Touch.
Kaine didn't know how he did it. His body was still chained to the altar, hands and feet immobilized, but his consciousness—or something beyond physical—extended outward and made contact with that misaligned node.
The world exploded.
Those transparent lines—the rule structures only he could see—suddenly became visible, forced out of their invisible state, filling the entire altar, descending from the stone dome, rising from the ground, weaving into a massive web in the air.
The priests' chanting stopped.
"What—" Panic edged the head priest's voice as his staff shook violently, the green flame destabilizing, flickering.
Kaine saw it clearly.
The node he'd touched began collapsing in a chain reaction. The rule lines around the node twisted, snapped, triggering errors in adjacent nodes. One affected three. Three affected nine. Nine affected twenty-seven.
The entire formation was losing control.
Green light no longer followed fixed paths but scattered wildly, some streams hitting the priests' defensive barriers with sizzling sounds while others drilled into the floor, burning black scorch marks into stone.
"Stabilize the formation!" the head priest shouted.
The other priests scrambled to adjust their staves, trying to regain control over the energy flow, but chaos had begun, accelerating its spread. More nodes flickered. More rule lines fractured.
Kaine's body was still collapsing, but slower now.
The black lines stopped spreading and began retreating—not disappearing, but reversing. The life force drain halted, and some of what had been taken was flowing back.
Not much. But enough to restore a fragment of consciousness.
Below the altar, the family members grew restless.
"What's happening?" Anger sharpened Edwin's voice. "Isn't this ritual supposed to be stable?"
Bernard didn't answer. The old man stared at Kaine on the altar, his expression shifting from satisfaction to confusion, then to wariness. He turned to the elder beside him and spoke in a low voice.
Kaine watched them.
Even in this state, his mind analyzed the situation. The ritual had failed—partially, at least. This would bring the family trouble. More importantly, he was still alive.
He shouldn't be alive.
According to the plan, he should already be an empty shell, but he wasn't. Not only that, he'd seen things he shouldn't have seen—those rule lines, those energy flow paths, the foundations underlying the formation.
The formation's collapse continued.
The green light grew more violent, attacking the priests' defensive barriers until a young priest reacted too slowly. A beam of light struck his shoulder and he screamed and fell, his shoulder beginning to rot, skin blackening and decaying at visible speed, exposing bone beneath.
"Retreat!" The head priest made his decision. "Abort the ritual. Activate the seal!"
The other priests moved immediately, raising their staves in unison, reciting different incantations. A translucent barrier appeared in the air, contracting inward from the altar's edge, attempting to lock all the energy inside.
Kaine felt the pressure increase.
That barrier was contracting, trying to seal him and the out-of-control energy together. Breathing became difficult, his chest feeling crushed by weight.
He needed to act.
Kaine looked at the rule lines again—crystal clear now, clear enough to see the texture of each line, the structure of each node. His consciousness extended again, not blindly touching this time, but exploring with purpose.
He found the energy source.
A massive node at the altar's base where all the green light poured from. The light wasn't infinite—it came from a reservoir, and Kaine could see the flow rate decreasing. The reservoir was nearly depleted.
But enough energy remained to kill him.
The sealing barrier drew closer. Kaine could see its structure—more rule lines, densely woven together, forming an airtight cage. Once the barrier fully contracted, he'd be trapped inside, permanently sealed with the out-of-control energy.
No.
Kaine's consciousness locked onto the energy source node, large and stable, but not perfect. He could see subtle fluctuations, discordant tremors—pressure points where, if enough force was applied, that point would collapse.
The problem: he had no force.
He was just an ordinary person, currently chained to an altar, life force nearly exhausted. All he had was the ability to see rules and a consciousness on the verge of collapse.
Maybe that was enough.
Kaine concentrated all his focus, compressed his consciousness into a single point, then drove it hard into the node's pressure point.
The node shattered.
Explosion.
Not fire—energy release. The massive node collapsed under Kaine's impact, and all the life force stored inside—decades of accumulated sacrificial energy—lost its restraint in an instant and erupted like floodwaters through a broken dam.
