Kael Voidwalker's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

The pain came at dawn, as Rook had promised. The iron frame under Kael's skin woke first. Cold spread from the shard through his chest, down his arms, into his hands. His fingers curled tight and would not open. He tried to grip his knife. The handle slipped free and hit the dirt. He flexed, forced, cursed. His hands stayed claws. Somewhere past the black trees, something moved. If it found him now, he could not lift a blade to meet it. Kael walked back into the caravan on stiff legs. The hooded travelers stepped aside without a word. Down the open lane came the small barefoot child in the patched black cloak. Rook. The one who had sunk the stone into his flesh yesterday and turned away. "Your hands," Rook said. Not a question. "They won't work." Kael held them up. The fingers shook. "You did this. Fix it." "I told you the price. Pain. Every day." The old voice came flat from the child's mouth. "You paid it. This is what paying looks like." "Then I'm dead. I can't hunt. I can't fight. I can't hold anything." Rook studied the claws for a long moment. "The frame pulls your aura at dawn. It feeds on you. That is the cold." He tapped Kael's chest, over the buried shard. "You are fighting it. Stop fighting. Feed it first." "Feed it what?" "Yourself. The same thing you used in the mine." Kael understood. He reached inside for the cold place, the live wire he feared to touch. He pulled a thread of it up and pushed it down into his chest instead of out. Dark violet smoke leaked from his knuckles. A faint black aura rose off his shoulders. The shard drank it. The cold in his hands eased, then broke. His fingers loosened. Slowly, one by one, they opened. He bent, picked up the knife, and gripped it hard. The handle held. "Every morning," Rook said. "You give it a little of yourself. It gives you your hands. That is the trade." Kael's stomach dropped. "And the shard keeps more of me each time." "Yes." He remembered the scholar's warning. The stone held a piece of his soul already. Now he would pour more in daily, just to close his own fist. He looked at the child. "How long before there's nothing left to give?" Rook did not answer that part. He never gave the part that mattered most. "You can hold a weapon now," he said. "That was the question you came with." The child turned and walked back down the lane. The hooded travelers closed the gap behind him. Kael sheathed the knife. His hands worked. He could survive the day. But the fix was the trap. Each dawn would cost him a sliver of the man who decided things, traded for the strength to keep going. He had bought one more morning. He did not know how many mornings the shard would sell him.