Chapter 3: A Ritual of Blood and Deceit

Chapter 3: A Ritual of Blood and Deceit

The storm broke over Aethelgard with biblical fury, lashing rain against the stained-glass windows of the manor. Thunder rattled the very foundations of the house, a percussive accompaniment to the frantic beating of Caelen’s heart. Each clap of thunder was a welcome cloak, masking the blasphemy he was about to commit.

Valerius’s lockdown had been absolute, a stranglehold of silence and starvation. But the alchemical underground was a creature of the shadows, accustomed to squeezing through the tightest cracks. Two nights ago, a loosened brick in the garden wall had yielded a package wrapped in oilskin. Inside were the reagents, foul-smelling and potent, and a small, corked glass vial. It contained less than a thimbleful of dark, viscous liquid. Sanguis Silus Croft. The key.

Now, there was no more time for hesitation. Freedom was a shore seen across a lethal, storm-tossed sea, and this ritual was his only vessel.

In the center of the library, Caelen had cleared a wide circle, the rug rolled back to expose the bare, splintered floorboards. Using a stick of purified chalk, he inscribed the Grand Polarity Circle, its complex geometry a map of Aetheric currents. Within it, he drew the interlocking triangles of elemental binding and the sinuous runes of formation. It was a language his soul knew better than his mind.

He worked with a grim, focused intensity. He poured the quicksilver into a clay basin at the northern point of the circle, its shimmering surface reflecting the flickering gaslights. Brimstone, ground into a fine yellow powder, was laid at the southern point. A dozen other substances were meticulously placed, each according to ancient laws of sympathy and opposition. The air grew thick, heavy with the smell of ozone, damp earth, and something else—the sharp, metallic tang of raw potential.

The final component was the vial of blood. He uncorked it, the coppery scent of life filling his nostrils, and poured the dark fluid into the central basin. The ritual was primed. All it needed now was the spark. His spark.

Caelen stepped into the circle, the chalk lines feeling like the edge of a precipice. He knelt, took a deep, shuddering breath, and plunged his hands into the alchemical slurry at the center. It was cold, viscous, and unnervingly slick. Closing his eyes, he shut out the storm, shut out the face of Valerius Thorne, and reached inward.

He called upon his Aether.

The tattoo on his neck erupted with a brilliant azure light, the glow projecting the intricate pattern onto the ceiling above him. A searing heat flooded his veins—the feeling of his own life force being drawn out, channeled through his arms and into the basin. It was an agony that was also an ecstatic release, the shriek of a rusty hinge being forced open after years of disuse.

The slurry began to bubble and steam. Guided by the template in Croft's blood and fueled by Caelen’s soul, the impossible began to happen. Strands of pearlescent matter, like spun moonlight, began to weave together in the basin. They coalesced, thickened, taking on the colour and texture of sinew, then muscle, then skin. A human form was taking shape in the primordial soup, a grotesque and miraculous birth. The air in the room thrummed with a power that felt ancient and deeply, fundamentally wrong. This was the scent of heresy Valerius could supposedly smell on the wind.

The homunculus was almost complete. It lay fetal in the basin, a perfect, naked replica of a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a soft paunch. Silas Croft. It was breathing, shallowly. Its chest rose and fell. A masterpiece of deceit.

Just as Caelen prepared to complete the final binding—the step that would sever his Aetheric connection and grant the homunculus a fleeting, independent existence—the library doors burst inward.

They didn't break. They were blasted from their hinges by a wave of incandescent white light, a concussive force of pure, divine will.

Lord Inquisitor Valerius Thorne stood in the ruined doorway, silhouetted against the lightning-streaked hall. Rainwater dripped from his silver hair, but he seemed untouched by the storm’s chaos. His golden eyes, however, were blazing with a holy fire, fixed on the sacrilegious tableau before him. He saw the glowing circle, the fuming reagents, the nascent man in the basin, and Caelen kneeling at the heart of it all, bathed in the unholy blue light of his own power.

“Heresy,” Valerius’s voice was not a shout, but a blade of ice that cut through the thunder.

The carefully constructed plan of a faked murder evaporated in an instant. This was infinitely worse. Caelen was caught not in an act of deceit, but in the ultimate blasphemy: the creation of a soulless man. There would be no trial, no questions. Only purification by fire.

Survival became a primal scream in Caelen’s mind.

Valerius drew his sword. The blade was a marvel of silver and steel, but as he channeled his power into it, it ignited with a blinding white flame. It was not a fire that burned wood, but one that unmade magic, that scoured souls. He took a step into the library, his purpose absolute. “By the Divine Flame, you are unmade.”

Caelen reacted on pure, desperate instinct. He was no swordsman; he was a scholar, a creator. So he would create a defense. He plunged his right hand back into the churning basin, ignoring the shriek of protest from his overtaxed body. He didn't try to shape anything complex. He just grabbed a handful of the raw, chaotic stuff of creation—the half-formed potential that had not yet become flesh and bone.

With a guttural cry, he flung it at the advancing Inquisitor.

A writhing tendril of corrosive, semi-sentient protoplasm shot across the room. It was not elegant alchemy; it was a raw, visceral attack. Valerius met it with his sword of light. The holy fire contacted the unholy matter and there was a violent hiss, like water on a forge. The tendril dissolved into foul-smelling smoke, but the attack had served its purpose. It had slowed Valerius’s advance by a precious second.

In that second, the homunculus—born of violent magic and a raging storm—opened its eyes. They were not Silas Croft’s eyes. They were vacant, milky-white orbs, and from its throat came a soundless, psychic scream of terror and confusion. It lurched upright, slick with alchemical residue, a being of pure instinct caught between a furious creator and a divine destroyer.

Valerius’s gaze flickered to the abomination, his perfect discipline momentarily shaken by the creature’s sudden movement.

It was the only opening Caelen would get.

With a desperate surge of adrenaline, he abandoned all pretense of control. He kicked out, not at Valerius, but at the brazier of burning brimstone at the edge of the circle. The iron stand toppled, spilling incandescent coals across the chalk lines.

The containment circle broke.

Every student of alchemy knew the law: you never, ever break a circle while it is actively channeling Aether. The result is not a fizzle; it is a catastrophic, uncontrolled implosion.

The azure light from Caelen’s tattoo flared nova-bright. The Aether, with nowhere to go and no instructions to follow, collapsed in on itself. A shockwave of pure, untamed magic erupted from the center of the room. It was a silent explosion of force, a clash of holy gold and heretical blue.

The world dissolved into a maelstrom of light and sound. Caelen was thrown backwards, his head striking the leg of a heavy bookshelf. The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was the brilliant, burning figure of Valerius Thorne, caught full in the face of the blast, his expression of righteous fury transformed into one of pure shock. The library, his cage, was coming apart around them both.