Spells·Dark Arts
School of Magic
The Oxblood Pages - Shadow, dread, and debts paid in the self.
A needle of darkness. It finds the cracks in armor and soul alike.
Your fingers brush their skin. The cold that follows is not temperature.
The body knows what's coming. It just can't stop it.
The thread is thin. What it pulls is not.
You don't shout. You don't need to. The right word in the right ear does more than any blade.
The shadows don't hide you. They just make everyone else forget to look.
Your palm presses flat against their chest. What enters through the skin has no cure.
Stand close to me. I dare you.
You were there. Now you're here. They're still looking where you were.
The thread between you tightens. They grow pale. You don't.
The mind is a door. You don't knock.
The dark is not empty. It's crowded.
Something behind their eyes breaks. You can hear it from here.
The bargain is simple. Blood now. Power now. Cost later.
They don't serve you because they want to. They serve you because you won't let them rest.
The pain has no source. It's everywhere. It's everything.
The bolt doesn't burn. It unmakes. There's a difference.
The swarm doesn't think. It doesn't need to. It just eats.
Your arm stops being an arm. What it becomes, no one wants to name.
Their eyes go still. Their voice is yours.
The void doesn't push. It pulls. Everything falls inward.
You don't take what they offer. You take what they have.
You stop pretending to be human. Just for a while.
They'll see the mark. They won't understand it. Not until it's too late.
The beam fades. The rot doesn't.
The fear was keeping them alive. It was the only thing holding the scream together.
The darkness doesn't surround them. It's already inside.
Something followed them back. They can feel it breathing.
The ground remembers the dead. Sometimes the dead remember back.
The darkness was always a cage. Now it has a lock.
These flames don't care what you resist. They found the other way in.
Every prayer for mercy lands at the wrong altar.
Every curse you planted finds the same root.
Fear spreads the way fire does. One spark is enough.
You built the dark around them. Now you light the match.
Three heartbeats. That's all the time they have left.
You didn't kill them. You collected what was owed.