The next morning Ruby woke earlier than usual.
The cabin was still quiet when she slipped out of bed and climbed down from the loft. The early light of dawn stretched through the small windows while the smell of damp earth drifted in from outside. Ruby stepped out into the cool air and walked toward the treeline behind the house, the same direction she had taken the night before.
She stopped after an around a half hour of walking.
The dead patch was still there.
What had once been soft green grass was now gray and brittle, and the surrounding trees carried sickly patches where leaves had shriveled and fallen overnight. It looked wrong. Like a wound in the forest.
Ruby crouched and touched the soil.
Dry.
Lifeless.
“…so that really was me,” she murmured.
She stood again and looked at her hands.
Dark magic.
Arkhavel had spent two years warning her not to let it consume her, yet he had never really shown her what it could do. He had taught control, discipline, awareness of her mana pathways, but never techniques.
Which meant now she had a new element…
…and absolutely no idea how to use it.
Ruby exhaled slowly and closed her eyes.
“Alright,” she said quietly to herself. “Let’s try something.”
She reached inward toward the heavier mana sitting beneath the rest of her energy, the strange weight that had appeared after Arkhavel’s soul merged with hers. It responded immediately, flowing into her arm like a slow dark current.
Ruby looked down at her shadow stretching across the ground.
She pushed mana into it.
The shadow shifted.
It slid outward across the dirt like spilled ink, stretching farther than the morning light should have allowed.
Ruby tilted her head.
“Okay… that part still works.”
She focused harder.
The shadow lifted slightly off the ground, forming the same rising bulge she had created the night before. It trembled there for a moment before colpsing back into pce.
Ruby sighed.
“That’s… less impressive in daylight.”
She tried again.
This time she imagined the shadow splitting into smaller pieces, but nothing happened. The darkness stayed stubbornly attached to her feet like a normal shadow.
Ruby frowned.
“…so shadows are a thing.”
She lifted her hand and tried to form the dark mist she had imagined the night before.
Nothing happened.
No swirling darkness.
No creeping fog.
Just her hand in the sunlight.
Ruby rubbed the back of her neck.
“I feel like there should be more.”
She tried pulling energy from a nearby pnt the way the forest had withered during her grief. The small clover patch near her boot twitched slightly as the warmth drained from it, but the effect was weak and inconsistent.
The leaves sagged but didn’t fully die.
Ruby released the mana and watched the pnt slowly recover.
“Huh.”
She stood there thinking for a moment.
Shadows.
Decay.
Possibly stealing energy.
Those seemed to be the three things she had seen so far.
But without books or examples she was mostly guessing.
Ruby finally shrugged.
“Well… that’s annoying.”
She brushed the dirt from her hands and turned back toward the house.
If she wanted answers, she would probably have to look for them somewhere else.
An hour ter Ruby found Lena sitting on the mill’s front steps sharpening the metal tip of her staff.
Ruby walked over and tapped the wood beside her.
“Come with me.”
Lena didn’t even look up. “That sentence has historically resulted in property damage.”
“Library.”
Lena paused.
“…oh.”
The vilge library turned out to be very small.
Ruby pushed open the door and stepped inside while Lena followed behind her.
Sunlight spilled through a single dusty window and illuminated exactly four shelves of books lining the walls. A wooden table sat in the center of the room, and an elderly man dozed behind a small desk near the entrance.
Ruby slowly turned in a circle.
“That’s it?” she whispered.
Lena leaned against a shelf and crossed her arms.
“What were you expecting?”
Ruby walked over and began scanning the titles.
Crop rotation.
Local river fishing.
Vilge tax records.
Basic arithmetic.
She checked the next shelf.
Regional history.
Weather patterns.
Herbal cooking.
Ruby stared at the spines for a long moment.
Not a single book about mana.
Not a single mention of magic.
She stepped back slowly.
“…huh.”
Lena smirked.
“You dragged me here for farming manuals?”
Ruby ignored her and looked around the room again.
