinking of it as taking," he said, his voice low. "Stop. You are not a thief. You are a vessel. The magic exists. You are a space for it to flow into. Be the empty cup, not the hand that grabs the pitcher."
He reached out, not touching her, but holding his hand palm-up between them. A small, perfect sphere of shadow and starlight—his magic—coalesced above his palm. It was mesmerizing, a miniature cosmos spinning silently.
"This is a measured amount. A single drop of my power," he said, his eyes holding hers. "Do not pull. Be open. Let it come to the void."
This was madness. To try this on his power, the most potent, dangerous force she'd ever felt? It was like practicing surgery on a live dragon.
But the challenge in his eyes was absolute. And the scholar in him was waiting to see what would happen.
Swallowing her terror, Elara nodded. She focused on the spinning sphere. Instead of reaching for it with the ravenous hunger, she tried to follow his instruction. She turned her awareness inward, to the emptiness. She didn't project need. She simply… made space.
For a long moment, nothing. His power spun, contained and separate.
Then, a faint, almost imperceptible wisp of shadow detached from the sphere. It drifted, drawn not by a violent pull, but as if finding a path of least resistance, a vacuum. It touched the space between them and vanished into her.
The effect was instantaneous and electric.
It was not like the blight or the ward-stones. This was living power, ancient, complex, and intimately tied to the will of the king before her. It tasted of cold starlight, of deep earth, of absolute authority. It hit her system and the void within her didn't just consume it; it shuddered, resonating with a strange, deep harmony. A soft, surprised sound escaped her lips.
Kaelen's eyes widened a fraction. The sphere in his hand flickered. He felt it too—not just the loss of power, but the connection. A thread plucked between them.
"Again," he breathed, his voice hushed with revelation.
They repeated the process. Wisp by careful wisp, she drew the measured amount of his power into herself. Each sip was a controlled, intentional act. Each one sent a thrill through her that was part power, part something else entirely—a terrifying intimacy. She was taking a piece of him inside her.
When the last wisp vanished and the sphere winked out, she was trembling, but not from exhaustion. She was vibrating with a new, clean energy, and with the staggering realization that she had done it. Control.
Kaelen slowly lowered his hand. He looked at her as if seeing her for the very first time. The storm in his eyes was calm, replaced by a deep, fathomless calculation… and a spark of something that looked like awe.
"Good," he said, the single word heavy with meaning. He stood, breaking the intense proximity. "That is enough for today. Your body and spirit need to assimilate what you have taken."
He walked to his desk, his back to her. "Return to your chambers. Practice the feeling of openness, of the empty cup, without drawing on anything. Master the state of readiness without desperation."
Elara stood, her legs unsteady. The world seemed different. The magical currents of the keep were no longer just a tormenting temptation; they were a map, a symphony she could now hear the individual notes of. And at the center of it all was the dark, resonant chord of the Shadow King.
As she reached the door, his voice stopped her.
"Elara."
She turned.
He was watching her, his expression inscrutable. "The stone you first practiced on… it was not the tenth you destroyed. It was the twenty-seventh. Remember that. Progress is measured in persistence, not in easy success."
He had been counting. He had noted every failure without comment, waiting for the breakthrough. The realization was more unnerving than his anger would have been.
She simply nodded and stepped out onto the slender bridge, the mist of the chasm curling around her ankles. The hunger was quiet, satisfied not just by the power, but by the first taste of mastery. And the memory of his starlight power, now a part of her, hummed a quiet, dangerous song in her blood.
The cage was still there. But she had just been given a file. And the guard had shown her how to use it.