Thorne's expression didn't change as he pressed his will deeper into the mass of motes. The cloud thickened until it had the weight of a landslide.

Zarash's groan rasped out through clenched teeth. His scales cracked in thin, hairline fractures where the pressure ground him against the iron.

Still, Thorne ignored him.

He reached into the motes, searching for the dull flicker of corruption. One flaking, muddy-green mote drifted to his hand. It hovered just above his palm, trembling faintly under the conflicting strains tearing it apart.

He studied it in silence, fascination rising through the chill calm.

Carefully, he extended his will again, summoning a healthy mote from the swirling mass. It drifted closer, bright and whole.

He watched as the corrupted one quivered, flaking tiny particles that drifted onto the clean mote's surface.

A heartbeat later, the clean mote began to darken, the same sick discoloration spreading across its surface like rot.

Interesting.

He beckoned a second healthy mote. This time, the moment the corruption began to leech across the surface, he wove a tighter lattice of force around it, holding its shape, commanding its cohesion.

For a moment, it quivered on the edge of collapse, flickering between green and white.

And then it stilled, whole again.

It felt…diminished. Smaller, like a wound had been stitched shut without fully healing. But it remained itself.

Thorne's gaze sharpened.

He flicked the healthy motes away, scattering them back to the ambient tide. Only the two corrupted ones remained, swirling slowly above his palm.

With a slight motion of his finger, he spun them in a slow orbit, studying every angle.

They were decaying before his eyes. Flakes drifted free, dissolving into nothing the instant they lost contact with their kin.

So it consumes itself, he thought. If the fragments don't spread the infection, they simply…die.

His mind ticked over the implications, Aether traps that degrade wards. Infected decoys to collapse containment circles. Bait to exhaust an enemy's resources without ever striking a blow.

Useful. In more ways than Zarash could likely imagine.

Slowly, he turned his attention to the other corrupted mote. His eyes narrowed, and he extended his will, pressing down with the same force he used to bind the healthy one, only reversed.

Instead of holding it stable, he tried to heal it. To press the disordered threads back into their natural lattice.

The mote quivered violently, shedding larger flakes under the strain.

No.

He tried again. Softer this time, coaxing rather than commanding.

More of the mote sloughed away, drifting into nothing as it cracked and unraveled.

Thorne's jaw tightened.

He released the fragments and called two more corrupted motes from the air. Again he tried, once with delicate pressure, once with brute force.

Both dissolved faster under his touch.

The answer was clear enough.

He couldn't reverse the corruption. Only contain it.

He exhaled slowly, the weight of the realization settling in the pit of his chest.

If this disease took root in a ward, or in someone's core, it couldn't be undone.

Only burned away.

The air between them hung heavy with tension, the motes still pressed like a physical weight against Zarash's back.

Slowly, Thorne lifted his gaze, his eyes flat and cold.

"How?" he asked, his voice soft and measured.

Zarash made a low, strangled noise. "What?"

Thorne took a step forward, the motes swirling aside for him alone.

"How do you do it?" He tilted his head a fraction. "How do you corrupt the aether in the first place?"

For the first time, Zarash looked genuinely unsettled. His scaled throat flexed as he swallowed.

"I… It's not something you can just teach in words," he said hoarsely. "It's… It's like breathing. Like remembering something you were born knowing."

Thorne didn't blink.

"Show me," Thorne repeated, his voice quiet but edged with an authority that left no space for refusal.

Zarash lay half-pinned under the crushing field of motes, breath ragged. His yellow eyes flicked up, meeting Thorne's in a long, searching stare.

For a moment, he looked as if he might try defiance. But then his gaze shifted to the swirling fragments Thorne held between his fingers, what remained of the corrupted motes, and something wary crept into his face.

Slowly, carefully, he exhaled, the effort it took to speak evident in the strain of his limbs.

"You really don't know," he rasped. "Gods below… You don't know anything about what you are."

Thorne said nothing. The motes pressed harder, flattening Zarash's scales against the floor.

A low groan slipped from his throat. When he spoke again, it was softer, tinged with something between wonder and exasperation.

"All right." He drew a ragged breath. "Release me. And I'll show you."

Thorne studied him, searching for any flicker of deceit. But Zarash's aura burned with something blunt and raw: desperation. Resentment. A glimmer of dark pride.

"Slowly," Thorne said.

He unspooled the pressure bit by bit. The swirling motes dissolved back into the ambient tide, their weight lifting by increments until Zarash could drag himself upright, leaning heavily against the collapsed bars.

For a moment, he simply panted, head bowed. Then he lifted his gaze, meeting Thorne's eyes.

"I'll show you," he said again, more steadily. "But know this, it's not a technique you can replicate without understanding what you are."

"Try me."

Zarash's mouth twisted in a humorless smile. "As you wish."

He straightened, rolling his shoulders until the joints cracked. Then he spread both hands in front of his chest, palms turned inward.