"Excuse me?" Ruby questioned the sleeping man.
"Huh! Ah, customers. Goodmorning little dy, how can I help you?" He asked kindly.
"Hi, I'm Ruby SunCleanser. I was wondering if you had any books about magic. My dad bought me some in my youth and I was wondering if you had anymore."
"Ah, sorry those books don't tend to reach this corner of the world. He most likely found them at the market. Luckily this week is market week so you might be able to find what you are looking for there."
"Oh, okay thanks!"
Then something clicked.
All the books her father had bought her over the years.
Every single one.
The mana theory books.
The elemental studies.
The strange manuals on magical constructs.
None of those had come from here.
They must have been ones he found at the market. That would make sense, not many rural farmers are trained to use magic.
Ruby blinked.
“…dang.”
Lena tilted her head.
“What?”
Ruby smiled faintly.
“My dad specifically looked for the books he got me. I thought it was just a quick grab.”
Lena rolled her eyes.
“Touching.”
Ruby turned and headed for the door.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Market.”
Outside, the vilge square was busy.
Traveling merchants had arrived that morning, their carts arranged in colorful rows while traders shouted about fabrics, tools, and trinkets from distant towns.
Lena’s eyes immediately lit up.
“Oh good,” she said. “Something actually interesting.”
Ruby ughed softly and followed her into the crowd.
They wandered through the stalls slowly, examining carved wooden figures, polished stones, bundles of spices, and shining metal jewelry id out across velvet cloth.
Ruby paused in front of one particur stall.
A small tray of sea shells had been polished and mounted into simple jewelry pieces.
Her eyes nded on a small blue conch shell pendant hanging from a thin silver chain.
Ruby picked it up.
The shell shimmered faintly in the sunlight, the deep blue color matching Lena’s eyes almost perfectly.
Ruby tilted her head, imagining it on her friend.
“…that would look really cute on Lena.”
She froze.
Did she just think that?
Ruby blinked and slowly looked over her shoulder.
Lena was standing at the next stall over, holding something up to the light.
It was a small ruby set in a simple metal medallion.
Lena squinted at it thoughtfully.
“…yeah,” she muttered. “That looks like Ruby.”
The two girls noticed each other looking at them at the same time.
They both froze.
Then they both immediately looked away.
Five minutes ter they awkwardly approached the merchant together.
They used nearly all the coins they had saved from chores and allowances.
When they stepped away from the stall, Lena cleared her throat and held out the ruby medallion.
“…here.”
Ruby blinked.
“For me?”
Lena shrugged and refused to meet her eyes.
“It matched your name.”
Ruby smiled softly and slipped the chain over her head.
The ruby gem rested lightly against her chest.
“Thanks.”
Then Ruby handed Lena the blue conch shell pendant.
“This one’s for you.”
Lena stared at it.
“…really?”
Ruby nodded.
“It matches your eyes.”
Lena tried to look unimpressed and completely failed.
“…fine,” she muttered, taking it.
She lifted the chain and fastened it around her neck.
For a moment both girls stood there quietly.
Then Ruby felt something strange.
The ruby against her chest suddenly grew warm.
Very warm.
Ruby frowned and looked down at it.
“Uh…”
The world vanished.
Light disappeared.
Sound disappeared.
The busy vilge market evaporated like mist.
Ruby stood alone in darkness.
The market was gone.
The merchants. The carts. Lena.
All of it had vanished as if someone had snuffed out the world like a candle.
Cold air brushed against her skin.
Ruby slowly turned in a circle, her boots crunching softly against something brittle beneath her feet. For a moment she thought it might be sand, but when she knelt and picked some up, the grains crumbled into gray ash between her fingers.
She looked up.
The sky above her wasn’t a sky.
It was a vast ceiling of shifting shadows, like storm clouds frozen in pce. No sun. No moon. Just a faint dim glow that made the nd visible in a bleak twilight.
Ruby swallowed.
“…okay.”
Her voice sounded small in the endless quiet.
She looked down at the ruby medallion resting against her chest.
