Journal Entry 1.0
The room suits me. Large, dark, and cold. The largest in the keep, as it should be. Draga built it well—his heavy hands shaping stone and timber with reverence, though I doubt he knows what he’s really made. I drift my fingers along the wall, feeling the rough edges like old scars. This space doesn’t breathe or stir unless I allow it.

I like that.

I set the candelabra on the table, but I don’t light it. Let the darkness gather. Let it settle in the corners, the way I do when no one is watching. The air hums softly with the weight of emptiness, and I let it press down on me until it feels like an embrace. This room is mine, and in it, I can stretch out the tangled thoughts that coil tight around my ribs.

Draga’s mark is everywhere here—solid, dependable as if he thinks stone and wood are enough to contain me. He trusts me, I think. That’s sweet. Naïve, but sweet. I’ll keep him close. He doesn’t need to know why.

I drape my cloak over the chair, the red spilling like blood against the dull grain. This will be my fortress, a nest of shadows from which I will emerge only when it suits me. They can knock at the door if they wish. Or they can wonder if I’m even here at all.

It’s better this way.

Journal Entry 1.1

The firewood remains untouched. Lighting it feels like an invitation—too bright, too obvious. Shadows are safer. Flames draw eyes. The dark conceals

I sharpened the dagger until the blade hummed beneath my fingers. The reflection twisted in the steel, following my every move. Watching me. I nicked my thumb—an accident, maybe. Or a warning. The blade knows something I don’t.

Draga trains them in the yard. His voice carries too far, stretching into places it doesn’t belong. I listen through the cracks in the stone. He hesitates between commands. Does he know I’m listening? I shift out of view, just in case.

The curtain falls as the sun sinks. I let it. Easier to stay unseen. The shadows press in, familiar and quiet. Someone will come. They always do. I’ll be ready when they knock.

The Slumberer’s Prayer

In the hush of night, I kneel. One palm pressed to the cold stone, the other over my heart.

“Slumbering One, keeper of stillness, let the weight of your veil fall over me. Shroud me from prying eyes and wandering thoughts. Where light forgets to reach, may I find your embrace. Let the quiet linger, and may your silence be my guide.”

I breathe in slow. Count to seven. Exhale until my chest is empty. The dark swells around me, thicker than before.

-► On Profane Magics: ○ Mental magic is a malefic force that is inherently corruptive to the mind. Those that use it inevitably fall to wicked ways as they subjugate others with this fell power. ○ Blood magic is a malefic force that is inherently corruptive to the body. Those that use it inevitably fall to wicked ways as they subjugate themselves and others to this fell power. ○ Dark magic is a malefic force that is inherently corruptive to the soul. Those that use it inevitably fall to wicked ways, harkening to the void or the wastes, twisting this world and poisoning it with otherworldly influence. Furthermore making use of this profane art weakens the veil, allowing creatures from the other side to find their way through to our realm.

Practitioners of these profane arts will be hunted down for punishment. If unwilling to perform the closing of their conduit they will be stricken and cleaved from their foul arts by way of brand or the castigation. Those that seek to have their wicked magics returned to them will be marked for death.

– Immitus has come.

No name signed it, but the seal was unmistakable. I burned the note without reading it twice, but the words stayed with me. Who watched close enough to know?

Theo’s Response

To the one who warns from shadows,

Your parchment bleeds fear—fear of what you cannot chain, of what lingers beyond your reach. You speak of corruption, yet it festers loudest in those who wield power wrapped in false piety.

I owe no allegiance to your Treaties. The Slumberer’s veil guards me, and in the dark, I thrive. Strike if you dare. But know this—when the sun sinks and your fires burn low, I will still be here. Watching.

I am not the hunted. I am the quiet that outlasts.

– Theodora

Journal Entry 1.2

The note was left beneath my door, scrawled with all the usual rhetoric of fools who think they understand power. “Profane Magics,” they call it. “Mental magic,” “Blood magic,” “Dark magic.” They write their words with a righteous fury, as if their ignorance could burn away what they do not understand.

I have seen their kind before—hunters who believe themselves above reproach, who turn their eyes to the dark, thinking they can erase it with their light. The note is a threat, a warning. It promises to cleave me from my arts, to sever my connection to the currents that pulse through me, should I refuse their “cleansing.” They don’t know me. They never will.

Their ignorance is as boundless as their conviction. The truth is simple—magic does not belong to the body, the mind, or the soul alone. Magic is a force beyond understanding, a current that runs beneath the world, around it, through it. What they call “dark” magic is simply a mirror, reflecting back the shadow within us all. Their feigned purity is nothing more than a lie.

They speak of “closing the conduit,” as though it were a door that can be shut. They do not understand that the veil is not something I walk through—it is something I am. I am the conduit. And if they think they can castigate me with brands and strikes, they will learn that no mark will ever touch what I’ve already become.

Let them come. Let them knock at my door. Their message is no more than a whisper in the wind, a fleeting thing that will fade beneath the weight of what I carry. The magic is mine. And they? They are just one more prey to be hunted.

Journal Entry 1.3

They came in the night. Three of them. Cloaked, faces buried beneath layers of cloth. The door didn’t so much break as it surrendered—splintering into jagged shards as though it had long been prepared to collapse. I heard them first, the scrape of boots against stone, slow, deliberate, like the pace of a predator savoring the hunt.

I tried to slip through the side passage, but he was there. A shadow in the dark. I never saw his face, but his grip around my wrist was cold, like iron forged in the heart of a grave. I fought, I tore free, but the next one was waiting. The third caught me as I tried to ascend the stairwell, his boot in my back, sending me crashing to the ground.

I fought. Of course, I fought. But they were prepared. They knew how to break me. Knew how to sever the pulse of magic that thrummed through my veins. One muttered something—words older than time itself, brittle like rotting leaves underfoot. And I felt it. The pull. The snap. The darkness inside me recoiling, like the tide retreating into a black void.

Now, I am empty. For three days, I will know nothing but this hollow space. The void inside me has been scraped clean, and in its absence, there is only silence—loud, suffocating silence. The shadows that used to cling to my skin, that used to whisper and dance in the corners of my mind, are gone. I can’t feel them. Can’t hear them.

The stone walls seem closer now, as if they are pressing in, eager to crush the breath from me. I pace, but the echoes are wrong—hollow, delayed, as if the world itself is half-dreaming. The dagger still hums on the table, but it reflects nothing. No light, no shape, no image—not even mine.

I know they watch. I know the walls listen. But there is no veil anymore, no curtain between us. I am bare, exposed to it all.

They left me there, the door hanging wide, the cold wind curling through the broken keep. Draga found me at dawn, but he didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. He knew.

Three days. I will wait. Three days isn’t forever. But the dark used to wait with me. Now, I wait alone. And I am not sure if I will return from this.