70. Cacophony
Chapter 70
IRIS
Two dead bodies lay on the wooden tables before me.
On the right was Hawthorn Belwraith. Alive, he had recently taken over his father’s carpentry business, set to marry his childhood sweetheart in the spring. His family had been among the first to trial the Lotus Tonic, and they had granted me permission to examine his body before its return for burial.
On the left was the incarnate. His dark leathers and raven hair contrasted with the sickly hue of his skin—different even from the other lifeless body in the room. I wished I knew his name, if only to grant him the dignity of it in death.
In the morning, I was to assess Hawthorn’s magical signature, searching for discrepancies in how the Malum manifested within his bloodstream. We had yet to obtain permission to conduct such experiments on living patients, but essence often lingered for days after death. Burial ceremonies across the realms allowed for that residual power to be transferred back to the Sylvan Blooms.
I circled the incarnate, debating where to begin. Ferrin and Nadya’s conversation had been a catalyst for re-visiting the idea of magical signatures in the first place, even before I thought of using it for our patients, planting the idea that whatever unexplainable phenomena was happening with the Incarnates could be studied through them. Their refusal—or perhaps inability—to use their goddess-given blessings had to mean something. Though an eyeball wouldn’t have yielded much information, the lingering essence after death or removal might reveal something about what they are—or were— and what they’re trying to accomplish.
A putrid stench rose from the incarnate, a nauseating blend of decay and something saccharine. It reminded me of Bastion’s death. The bronze palace had delayed his funeral for weeks, masking the scent of his decomposing body with copious florals. But the two scents had only mingled, twisting into something worse. The bouquets had been cut already, on their way to meet the same fate as him—a death covered by false life.
Shuddering at the memory, I reached for the bindings of the incarnate’s leather tunic. The smell thickened as his skin met open air, his chest a ruin of marred flesh and dried blood.
I would recognize Nadya’s methodical handiwork anywhere.
Grabbing a damp cloth, I cleaned the gore from his skin, leaning in to inspect what lay beneath. The same brand from our previous encounter with the incarnates marked his sternum, though less...volatile. Where the sigil on the live attackers from Marikaim had been a void—constantly pulsating while dark tendrils whipped from the center and spread in spiderweb patterns across their chest—this was a gaping chasm. Rotting flesh peeled from the deep intersecting lines, the carving sinking into the bone at his sternum, each score no longer filled with deep moving shadow. The symbol sparked a hazy recognition, but I couldn’t place why it seemed familiar.
I removed more of the tunic and sucked in a sharp breath at the difference from my memory of Marikaim. The other two we had faced bore dark networks, but theirs had been contained, only following the path that those dark tendrils took as they escaped from the brand.
Here they were no more than decay. Streaks of rot shot out from the symbol like lightning, splintering in deep gouges across his torso until they pooled at the junctions of his limbs. The thicker striations coursed down his arms, stopping just short of his wrists. I traced the lines with my fingers, comparing each arm side by side.
No…
Rounding the table, I pulled up Hawthorn’s sleeve. Side by side, there was no mistaking it. The pattern on the incarnate seemed to burrow into his skin, like those wisps of darkness had repeatedly dragged a knife across them, unlike the veining beneath Hawthorn’s. And the directions differed—Hawthorn’s veins moved away from his fingertips, while the incarnate’s spread toward them—but the pattern was identical.
Wood groaned in the silence as I pushed the tables together, freeing Hawthorn from his tunic as well.
The two bodies were mirrors.
Save for the brand on the incarnate and the way it manifested, the map of each was nearly identical, only slight deviations across their torsos. Where the network thickened at Hawthorn’s shoulders, funneling into an almost striped pattern aimed directly at his heart, it shattered outward from the incarnate’s brand like fractured glass. As if the carving had been the catalyst for a collision, everything beneath it splintering until it coalesced once more.
My heart thundered, but I had no time to panic—or to fully comprehend how much we had missed. How wrong we had been.
I unsheathed Aconite and sliced the blade across a thick vein at the incarnate’s elbow. Blood poured forth, dark and sluggish. I sent a Thread diving into his bloodstream, searching for what remained of his essence.
Golden strands skittered beneath his skin. I gagged as they collided with the ward encasing his essence. All barriers carried a unique taste, a moniker left behind—but never had I encountered one so vile. Swallowing against the acrid tang, I picked apart the pieces.