It was glowing faintly.
Warm.
Then a memory flickered through her mind.
Arkhavel’s voice.
Not from a ghostly whisper, but from something he had said months ago during a lesson.
“Some relics exist that hold fragments of divine power. Gods, humans and demons alike have forged such artifacts throughout history. Most are lost. Some… are better left lost.”
Ruby’s stomach tightened.
He had said some reelics held pieces of the God of Death’s authority.
Some controlled souls.
Some controlled life.
And one category…
Ruby looked around slowly.
“…access.”
Access to the realm of the dead.
Her heart sank.
“Oh.”
Ruby took a slow breath and stared across the ndscape.
She was standing in a vast frozen wastend.
But it wasn’t snow.
It looked like a desert made of pale gray dust and bck stone, stretching endlessly across rolling hills. Jagged rock formations jutted from the ground like broken teeth while thin wisps of shadow drifted across the barren pins.
It wasn’t fire and brimstone.
There were no rivers of va.
No towering fmes.
Instead the air felt cold.
Dry.
Empty.
Like a pce where life had long ago abandoned hope.
Ruby slowly turned again.
“Hell.”
The word felt strange leaving her mouth.
She pulled her cloak tighter around herself and started walking.
Each step crunched softly in the ash beneath her boots.
The silence was unsettling.
No insects.
No wind.
No birds.
Nothing alive.
Just the faint whisper of drifting shadow.
Ruby walked carefully across a low ridge and stopped abruptly.
Something moved in the distance.
She immediately crouched low behind a jagged stone formation.
Several rge shapes moved across the gray ndscape below.
Ruby squinted.
They weren’t demons.
They looked more like animals.
Huge animals.
Her breath caught.
They resembled wolves.
But far rger.
Each creature stood nearly as tall as a horse at the shoulder, their bodies lean and powerful with thick bck fur that seemed to absorb the dim light around them. Their heads were broader than a normal wolf’s, filled with rows of jagged teeth that glinted faintly when they opened their mouths.
Hell hounds.
Ruby had heard the name before.
Arkhavel had mentioned them once.
“Not demons. Beasts. Predators of the underworld.”
There were six of them.
They moved as a pack.
Ruby stayed perfectly still.
The creatures circled something in the distance.
Then she saw it.
A massive carcass.
Ruby’s eyes widened.
The creature lying in the dust looked vaguely like a triceratops, but wrong in several disturbing ways. Instead of scales it had thick shaggy fur covering its enormous body, and where hooves should have been there were massive cwed hands tipped with curved spikes like natural weapons.
The hell hounds were tearing it apart.
One of them cmped its jaws around the creature’s neck and ripped backward while the others lunged in, shredding chunks of flesh with brutal efficiency.
The sound carried across the empty wastend.
Wet tearing.
Bone cracking.
Ruby pressed herself lower behind the rock.
Her heart pounded quietly in her chest.
The beasts devoured the carcass like starving predators, their glowing eyes flicking around the horizon occasionally as if expecting competition.
Ruby slowly backed away.
Carefully.
Quietly.
The st thing she wanted was for those things to smell her.
She moved down the ridge, keeping low until the feeding pack disappeared behind the rocks.
Only then did she allow herself to breathe normally again.
“…not staying here long,” she whispered.
Ruby looked down at the ruby medallion again.
The stone pulsed faintly with dark light.
Her mind raced.
If this artifact could bring her here…
Then maybe it could take her back.
But before she tried anything, Ruby gnced once more across the endless wastend.
This pce wasn’t just dangerous.
It was ancient.
Old beyond anything she had ever felt before.
And somewhere out there, beyond the shadowed dunes and jagged cliffs…
was the true realm of Hell.
Ruby shivered slightly in the cold air.
“…okay,” she muttered.
“Let’s not explore too much.”
Because somewhere behind her…
the hell hounds had suddenly stopped feeding.
And several glowing eyes were now staring directly toward the ridge where she stood.
