Chapter 2: A Drop of Crimson

Chapter 2: A Drop of Crimson

The magical ladder dissolved into the rain-slicked air the moment Kael’s feet hit the grimy cobblestones of the alley. Above them, the night sky flared orange as another explosion tore through the top floor of the building—his home. Or what was left of it. He staggered, clutching Nyx to his chest, the cat’s small body trembling violently against his ribs.

“This way! Quickly!” Isolde’s voice cut through the chaos. She still had him by the arm, her grip unbreakable, pulling him through a labyrinth of narrow, reeking passageways. The glittering corporate towers of Canary Wharf seemed a world away from this forgotten underbelly of London, a place of overflowing bins and graffiti-scarred brick.

His mind was a maelstrom of fractured thoughts. Kaelen Ashford. House Ashford. Valerius. The words were meaningless anchors in a sea of fire and terror. He’d lived his entire life in the shadows, deliberately invisible, and in the space of ten minutes, that invisibility had become his death sentence.

Isolde dragged him around a sharp corner, pressing them both flat against a damp wall as the sound of heavy, running footsteps echoed from the street they’d just left. Men shouted, their voices strangely muffled, distorted by the same shimmering fields that had hidden the attackers’ faces.

“They’ll be tracking our Aetheric signature,” she whispered, her breath misting in the cold air. Her calculating blue eyes scanned the darkness, no longer filled with pity, only a hunter’s focus. “We need to separate. I’ll lead them away. You need to disappear.”

“Disappear where?” Kael hissed, his voice cracking. “They destroyed everything! Where am I supposed to go?”

“Anywhere but here.” She pressed a small, cold object into his hand. It was a metal disc, featureless and smooth. “This is a scrambler. It will mask your signature for a few hours, but it’s a drain. Don’t activate it until you’re clear. Find somewhere to ground, somewhere deep. Old stone, running water. Stay off the grid. I will find you.”

And then, she was gone. She didn’t run; she simply melted into the deeper shadows at the end of the alley, leaving him alone with the rain, the distant sirens, and the frantic, painful beating of his own heart.

He was a tool. A problem to be managed. She hadn’t saved him; she’d secured an asset. The cold cynicism of it settled in his gut like a stone.

A weak, pained mewl brought his focus crashing back to the small, warm bundle in his arms. Nyx. He looked down, and his blood ran cold. The dark fur on her side was matted and wet, and it wasn't just from the rain. His hand came away sticky and dark. The wound from the stray energy bolt was worse than he’d thought—a nasty, puckered burn that seemed to sizzle with a faint, residual crimson energy. It wasn't bleeding heavily, but it was festering with a malevolence that was decidedly unnatural.

Panic, sharp and acidic, clawed at his throat. He couldn't take her to a vet. How could he possibly explain this? ‘My cat was hit by a hostile magic missile during an assassination attempt by a rival aristocratic House I didn’t know existed until an hour ago.’ They’d lock him in a padded cell.

This was a magical injury. It needed a magical solution.

He ran. He clutched Nyx tight, shielding her from the worst of the downpour, and sprinted with no destination in mind, only the desperate need for distance. He dodged through backstreets, vaulted over low fences, and pushed his way through overgrown, forgotten lots. The city was a blur of wet asphalt and sodium lights. Every shadow seemed to hold a new threat, every distant shout the sound of his pursuers.

He finally collapsed in the derelict shell of a canal-side warehouse, the roof mostly gone but for a few skeletal rafters. The air was thick with the smell of rust and stagnant water. It was miserable, but it was cover. He sank to the floor behind a crumbling brick wall, his lungs burning. Nyx let out another pitiful cry. Her breathing was shallow, her emerald eyes clouded with pain. She was fading.

Desperation was a physical force, shoving him into action. He shrugged off his singed jacket, the one thing he’d managed to grab. The pockets were empty, save for his keys—useless now—and a slim, leather-bound notebook.

His father’s journal.

