“Your body is a weapon,” Father said, pacing around Aven.

  Aven’s legs burned from holding the stance. His back ached, shoulders protesting the weight of his pack.

  “You forge it,” Father’s cane struck Aven’s arm as he tried to shift the weight of the sword to a more comfortable position, “with every act.” A jab to his lower back forced him to straighten. “You must forge your body to perfection. A weak blade snaps under pressure.”

  A strike to the back, not to correct but to test. Aven stifled a gasp and held the position. Sweat trickled down his neck and stung his eyes. It had been hours. A single misstep, and he’d start over from the beginning.

  “Begin,” Father said.

  Aven shifted to the next stance. Too slow. Too sloppy for Father’s judgement, the errors earning more strikes of the cane.

  Day after day. Month after month, Aven worked to forge a body worthy of a vis.

  “When you truly master this,” Father lectured, “your body will be more than flesh. You will forge power deep into your bones and blood. Your muscles will be alight with it, your breath filled with it.”

  Day after day. Month after month, year after year, Aven worked to forge that power.

  Father could move faster than Aven’s young eye could track, even without effort. Other vis could cross a room in a single stride, or bear blows that would cripple mortals without flinching. Others could lift an oxcart with their bare hands. Some could leap from rooftop to rooftop without fear. Aven dreamed of such feats, imagining a future self wielding the strength of a demigod.

  His body would not cooperate. The years of training honed his body, but only as mortal flesh. He became stronger, but no stronger than common farmers who worked the fields. Faster, but no faster than any other who trained in athletics. His stamina increased, and his senses sharpened. Yet all of it remained within human bounds. Even when Aven awakened the Battle Mind and achieved the First Circle of vis power, still his body never advanced.

  Now floating in the void and bereft of that body entirely, Aven forged something new.

  “Your hands must be steady and strong,” Father demanded.

  The mists of the void coalesced into hands. First twisted, gnarled. He tried again. Hands that could hold spear and shield. No, hands that could change form with his will. Not the hands of a soldier. The hands of a voidtouched.

  “Your feet must be swift.”

  Feet were a godsdamned pain. By the dozenth try, Aven detested the very idea of toes, cursing at every step. Still he poured the power of the void into them. Feet that could run towards danger. Legs that could stand strong against it.

  “Your eyes must see what others do not. Your ears must hear the enemy’s approach. Your skin must feel their movements before the attack.”

  Aven forged himself anew from the mist and darkness. He willed it into form, and the form obeyed. Without a mirror, the process was imprecise, but Aven could feel the wrongness of the first attempts. Of all Father’s lessons, one helped.

  “You must know your body above all else. Every point of strength. Every flaw and every weakness.”

  He knew it all. Every muscle trained from weakness. The bones broken and restored.

  The scars. Every carved reminder of mistakes or cruelty. The marks on his arm where Mother had pierced and cut his skin to inject the black blood. A line on his ribs where Ralius Talone had accidentally cut him in training. Cuts on his sword hand where Father deliberately taught a lesson in hand protection. The gashes on his leg where the voidspawn had dragged him beneath the other pit. Some, he kept. His own mistakes. The rewards for his own failings. The others...he could do without. A new start, without the wounds that Mother and Father marked on his flesh. Their marks on his soul were enough.

  “Which leads?” Father had asked. “The body or the mind?”

  “The mind commands the body,” Aven had replied.

  “No,” Father’s cane struck faster than Aven’s mind could process. Yet his arms raised in reflex, snapping up to block the strike. “Your body must move faster than your mind.”

  That lesson, Aven had ignored. After all, he was a Battle Mind; what body could move faster than his mind could? As it turned out, there were plenty of Swiftfoot vis who could outpace the Battle Mind. Now, Aven had a new opportunity. For mind and body to become one.

  “What is a vis?” one of the first questions that Father had asked Aven. The very first day of training.

  “Vis are heroes that kill monsters,” the answer came from a child who only knew power filtered from heroic tales. Who knew vis to be a force of justice, the heroes of the empire. Vis were the heroes that saved everyone.

  “A vis is a weapon,” Father corrected, and from that lesson, the real training had begun. “A weapon for the empire.”

  The child was wrong. And Father was wrong as well. Weapons had no will. A vis who did not act on their own, who only followed the commands of those higher was worthless. Vis were more than weapons. But vis were not heroes. Experience had crushed that naivety early on.

  “Vis are monsters,” Aven spoke aloud to the darkness. “Vis are the monsters that the world deserves.” Some vis killed other monsters. Some crushed helpless mortals underneath them. Some few used their powers to better the world.