Ruby’s fingers trembled as she yanked the ruby medallion over her head.
The chain slid free.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
The frozen wastend remained exactly the same.
The ash desert stretched endlessly under the dim shadowed sky.
Ruby blinked.
“…what?”
She looked down at the neckce hanging from her hand.
The ruby was still glowing faintly.
“Okay… maybe it needs to react to something when I put it on.”
She quickly slipped it back over her head.
The gem settled against her chest again.
She waited.
Nothing.
The world did not change.
Ruby pulled it off again.
Still nothing.
She shoved it back on.
Nothing.
Her breathing began to quicken.
“Okay—okay—okay.”
She began taking the neckce on and off rapidly.
On.
Off.
On.
Off.
Nothing happened.
The wastend remained cold and silent.
Ruby stared down at the ruby gem, its faint red glow pulsing gently like a heartbeat.
“What are you?” she whispered.
Her mind raced.
If this artifact transported anyone who wore it…
Why would it be sitting on a random merchant’s table?
That didn’t make sense.
Unless…
“…it’s cursed.”
The thought made her stomach twist.
Maybe the trader had been trying to get rid of it.
Maybe no one who bought it ever came back.
Ruby exhaled slowly.
“Fantastic.”
Well.
If she got back to the vilge, she was definitely going to have some questions for that merchant.
Then she heard it.
A faint sound carried across the ash desert.
Pitter.
Patter.
Running paws.
Ruby froze.
Her head slowly turned toward the ridge behind her.
The sound grew louder.
Pitter-patter-patter-patter.
Ruby’s heart began to pound.
“…no.”
She ran.
Her boots kicked up clouds of gray ash as she sprinted across the barren ground, desperately putting distance between herself and the feeding grounds she had seen earlier.
The ndscape blurred past her.
Then something moved above her.
A massive shape leapt from the top of a rock formation.
Ruby skidded to a halt.
A hell hound nded directly in her path.
Its body was enormous up close, its shoulders nearly level with her chest. Thick bck fur clung to its muscur frame, coated in gray ash from the wastend. Its glowing red eyes locked onto her with predatory hunger while its lips peeled back to reveal rows of jagged teeth.
Behind her, another nded.
Then another.
Ruby turned slowly.
Six.
They had surrounded her.
The beasts circled slowly like wolves.
Their paws crunched softly in the ash.
Up close the smell hit her.
Sulfur.
Burning.
Like rotten smoke.
Their eyes glowed a deep infernal red, and as they opened their jaws Ruby saw something worse.
Light.
A dark purple-red glow flickered deep inside their throats.
Hellfire.
The nearest hound lowered its head and growled.
The glow inside its mouth deepened into a violent mix of purple, red, and bck fmes that seemed to devour the air around them.
Gluttony.
Hunger.
The fmes pulsed with their emotion.
Ruby’s brain snapped into focus.
“Okay,” she muttered quietly.
“Let’s not die.”
The first hell hound lunged.
Ruby thrust her hand forward.
A burst of fire exploded from her palm.
The normal orange fmes smmed into the beast’s face—
And did absolutely nothing.
The hell hound plowed straight through the fire.
Ruby’s eyes widened.
“Right.”
Hellfire ignored normal fire resistance.
Which probably meant the reverse was also true.
The beast snapped its jaws inches from her face.
Ruby dove sideways as purple hellfire erupted from its mouth.
The bst smmed into the ground where she had stood.
The ash exploded outward as the infernal fme burned a jagged crater into the desert floor.
Ruby rolled to her feet and thrust both hands forward.
Two molten va constructs shot from her palms like cannonballs.
They smmed into the nearest hound and exploded across its chest.
The beast staggered but did not fall.
It shook violently, scattering cooling va fragments across the ground before snarling and charging again.
“Of course that barely worked!”
Another hell hound leapt from her blind side.
Ruby spun and raised both hands.
A wall of fme erupted between them.
The beast crashed through it.
Ruby reacted instantly.
She pulled all the heat from the fme barrier at once.
