The ride out took two days, long enough for the dread to settle into something closer to routine than fear, and Isakk spent most of it turning Doran's question over in his mind.
"If it's not Diavlos," Doran had said, back at camp, loading his own blade onto the saddle, "then I want you ready regardless. You've got power now. Time you understood exactly what kind."
"Xerile's power."
"That's what you've got. Not what it is." Doran had looked at him then with that same patient, unhurried attention he always carried, the look of a man who'd spent a career separating what people assumed from what was actually true. "There's a difference between the two, and if you don't know it, you'll get yourself killed the first time you meet something your sigil can't answer."
He'd explained it properly that night, by the fire, in the plain, unhurried way he explained everything.
Magic in the empire's understanding broke down three ways. Mana was the common kind, the kind taught at the mage towers, drawn from the world itself, rivers and stone and the slow breath of growing things, disciplined and teachable and, Doran said, mostly harmless if handled with care. Will was rarer, born from conviction rather than any outside source, a magic that answered to belief alone, which was why so few ever mastered it, since belief that strong rarely survived contact with a hard life. And then there was Demon Magic, which didn't draw from the world or from conviction at all. It drew from the caster, hunger feeding on hunger, power bought with pieces of the self that didn't grow back the way mana or will eventually could.
"That's what you've got," Doran had said. "Whatever Xerile gave you, it's not of this world. It doesn't replenish the way a mage's reserves do. Every time you spend it, you're spending something of you."
"I know that."
"Knowing it and respecting it aren't the same thing." Doran had held his gaze a long moment. "You'll want to use it like a sword. It isn't one. A sword doesn't care how angry you are when you swing it. Demon magic does. It listens to grief, to rage, to the ugliest parts of a man, and it gets stronger the more of those parts you feed it. You use it enough without discipline, and one day you'll look down and realize you've spent the parts of yourself you actually wanted to keep."
Isakk had said nothing to that. He'd only looked down at the sigil, quiet now, and thought of Tomas's hand waving off thanks, and wondered how much of that was already gone.
The village was called Hallowmere, and by the time they reached it, the sun was already low enough to paint the smoke orange.
Not burned to the ground this time. That was the first thing Isakk noticed, swinging down off his horse at the treeline with Doran beside him and four soldiers fanning out behind. Houses stood intact, mostly. Doors hung open. A cart sat abandoned in the middle of the lane, one wheel still spinning slow in the wind, like whoever had been pulling it had simply vanished mid step.
"This isn't Diavlos," Doran said, low, scanning the empty square.
"How do you know."
"Diavlos burns. Diavlos doesn't bother hiding what he's done, he wants it seen. This is something that wanted quiet." Doran drew his blade, slow and deliberate, no wasted motion. "Something that didn't want anyone running far enough to warn the next village over."
They found the first body behind the bakery, and Isakk understood immediately what Doran meant. It wasn't burned. It wasn't cut. It had been opened the way a man might open a piece of fruit, almost careful about it, and whatever had been taken from inside was gone entirely, leaving behind something hollowed and dry, already stiffening in the evening cold.
"Gods," one of the soldiers muttered, turning away.
"Soul eater," Doran said quietly. "Lesser demon. Not Diavlos's kind of monster, not his kind of cruelty either. This is just hunger. Simple and stupid and hungry." He glanced sideways at Isakk. "This is the kind of thing you're going to meet a hundred times over in this line of work. Not every horror in this world answers to some grand design. Some of it's just an animal that's learned to walk on two legs and found out humans taste good."
"Where is it."
"Close. It won't have gone far, not with this much left to finish." Doran's eyes swept the square again, methodical. "This is yours, Isakk. I'll be beside you. My men will hold the perimeter. But I want you to handle this one. Not because I think you're ready. Because the only way you'll ever actually be ready is if I stop pretending you're not."
Isakk's hand curled, the sigil along his palm catching the dying light, black lines shifting faint and slow like something breathing beneath his skin.
"And if I can't."
"Then I'm standing right here." Doran's voice didn't waver. "That's the whole point of training somewhere that isn't Wideroth's camp, Isakk. Nobody throws you in alone to sink or swim just to see which it'll be. I expect you to struggle. I don't expect you to drown. Those aren't the same thing, and any commander who tells you otherwise is lying to make himself feel less responsible for what happens next."
They found it in the root cellar beneath the chapel, a thing that had worn a human shape once and had stopped bothering with the pretense, limbs too long, joints bent wrong, a mouth that opened far past where a jaw should have allowed. It turned toward them with eyes like wet coal, and the sound it made wasn't a growl so much as a low, wet hum, the sound of something anticipating a meal.
