Chapter 223: Death

Kalon woke up and felt a severe change in his body before he even stood up.

His body sat differently against the mattress. The proportions were off from the day before.

He walked to the full-length mirror in the apartment and stopped in front of it, examining himself.

He had grown to a height that looked similar to 5’11.

Formidable Body had pushed him up another inch overnight. The frame in the glass was leaner through the waist, broader through the shoulders, and taller than the boy who had once been bullied through academy corridors.

His face had hardened further with the rank jumps. His black hair had grown longer and healthier, with streaks of white in it to represent his light affinity.

The high-rise apartment around him, the Atlas contract, the fight with an Eighth Dragon on the calendar, the list of planets under his system, none of it matched the life he had been living only months ago.

He flexed his hands once and let the thought pass.

Everything was different, but everything was the way it was meant to be.

As he was about to start his day, his phone buzzed on the counter.

It was a text message from his lover, Thea.

[I need to see you. Urgently. Can I come over?]

Kalon replied at once.

[Yes. I just woke up, but you can come whenever.]

...

Thea arrived less than half an hour later.

She stepped into the apartment with her hands tight around the strap of her bag and her blue eyes unsettled in a way Kalon did not often see on her.

She wore no training gear, and there was no smile on her face. She walked past him, stopped near the window, then turned like she had been holding the words in the whole way over.

"I awakened something," she said.

Kalon closed the door. "What?"

"Death."

The word sat heavy in the room.

Thea’s jaw tightened.

"I felt it this morning. It settled into me like cold water. I can feel it under my skin whenever I stop distracting myself. I don’t want this, Kalon. People don’t look at Death the same way they look at water or fire. They look at it like a sickness. If the wrong person finds out, it follows you for the rest of your career."

Kalon studied her for a second, then activated Arcane Sight.

Death was there, freshly surfaced and dark in her core. Beside it, deeper down, Life still waited dormant.

Both had always been in her. The system had shown him that much back when he first learned what Arcane Sight could do.

"I already knew you could," he said.

Thea stared at him. "What?"

"I can see dormant affinities. Death was always in you. So is Life. You haven’t lost anything by awakening one of them. You still have the other waiting. There is nothing wrong with you."

Some of the panic in her face loosened, but not all of it.

"You knew and you didn’t tell me?"

"I didn’t see a reason to push you toward it. Affinities surface when they surface." Kalon stepped closer. "You’re not cursed. You’re stronger than you were yesterday. That’s all."

Thea’s eyes dropped to the floor. For a while she said nothing. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.

"I think it happened because of my father."

Kalon waited. He was aware that her father passed when she was younger.

"I was close to him," she said. "Closer than I ever was with anyone else in the family when I was younger. When he died, it left a hole I never really closed. I’ve been thinking about him more lately. Training. Leaving the academy track. This morning it just... opened. Death came through like it had been waiting for me to stop running from it."

She swallowed once and held out her hand.

A thin black mark gathered above her palm, not smoke exactly, not shadow either. It pulled at the light around it.

"My first skill... The system named it," Thea said. "Wither Touch. If I hold it on something living long enough, it starts shutting them down from the inside. I tried it on a plant outside the building. It went grey in seconds."

Kalon looked at the skill, then at her face.

"Do you want to learn how to use it properly?"

"I don’t know."

"Then a better question," he said. "Do you want a chance to use it on an enemy instead of a plant?"

Thea’s blue eyes lifted to his. Fear was still there. Under it, something sharper had started to wake up.

"...Yes."

"Then tonight," Kalon said. "I’ll take you somewhere you can."

...

When night arrived, Kalon took her to Veylora.

[Initiating Travel Sequence...]

[Adapting both bodies to suit conditions...]

[...]

[You have arrived!]

[Welcome to Veylora!]

They appeared at the edge of the wild forest beyond the cathedral grounds.

The trees here grew denser than the ones near Nyphara’s temple. Thick trunks. Heavy vines. Wet earth underfoot.

The air carried the sweet mineral smell of the planet mixed with animal musk and rotting leaves.

There were no open-breasted priestesses here. Just deep woodland where the Berry Pickers did not usually bother to hunt and the local beasts claimed the dark.

Thea stood close to him, blue eyes adjusting to the low light, one hand still faintly marked by the leftover feel of her new affinity.

"This is where you bring me for my first death skill practice?" she asked, curiously.

"This is where the animals lurk," Kalon said. "There’s no better place for you to practise your skill without killing humans, or accidentally revealing your affinity to the world."

Thea nodded once.

They moved into the trees.

Branches closed overhead. The ground softened. Somewhere deeper in the forest, something large shifted through undergrowth and went still again.

Kalon kept Thea on his right and listened to the woods settle around their footsteps.

Then the howls started.

Close enough that the sound moved through the trees, low and hungry, marking that the forest had noticed them.