The deepest part of the ocean is a place of crushing silence.
Millions of tonnes of water pressed down on me, enough to fold a submarine like foil. I had stopped feeling it.
In the pitch black, my hands were pressed together.
For my whole second life I had treated Mana and Miasma like oil and water. Mana was the blue light of civilisation, of rules, of the System. Miasma was the violet static of the Abyss, of mutation, of Tenebria.
Mages spent their lives filtering Miasma out. Demons spent theirs corrupting Mana. Matter and antimatter. If they touched, they destroyed each other.
That was the law.
But Tenebria had spent ten thousand years proving that laws were only suggestions to anyone with enough Will.
'I am not a mage,' I thought, and the thought settled over me like a blanket in the freezing dark. 'And I am not a demon.'
My left hand burned with the violet heat of the Overlord's blood. My right hand hummed with the blue order of the Tenth Circle.