  In the darkness of the voidpit, a monster formed. Forged from the void itself, the mists embodied a man’s shape.

  Aven flexed new fingers, feeling their strength. Black veins pulsed along both arms, along his whole body. He could feel the power in them, the void channeled through every muscle and fiber of his being. It was the power that Aven had always dreamed of. The power of a true vis.

  Some instinct named the power. The Second Circle. Of the many, many millions within the empire, some hundred thousand claimed that level of power. Most, presumably, did not have to have their body melted and reforged. Not the usual path. Yet it was Aven’s path. The first step on that path.

  “Am I a voidspawn now?” Aven asked.

  The goddess, always watching and seldom speaking, answered, “You deserve the title far more than the creatures that come from below. The void is not theirs; they merely feed upon it. The void is potential is its most raw, primal form. The power you wield is not theirs; it is yours alone. Call it what you wish.”

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  If people feared him as voidtouched, he’d keep that title for now.

  Aven reached out, and mists burst from his hand to form a voidhand as naturally as moving his own limb. The blackstone walls were rough, strong. There were cracks, however, that he could anchor into. The void could slip into the smallest of cracks, latching on like a limpet. Handhold by handhold, he rose from the void.

  * * *

  It started with a laugh. Esharah first thought the laugh must be Janaya’s when she woke from a fitful sleep the night of the New Moon. That wasn’t Janaya’s voice. Nor was it coming from the cells.

  “What in the hells?” Logash’s voice came from the cell to Esharah’s left.

  Then a sound of scraping claws against rock. The fatigue clouding Esharah’s mind gave way to panic as she realized the sounds were coming from the voidpit. Esharah retreated into the corner of her cell, curling back in the corner with heart hammering as the sound of scraping claws drew closer. She held her breath.

  Clawed hands wide as a spade’s blade grasped the ledge of the pit. They pulled, and a moment later, two human hands grabbed the lip as well. In the shifting, wandering red light of the Warden’s Eye, Esharah watched the shape of a man rise up onto the ledge. The claws retreated, tendrilled arms merging back into the humanoid shape. Covered in black blood, mist rising up from his back.

  “Whew,” the figure let out a deep sigh and wiped a hand across his face. “Wouldn’t recommend the trip.”

  The mists and black blood moved inward as the figure inhaled, absorbing into his skin.

  Esharah gaped as the hideous form resolved to something familiar, “Aven?”

  The shape was subtly different than Esharah remembered, but undeniably his. Then again, some differences were not so subtle. Namely, the black veins covering not just his left arm but all over his body. All over, Esharah saw, because Aven was also extremely naked. A fact that he seemed not to have yet noticed, or else not to care about as he grinned and stretched. The same manic smile, the same wild eyes.

  “I thought,” Logash whispered. “That nothing at all could surprise me anymore. What are you? A wight? A ghost?”

  “A devil?” Janaya asked, sounding actually eager at the prospect.

  “Good question,” Aven’s resurrected form continued to stretch, as if testing whether the body worked. “As far as I know, I’m still me. Working out the details.”

  “You...you died!” Esharah said, still half-convinced this was some voidspawn taking Aven’s shape. “You were in the voidpit for two weeks! No one could survive that.”

  “Was I?” Aven looked genuinely surprised about that. “I’m sorry for the wait, then.” He clapped his hands, “No time to waste then. Ready to start the plan?”

  “The plan...” Esharah shook her head. This was almost too absurd to be a nightmare. “What plan? There’s nothing left of that. There’s no one left to fight. After you died, it all felt apart. We’re...we’re broken, Aven. There’s nothing left.”

  Aven’s face darkened for a moment, and Esharah felt his gaze on her. Esharah knew what he must be feeling. Disgust, probably. Disappointment, at the least. She was the one who had dragged him into the suicidal idea of escape to begin with. And encouraged him with false hope, despite knowing his own desperate plan was doomed from the start.

  “You should not speak for others,” Logash spoke up.

  Esharah frowned at that.

  “You do not know what has been happening outside the cell,” Logash said. “Yes, Yvris and Erdrak and the others have been harsher. There have been some deaths. Some beatings. They have tried to scare us into obedience.” A small, wry chuckle. “When a bonfire is already lit, heaping more refuse on top may stifle the flames, but it also may only provide more fuel.”

  Janaya’s harsh, exultant laugh rose above Logash’s calm tones, “Yes! The time has come! Let the fires rise!”

  Logash continued, “Aven, can you open the cells? Can you remove the manacles?”

  “I can give it a go.” Aven’s hand stretched into the voidhand. He glanced up at the Warden’s Eye, but it did not focus on him. It only continued the lazy circles.

