"Okay, help me with this."
Suddenly a wooden bucket materialized, its contents dark and viscous.
"Is that blood?"
"Yes. Blood of a hundred virgins. Traded half my collection for it before I came to this place. It's one of the few treasures I still possess."
Sage looked at him in disgust.
"What?" Baelor's monkey face managed to look offended. "It's valuable for what we're about to do. Don't look at me like that—I didn't kill them. Just bought from those who did. There's a difference."
"That doesn't make it better."
"Morality is a luxury, kid. Now follow me with the bucket while I draw the runes."
Sage reluctantly picked up the bucket, grimacing at its weight and warmth. He followed Baelor as the demon began tracing an enormous circle on the cavern floor, his clawed finger leaving glowing red lines in its wake. The symbols he drew were complex, layered, each one seeming to pulse with its own dark energy.
Around the outer edge of the circle, Baelor carefully placed strange withered leaves at precise intervals.
"Okay, now take off all your clothes and lie down in the center."
Sage stared at him.
"What are you gawking at me for?" Baelor's voice rose defensively. "I'm a damn monkey! What exactly do you think I'm going to do to you? This is a ritual, not a social event."
Sage coughed awkwardly and began removing his clothes. He folded them carefully and set them outside the circle, then stepped into the center and lay down on his back. The stone was surprisingly warm beneath him.
He felt incredibly vulnerable, completely naked and exposed in the vast cavern with blinding divine light pulsing nearby.
"Listen carefully," Baelor said, his tone deadly serious now. "This is going to be extremely painful. I made the circle large to give you room, but no matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts, do NOT leave the circle. Understand? If you break the boundary while the ritual is active, you'll die. Horribly."
"Got it. Don't leave the circle."
Baelor positioned himself at the edge of the rune circle and began chanting. "Cor virtutis, lux aeterna, per sanguinem innocent—" He stopped abruptly. "No, that's not it."
He started again. "Aperire portas caeli, descendere in—" Another stop. "Dammit, not that either."
"Ex tenebris ad lucem, per mortem ad vitam—" He growled in frustration. "No, definitely not that."
Sage raised his head slightly, his discomfort growing. "Do you even know what you're doing?"
"Shut it! I've never attempted to move a heart this powerful before. The incantation has to be perfect or we'll both be vaporized. Let me think!"
Sage lay back down, staring at the dark ceiling above. Wonderful. He was naked, lying in virgin blood, about to undergo an agonizing ritual, and his guide couldn't remember the magic words.
This was going well.
Baelor straightened, his voice taking on a commanding tone that echoed through the cavern:
(Heart of sins, come to me! We do not worship, but command! Through blood and pain, let the mortal heart be broken!)
Suddenly Sage felt something shift. He watched in horror as the blinding light began to move, drifting slowly over his chest like a miniature sun. Baelor continued chanting, his voice growing stronger and more authoritative with each word.
Sage felt his heart lurch violently in his chest. It was as if something invisible had grabbed it and was trying to yank it free. He could see his chest stretching upward grotesquely, the skin and muscle pulling taut—
BOOM.
Blood exploded across the cavern floor as his chest cavity burst open. His heart, still connected by arteries and veins, was dragged toward the light like a fish on a hook.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
The scream that tore from Sage's throat was inhuman, raw, primal agony that echoed off the cavern walls. He tried to move, to escape, but his body was completely paralyzed. The pain was beyond description, beyond comprehension. It felt like every nerve ending in his body was on fire while his very essence was being ripped away.
His heart had literally been torn from his chest, and somehow he was still conscious to feel every agonizing second of it.
"Hold on!" Baelor shouted over the screaming.
Sage couldn't see anything through the tears and blood. Baelor began another chant, this one different, more complex:
(Two hearts, one essence! Sin and mortality, unite in darkness!)
Inside the brilliant light, Sage's still-beating heart began to merge with something else, something dark and ancient that pulsed with malevolent power. The light started to diminish slightly, but it was still blindingly bright.
Then the combined heart dropped.
It slammed back into Sage's chest with tremendous force, making his already broken screams crack into something even more desperate. His voice was giving out, from screaming when Móði killed his mother and Hati, from screaming when he'd first arrived in this hellish place, and now from this unendurable torture.
The heart began reconnecting to his circulatory system, veins and arteries reattaching themselves with wet, squelching sounds. Blood pumped erratically as his body tried to adjust to something fundamentally foreign now beating inside him.
Suddenly, a magical circle appeared above him, brilliant gold and covered in intricate symbols.
"The seal," Baelor breathed.
Sage couldn't see anything clearly. His vision swam with tears and pain, but he could feel something pressing down on him from above. The seal was fighting against the corrupted heart now beating in his chest, divine magic warring against infernal power.
Cracks began to appear across the golden circle. It flickered, shrank, and then—
Shattered completely.
Sage's vision went black as golden and black veins erupted across his entire body. They glowed beneath his skin like liquid fire, spreading from his chest outward, down his arms to his fingertips, up his neck to his face, across his torso, down his legs, even to his most private areas. Every inch of him was lit up with power.
Then everything went silent.
And dark.
Baelor collapsed as well, completely exhausted. "Haah... finally..."
He looked at Sage's unconscious body and noticed it was changing. The transformation was subtle but unmistakable.
Sage's vibrant red hair was darkening, shifting into a deeper, almost crimson shade—like blood that had been left to dry. His skin, which had been tan already, took on a slightly more tan complexion, though still light enough to show the fading glow of the veins beneath.
But most noticeably, his body was growing.
Sage had been lean before, almost wiry from years of training but still carrying the frame of someone not yet fully grown. Now his muscles were filling out, his shoulders broadening, his height increasing. The boy who had entered this cavern was being reshaped into something more.
Even his hair, which had been relatively short and practical, was lengthening. Dark red strands spread across the cavern floor beneath his head, growing longer with each passing moment.
"What the..." Baelor muttered, watching the transformation with a mixture of fascination and concern.