"Watch with that pretty Sight of yours."

Thorne didn't move. He opened his senses, letting the aether sharpen and bloom around him in all its intricate currents.

Zarash's breath slowed. He closed his eyes, and when he exhaled, it wasn't the same deliberate breath as before. This was deeper, older, like he was reaching into something buried under the shape of his body.

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In Thorne's Sight, the motes nearest Zarash began to stir. Not violently, just a faint quiver, as if recognizing a master's call.

But this time, Thorne saw it happen.

Deep inside the currents of Zarash's core, a thread of something dark flexed and uncoiled. It passed from him into the motes with quiet inevitability, like a stain seeping into clear water.

The first few turned that muddy, green-grey hue.

Then the contamination spread, slow as dawn, into every mote the darkness touched.

When Zarash opened his eyes again, they glowed with a faint inner light, alien and cold.

"This is not something you force," he said quietly. "It's something you become. You call the oldest part of yourself, the part that remembers what it is to unmake. And then you breathe it into the world."

Thorne watched, unmoving. In the air between them, the motes continued to decay, flaking apart in slow, quiet ruin.

"How did you learn it?" he asked.

Zarash's smile was thin. "I didn't. It was always there. Like your own gifts."

He tilted his head. "Tell me, did you ever wonder why the Purifiers fear us more than any mage? Why they would rather raze a city to the ground than let one of our kind walk free?"

Thorne said nothing.

Zarash gestured to the rotting motes. "It's because we are proof that the aether isn't just creation. It is also decay. Entropy. And we remember how to call it."

His gaze sharpened. "And now, so will you."

Thorne's eyes narrowed. He extended his senses again, tracking every thread, every pulse in the corrupted aether.

Quietly, he began to memorize the shape of it. The texture. The feeling.

Because whether or not Zarash realized it, Thorne had no intention of relying on instinct alone.

He would learn.

He would master this, as he had mastered everything.

No matter what it cost.

Thorne stood in silence, the cold light striping his face. He watched the corrupted motes drift apart in lazy ruin. And slowly, very slowly, he reached for them.

He let his senses expand, past the bright currents of the ambient aether, past the familiar lattice he'd studied all his life.

Deeper.

To the place inside him he almost never touched.

The oldest part.

It wasn't like summoning aether to his hand or shaping it into blades. It wasn't even like slipping through shadows or cloaking his form.

This was something else.

A presence. A knowing.

A memory he had never made.

It felt…primal.

Older than the word for fire. Older than any written spell.

He felt it stir, uncoiling through his veins in a slow, predatory hush.

Decay.

Zarash's voice came from far away, low and uncertain. "Careful. You can't..."

But Thorne wasn't listening.

He focused on the motes in the air, still quivering in their half-dissolved state and drew a breath, tasting the coldness behind his own ribs.

Then he exhaled.

In his Sight, he saw it happen.

A thin, invisible ripple passed from his chest out through his breath. Where it touched the motes, they began to turn.

Green. Mottled. Fragile.

Flakes peeled away in slow shreds of dissolution.

Zarash fell silent. His golden eyes went wide, the pupils blown thin as needle-points.

Thorne let the current ease, breathing out the last of the rot.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet, even. "…I think I understand it."

For a moment, the only sound was the soft crumble of corrupted aether falling to dust.

Then, in the corner of his vision, a bright pulse flared:

New Ability Unlocked: Entropy Breath! Breathe decay into the ambient aether, unraveling magical constructs and contaminating enemy cores over time.

Zarash's mouth worked soundlessly. His claws flexed at his sides. "You…" He swallowed, voice hoarse. "You learned it."

Thorne looked at him without blinking. "Yes."

"That's…impossible," Zarash whispered. "I..."

He broke off, staring as if trying to reconcile what he was seeing with every truth he'd ever known.

"That's blooded magic. My line's inheritance. I've seen others try to mimic it, elders, warlocks, monsters. They can't."

Thorne didn't answer. He lifted one hand, palm open. A few motes drifted down, still corrupted from the test. He watched them disintegrate against his skin.

Zarash took an involuntary step back. "You... what are you?"

Thorne let his hand fall. "Does it matter?"

His voice was soft.

Too soft.

Because behind it, in the coldest part of himself, he felt something like satisfaction.

Not just for the power. But for the knowledge:

That whatever he was, it was older and perhaps far more dangerous than any of them suspected.

Zarash swallowed, visibly unnerved. "I... I was bluffing," he said finally. His voice was low, almost resigned. "I didn't think you could learn it. I thought…I thought I'd buy time. Keep you curious. That you'd need me."

He looked down at his hands, flexing the clawed fingers. "I've never heard of anyone…any thing…that could take it just by watching."

Thorne watched him in silence.

Then he turned his gaze back to the motes, dimming now, drifting back to the ambient currents.

