Chapter 582: The Rust Bites Back

The grey gloom of the shelf felt colder than before.

My well was full to the brim, five thousand units of pure spirit essence humming behind my ribs, but my chest still throbbed with a low heat that turned my stomach. The black lines woven through my skin stood out dark and distinct, like cracks in porcelain filled with dried ink.

Kassie stood up, her lustrous black armor clanking in the heavy quiet. She looked down at me in a way that made it clear something wasn’t up for discussion.

"I am going back inside."

I looked up from my hands, leaning back against the stone.

"You don’t have to go back in, Kassie. My well is completely restored. I can hold you out here."

She didn’t offer a gentle smile or a soft word. Instead, she crossed to where Devant still sat on his boulder and stood over him like a storm cloud, one gauntleted hand resting on the pommel of her bloody greatsword.

"If you touch him while I am inside, I will tear your limbs off one by one, boy."

Devant didn’t flinch. He only smiled pleasantly, his tin cup balanced on his knee, and gave her a slight nod.

’That’s the nod of a man agreeing to absolutely nothing.’

Kassie turned back to me. Her eyes flashed blood-red behind the visor.

"Your vessel is cracked, maggot. Holding two of us out here will tear you apart." Her fingers tightened once around the pommel, then let go. "I choose to go back."

She didn’t wait for my answer. Her body came apart in a rush of crimson sparks that streamed back through the wide-open threshold of the Soul Sanctum, and the air where she had stood felt suddenly empty.

I closed my eyes and reached into the Nave.

[Active Spirit: 5/7]

[Summoning Spirit: Magdalene]

A brilliant white light flashed across the shelf and left behind the smell of cold incense and burnt ozone.

Maggie stepped through the threshold. Silver hair spilled from beneath her nun’s habit, and her silver chain swung against her hips. Her crimson eyes swept the cavern once, coldly, before landing squarely on me.

[Fortitude: Magdalene (9.2)]

[Attribute unlocked: Stigmata Sentencing]

She didn’t greet me. She didn’t ask how I was.

Instead, her face went dead white, and her whole body locked into a rigid, liturgical stillness that was a lot scarier than Kassie’s rage. She took two fast steps forward, her boots making no sound on the gravel, and stopped right above me.

"Lord Cade. You smell of rot."

’Great. Glad to know the recovery didn’t hide the smell.’

I sat up slowly, wincing as the black lines on my collarbone pulled.

"It’s Dark Essence, Maggie. It’s what kept me together when the Overdrive broke my body."

Her hand shot out for my chest, terrifyingly fast. White holy flame flared around her knuckles, hot and sharp, ready to burn the dark marks clean out of my skin the way she had at the Chameleon gate.

I caught her wrist mid-air.

"No, Maggie. Stop."

She froze. Her crimson eyes locked onto mine, and her lips parted by a fraction, which was the most shock I had ever seen on that face. It was the first time I had refused her purging. The first time I had ever stopped her hand.

"It is corruption, Lord Cade." She didn’t try to pull free. "It is a filth residing within your core. It must be cleansed."

"It stays." I didn’t let go either. "It’s the only reason I was able to break the door open and pull Kassie out. It’s part of my core now."

Maggie looked at me as if I had just declared myself a demon. To her mind, choosing to keep corruption was an unthinkable sin.

Without asking, she pulled her wrist out of my grip and laid her bare palm flat against the dark lines on my chest.

The moment her holy fire touched my skin, the Dark Essence answered.

It didn’t retreat. It didn’t dissolve. The black lines flared violently, and a white-and-black fire lashed out of them like a striking snake. The feedback slammed straight into Maggie’s hand.

She gasped and snatched it back. Her fingers were scorched, and red blisters were already rising across her palm where my dark fire had bitten into her holy essence.

A summon couldn’t harm her summoner. The rules of Ealdrim were absolute on that. But Dark Essence was rot, the same filth that festered in the corrupted spirits of the Spirit World, and nothing in the system said it couldn’t lash back at a holy spirit trying to burn it.

’Ah, damn... that’s new.’

Maggie stared at her burned hand, her breath coming in short hitches, and slowly turned it over to look at the back.

"Your essence fought back."

"I told you to leave it alone."

She didn’t argue further, but her eyes stayed cold and measuring. She closed the scorched hand into a fist, and her holy power flared again as she called on her newly unlocked ability.

Four thin golden needles of light formed around her fingers. With four quick, precise strikes, she drove them into the skin above my heart and pinned the dark veins in place.

The burning itch under my ribs died down at once. The black lines didn’t vanish, but they stopped writhing, bound tight under her holy seal.

She looked down at her work, the fist still closed at her side. "I have bound the rust. It will not spread further, but it remains a stain upon your soul."

"I can live with a stain."

She turned away from me, her silver veil swaying as she looked toward the edge of the shelf.

Devant was sitting on his rock, his tin cup balanced on his knee, his amber eyes fixed on the ceiling. He didn’t look at Maggie as she walked toward him, but his fingers drifted to his bare throat, where the filthy purple scarf used to be.

Maggie stopped ten paces away from him and stood perfectly still, her red eyes reading him from head to toe.

For nearly a minute, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the hollow draft whistling up from the abyss below.

’Somebody say something. Anybody.’

In the end, it was Maggie who broke it, without moving so much as a finger.

"I cannot smell anything on you."

Devant tilted his head and gave her that pleasant smile, the one with nothing behind it.

"Is that so, Sister?"

"There is no sin on you. There is no virtue. You have no soul, and you have no essence." Maggie didn’t pause over a single word. "You are an empty shell."

Devant chuckled softly. The tin cup on his knee didn’t so much as tremble.

"People tell me that all the time."

Maggie didn’t reply. She turned her back on him and walked slowly back to where I sat, her face paler than usual.

I stretched my shoulders. Now that the rust was bound, the full 5,000 units of spirit essence moved smoothly through my veins again.

"What do you make of him, Maggie?" I kept my voice low.

She bent down until her silver veil brushed my shoulder, close enough that her voice wouldn’t carry to the boy on the rock.

"Lord Cade. There is something about you, I can sense on that man... it’s deeply unsettling."