He always kept it with him. It was a tangible piece of his past, filled with Alistair Vance’s—no, Alistair Ashford’s—precise, spidery handwriting. All these years, Kael had thought they were just an eccentric watchmaker’s designs: complex gear diagrams, notes on resonant frequencies, and strange, geometric patterns. He’d learned his own rudimentary Drucraft by mimicking the simplest of those patterns, treating them as abstract art.

Now, seeing them through the lens of Isolde’s revelation, the pages transformed before his eyes. These weren’t gears; they were sigil architecture. The notes on resonance weren’t for clock chimes; they were for focusing Aether. It was a grimoire, disguised as an engineering manual. A lifetime of secrets hidden in plain sight.

His hands, slick with rain and trembling, fumbled through the pages. Preservation sigils, wards, kinetic lattices—all far more complex than anything he’d ever attempted. He needed something else. Something to heal.

He found it near the back. The page was titled, not with a name, but a designation: Bioregenesis Schematic 7. The diagram was a nightmare of interwoven lines and nodes, a web of such complexity it made his head spin. It was designed to purge foreign energy and stimulate cellular reconstruction. A healing sigil.

But the notes in the margin were terrifying. HIGHLY UNSTABLE. Requires precise Aetheric modulation. Catalyst cost is… significant.

He read the instructions, his heart sinking with every word. The sigil didn't just require rare components he didn't have; it required a direct, powerful energy source. And a catalyst. A binding agent to link the caster’s energy to the subject. The final line of the schematic pointed to the central node with a single, stark annotation: Sanguine Core.

His own blood. His own life force.

He looked at Nyx, shivering in his lap. Her purr, usually a rumbling motor, was a faint, ragged vibration. She was his only family, the one constant in his transient, lonely life. He remembered finding her as a half-starved kitten, abandoned in a box, and the fierce, protective bond that had formed between them. He would not lose her. He could not.

There was no choice.

Using the faint light from the distant city glow, he set to work. He found a relatively smooth piece of slate amidst the debris. He didn't have his silver stylus, only the sharp edge of one of his useless keys. It was crude, but it would have to do.

He held the journal open, his eyes flicking between the complex diagram and the slate, his hand moving with a desperate, newfound purpose. He etched the outer circles, the containment fields. He carved the intricate pathways for the Aether to flow. His muscles screamed in protest, his mind reeled from the complexity, but he pushed on. Each line was a prayer.

When the lattice was complete, a pale, lifeless carving on the dark stone, he took a breath. This was the point of no return. He placed the slate gently on Nyx’s flank, directly over the festering wound. Then, he took the iron ring from his finger, the one his father had given him. Using its edge, he sliced a deep cut across his own palm.

Blood, dark and crimson, welled up. He pressed his bleeding hand to the center of the sigil, to the Sanguine Core.

“Anima... flumen... vitae,” he whispered, the strange, guttural words coming not from memory, but from a deeper, instinctual place. He pushed his will, his energy, his very essence into the carving.

The sigil exploded with light. Not the gentle turquoise of his preservation charms, but a fierce, hungry crimson. Pain, white-hot and absolute, shot up his arm. It felt like his soul was being siphoned out through his palm, a torrent of life force pouring into the stone. The world dissolved into a grey haze. He felt his consciousness fraying, his heart stuttering in his chest.

The crimson light on the slate pulsed, a parasitic heart beating in time with his own. He could feel it fighting the dark energy in Nyx’s wound, a microscopic war being waged on her tiny body, fueled by his life.

He was going to die. He was draining himself to nothing for his cat, in a ruined warehouse, alone.

Then, just as the blackness threatened to swallow him whole, the crimson light shifted. A single, pure thread of gold spun out from the center of the sigil, weaving its way through the violent red. It was a color of warmth, of life, of healing.

The drain lessened, the pain receded to a dull, throbbing ache. He collapsed back against the wall, gasping, his vision swimming. The sigil’s light softened, fading slowly back into the slate, leaving the intricate pattern glowing with a faint, golden warmth.

Beneath the stone, he heard a new sound. Faint, but growing stronger. Steady.

A deep, rumbling purr.