Chapter 11 – The Price of the Heart
The smell came first: iron, moss, and rot. In the middle of the cavern, the motionless bulk of the Serpent King sprawled like a black lake across the stone. On his knees, Seryn steadied the tremor in his sword hand and forced air into his lungs. Every breath was a blade between his ribs. But his eyes were locked on the slow, fading throb beneath the beast's breastplate of bone.
The heart.
And the core.
"If I walk away now, all of this pain is wasted," he whispered. His fingers tugged at the pack's straps. One by one the knots yielded: leather pouches, knives, clamps, and wax seals. He took a vial—the stabilizing elixir—pulled the stopper with his teeth. Metal and herbs burned his nose. One swallow, then another. Fire slid down his throat and punched his gut.
He slid the soul ring onto his fingers. "Four breaths," he murmured. "Quarter-feed… now." The dim line inside the silver warmed with his heartbeat. Remember yourself. The shaky script he'd seen in the archives felt engraved on this moment.
He bent over the carcass. The cleaver found the thin line between tendon and fascia. He pushed, not hacked; metal walked the wet seam of flesh and cartilage. Heat bled into his palms as dark, heavy blood flooded out, the scent bouncing off the stone and back into his head. "Patience," he told himself, binding his wrists with linen so his grip wouldn't slip. "Don't hack—open. Don't tear—separate."
Rib arcs loosened. The hot air inside the chest struck his face—like the world had held its breath. There, wrapped in black-red cords of tissue, the heart beat heavy and slow. Beside it, nested in fibrous roots, a core—not stone, but a chip of night itself.
"Heart first," he said, voice almost a ritual. "Core is for the rite."
Waxed clamps pinched two arteries so they wouldn't spray. The blade slid again into a lighter line among the fibers, pressing through. Heat and a surge—then his fingers closed around the weight. Through his gloves, the warmth crawled up into his skin. For a heartbeat, his own pulse and the dying beast's overlapped.
Out… now.
He set the heart at the center of his portable ritual circle. The ring—cobbled from old altar lines and runestones—glimmered faintly on the wet floor. He placed environmental harmonizers around it: exile weed, blackroot, resin. He fed the soul ring with four breaths again.
"We begin."
He nicked a vessel; thick blood ran into the circle, sketching thin scarlet roads between stones. Seryn knelt, palms on the heart, and murmured the attunement—not magic, but intent and alignment. The elixir iced his veins open and left a stone in his stomach.
The first wave hit like fire.
A thousand needles laced his muscle fibers. He had no "channels," yet some living force—mana-like but crueler—forced its way into muscle, bone, nerve. Someone was recasting him from the inside out. His jaw locked. The backs of his eyes went black.
Don't forget… remember yourself.
The ring grew heavy. A voice—his own—seeped back: "Measure—balance—line." The old instructor's cadence. He counted breath: four short in, two short out. He spread the wave evenly through his body.
The second wave brought sight—but not of the cavern.
Walls elongated, the rock's curve became a spiral; the spiral grew into a jaw closing around him, its teeth stone, its tongue rusted iron. His hands looked wrong—longer, clawed, nailbeds going black.
"No." His teeth clicked the word. "Not mine."
For an instant the heart's beat synced with another: hunt, find heat, crush, swallow. Hunger rose in him—salty, metallic, burning. He looked at his fingers; the tremor became a low growl somewhere in his chest.
The ring seared his finger.
Heat ran from silver to sternum, a silk thread re-tied just as it was about to snap. Remember yourself.
Seryn dragged a name up from the dark: Seryn Daskal. His lips formed it. "Seryn."
The other in him shuddered. Hunger took one step back.
The third wave was pain.
All muscles clenched at once; bones sizzled. He didn't scream; his teeth welded the sound inside. Fire crawled his skin—and then, slowly, the burned places hardened. Fibers re-wove; weak bands—shoulders, spine line, kneeband—thickened. Beneath the skin, vessels stood out; blood ran heavier. Its scent changed—hot metal with a strange linden edge.
Pressure bloomed behind his eyes.
When he lifted his lids, gold motes floated in the dark. For a heartbeat he was surprised—then realized the light was coming from his eyes. Sight dug deeper; he read stone grain, blood flow, the heart's fading pulse—included in vision.
"Side effect…" he rasped. "But not only a side effect."
Gold left a mark on the dark.
The fourth wave was the trial.
His mind emptied. Voices stepped outside; from the walls, from the carcass, even from the unopened core, whispers slid: "Are you ours?" "Prey or hunter?" "Return." "Stay." "Let go." "Swallow."
Seryn didn't lift his palms from the heart.
"Intent," he said within. "Will."
He fed the ring four more breaths. One, two, three, four.
Then—the ugliest part—he took the prepared vessel-thread from the heart's tissue to his mouth. Resin and bitterness. He chewed… swallowed. His stomach lurched; bile surged. The elixir caught him, slowing the flow. His body recognized each mouthful, translating outside power into an inside tongue.
Now—the core.
It was black-bright; holding it numbed his fingertips. To consume it whole would be suicide. He recalled his notes: "Fracture—dust—trace—attunement test."
He cracked it with the butt of his ritual knife. A faint vapor bled out. He didn't feed it into the heart's line; he touched with it only. Attunement either accepts or rejects.
A brief struggle—inside and out.
Then a small inner click: Fit.
"Enough." He lifted the blade, sealed the core. More would tear the mind loose.
The circle's glow faded. The heart's beat… stopped. The cave exhaled and settled into silence.
Seryn's body dropped into that silence and was rebuilt. His shoulders squared; the ache at his beltline resolved into a hard, physical center (not magical). His palms callused in an instant; vessels thickened. When he breathed out, the air felt pushed—a pressure others would feel. For a blink, he thought the roles of hunter and prey had reversed.
He looked at his hands.
They did not shake.
On the cave wall, two golden points burned in the shadow—his own eyes. A side effect… or a brand. To an outsider he remained human; but those eyes now watched with the patience and edge of a creature fitted to the dark.
"D… peak," he said, hearing the weight in his voice. "Body."
He stepped; balance lived at a deeper seam.
The second step brought a hot sting—a cracked rib reminding him: the rite hadn't welded bone; it had armored muscle and nerve. A price remained a price.
"I lived," he said, counting breath. "I stayed… me."
He sat awhile. Sweat tangled with blood and dust. His gut rocked like cold water over stone—but the elixir kept the flow even.
When he rose, he looked once more at the carcass.
"The hunt is done," he said. "Now—erase the trail."
He pulled soil and rubble through a narrow side shaft to dam the main chamber; he brushed sand over his path to the exit. Because he hadn't fully taken the core, he smashed each ring-stone of the circle so no remnant whisper would lure some fool toward "easy power." He did not cool the soul ring; he kept its warmth on his skin—the tether must not slacken.
Rain met him outside. Cool air steamed the fire inside him. The forest's breath seemed to test him, to learn him. He set his feet on root-lines, not the treacherous thin branches' shade. At each trunk-shadow he paused and listened—and realized he could separate his heartbeat from the world's.
"Side effect," he murmured. "Useful."
When the academy's far lights smeared through lake mist, his knees unlocked. He slid down a tree's root and rested his back. His lids grew heavy.
For a last moment, the gold in his eyes shone—and closed.
His final thought was cold and simple:
"There is no way back from this."
And the night took him, quietly.
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