Chapter Text
The forest still bore the aftermath of the storm.
There had been nine days of uninterrupted rain, nine days in which the world seemed to stop and limit itself to surviving. The trees remained tilted, their roots partially exposed, the ground had turned into a thick sea of mud that swallowed every step without resistance or mercy.
The sorcerer’s tunic stained with every step forward, darkening with mud and stagnant water. Rui did not stop to clean it. It was not worth it. After such long rains, magical creatures were always left weakened: exhausted, vulnerable, forced to negotiate. It was a familiar opportunity, almost routine, to demand favors, bargains… or simple survival.
His steps were quick and steady, even as the cold began to bite at his feet through the frozen mud. It did not matter that the dampness numbed his hands or that fatigue weighed behind his eyes. His expression remained closed, irritated, sharp like an unpolished blade.
The snow angels.
Proud creatures, unbearably proud. Simply for being born with magic, they believed themselves above the entire chain of the world, untouchable, eternal, superior.
Rui hated them.
He hated their artificial purity, their disdain for the ephemeral, that condescending way of existing as if the suffering of others were a design flaw. Even so, he was there because of them. Not out of interest, nor admiration. Out of necessity.
In storms like that one, snow was no refuge for creatures as fragile as angels. They ended up hiding in deep caves, sharing space with fairies who at least knew when to stay silent and when to flee. Rui knew those hiding places well. He knew how to find them. He knew how to speak to them… and how to pressure them without raising his voice.
The reason?
A commission.
A family from the north had come to him with a desperation that no longer surprised him. A priest had cursed the land where they lived, sealing it under an ill omen they did not fully understand. The crops withered, the animals fell ill, the cold grew more aggressive with each passing night.
The contract was simple.
Fair.
Rui would break the curse.
In return, he would receive food.
Nothing more.
Living far from the kingdoms had its costs. Rui lacked brute strength, that direct violence others used without thought. He had never been able to kill even a rabbit. Not out of weakness, but knowledge. Knowing too much meant understanding precisely how much the world could be warped by a single poorly chosen action.
The consequence of understanding magic in all its forms was not power.
It was responsibility.
The icy wind slipped through the trees and stole his breath for a moment. Rui clenched his teeth and kept moving, his feet sinking again and again into the frozen mud.
He was tired.
He was irritated.
He was alone.
But he did not lower his guard.
Only a few days earlier, bounty hunters had reached the forest. Clumsy men and others dangerously clever, all drawn by the same name, the same reward inflated by rumors and fear. The storm had been his salvation. The most cautious withdrew by the third day, understanding that chasing a sorcerer in that weather was a slow sentence. The most stubborn continued, following tracks the rain erased again and again, chasing shadows that never quite took shape.
Rui had felt them nearby.
Not footsteps.
Not voices.
But that uncomfortable pressure in the air, that slight distortion that appeared when someone wanted your death with enough conviction.
He walked for hours without stopping, straying from the path again and again, until the silhouette of his refuge emerged through the mist.
An ancient ruined castle.
It had been abandoned decades earlier after an absurd succession of apparitions: supposed ghosts, ill tempered goblins, and even the particularly ridiculous rumor of a vampire count. Rui had heard better stories in disreputable taverns. As if creatures of that kind would roam lands so poor, so far from any true magical refinement.
Humans needed monsters.
And when they did not find them, they invented them.
The deal with the snow angels had been simpler than Rui expected.
There were no threats.
There were no rituals.
There were no displays of power.
They already knew who he was.
Twenty feathers were handed over in exchange for peace. The angels watched him with that cold hauteur so typical of creatures born with magic, convinced the agreement was a minor concession. Rui accepted without argument, though he could not help thinking that had they known what would come next, they would never have been so generous.
The feathers would be crushed as soon as he reached his refuge. Mixed with impure water, collected from old puddles and forgotten cracks among the ruins. Nothing ceremonial nothing elegant.
Magic did not need reverence, only precision.
…
Loneliness was rotting him.
Not all at once, not in any obvious way, it was something slow, silent.
Everyone saw him as a monster now.
At first it was simple suspicion. Three years ago, when he was still tolerated within the kingdom, strange deaths began to appear: parasites never documented before, bodies collapsing from extreme heat in the middle of summer, corpses whose blood had taken on impossible hues.
Of course it was Rui.
Who else could have created such anomalies?
Despite being innocent, no one wanted to hear that he had never killed anyone intentionally, no one wanted to know that those bodies were abandoned corpses, unclaimed, discarded like human waste. Rui had always worked with them respectfully, with the care any scholar would give to an irreplaceable object of study.
His goal was never harm.
It was always the cure.
He wanted to heal illnesses faster than the human body allowed. To surpass limits without being born with magic, without relying on blessed blood or ancient lineages. To prove that magic could be learned, understood… shared.
He never did it out of hatred for the kingdom.
…
Then the people came.
Not desperate patients.
Not the dying.
Healthy people.
People who only wanted to feel special.
They arrived with that anxious, pleading look, convinced that having magic inside their bodies would make them more than human. That breaking natural limits was a right, not a risk.
Rui was not prepared for that.
He tried to refuse.
