Argent Sanctum Archive - 2

Aden's cell was a tomb of shadows, its walls slick with condensation that never dried. Moonlight bled through the iron door's cracks, painting fractured stripes over the scroll in his lap.

The Vasco Eclipse's pages felt alive under his fingertips—cold, unnervingly smooth, as if woven from serpent scales. Diagrams of twisted stances glared up at him, limbs bent at angles that mocked human anatomy.

The mana circulation paths were worse: jagged lines cutting through meridians like shrapnel. 

He shifted on the damp straw pallet, the chill of the stone floor seeping into his bones. Somewhere in the Sanctum's bowels, water dripped. *Plink. Plink. Plink.* A metronome for his hesitation. 

The first step was simple. 'Breathe. Focus. Circulate.' 

Aden closed his eyes. His mana stirred sluggishly, a tired river forced into alien channels. The pain was immediate—a white-hot wire threading through his veins. He gritted his teeth, sweat beading at his temples as he pushed further. 

The scroll's instructions pulsed in his mind, cold and exacting: 

"Let the shadow precede the blade. Let the void drink the light." 

His lungs burned. The cell's air thickened, pressing against his skin like a suffocating hand. 

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the cell. 

The subspace realm stretched before him—a cavernous hall of polished black stone, its vaulted ceiling lost to darkness. Chains hung from the void, their rusted links coiled around Egmund's wrists and throat.

The demon knelt at the foot of a dais, his form flickering between a man and a thing of claws and teeth. Behind him loomed an empty throne, its jagged silhouette a crown devouring itself. 

Aden's anger flared, hot and sudden.

But as he stepped closer, the fury bled away. Egmund's head hung low, his human guise gaunt, eyes hollow. The chains had worn grooves into his wrists, oozing black blood that pooled and evaporated into smoke. 

"Come to finish the job?" Egmund's voice was a rasp, like wind over gravel. 

Aden sat on a chunk of fallen stone nearby. The subspace hummed faintly, a dissonant chord reverberating in his ribs. "The Eclipse isn't working." 

Egmund barked a laugh. "Of course not. You're trying to carve a mountain with a butter knife." 

"Then explain it." 

"Why?" The demon lifted his head, eyes glinting. "So you can chain me tighter? Bury me deeper?" 

Aden stared at the throne. Its emptiness felt heavier than the chains. "You want out. I want to survive. Explain the scroll, and I'll find you a way." 

Egmund's smile was a jagged thing. "Your ancestors promised that. Edrick swore it too. Look where it got me." 

Aden's jaw tightened. Edrick Vasco's face haunted every corridor of the Sanctum—sharp, unyielding, a mirror Aden refused to acknowledge. "I'm not him." 

"Aren't you?" Egmund leaned forward, chains clinking. "You're here, aren't you? Begging for power you can't control." 

Aden met his gaze. "And you're still here. Begging for freedom." 

The demon stilled. For a heartbeat, the subspace held its breath. 

Then Egmund sagged, the fight leaching out of him. "The Eclipse isn't a technique. It's a *key*. It cracks your meridians open, lets the void in. But once it's inside…" He nodded to the throne. "It'll eat you alive. Unless you let me guide it." 

"No possession." 

"Then you'll die." 

Aden's hands curled into fists. The throne's shadow stretched toward him, tendrils brushing his ankles. Cold seeped into his bones. 

"Teach me," he said finally. "And I'll make you… free." 

Egmund froze. 

For a moment, Aden's face overlapped with a memory—Edrick, centuries younger, standing in this same void, hand outstretched. "Fight with me," he'd said, "and I'll make you free."* 

The demon's throat worked. "You don't know what you're offering." 

Aden looked towards Egmund, his posture relaxed but his gaze sharp. "I understand you," he said quietly.

Egmund's head snapped up, eyes burning like embers in a dead fire. "Understand me?" The chains rattled as he strained against them, voice rising to a snarl. 

"You, a mayfly who'll crumble to dust in a breath, think you grasp millennia of betrayal? I carved worlds for the King. Burned empires to ash. And when he grew bored?"

A bitter laugh escaped him, raw and jagged.

"He stuffed me into your bloodline like a trophy. Your ancestors leashed me. Used me. Discarded me. You don't understand. You can't."

Aden didn't flinch. "You're right. I don't know what it's like to serve for millennia. But I know what it's like to be a fool." His voice hardened. "To have your worth measured only by the blood you spill. To scream into the void and hear nothing."

Egmund's lip curled. "What so great happened this time?, Got thrown out of the Family?"

"No." Aden leaned forward, moonlight from the cell above slicing through the subspace, casting his face in sharp relief. "He saw me. Saw a weapon. A thing to point at his enemies. Sound familiar?"

The demon fell silent. Somewhere in the void, chains creaked.

Aden pressed. "You want freedom. I want to survive. We're both trapped by the same blood."

Egmund's laugh was hollow. "And? You'll pat my head and promise sunshine? Butter me up with pretty lies?" His eyes narrowed. "Or do you want more power? A taste of what I gave you in Dahaka?"

"No." Aden stood, dusting ash from his hands. "I want to give you what the King never did."

The name hung in the air like a curse.