His heart was calm. Steady.

Another tool.

Another secret to keep.

He let out a long, quiet breath.

"…Good."

Thorne watched the last motes of decay drift apart. Then he lifted his gaze to Zarash, and took a single, deliberate step forward.

Zarash stepped back, a flicker of instinctual fear crossing his face.

Thorne's expression didn't change.

He raised his hand.

The air shivered.

Every mote in the chamber stirred, ambient aether sliding across the cold stones like a living tide. It gathered around his fingers in long, shimmering strands, swirling in slow, hypnotic arcs.

Zarash's pupils dilated. His jaw worked once, but no words came.

He tried. Thorne could see it, the moment he reached with his will, fumbling for the currents. Trying to wrench them back under his own command.

But it was like watching a child brace his hands against a mountain and try to shove it aside.

The motes ignored him.

Bands of bright aether uncoiled from Thorne's outstretched palm, slithering across the floor like serpents.

They climbed Zarash's scaled limbs, first around his ankles, then coiling up to his knees, his hips, his chest. One circled his throat with slow, deliberate finality.

Zarash made a ragged sound. His claws rose, grasping at the collar of force, but it tightened, cutting off his voice in a choking gasp.

Thorne's eyes were very calm, very bright.

With the faintest motion of his hand, he lifted.

Zarash's feet left the floor. The iron bars groaned behind him as his body floated upward, suspended by invisible chains.

He thrashed, a strangled wheeze rasping from his throat.

Thorne tilted his head slightly.

Then, with another flex of his will, he solidified the aether.

Dozens of thin, gleaming needles formed in the air, each one spinning lazily. They rose in a precise, lethal arc, every point aimed straight for Zarash's scaled face.

The elderborn froze. His golden eyes fixed on the glittering forest of blades trembling an inch from his skin.

Thorne's voice, when it came, was soft. Almost conversational.

"Now," he began, as if they were two friends discussing the weather, "once we leave this place, and we will, if you ever have the misfortune of meeting me again…"

His free hand lifted. One needle drifted forward, lightly touching Zarash's cheek. A bead of blood welled up around the tip.

"…please, for your own health, don't try to deceive me."

Zarash's pupils contracted to pinpoints. He tried to nod, but the band around his throat made the motion a strangled twitch.

Thorne's eyes gleamed with cold amusement.

"I have some very murderous tendencies," he continued in the same mild tone, "that I'm truly trying to overcome."

He cocked his head, studying the way the needles hovered, the way Zarash trembled. His green scales rasping together as he desperately tried to free himself.

"And you," he said, voice lowering, "are not helping my case."

A thin smile curved his mouth, just a fraction too sharp.

"I'm half convinced I should kill you right now."

Zarash's eyes bulged. He tried again to shake his head, a muffled, panicked whimper escaping his throat.

One of the needles shifted minutely, slicing a shallow line across his cheek. Blood slid down the green scales in a thin ribbon.

Thorne watched it fall.

He loved the look on the man's face, pure, unguarded horror.

It made something quiet and dark in his chest uncoil in satisfaction.

He considered him for a long moment. Then he sighed.

"…I wonder," he murmured softly, almost to himself, "are you immune to your own corruption?"

Zarash's eyes widened further, if possible.

Thorne drew a slow, deliberate breath.

When he exhaled, the motes came alive.

A cloud of flaking green-brown aether billowed out around him, swirling in slow eddies.

Zarash thrashed violently, his claws scrabbling at the constricting bands around his limbs. The needles spun closer.

"Wait," he croaked, just barely managing the word past the choking pressure. "No... no... don't..."

The corrupted motes drifted closer.

"I'm sorry," he gasped. "I'm sorry, I swear..."

The cloud hovered an inch from his scales, the flakes already shedding decay into the air.

Thorne let it hover there, watching the panic bloom in Zarash's face.

Then, with a single pulse of his will, he commanded the healthy motes to scatter, leaving the decaying ones suspended in a still, empty void.

It took several long seconds, but without anything left to infect, the corrupted motes began to collapse, one by one, into nothing.

When the last fragment disintegrated, Thorne lowered his hand.

The aether bands unspooled and vanished. The needles evaporated into thin air.

Zarash fell.

He hit the stone on all fours, panting raggedly.

Thorne tilted his head, studying him.

"Good to know," he murmured.

Zarash lifted his gaze, the scales of his face were leeched of all color, showing his terror.

Thorne clapped his hands together once, the sound sharp in the silence.

"Now that we've gotten to know each other," he said cheerfully, "let's leave this sick place."

Zarash stared at him, chest heaving.

"How?" he managed to croak, terror lingering in his gaze.

Thorne rolled his eyes, exasperation flickering over his features.

"Is this the first time you've ever escaped somewhere?" he asked dryly.

He gestured to the darkened corridor beyond the ruined cell.

"We cause chaos, of course."

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