Raze spent the next few hours reading, fully engrossed in the introductory section of soul magic.
But unlike every regular magic he'd touched so far,.fire, water, even the rare space magic, soul magic was nothing like them.
It didn't work with finding the mana frequency. It didn't work with attunement. It didn't even obey the same logic.
Soul magic tampered with the very existence of living beings. It manipulated a different energy entirely: soul energy. Some books classified it as a branch of mana, but the text made it very clear it was an existence of its own.
A mage could reach soul magic, yes, but if they weren't careful, a single mistake could cause catastrophic, irreversible damage… death to others… or even death to themselves.
There were no chants, no external spells, no flashy blasts like elemental magic. Instead, soul magic worked on one terrifying principle:
Equivalent exchange.
Nothing in soul magic went in one direction. Nothing was free.
To damage a soul, to touch a soul, to bind a soul, something of equal value must be given up. Something must be paid.
Raze flipped through the pages, each line sinking deeper into his mind.
Soul magic… was the foundation of all curses.
A curse wasn't some mystical spell thrown casually. It was a pact, an exchange.
If a condition was met, one effect would occur. If a condition was broken, another would trigger.
The caster always paid a price to place a curse. And the cursed person became bound to that exchange.
To break a curse, the book stated, the cursed victim had to offer a force or a power greater than the one used to bind them. Only then would the curse release.
But if the cursed broke the rules… if they resisted without enough power… the curse would take its due: Pain, Life, Soul.
Whatever the exchange demanded.
Raze slowly closed the book, absorbing the weight of it.
This wasn't just magic. This was law, unforgiving, absolute, unbreakable unless overpowered. And the deeper he read, the clearer it became:
Soul magic was one of the most dangerous branches of magic in existence.
Seeing how soul magic required an equivalent exchange to function, Raze naturally began wondering: how the hell was demonic energy able to twist and hijack people's souls to create abominations? If soul magic demanded a price, then what was being paid?
He kept reading.
And very quickly, the answer revealed itself—an answer far worse than he expected. Demonic energy did not follow the normal rules of soul magic. It bypassed the exchange entirely.
Not by overpowering it. Not by brute force.
But through something far more sinister:
Deception.
The book explained that demonic corruption didn't immediately attack the soul. Instead, it seeped into the host's mind, mana, and body, weaving itself slowly into every part of them.
Little by little… thought by thought… breath by breath…
The demonic energy fed on the host's emotions, fears, anger, despair, anything it could use as an anchor. And as it fed, it reshaped the host's inner perception.
It made the soul believe:
"This energy is a part of me."
Once the soul accepted that lie, even unconsciously, the foundation of soul magic broke. Because if the demonic energy was "part of the host," then the soul believed it wasn't being attacked.
And when that lie settled fully, the soul itself willingly offered the exchange.
Not mana. Not flesh. Not energy. But the host's consciousness, their identity, their existence, their sense of self.
The soul gave up the true pilot, thinking it was obeying natural law, and handed control over to the demonic energy.
And in that moment, an abomination was born. The worst part?
It wasn't forced.
It wasn't a battle.
It was a trick.
The system believed the host was "paying the price" of soul magic by offering their mind as the exchange, when in reality, the demonic energy was hijacking the entire mechanism, turning the person's soul into the very fuel for their own destruction.
It was slaughter disguised as a handshake.
And now, Raze understood why abominations were so difficult to reverse, so dangerous to fight, and so terrifyingly efficient.
They weren't just monsters.
They were corrupted systems, running on the soul of the victim as their power source.
It finally clicked—the reason every recorded attempt to reverse an abomination had failed, the reason every mage, priest, healer, and scholar had called it "impossible."
It wasn't because the people trying weren't skilled enough. It was because they were fighting the wrong enemy.
The body wasn't resisting their magic. The demonic energy wasn't resisting their magic. The soul itself was resisting.
Raze read the explanation in stunned silence.
The soul, believing the abomination form was its true form, actively rejected every attempt to restore it. To the soul, returning to human form meant violating the law of equivalent exchange. It meant going against what it believed was a fair deal it had already accepted.
It didn't matter that the deal was fake. It didn't matter that the demonic energy had tricked it. The soul believed it was real. And a soul defending its belief… was something terrifying.
Even if a mage used magic of higher power, even if a healer tried to reconstruct the body, the soul fought back with everything it had.
Because from its perspective? They were trying to rip it away from its correct form. They were the invaders, and the demonic energy was the "natural state."
And that's when Raze realized the shocking truth:
If the soul could be shown the deception, if it could be made to understand that the exchange was false, if it could be reminded of its true form, then the soul itself would undo the corruption.
Automatically.
The soul, once aware of the lie, would reject the demonic energy completely and restore the body to its original state without outside force.
Because soul magic was absolute: if the soul believed the abomination was true, nothing could change it, but if the soul believed the abomination was false, nothing could stop the change.
That meant reversing abominations wasn't impossible; it was simply never attempted the right way.
No one had ever tried to convince the soul. No one had ever tried to show it the lie.
But Raze understood now.