The graveyard wind, carrying the scent of damp earth and old stone, felt less like a chill and more like a constant, unseen presence now.
Elias shivered, not from cold, but from the realization that every rustle of dry leaves, every fleeting shadow, might be more than just nature.
Silas had led him to an ancient, secluded crypt, half-buried by sprawling roots, its entrance almost swallowed by a thicket of thorny bushes. It was a place far from the bustling, mana-lit city, a place where the veil between worlds felt thin enough to tear.
"Here, we are undisturbed," Silas's voice was a low, gravelly rumble, cutting through the heavy silence. He pushed aside a gnarled branch, revealing the moss-covered entrance.
"The living rarely venture here, and the mana-attuned avoid it instinctively. They sense the wrongness, the… echo."
Elias followed him inside, into a cool, damp darkness that smelled of dust and time. Lantern light flickered, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to writhe on the walls, making the stone figures carved into the crypt's interior seem almost alive.
Silas set the lantern down on a chipped stone sarcophagus, the flickering light illuminating his aged, resolute face.
"What you felt, what you glimpsed," Silas began, his voice devoid of judgment,
"is the Embermark. It is not mana, Elias. It is a fundamental difference, a primal energy that connects our bloodline to the very essence of life and, more importantly, death. While the mana-wielders draw from the vibrant currents of the world, we draw from the echoes, the lingering imprints of what was."
Elias swallowed hard, his throat dry. "Necromancy," he whispered, the forbidden word feeling heavy on his tongue. He remembered Mr. Thorne's hushed warnings, the fear in Lena's eyes.
Silas nodded, his gaze unwavering.
"A crude term for a complex power. Yes, the uninitiated fear it. They have been taught to. They call it dark, evil. But energy, Elias, is simply energy. It is the wielder's intent that defines it."
He paused, studying Elias.
"You already possess a raw connection. You felt the sorrow of that spirit in the annex, didn't you? You even, unknowingly, called upon it to push that falling stone."
Elias's eyes widened. "That was... a spirit? I just felt a desperate pull, and then it happened."
"Precisely. Your Embermark surged, and the despair of that lingering soul resonated with your own desperation to protect your friend. The Embermark is a conduit. It allows us to perceive, interact with, and yes, eventually command the residual spirits, the souls tethered to this mortal coil after death."
Silas leaned forward, his voice dropping to an almost hypnotic tone.
"But this is not a power of immediate, destructive force like mana. It is subtle. It is persistent. It is about influence, about resonance, about the profound connection to the essence that remains."
He picked up a small, weathered skull from a nearby shelf, its bone yellowed with age.
"Your ancestors, the Vance family, were once as vibrant with mana as any other. Then came the Blackwood curse. It didn't just sever our mana. It twisted our very being, rendering us deaf and blind to the mana currents, making us outcasts in this new world."
Silas's voice hardened, a flicker of ancient rage in his eyes.
"They thought they had broken us. They thought they had extinguished our light."
He set the skull down, his gaze piercing Elias.
"But a Vance always finds a way. My father, and his father before him, experimented, pushed the boundaries of what was possible for the mana-less. I, through decades of isolated study and dangerous trials, discovered how to harness this latent Embermark. I invented the control, Elias, the discipline needed to master what flows within our veins. I learned to draw on the essence of decay, the quiet power of memory, the lingering sentience of the dead."
He flexed his hand, and a faint, icy mist seemed to swirl around his fingers, a controlled, almost beautiful manifestation of the Embermark. It was powerful, yet seemed to cost him. A subtle tremor ran through his aged hand.
"But I am old. My strength wanes. You, Elias, are young. Your Embermark is a nascent fire, waiting to be stoked."
"How... how do I do it?" Elias asked, a mix of fear and desperate curiosity warring within him.
He thought of Lena's scared face. He couldn't go through life a scared, useless outcast.
"Control," Silas stated simply.
