Page 166 of Of Masks and Fury

She nodded, her gaze distant. “Your father asked me to stop this research. He said some knowledge was too dangerous to pursue.” Her voice dropped. “I should’ve listened. Then maybe he’d still be alive. Please be careful.”

So much sadness in her eyes.

After she left, Trew opened the portfolio. The documents inside had yellowed over time, and the ink had faded in places.

I leaned close, reading over his shoulder. “Midnight’s Sorrow is extremely rare but quite effective in creating the potion needed to facilitate bloodfire magic. The only documented growth is in northern coastal regions with specific soil composition. It blooms once every three years under new moon conditions.” I frowned. “Northern coastal regions?”

“Emberkeep, Noctvale, and Solwynd are the only northern courts,” he said.

The next section contained an incomplete diagram covered in notes. The same symbol from the dead spy’s wrist sat in the center, but the surrounding annotations were fragmented.

Two casters minimum.

Anchor point must be blood-bonded to primary.

Secondary caster provides—The sentence ended, the rest of the line too faded to read.

“Blood-bonded,” Trew said, his finger hovering over the words. “Like a companion bond?”

“Or something darker.” I pointed to another note in the margin.Could artificial bonds be created? If so, would that not be forced servitude?

We continued reading, horror building with each page.

Coralee had documented what happened to bloodfire casters themselves. The magic wasn’t just forbidden, it was actively destructive to the person taking on the bloodfire bond.

Premature aging appears to be common in the caster. One bit of research in an obscure journal suggested the caster aged twenty years in the span of three months. It was suggested the body could not handle what the power demanded.

Pherin chittered from the windowsill, a sound of pure disgust.

Bad magic,she said.Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The next page made my stomach turn.

Raw bloodfire magic is inherently unstable. It must be anchored to physical objects or it dissipates within minutes. Tested anchor methods include blood-infused ink (wards, symbols), crystallized compounds (poisons, potions), and organic matter (living tissue shows promise but degrades rapidly).

“So the spy’s poison didn’t just kill her,” I said. “It was the vessel for the magic that burned her body to ash. A gruesome but effective way to destroy evidence.”

We were near the end of her research. The final page was dated sixteen years ago. The handwriting was shaky, unlike Coralee’s usual precision.

I made a disturbing discovery in the Velmire archives. Bloodfire can temporarily sustain a corpse. It’s not true resurrection. That remains impossible per all natural laws. But a semblance of life can be maintained through continuous magical application. The caster would not truly live, though to anyone seeing them, they’d appear as normal as you or me. I pray no one has attempted this horror.

And, at the bottom of the page, a few final lines.

I have destroyed all evidence of this research wherever I found it. I’ll maintain only this one document as proof of what I discovered, should it ever be needed. May the Fates forgive me if this knowledge is stolen or misused.

Silence filled the office. Even Pherin had gone quiet on the windowsill.

I stepped back from the desk.

A person. Walking around. Looking alive. Being trusted. Being spoken to. And not alive at all.

How long? How many years of rooms and conversations and decisions, all of it coming from something that should’ve been in the ground?

“Someone could use bloodfire magic and while they’d age, they could use more to maintain their life,” I whispered. “Life or something close to it.”

“The cost would be extraordinary.” Trew’s hands shook as he set down the papers. “It would likely take continuous application of bloodfire magic to sustain them. They’d age years in months. All that to keep their corpse animated.”

“Unless they had another source of power.” I thought of all my court’s people killed for their magic. Of the west tower and its horrifying secrets. “What if they were draining magic from others to fuel it?”