He tried to explain.
He tried to set boundaries.
It did not work.
The requests turned into threats.
"—I will tell the king if you do not use some spell to heal me."
And so, little by little, everything broke.
Magic was not safe. It never had been. And even less so when it was used to repair something that, by nature, needed to break in order to survive. Those who insisted began to fall ill. Others died. The consequences were unmistakable.
Distortions that only magic could create.
When the king learned of it, there was no trial.
There was no hearing.
There was no defense.
The order was immediate.
Execution.
They did not even give him time to explain himself, to show that he had never acted with criminal intent. The truth was irrelevant. Rui had become the monster they needed.
At least one person tried to understand him.
At least someone, in that entire world, did not look at him with fear.
Did not call him an aberration.
Did not see him as a plague.
That memory… was the only thing he had not yet managed to destroy.
The refuge welcomed him with its usual silence, the ruins did not judge, did not whisper, did not ask for explanations. Inside, the cold mixed with the persistent smell of dampness and old stone, and for a moment Rui was able to breathe without feeling the weight of nonexistent gazes. No whispers, no half-spoken prayers, no human fear contaminating the air.
Only space.
Only stillness.
He let his cloak fall over a broken chair and moved toward the improvised table at the center of the main hall. The wood was splintered, held together by sheer stubbornness and a few poorly made reinforcements he himself had added years earlier. He placed the feathers on it one by one.
They were far too pure to survive the process.
He watched them in silence, his fingers numbed by the cold taking a second longer than usual to respond. The exhaustion had settled on his face like a second skin.
Dark circles beneath his eyes, dry lips, a jaw tense more from habit than from anger. Even so, his movements remained steady. Even with his feet still frozen and his hands trembling almost imperceptibly, there was no hesitation in him.
He had been lucky.
No setbacks along the way, no unnecessary encounters, no presence that disrupted the balance of the day. After weeks of constant hostility, the world seemed, for once, willing not to interfere. The storm had eased, the wind struck less fiercely, and even the light filtering through the collapsed arches carried something close to indulgence.
Rui did not believe in favorable signs.
But he knew how to recognize a truce when it was offered to him.
He removed his gloves and set them aside, the skin of his hands was cracked, reddened by the cold and by years of handling substances no human body should touch without consequence. Even so, he showed no reaction to the pain when he took the stone mortar.
He began with the feathers.
He broke them, reducing them to irregular fragments that he then crushed with patience. There was no anger in the motion, but no delicacy either, only repetition, constant pressure. The dry sound of the material giving way filled the room, mixing with the distant dripping of water seeping through cracks in the ceiling.
As he worked, his mind inevitably returned to the request.
The family from the north.
They were not rich, they were not influential. They barely survived thanks to an ungrateful land that, until recently, at least allowed them to subsist. The priest had spoken of purification, of divine punishment, of an evil that needed to be sealed. Big words to cover ignorance and fear.
The result had been a bad omen anchored to the land itself.
Not an active spell, not something that could be broken with violence. This was more insidious, a slow distortion, a denial of balance. Poorly applied magic had that habit. It did not attack directly, it eroded.
It rotted from within.
Rui knew this well.
When the feathers had been reduced to powder, he took a ceramic bowl and poured the contents carefully. Then he moved toward a dark corner of the refuge, where several opaque glass bottles had been arranged. He chose one in particular. The water inside was not clear, it had a murky, almost grayish tone. It was water collected from ancient puddles, from deep cracks where rain stagnated for years without receiving light or movement.
He slowly poured it over the feather powder.
The mixture barely hissed, as if reacting to the contact. Rui observed the change in texture, adjusting the amount with precision.
If it was too liquid, the conjuration would disperse. If it was too thick, it would become useless.
He then added other components. A handful of dry earth, collected from the exact boundary where the crops had begun to die. Old ash, taken from a domestic fire, not a ritual one and finally... a few drops of his own blood.
Not as a sacrifice.
As a bond.
Magic meant to affect a territory needed to recognize someone as an intermediary. Rui did not offer himself as a master or as a martyr, only as a conscious witness.
When he finished, the preparation had an indefinable color, shifting depending on the angle of the light. It did not glow, it did not emit heat, nor did it promise anything.
It was simply right.
Rui placed both hands on the table and closed his eyes for a moment. He did not speak words, he did not invoke names. Magic did not need to be called when it was already there, waiting for instruction.
He thought of the northern land.
Of the quiet desperation of a family that did not understand why the world had decided to turn against them.
Then, with a slow and deliberate movement, he sealed the bowl.
The bad omen would not vanish immediately, but it would begin to unravel. To lose coherence, to return, little by little, what it had taken.
Enough for the land to breathe again.
Rui let himself fall into the chair, his body finally yielding to the exhaustion he had ignored for hours. The silence of the refuge wrapped around him once more, thick and honest.
For a moment, he almost managed to convince himself that it was enough, that somehow continuing to repair fragments of the world made up for everything else.
But the human body did not negotiate with ideals.
Hunger settled in his stomach like a sharp reminder, uncomfortable, persistent. Rui closed his eyes for just a moment, then stood up with a low sigh. He could not afford to delay the request. He knew the night would be cruel, that the cold would follow him back to the ruins, but even so, he needed the food.