Sickly green light flooded the entire altar.
The priests screamed as the sealing barrier disintegrated under the energy impact, fragmenting into countless points of light. The three priests closest to the explosion center didn't even have time to run before the energy consumed them, their bodies melting in the light, turning to black ash.
The head priest collapsed to his knees, hands braced on the ground, blood pouring from his mouth.
He raised his head and looked toward the altar's center.
This wasn't sacrifice.
This was desecration.
No—worse than desecration. The essence of a sacrificial ritual was "giving"—offering a sacrifice's life force to a deity in exchange for divine protection, but what was happening now was the complete opposite.
The sacrifice was plundering.
The head priest could clearly sense it. The life force stored in the temple was being devoured by something—not slow leakage, but violent theft, like a bottomless pit had suddenly appeared at the formation's center, madly absorbing everything around it.
Worse still—the Rot God's attention had turned here.
The head priest felt it. That massive, decaying presence in the abyss had stopped its leisurely feeding and was now focused entirely on this place, on this altar, on that thing lying in the center of the formation.
The god was angry.
No. Not just angry. It was... greedy.
The head priest's pupils contracted. He understood what was happening—the ritual hadn't simply failed, it had reversed. The sacrifice had become the predator, and the god—
The god had become prey.
"Impossible," the head priest whispered.
But reality didn't care about impossibility. Green light continued pouring from the shattered node, and all of it flowed toward one direction: toward Kaine Ashford's body.
Kaine could feel it.
Life force flooding into him—not his own life force returning, but something foreign. Cold, rotten, ancient energy forcing its way into his body, filling every cell, every fiber of muscle, every fragment of bone.
It hurt.
Like molten metal being poured into his veins. His body wasn't designed to hold this kind of power. Flesh tore. Blood vessels ruptured. Bones cracked under internal pressure.
But he didn't stop.
Kaine's consciousness gripped that energy flow and refused to let go. He pulled harder, forcing more energy to flow toward him while the rule lines responded to his will, restructuring themselves, forming new pathways to channel even more power.
The chains snapped.
Not unlocked—the iron links simply broke, unable to withstand the energy radiating from Kaine's body. He sat up on the altar, green light pouring from his eyes, his mouth, the cracks forming in his skin.
Below the altar, Bernard Ashford stepped back. "Kill him. Now."
The family knights drew their swords, but none of them moved forward.
Fear held them in place. What sat on that altar wasn't human anymore.
Kaine looked down at his hands, covered in those black lines, but the lines were no longer parasitic marks draining his life. They were channels. Conduits. Part of him now.
He stood.
The remaining priests raised their staves, preparing to strike. Kaine looked at them—through them. He could see the rule lines woven into their defensive spells, could see the nodes maintaining their barriers.
He reached out and touched one of those nodes.
The priest's barrier shattered as a spike of green energy pierced his chest. He died without a sound.
The other priests scattered.
"Seal the chamber!" the head priest screamed. "Don't let him escape!"
Stone doors began grinding shut at the chamber's exits. Kaine watched them close but wasn't concerned. He could see the mechanisms, the rule structures governing their movement. He could see everything now.
The energy flow finally stopped. The reservoir was empty. Silence fell over the altar chamber, broken only by ragged breathing and the quiet crackling of residual energy.
Kaine stepped down from the altar, his legs trembling but holding. He was exhausted—close to collapse—but alive. More than alive. Changed.
The head priest backed away, staff raised defensively. "What are you?"
Kaine didn't answer. He had a more important question.
He looked toward the chamber's exit, where his father and brother stood frozen. Bernard's face had gone pale. Edwin's wine cup lay shattered on the floor.
"You offered me to a god," Kaine said, his voice rough, damaged by the energy that had passed through him. "Did you think there wouldn't be consequences?"
Bernard's hand moved toward his sword. Kaine saw the intention before the action began—saw the rule lines governing motion, the neural pathways firing in Bernard's brain, the muscle contractions about to occur.
He was faster.