A psychotic laugh echoed from somewhere behind him, but the only thing Kael could hear was a high pitched ringing.
It took everything in him to keep the refinement orb stable.
He collapsed further onto the chain, relying entirely on his torn flesh to keep him from going down completely. His breaths had no depth and his teeth were dark with blood.
Then he snapped back, coughing violently.
Kael turned toward the sound.
Aven stood clutching his own hair hard enough that some had begun to come loose. A visible wound ran across his stomach where the chain had erupted from.
Syleena walked up and crouched beside the chain, taking hold of it without flinching at the blood soaking into her hand.
White Will streamed from her fingertips and began climbing up toward Kael. He watched it move into his body and nearly fainted from the pain. When the refinement orb flickered Syleena paused.
"Don't die on me yet." She said with a smile, then continued.
The pain was ice cold and gut wrenching, invasive enough that clawing your own eyes out felt preferable to enduring it. But Kael kept his focus on the orb.
Behind him, Aven laughed through tears and began pushing his own Will into Kael.
Kael clenched his teeth hard enough to shatter them and, against every instinct screaming at him not to, split his consciousness and drove half of it into his inner realm, keeping the other half locked on the orb.
Syleena stood with her eyes locked onto his River of Will, hands folded in front of her.
"A red Will?" she murmured.
Her eyes moved to the vast cracks stretching across his soul as far as she could see.
"How are you even still conscious?"
Kael stood with his head tilted back, grasping for air.
"Get out." He rasped.
Syleena shook her head and raised her hand. White Will streamed from her fingertips toward his, and where they met it turned a shade of pink.
Kael watched, unable to put up any resistance.
Not a single one of his motes was designed to work against an invasion of his inner realm nor did he have the strength to force them out using his Will. But in truth, no one should have been able to enter in the first place.
'Aven.' Kael cursed inwardly.
Whatever that chain had been, it had given them a way in. Normally, entering someone's inner realm required either severe mental incapacitation or willing permission. Kael had experienced both before, but never anything like this. He couldn't begin to understand how it was possible.
With what little energy he had left he began pushing his Will against Syleena's. In his current state it could only delay her, not stop her.
"What are you after, Syleena."
Syleena guided her Will with precision before turning to him with a blank expression.
"I'm here to take your Refinement Soulbound mote."
"I'll die."
"Then so be it. You've been of great help."
Just as Kael moved to respond, another black crack split through his soul and drove him to his knees.
"Focus on the refinement or you'll die." Syleena said.
If he weren't in such a sorry state he might have laughed.
The situation was almost impressively pathetic. Syleena was moving through his inner realm searching for his Refinement mote to take by force, yet he couldn't stop her. He had to keep the refinement orb stable or die from the backlash. But keeping the orb alive gave her free reign to search, and if she found the mote it killed him anyway. He couldn't move physically either, pinned by the chain with the refinement still ongoing.
Every option led to the same place.
"Aveline… the mote she activated didn't reach Vael. It reached Aven."
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it, and his arm shot out to keep himself from collapsing further.
Syleena raised an eyebrow but kept spreading her Will.
If he had known it would find Aveline's pathetic brother instead of her father, he would have killed her on the spot.
"Fuck." He couldn't help but curse his own negligence.
Aven stumbled into Kael's inner realm wearing a maniacal smile, immediately spreading his Will in every direction.
Kael watched with clenched teeth.
It was absolutely awful. In his current state even a rank one Luminaire could wander through his inner realm and pick through his motes without a care in the world.
His inner realm was vast. Kael could summon his motes with a single thought, but they couldn't. To take one they would have to search manually, stumbling through the space hoping to land on something by chance, then cleanse his will from it and replace it with their own. That could take hours.
But so what? Hours or minutes, it didn't matter. Kael was a complete hostage inside his own body.
Aven's expression suddenly turned serious.
Through absolute idiotic luck he had found one of Kael's motes. He guided a feather toward himself with his Will, grabbed it firmly, then turned to Kael and held out his hand in front of his face.
"One." He said, and clenched his fist.
The Feather Quill mote snapped in half.
In the hollow mountain Kael collapsed forward and puked out another mouthful of blood, cold sweat running down his chin.
