Bloodwynne approached the benches and the hooded figures, passing between them and beginning to climb the stairs carved into the stone. His son stayed on one of the benches and indicated for Ronan to do the same.

  Curiously, the hooded figures barely spared him a glance. They had stood up and turned toward the count.

  He, with his back to the rest, had positioned himself in front of the altar before the statue. He pulled from a pocket in his robe a dagger adorned with gems and brought it close to two stones resting on the altar. Those stones reminded Ronan of the ones his lady used to travel to Clearhaven village.

  They didn’t look at all like the typical rounded, polished stones that can be found in riverbeds and are used for portals. No. These were more like two cubes with perfect edges, a little over a handspan long. Their resemblance to teleportation stones became evident when Bloodwynne brought the dagger close: as soon as the blade touched each one, symbols began to glow, both on the stones and on the blade.

  They were lines, both curved and straight, that didn’t belong to any human language, but undoubtedly similar to those on portals. Also, in a way, their blackish-blue color reminded him of the ones that had appeared on his face that time, which he’d seen through the mental images of his undead friends.

  Is it worth going with Damien’s father? he’d asked his invisible friend when Bloodwynne had invited him.

  It interests you, he’d answered.

  In that moment, seeing those lines, he undoubtedly felt very interested.

  A flame ignited on the altar after the second cubic stone was activated, and the count began to chant a prayer that everyone except Ronan chorused.

  In antiquity, there was a magic, now lost, that flowed along pre-existing grooves, casting light and color as it traced designs—sometimes simple, sometimes intricate. Runes.

  Ronan was thoughtful as they prayed. The flames grew brighter and the ruby eyes of the statue reflected that changing light.

  Could Bloodwynne’s church have discovered that lost knowledge?

  When the prayer ended, the count, immersed in his role as first priest, turned toward the congregation and raised his hands high. The fabric of his cloak billowed. The red thread, despite being a dark shade, stood out against the absolute black of the rest of the fabric, even more so thanks to the scarlet glow of the flames.

  “Dear brothers, tonight is a special night. As I promised you, I have found and brought to the seat of our Church the Chosen One, he who has been favored above other mortals with the affinity and gifts of our Lord. Please, Ronan Velbrun, come forward.”

  The hooded faces were turned toward him now, looking at him with what seemed like religious devotion. Feeling quite uncomfortable, the young man who had spent years in forced solitude stood up and walked toward Bloodwynne.

  The cubes with their drawn lines kept glowing brightly. The dagger rested on the altar, to one side and away from the fire.

  “Kneel, Chosen One. Joyfully accept the blessing of our Dark Lord,” he told him once the necromancer stood before him.

  At that moment, Ronan hesitated.

  That he was an acolyte of the dark lord, he already knew. He had read it on his slab that day of the tests at the academy. It was something that fit his day-to-day life, from the description “the dark god speaks to you.”

  But kneel?

  That wasn’t the relationship one had with a friend.

  However, all those hooded figures were watching him intently, as if him kneeling and Bloodwynne, the First Priest of the Church of the Return of the Dark Lord, performing the investiture ceremony was something that could catapult them into some kind of religious ecstasy.

  Something foreign to him, since the closest thing he’d felt to mystical rapture was when he observed his angel for the first time. And nothing like the expressions of fanaticism from those hooded figures.

  Well…

  He didn’t particularly feel like kneeling, but playing along would be the best way to find out not only whether they could be vassals or allies of his lady, but why they were using an extinct magic.

  I hope it doesn’t bother you that I do this, he thought with his friend in mind, not knowing if he’d hear him.

  He received no response; he didn’t expect one on that occasion either.

  He knelt before Benedict, who curved his lips in a satisfied smile and grabbed the dagger from the altar. He passed it over his hand, cutting just enough for a thin line of blood to appear. Then he placed that hand on Ronan’s left shoulder. The blood hissed on contact and ignited. Ronan heard it and smelled it. Burnt flesh and blood. The count felt a pain he hadn’t expected. No one else but Ronan noticed.

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  “May the Forgotten One bless you, may your power increase and may your body be a conduit for His mana and His desires. Welcome again, High Priest, chosen of the Dark Lord.”

  What no one expected, Ronan included, was that the eyes of the statue would emit a flash of light instead of just reflecting it. That the red flames would grow suddenly, almost touching the distant ceiling. That their color would darken around the edges to a black as intense as the deepest night. That Bloodwynne couldn't pull his hand from the chosen one's shoulder and that the fire, as if it were lightning more than fire, would arc in a sudden discharge toward that hand.

  Bloodwynne opened his mouth in a frozen grimace of pain. He didn’t even manage to utter the sound that was undoubtedly tearing him apart inside. The rictus tensed his features under the hood.

  Ronan felt as if his shoulder were burning and rivers of lava were flowing through his body toward his heart, his brain, and another place. One he knew existed from his lady’s descriptions related to mana and meditation. A mana core, the main one, the one where it resided. But they didn’t follow the paths of veins, of blood, but others he still didn’t know.