"It begins with perception. You felt the cold, the whispers. That is the first step. Mana-wielders feel the vibrant life; we feel the profound stillness of death. Now, you must learn to focus it."
Silas led him to a patch of damp, crypt floor where a single, dead rose lay crumbling.
"Place your hand here. Close your eyes. Don't try to do anything. Just feel. Feel the absence of life, the decay, the subtle energy that makes this flower return to the earth."
Elias hesitated, then complied. He placed his hand over the withered petals. It felt… cold. But as he focused, channeling that familiar warmth that sometimes flared in his gut, the cold began to sharpen, to coalesce.
He felt a faint hum, a delicate vibration emanating from the dead rose. It was like tuning into a frequency no one else could hear.
"Good," Silas murmured. "Now, extend that feeling. Seek the traces, the residual essence. Not life, but its ghost. The memory of its bloom."
Elias focused harder, pushing past the discomfort, past the instinct to shy away from this morbid connection. He felt a slight pull on his consciousness, as if he were stretching a delicate thread.
The air around the rose grew intensely cold, almost freezing, and then, for a fleeting moment, he saw it.
Not with his eyes, but in his mind's eye: a faint, ethereal shimmer, the ghost of a vibrant red bloom, superimposed over the decaying petals. It lasted only a second, then vanished, leaving him breathless.
"You saw it," Silas stated, a rare hint of satisfaction in his voice. "The memory. The echo. This is the foundation. From perceiving, you will learn to influence. From influencing, you will learn to command."
The training that followed was grueling, unlike anything Elias had ever imagined. It wasn't about flashy spells or powerful blasts. It was about stillness, about concentration, about pushing past the primal fear of death.
Silas taught him to meditate in the crypt, to quiet his mind and open himself to the pervasive cold, the whispers of the unseen. He learned to distinguish between the faint, impersonal echoes of decay and the more distinct, often sorrowful, presences of lingering spirits.
He learned to draw the cold energy into himself, not for power, but for perception. Silas demonstrated how to sense the essence of objects, to see the imprints of their past, the emotional residue left behind.
He showed Elias how to subtly influence these traces, to make a long-dead candle flicker, or to cause a draft in a sealed chamber, all without touching it. It was like manipulating the air itself, but an air made of memory and faint, cold energy.
His greatest challenge was the souls. Silas called them the "Restless," spirits who clung to the mortal plane due to unfinished business, intense emotions, or sudden, violent ends.
He taught Elias to approach them not with fear, but with a kind of morbid empathy. Elias learned to extend his consciousness, to offer a connection, to perceive their last moments, their lingering desires. It was a harrowing process, filling his mind with fragmented sorrows and ancient pains.
"To command a soul," Silas explained one day, his voice rasped with effort after a demonstration that left him visibly drained, "is not to enslave it. It is to offer it a temporary purpose, a means to an end, for our end. Their essence, their raw emotion, their lingering will can be focused, directed. It is not done lightly, Elias. Every such action takes a toll, on both the spirit and the wielder. It pulls at the very fabric of your being."
Elias practiced, struggling. His Embermark was powerful, a raw, untamed current compared to Silas's disciplined trickle. When he tried to influence a restless spirit in the crypt, a disembodied moan echoed through the chamber, and a cold gust blew out their lantern.
He was less precise, more volatile. His Embermark raged, but his grandfather's was a finely honed blade.
"You have the strength, Elias. More than I ever possessed at your age," Silas rasped, coughing into a handkerchief that came away stained with blood.
He dismissed Elias's concern with a wave of his hand.
"Just the old man's aches. You have the raw power. Now you must find the control. The Embermark runs deep in your blood, boy. It's what allowed our ancestors to even conceive of such a counter to the Blackwood curse. And it's what will allow you to finally break it." His words were heavy with a conviction that Elias was only beginning to share.
The more he learned, the more the pieces of his family's cursed past clicked into place, forging a cold, hard resolve in his heart.