Chapter 5: A Taste of Rage

Chapter 5: A Taste of Rage

For three days, the decaying mansion was Kaelen’s monastery. He immersed himself in the journal, the profane text his new scripture. He practiced in the cavernous laboratory, treating his newfound knowledge with the same rigorous discipline he’d once applied to his prayers. He learned that summoning the Shadow Barrier left him hollow and cold, a psychic exhaustion that felt like a piece of his soul had been flayed away. It was a power born of desperation, a defense that cost him dearly. The lexicon was clear: FEAR = SHADOW BARRIER. But it was an equation he had no desire to solve again.

His attempts to tap into JOY = KINETIC FORCE were a pathetic failure. He tried to recall happy memories, the taste of honeyed bread from the monastery kitchen, a rare moment of praise from the Abbot. The resulting flicker of power was barely enough to rattle a dusty beaker on a shelf. Joy, he realized, was a language his body had forgotten how to speak.

By the fourth day, the house’s meager supply of stale crackers and canned goods had run out. Hunger, a simple, primal need, finally drove him out into the humid labyrinth of New Orleans. He waited until nightfall, hoping the darkness would grant him anonymity. He pulled on a plain grey shirt, the dark clerical black too much of a uniform, and ventured into the electric chaos of the French Quarter.

The sensory assault was even more jarring this time. A tide of humanity washed over him—laughing tourists with plastic cups, street musicians coaxing mournful blues from a saxophone, the scent of fried dough and spilled rum thick in the air. The vibrant, chaotic life of it all was overwhelming. He kept his head down, a pale ghost haunting the edges of the celebration, his only goal a small corner store he’d spotted on a map.

He was so focused on navigating the throng, on keeping the riot of external emotions from seeping into his own carefully guarded emptiness, that he didn't notice the two figures detaching themselves from a shadowed doorway until they were flanking him.

“Lost, little priest?” a woman’s voice purred, laced with a Creole accent thicker than Liberté’s.

Kaelen froze. He turned to see a young woman with sharp, predatory features and eyes as black as crude oil. Beside her stood a mountain of a man, his arms crossed over a barrel chest, his knuckles scarred. Both of them radiated the same crackling, latent energy he’d felt from Liberté, but theirs was coarser, frayed at the edges with impatience.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Kaelen said, his voice low, his body tensing for a fight he didn't want.

“Too bad,” the woman, Camille, sneered. “Trouble’s looking for you, Frost.”

Before he could react, the large man, Bastien, lunged. He didn't use a spell, just his own brutal momentum, shoving Kaelen out of the river of people and into a narrow, reeking alleyway. The sounds of jazz and laughter were abruptly muffled, replaced by the drip of foul water from a rusty pipe and the clatter of a toppled trash can. The alley was a dead end, slick with rain and grime.

“Liberté is too patient,” Camille said, stepping into the alley’s mouth, blocking his only escape. Her shadow stretched unnaturally in the dim light from the street, twisting and elongating. “She wants to understand the rat. We just want to crush it.”

Kaelen’s first instinct was terror. He felt the familiar, cold spike of fear in his gut. He reached for it, trying to summon the void, the perfect, silent defense that had saved him before. But the fear was shallow, adulterated by a new, simmering heat. Annoyance. Frustration.

“I have no quarrel with you,” he said, backing away until his shoulders hit the cold brick of the wall.

“Your grandfather had a quarrel with our grandmothers,” Bastien grunted, his voice a low rumble. He cracked his knuckles, and shimmering bands of force, like heat haze, coalesced around his fists. “That’s all the reason we need.”

Camille’s shadow detached from her feet, slithering across the wet ground like pools of living ink. They rose into a trio of grasping tendrils, their tips sharpening like obsidian blades. “This will be quick,” she promised.

Bastien charged. Kaelen dodged the first crushing blow, the force of it cracking the brick behind him. The shadow tendrils lashed out, and he threw himself to the side, one of them slicing through the sleeve of his shirt, leaving a line of chilling cold on his skin.

He was outmatched. They were two, practiced and aggressive. He was one, armed with a power he barely understood and was terrified to use. He was a rat in a trap, just as she’d said. The thought fanned the embers of his frustration into a flickering flame.

“Why are you doing this?” he grunted, parrying another blow from Bastien, his forearm stinging from the impact.

“Your whole bloodline is a disease!” Camille spat, her voice rising with righteous fury. The shadow tendrils writhed faster, cornering him. “Otto Frost was a parasite! He didn't just kill our people, Frost. He used them up. Drank their souls like wine to make himself strong! You’re just like him—a monster hiding in a priest’s clothes!”

The words struck him with the force of a physical blow. Drank their souls. It connected with the horrifying diagrams in the lab, with the whispers in the journal about a “darker method.” The truth of it resonated with a terrible, soul-deep certainty. This wasn't just a vendetta. It was a deserved reckoning.

But he wasn't Otto Frost. He had spent his entire life, every waking moment, fighting the darkness in his blood, starving it with prayer and penance. To be equated with that man, to have his life’s struggle dismissed as a facade—it was the ultimate injustice.

And the injustice ignited him.

The simmering frustration, the annoyance, the helplessness—it all fused together in the crucible of her accusation, and in a blinding flash, it transmuted into something new. Something pure, white-hot, and utterly liberating.

Rage.

It wasn't the sputtering anger of a tantrum. It was the vast, clean rage of a dying star. It burned away the fear, the confusion, the years of self-doubt, leaving only a perfect, crystalline certainty. A sudden, profound calm settled over him, the eye of a hurricane of his own making. The lexicon bloomed in his mind, no longer a theory but a command: RAGE = SOULFIRE.

He stopped dodging. He stood straight, and for the first time, he met their attack head-on. As the shadow tendrils and shimmering fists converged on him, he opened his hands.

A torrent of incandescent white flame erupted from his palms. It made no sound but a low, hungry roar that vibrated in his bones. It produced no smoke, only a blinding, pristine light. It wasn't the chaotic, destructive fire of the mortal world; it was a fire of pure essence, a flame that burned not with heat, but with righteous will.

Camille’s shadow tendrils evaporated on contact, not burned but simply unmade, their magical essence annihilated by the purity of the Soulfire. Bastien’s bands of force shattered like glass. The sheer concussive wave of the eruption threw him backward, and he crashed into the far wall with a grunt of pain, his clothes smoking where the very edge of the light had touched them.

Kaelen stood in the center of the alley, his hands still outstretched, bathed in the ethereal glow of his own fury. The power didn't drain him like the fear had. It filled him. It was a current of liquid sun flowing through his veins, exhilarating, empowering. For the first time, he wasn't a victim of his emotions; he was their master. He held a storm in his hands, and it obeyed him. It felt like control. It felt like salvation.

Camille stared, her face a mask of shock and terror. She had expected a cornered animal to lash out. She had not expected to face a god of wrath. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her stunned partner, and dragged him out of the alley, melting back into the unheeding crowds of the French Quarter.

The white flame subsided, sinking back into Kaelen’s skin. He was left panting in the sudden darkness, the stench of ozone and vaporized magic stinging his nostrils. He looked down at his hands. They were just hands again, pale and trembling slightly, not with fear, but with the lingering thrum of immense power.

The monster his parents had feared, the Madness the monks had tried to scourge from him, had just saved his life. And it had felt intoxicating.

A slow, dangerous smile touched Kaelen's lips. It felt as foreign as joy, but it fit his face perfectly. For the first time in his life, Kaelen Frost wasn't afraid of the fire. He was the fire.