The air smelled of burnt bone.
Kael Arcanis woke with a gasp, his mouth full of the taste of batteries and old blood. He didn't remember his name. He didn't remember ever having a name. Only a throbbing ache in his chest, where a grotesque symbol—a circle split by an eclipse—had been seared into his skin.
"If you wish to live, steal the Guardian's name."
The voice didn't come from anywhere. It came from inside his skull, as if someone had hammered the words directly into his brain.
A cracking sound.
Kael looked up.
The Guardian was there.
He hadn't come. He hadn't come closer. He simply appeared, as if he'd always been watching him from the shadows.
He was tall. Too tall. His black cloak dripped with a thick substance that wasn't water, and his face—
—God, his face—
It wasn't that he didn't have one.
He had too many.
Under the hood, faces overlapped like layers of peeling paint: an old man screaming here, a child laughing there, a woman with her eyes sewn shut further back. They were all murmuring. They were all looking at him.
"Subject Three," the mouths said in unison, their voices a chorus of distinct agonies. "You have withstood the Seal for nine hours. A record."
Kael tried to speak, but his throat only produced a wet, raspy sound.
The Warden bowed his head—too far, too far—until his hood was inches from Kael's face.
"Do you know what happens to people when the Seal fails?" he asked, as one of his hands—was it six fingers? Or was it nine?—raised a crystal lantern filled with blue fire.
The light revealed the cell.
He was not alone.
Around him, embedded in the black glass walls like fossils, were others.
Bodies. His bodies.
Dozens of Kaels, some mummified, others as fresh as if recently dead, all with the same expression of frozen terror.
"The ones before," the Guardian whispered, one of his tongues (how many did he have?) licking the glass in front of a particularly decomposed Kael.
"They all stole. They all failed." Kael felt panic creeping through his spine, but also something else.
Hunger.
Something inside him writhed, like a parasite scenting blood.
"Now," the Guardian pressed the flashlight against Kael's chest, burning his skin. "Let's see how long you can last before you become another ornament in my collecti..."
Kael stole.
It wasn't a movement. It was a spasm, as if his entire body were coughing up a foreign organ.
"Way of the Blue Flame."
The name hit him like a knife between his eyes.
And then, the fire responded.
The blue flames didn't come from the lantern.
They came from the Keeper's chest.
The being screamed—all its mouths at once—as the fire consumed it from within, illuminating its multiple faces like paper lanterns.
"NO!" it howled, its cloak dissolving into black smoke. "THAT POWER IS NOT YOURS! YOU CAN'T—!"
The cell's glass shattered in a shower of sharp shards. Kael fell to his knees, gasping.
The Keeper was gone.
Only the lantern remained, now unlit, and a fading echo of laughter.
And then he saw it.
In each shard of broken glass, a different reflection stared back at him.
Some Kaels were frightened. Others smiled.
And one—just one—had completely black eyes and spoke to him: "Run. Because now that you've stolen, they're looking for you."