Inside his inner realm he grasped desperately for air. A crack as wide as Kael himself split open above his head, his soul taking the damage of the destroyed mote.
When Syleena saw it she crossed the distance to Aven in hurried steps and seized him by the throat.
"You can search for them but don't destroy another fucking mote without my permission." She said.
Back on the ground Kael lay fully collapsed when another laugh shook his entire body.
Of course. On top of everything else, Aven wasn't even acting on his own anymore. He was completely at Syleena's mercy.
He pushed himself up and looked at the two of them.
Just as he had done, Syleena and Aven had each split their consciousness to enter his inner realm. He was certain he could take on Aven's and force him out. But Syleena was the problem. The moment he moved against Aven she would intervene.
Kael's Will surged and clashed against the two.
It moved like a serpent through water, slithering until it found Syleena's and pierced it. The moment it entered her White Will it exploded like a drop of ink hitting water, losing all momentum, blooming outward into a cloud.
Kael flung his arm.
His Will responded instantly, retracting back into its serpent shape, then shot forward with terrifying speed. It slithered through Syleena's Will until it went straight into her.
Syleena's grip faltered and Aven dropped to the ground. She turned to Kael with a pale face, eyes wide with something close to shock.
Kael stumbled a few steps forward before finding his footing inside Syleena's inner realm. It held all the same fundamentals as his own, but her soul glowed such a bright white it was almost blinding, and her River of Will ran like a current of perfectly clean snow.
Kael raised both hands toward where the sky should have been.
A wave of crimson surged into Syleena's realm, instantly painting a third of her Will red. Tentacles shot out from it, moving against the current like invasive roots forcing their way upstream.
His idea had been simple. If they could enter his inner realm through the chain, why couldn't he? They had likely known about the drawback of Aven's mote, but never thought he would actually go through with it.
Kael's breath was ragged, his mind in absolute chaos. A headache so deep and pulsating it felt like his skull was splitting.
He was dividing his consciousness three ways at once. One part in his own inner realm, holding pressure on Syleena and Aven. One part outside, desperately keeping the refinement alive. And now one part here, inside Syleena's inner realm.
Syleena appeared beside him, breathing hard, instantly swinging her arm and commanding her Will to resist his.
Just as Kael was held hostage by his own condition, so was she. Her overwhelming advantage had quietly become her greatest weakness.
All it would take to stop Kael was a snap of her fingers. But he was so severely damaged that she risked killing him outright, and a dead Kael meant his Soulbound mote died with him. Every bit of leverage she held over him was the same thing keeping her from ending it.
It felt strange.
Everything his Will brushed against, he could feel. Each thought drifting through her current, every potential mote hiding within her Will. He could sense them the way you sense furniture in a dark room you've walked through a thousand times. No sight, no light, but a perfect map of where everything sat.
It was the same instinct he used in refinement. When he moved laws through an ingredient he didn't see them so much as feel them, the way your hand knows a surface before your eyes do.
The same logic applied to the physical world too. If he were to spread his Will through an unfamiliar room and he'd know it just as completely. Where the couch sat, where the desk stood, whether the pen had rolled off the edge or was still resting where someone left it.
Syleena's inner realm was no different.
Kael sensed five motes but moved past them without a second glance, pushing deeper in pursuit of her Soulbound mote.
He was aware of the risk. If Syleena realised how much damage he could cause in here, she might reevaluate, decide that killing him was worth losing the mote.
"How? How can your Will be so invasive?" Syleena hissed through clenched teeth.
Kael glanced at her but said nothing.
He had noticed it too. Not just how oppressive it was, but how different it felt from anything it should have been.
He had heard rumors about Will color being caused by illness or some similar condition, but that never sat right with him. When a Luminaire awakened for the first time their entire body was cleansed, features sharpening no matter how severe they had been before. And Kael's Will had always been blood moon red. From the very beginning.
There were also old tales, children's stories mostly, about how each Paragon's Will carried a different color, representing something, a sign that the heavens had already marked them before they ever awakened.
But that was all they were. Stories.
Every book he had read on the subject spoke only of the pure white Will that humans carried. Not one mentioned anything different. The truth was simple: everyone had a white Will.
Himself was the only exception he had ever found.