He needed to fulfill the agreement.
He took the sealed bowl carefully and wrapped it in thick cloth before storing it among his belongings.
The journey to the residence was shorter than he expected. The sky, still covered by dense clouds, held an opaque light that made it difficult to distinguish the passage of time.
When he arrived, the land around the house showed the first signs of the bad omen. Withered plants in irregular patterns, soil hardened as if rejecting life, an unnatural silence even for winter.
The family received him with a warmth that took him by surprise.
There was no fear and certainly no distance. Instead there were tired smiles, hopeful looks, hands offering him warm water and a place to set his things down. They invited him inside with an almost excessive gratitude, as if Rui were something like a hero and not the exiled sorcerer the kingdom described in its proclamations. It caused a dry discomfort in his chest. It was incredible how easily people’s perception could change with such simple actions. Saving a harvest, breaking a conjuration, listening without judgment.
But Rui did not stay inside for long.
He thanked them with a brief gesture and explained that he needed to work before night fell completely. He took the bowl and began to circle the land, moving forward with measured steps, observing carefully.
The procedure was not complex, but it did demand precision.
The bad omen was anchored at specific points, invisible knots where poorly applied magic had settled like a scab. Rui felt them more than he saw them: places where the air grew dense, where the cold bit harder, where the silence weighed too much.
He knelt at the first point and uncovered the bowl.
The salve had a thick, uneven consistency and a color impossible to pin down. Rui sank his fingers into it without hesitation and spread it over the earth with slow, steady movements, following a pattern only he seemed to understand.
He spoke no words, nor did he trace visible symbols. Magic responded to intent, not spectacle
.
He repeated the process at each strategic point, wiping his hands on dirty snow before moving on to the next. As he worked, the ground seemed to yield slightly, as if releasing something it had been holding for far too long. It was not an immediate change, but it was enough.
When he approached the pens, something broke the rhythm of his work. A dark shape, irregular and far too still to belong to the landscape. Rui noted it out of the corner of his eye and chose to ignore it for now. First he would finish what he had come to do.
The chickens scratched around him, oblivious to any omen, pecking at the freshly disturbed soil as if they instinctively understood that something had changed beneath their feet. Rui let the salve fall onto the final point, murmured the closing phrase which was not a spell and never had been but rather an ancient way of asking permission and carefully sealed the jar.
Only then did he lift his gaze.
They were corpses.
Two human bodies, stiff and covered by a thin layer of frost, and a little farther away, the massive bodies of two horses collapsed on the hardened ground. Rui did not flinch. Winter claimed its price every year, and roads far from the kingdom were full of similar stories: poorly prepared travelers, abandoned guards, men who had misjudged the distance or the cruelty of the cold.
Even so, something did not fit.
He approached slowly, recognizing the armor even before he saw the shield: royal guards. He had not seen them in those lands for a long time.
He frowned.
Another kingdom, perhaps? Or a silent war that had not reached the ears of the peasants? For a moment, he thought of the bounty hunters who had pursued him days earlier. What if they were nothing more than lost soldiers, using fear as a last resort?
But then he saw the horses.
The marks were not obvious at first glance. There was no blood, no open wounds. Yet beneath the fur stiffened by ice, the skin was… distorted. Rui knelt beside one of them, carefully brushed away the frost, and ran his fingers near the neck.
He stopped immediately.
Magic.
Not the clumsy magic of desperate villagers, nor the old protective sorcery he knew.
This was something else.
Cruel.
Precise.
There were invisible grooves, as if something had traveled through the inside of the body, twisting nerves and muscles from within. The same was true for the humans. Faces frozen in expressions that could not be explained by cold alone.
It had not been a quick death.
It had not been accidental.
Rui slowly rose to his feet, an uncomfortable pressure closing in on his chest. He had seen people die before. He had seen magic kill, but never like this. Never violence so deliberate, so meticulous, so… unnecessary and certainly never something that worked the same way on human bodies and animals alike, as if both were nothing more than interchangeable vessels.
It was definitely not a kind of magic he had studied, not even something he had heard mentioned in rumors or whispered warnings. It offered no knowledge, left no useful results, served no purpose beyond harm.
It was empty magic, designed solely to break.
As he straightened up, he felt the weight settle into his body, dense and impossible to ignore. When he asked the family about the corpses, the answer was simple, almost comforting in its normalcy: they had simply found them near the road and planned to take them to the kingdom to give them a proper burial. They had served the king, so they did not deserve to be left abandoned to the elements.
It was not dishonor. It was, in fact, the most moral thing they could do.
And yet, Rui felt empathy. Not for the discomfort of having bodies near their home, not even for the fear they might have felt upon finding them. He felt empathy for their ignorance, because to them those deaths were nothing more than another winter tragedy, mere bodies defeated by the cold.
They would never know how macabre it had truly been.
When he set out on his return, he carried a basket with bread, some meat, and regrettably vegetables. The weight was light compared to what he carried in his mind, not even the snow beneath his feet managed to distract him from his thoughts.
This was definitely something curious.