This magic was the opposite of Aspen’s warmth, where his power had danced and intertwined playfully. This magic lashed and writhed, erratic and violent. It darted and twisted as I pursued it, forcing me to hone my Threads sharper just to gain purchase. Finally, they sank into the core of his essence, wrenching it free.
Braids of gold folded over the wisps, floating before me as I examined the incarnate’s signature.
Goddesses above.
There was no glowing core at the heart of the sphere. No soft edges. No wisps of magic.
I had studied three different Ethera signatures before, each unique in color and shape. Aspen’s had been playful, a shifting tapestry of blue and silver; my own, slow and deliberate, moving to its own melody. We’d practiced a handful of times, separating the interwoven strands and testing how his essence responded to cuts, hunger, or power depletion. I had laid them out like the strings of the harp, searching for insult or injury. I was sure that if I could work out how to allow Aspen’s Medikai magic into the sphere without causing it to unravel, we could run a true diagnostic on them. It was the basis of my entire theory—how we would know if the Lotus Tonic truly destroyed the Malum.
Perhaps so much more.
But there was no untangling the signature before me.
It was devoid of light and color, swirling in on itself.t
A gaping black hole. Fragments of it shot outward, colliding with my ward so violently that my own magic shuddered, before diving back into the abyss. I worked to separate its pieces, but they refused to yield, caught in an endless, ravenous cycle of barrage against the ward.
Another tendril struck the barrier, and as I staggered back, I noticed the change.
The veining on Hawthorn’s body.
It was moving.
I twisted toward his corpse, the warded signature still floating in my outstretched hand... Raging. The closer I brought it to Hawthorn, the wilder the void became. It grew. Stretched. Burned against the edges of my own essence.
Shakily, I grabbed the discarded blade, repeating the process on Hawthorn. His essence rose before me—dim, but not yet gone.
And within that kernel of light that remained…
Darkness.
Not like the void. But still insidious, still present—intertwining itself within that core piece of his being, dipping and piercing in an onslaught.
I tried to separate those pieces of Hawthorn, managing only to pull them apart slightly. Still connected at the edges but no longer tangled together.
The two orbs in my hands jerked toward one another, my arms trembling under the effort of keeping them apart. Slowly, I moved them, testing their reaction.
The void raged against the barrier, and as I brought it closer to Hawthorn’s essence, the deeper that darkness burrowed within his light, knotting itself tighter. When I wrenched the spheres apart, the anomaly in Hawthorn’s loosened, but never fully retreated.
Then, in a single, violent lurch, the void struck.
The ward bulged under the force, slamming both signatures together. I watched as the darkness wrestled with the light that remained, that feeble yellow light sputtering.
Only then did I realize, the battle between the orbs wasn’t isolated.
Their bodies were responding in kind.
The incarnate’s skin regained color, pinker by the second, while Hawthorn withered. His skin shrank against his bones, his once-strong frame collapsing inward.
No. No, no, no, no.
He had to go back to his family.
I dove deep—too deep—into my essence, sending my Threads slicing through the black mass. Fast. I was racing too fast, barreling down with abandon to pull every drop I had in that bottomless pool of power. My hair stood on end, the cacophony in the room drowning out my pounding heartbeat as I sliced at anything I could find, pushing my hands closer together, suffocating the aberration that had formed. I crushed, and tore, and ravaged until, at last, all that remained was golden dust, slipping like sand through my fingers.
The bodies did not return to what they had been, but at least I had stopped whatever horror had begun to claim Hawthorn before he’d become unrecognizable.
Infection? Corruption?
There was no way it could be either. Something had linked these two bodies. Though I wasn’t sure it had always been that way. Nothing had changed in either of them until the dark tendrils involved in each essence were in close proximity. It had caused the veining on the incarnate to lessen while Hawthorn’s had increased, crawling across previously unmarked skin. They felt different, too. The darkness in Hawthorn’s signature was sickening, but the void of the incarnate—That had been pure emptiness.
That connection happened here.
But that meant... Magic could be bound in three ways. A life-debt bond, a soulbound tether—or a curse.
The first two didn’t leave these kinds of physical marks. They did not drain life like this. They were not capable of this magnitude of destruction.
They were stealing other Ethera’s magic.
The Incarnates, the Malum…
This was a curse.