  Rather than Logash’s cell, Aven approached Esharah’s. The voidhand stretched out again, shifting to a point and entering the keyhole.

  He gasped and grit his teeth, “Fuck...arcsteel burns.”

  Whatever pain he felt, Aven continued on, voidhand working at the lock. Until it opened with a click, the hinges screeched as it swung open.

  “And there were we are!” Aven held his arms wide, Janaya’s whoops acting as applause for the entrance, then he offered a hand.

  Esharah stared at the hand, then shook her head. “I...I don’t...think I can help.” The words came slow, halting, difficult to form. “Even...even without the manacles, all I can do is hear others’ emotions. And...and the Thorn...”

  Aven knelt down in front of her. “Esharah, I know that you hate Hellfrost as much as anyone. That you hate Yvris. You know that everything about this is wrong. You know that your spirit rebels against you. You want to shatter these chains and free these people. You want Yvris to feel all the pain he’s inflicted on us. You want to fight. I’ve felt that every time we’re connected.”

  Esharah kept her eyes on the floor, “That’s...not it at all. I...I hate it, yes. But I just...I can’t do anything about it. I’m weak. Liberating Hellfrost was never what I really wanted. I just...want the pain to stop.” It made her feel pathetic to admit it, but it was the truth.

  “It won’t stop,” Aven said. He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye, “It won’t ever stop, Esharah. Even if we kill Yvris, we’ll carry everything he did to us. That won’t just stop.” He took a deep breath, “But we can fight back.” He paused, “Show me the Thorn.”

  Esharah hesitated, then turned around. She removed her shirt, revealing the hideous spike stabbed into her back. She felt a brush as Aven touched the area. A hideous crawling as the voidhand touched it, alongside the stab of pain that always accompanied the Thorn’s touch.

  “It’s imbedded in your soul,” Aven commented. “Removing it might kill you.” His fingers traced along the outline. Esharah couldn’t see, but she felt the path of his touch.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Would you like me to try it anyway?” Aven asked.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  He was. The determination and will burned in him, and he’d do it the moment she said yes. Was she going to say yes? It would almost be a mercy to die. A release from everything in Hellfrost. Then again, she might survive it. Even if it hurt. Even if it left her scarred. It couldn’t be worse than before, could it?

  Esharah laughed even as she cried, “Fuck it! Do it! Tear the damned thing out! If I die, I die. If I live...I’ll fight.”

  “Ready?”

  “Just fucking do it.”

  The hand of the void sink into her back. For a moment, even with the suppressing manacles, she felt his soul. All the determination. All the pain that he carried. And, buried underneath, the fear that she’d die the moment he pulled. He was ready for that, prepared for her to die. Prepared to carry that memory for the rest of his life, as he did all other deaths that happened in his presence.

  He gripped the Thorn and pulled.

  Esharah sank her teeth into her hand. It was the only way to stifle the scream. Blood welled in her mouth. She felt the Thorn pulling at her, stabbing into her soul. Hanging on with all its might. As Aven pulled with the strength of the void, it spent its wrath upon Esharah. All the suffering it had absorbed over two years of existence. It stabbed that into her, forcing it all upon her. The Thorn stabbed that agony and pain into her, seeking to break her.

  She could die, and it all could end.

  Or she could live, and it would continue on. She would carry that pain still, the echoes carved into her soul. If she lived, then she’d have to face that suffering every moment for the rest of her life.

  She’d rather live.

  The Thorn tore away. Esharah fell forward. She curled against the ground. Sobs rocked her body.

  Silence. Blessed silence. For the first time in two years, there were no surges of pain. No echoes of the screams the Thorn had drank.

  No one spoke, giving her space to breathe.

  When Esharah finally took a deep breath, the tears had passed. The only sign of what happened was the dried blood from her bitten hand. And the gaping wound in her soul, the scar left where the Thorn had once been.

  Over. It was over, and Esharah was alive. A laugh welled up from somewhere in her, and Esharah found herself laughing. A bright laugh that shook her body, a sound that was as foreign to her as the silence in her own mind. Then a sudden cough cut off her laugh, sending spasms through her body just as strong.

  When she had recovered, Aven helped her pull the rough sackcloth shirt back on. He then pressed the Thorn into her hand. Three inches long, the spike of black bone stained with her own blood. The sight of the thing brought shudders of remembered pain, echoes still lingering even in its absence.

  Esharah gripped it tight.

  “It’s yours now,” Aven said. A grin, “I’m sure you can find a good use for it.”

  “Thank you,” Esharah smiled through the tears. “And Aven...” She cleared her throat, “Please, put some godsdamned clothes on.”

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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