"Ugly thing," Doran muttered, settling into his stance beside Isakk without hurry. "Not strong. Just hungry. Remember what I told you. Don't feed it your grief. Feed it purpose instead. There's a difference, and that difference is the whole of what separates a soldier from a slaughter."
Isakk breathed out slow, and thought not of Tomas, not of the fire, but of Sable laughing by a cookfire two nights past, safe, for now, because of choices he still had the chance to make.
The sigil answered to that instead, quieter, steadier, a current he aimed rather than unleashed.
"Alright," he said, stepping forward into the dark of the cellar. "Let's see what I've actually got."
The thing came at him fast, faster than something that shape had any right to move, and Isakk barely got his blade up before one long arm caught him across the ribs and sent him crashing into a wall of stacked grain sacks hard enough to drive every breath out of his lungs at once.
He hit the ground rolling, tasted copper, spat it out without thinking twice about it.
The soul eater didn't pause to admire its work. It never did, things like it, no pride, no cruelty worth the name, just hunger wearing a shape, and it was already closing the distance again before Isakk had fully found his feet, that too wide mouth cracking open with a wet, eager sound.
There it is.
The voice came up through him like heat off stone, and for the first time since the mindscape, since the dark had split open and poured the whole of her remaining strength into him, Isakk felt what was left of Xerile stir properly, not whispering, not needling, but roaring, delighted, ancient and hungry in a way that had nothing to do with the thing in front of him and everything to do with finally, finally being let off the leash, worn and diminished as she now was.
Oh, I've missed this. Look at it. Look at it, Isakk, it doesn't even know what's standing in its way.
He dropped low under the next swing, felt the wind of the creature's claws pass a hand's width from his scalp, and drove his blade up into the soft meat of its forearm on the way past. Black ichor sprayed across the cellar floor. The thing shrieked, high and wet and furious, and Xerile's laughter rolled through him like thunder rolling through a canyon, delighted, savage.
Good. Hurt it. Let it understand what it's actually facing before it dies not knowing.
Isakk wiped a smear of blood from his split lip with the back of his hand, breathing hard, circling as the creature recovered, favoring its ruined arm.
"You're enjoying this."
I've spent weeks reduced to a whisper behind your ribs watching you fix fences. Of course I'm enjoying this. Something in her voice sharpened, feral and bright despite its thinness. Stop thinking so much. It's going to gut you if you keep standing there counting your own heartbeat. Take what you're owed. Take what it's hoarding inside itself. You know how. I taught you how.
He did know. He'd practiced it a dozen times in Doran's yard, on nothing more dangerous than a straw dummy, drawing a thread of something out of a thing and into himself, vitality, warmth, the raw animal fact of being alive, and feeling it settle into him like a second pulse.
He'd never done it to something that was actively trying to eat him.
The soul eater lunged again, and this time Isakk didn't dodge, didn't retreat. He stepped into it, drove his palm flat against the center of its chest, and let the sigil open all the way, black lines flaring white hot up his arm, and felt the pull begin, a vast, hungry drawing sensation, like a tide reversing itself, like something vast and patient reaching through his hand and simply taking.
The creature screamed.
It was not a human sound. It tore through the cellar and rattled the shelves and sent dust sifting down from the rafters above, and beneath it Isakk could hear Xerile howling along with it, not in pain, in something closer to joy, in the pure animal thrill of a predator finally allowed to be exactly what it was, even a smaller, worn down version of what she used to be.
Yes. Yes, there it is, don't stop now, take it all, take everything it stole and make it yours instead.
The thing's struggling grew weaker beneath his palm, limbs trembling, that too wide mouth working soundlessly now, and Isakk felt it, actually felt it, warmth flooding up his arm and into his chest, vitality it had stolen from god knew how many villagers now pouring backward into him instead, stolen twice over, and some small, quiet part of him that was still only sixteen years old recoiled at how good it felt.
The soul eater collapsed to dust and black ichor at his feet a moment later, nothing left standing where it had been, and Isakk stood over the remains breathing hard, sigil still glowing faint along his arm, heart hammering with something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite triumph either.
Well, Xerile said, quieter now, almost fond, the roar settling back into something closer to a satisfied hum. Look at that. Maybe you weren't lying to me in the dark after all.
Above him, he heard Doran's boots on the cellar steps, cautious, unhurried.
"Isakk?"
He wiped the last of the blood from his lip and turned toward the stairs, the sigil finally dimming back to quiet black against his skin.
"It's done," he said.