  Intelligent as he was, noticing those unknown paths within himself, he focused on perceiving them with all his intention, on learning where they were, how they flowed, and how he could activate them on his own.

  He didn’t know it at that moment, but he had just learned not only the first of those three masteries prior to meditation, mana density, but had laid the foundations for the third, the most difficult to learn as it was related to energy channels.

  The hooded figures were as if in a trance observing everything, their eyes glassy, their throats murmuring with zeal a chant of praise to their god. But if they were in ecstasy, Ronan had his analytical mind working at full speed.

  He’d been doing experiments with magic since he was at the academy. None of the results he’d achieved came close to the amount of magical information he was receiving.

  None of those present were able to determine how much time passed, whether it was brief seconds, minutes, hours, or perhaps eternity.

  Because one felt it that way in pain, others in their fervor and religious ecstasy, and the third in those channels that were opening within him, showing him a new world where mana became stronger and developed not by soaking all the flesh and matter of his body but by flowing through channels that were undoubtedly being created.

  When everything returned to normal, the fire had extinguished, the stone cubes no longer had runes glowing on their faces, the dagger was inert in the count’s left hand, and he collapsed to the ground, finally able to separate his hand from Ronan’s shoulder.

  Ronan felt stronger. Much stronger. He knew something had happened with his mana and his magic, something good. He would have to touch a stone slab, whether the capital’s or the academy’s, to find out.

  He looked down. The count seemed unconscious, his face still frozen in a grimace of pain and his right hand, the one with the cut, had stopped being human to resemble one of his skeletons. The base of the wrist was burned, preventing blood from flowing out.

  “I think he needs a healer,” Ronan observed calmly, looking toward the hooded figure he believed was his roommate.

  But neither he nor the others reacted. They had prostrated themselves on the ground, on their knees, with their foreheads on the stone and their hands forward.

  “High Priest, High Priest,” they said and repeated over and over.

  It was as if they were still immersed in the mystical experience from before, their brains unable to articulate any other phrase.

  Even Damien was like that. He wasn’t going to help his father either.

  The now high priest, more uncomfortable than before, thought that if Mary were there, she would undoubtedly heal the count.

  Then he heard his invisible friend’s voice in his head.

  Although for different reasons than serving me, you have accepted your position as High Priest of my Church. I hope that my blessing, which will remain hidden from the eyes of others, will serve you to continue helping the one you call your lady.

  The ruby eyes of the statue neither shone nor emitted light anymore. They were barely distinguishable under the stone hood of the god’s statue. It, however, seemed to pulse with dark mana.

  Ronan looked at it curiously. Was that hooded figure really a representation of his friend?

  He’d imagined him as elderly and frail, with barely any muscle and very bony. That’s why he sometimes referred to him as “the old man.”

  Just like when he began speaking to him after he managed to survive by draining the life from rats, and just like when he offered him new magics, Ronan felt amazed by everything life and the world had to offer him. With a smile, he thanked him.

  Hey, do you really look like the statue? he asked.

  Not at all. Humans don’t know how to represent gods. When you still had temples, you sculpted us all identical, only changing the color of the robe and hood, as well as the weapon we wielded.

  So you don’t have muscles?

  My body doesn’t resemble that of a mortal. Talking about muscles doesn’t make much sense.

  Ronan nodded, imagining he could see him.

  Hey, couldn’t you tell them to stop doing that? He nodded toward the hooded figures who kept acclaiming him.

  They like doing it and it raises my influence over the world. But yes, I understand you find it annoying.

  The dark mana from the statue expanded outward, covering everyone present there, and then returned inward, dragging something the hooded figures had been emanating.

  That wasn’t mana, Ronan commented to the old man, realizing things he couldn’t before.

  Because now he could perceive mana better.

  No. It was faith.

  Faith? he asked.

  But the god didn’t answer him. Sometimes he did that. Stopped talking to him.

  Ronan shrugged. He’d ask him another day.

  As for those who to him were little more than cultists, they had remained prostrate with their foreheads on the ground. They no longer repeated that high priest thing.

  The first to wake was Damien. He was also the one who had given the least faith to the god.

  “Your father needs help. Do you have any life potion or a healer?”

  Damien frowned, stood up as if still somewhat dazed, and when he managed to fix his eyes on his father’s inert figure and saw the bones of the hand, he opened his eyes wide.

  “It can’t be,” he murmured.

  Another hooded figure opened his eyes and followed the trajectory of what Damien was pointing at.

  “The First Priest has been touched by Our Lord,” he murmured.

  And that strange thing that wasn’t mana but faith began to generate in him again.

  Then Bloodwynne himself woke and opened his eyes. Without realizing the state of his skeletal hand, he used it to get up and stand.

  It had no tendons, no muscles, but he could move it.

  Ronan, who hadn’t bothered trying to study religion, looked at him curiously.

  It’s not like he could have since supposedly all religious books had been burned, but he couldn’t deny he hadn’t expected this.