The fire vanished.
The sudden temperature drop froze the moisture in the air around the hound’s legs.
Ice exploded across its paws.
The creature slipped mid-charge and crashed sideways into the ash.
Ruby didn’t hesitate.
She smmed her fist into the ground.
A spear of hardened va shot upward and impaled the fallen beast through the chest.
The hell hound howled.
Its body dissolved into drifting bck ash.
Five left.
The others attacked together.
Hellfire erupted from three directions.
Ruby threw herself forward as the infernal fmes crossed behind her, each bst burning deep scars into the ndscape.
One of the beasts lunged.
Ruby twisted her hand.
Her shadow stretched beneath her feet.
The darkness surged upward.
A thick tendril of shadow erupted from the ground and wrapped around the hound’s throat mid-leap.
The beast smmed into the ground.
Ruby clenched her fist.
The shadow tightened.
The hell hound’s body convulsed as the darkness drained the energy from it like a parasite.
Within seconds its glowing eyes dimmed.
The body colpsed into ash.
Four.
Ruby spun as another hound charged.
This one opened its jaws wide.
A torrent of hellfire exploded toward her.
The fmes were wrong.
Purple mixed with bck and red, writhing like living hunger.
Ruby thrust both hands forward.
Instead of fire—
She pulled heat.
Every ounce of warmth in the air around the hellfire bst vanished.
The infernal fme faltered as the surrounding temperature colpsed.
Then Ruby shoved her own fire forward.
Superheated oxygen ignited violently.
The explosion smmed into the hound mid-charge and hurled it backward across the ash.
It didn’t get back up.
Three left.
The remaining beasts circled warily now.
They had realized she could fight.
Ruby panted slightly, sweat running down her neck.
She raised her hands again.
“Come on then.”
The pack attacked together.
Ruby’s shadow erupted across the ground like living darkness.
Fme spiraled around her arms.
Ice formed along the ground.
Lava spikes burst from beneath the ash.
Hellfire roared.
Shadow tendrils snapped.
The battlefield erupted into chaos.
Seconds ter…
Silence returned to the wastend.
Ruby stood alone in the ash desert.
Her chest rose and fell as she caught her breath.
Around her, six piles of drifting bck ash slowly scattered across the barren ground.
Ruby wiped soot from her cheek and looked down at the glowing ruby medallion.
“…okay.”
Ruby exhaled slowly.
“That could have gone worse.”
She looked across the battlefield at the scattered remains of the hell hounds. Their bodies had already begun to crumble, the strange purple-red glow of their hellfire fading as the st embers of infernal energy drifted into the cold air.
The ash desert slowly returned to silence.
Ruby rubbed the back of her neck and walked cautiously toward one of the bodies.
Hell hounds were insane.
Two years ago… she would have died here.
No question.
Back then she barely understood mana flow, let alone how to fight six monsters capable of breathing soul-burning fire. If she had encountered them as her ten-year-old self, the fight would have sted maybe three seconds.
Ruby looked down at the corpses again.
Now she had killed six of them.
That thought felt strange.
She crouched beside one of the bodies.
This was the one she had drained with her shadow magic. Unlike the others that had shattered under va and explosions, this one was mostly intact.
Its fur was dark and thin but strangely soft beneath the ash. Sweat and blood matted the coat where the shadow had constricted its throat.
Ruby pced her hand against the beast’s chest.
Cold.
Dead.
Her mind drifted to something Arkhavel had said once during a long lecture about forbidden magic.
“Dark magic does not only destroy. It commands. Life and death are merely states of mana.”
Ruby tilted her head slightly.
“…so what about the dead?”
She stared at the body for a moment.
Resurrection.
Arkhavel had tried to bring his family back once.
It had gone very badly.
Ruby frowned.
But that had been full resurrection.
A soul.
A person.
This… was just a body.
And bodies were systems.
Brain.
Heart.
Muscles.
Organs.
If something was damaged… it could be repaired.
If something was missing… mana could substitute.
And the soul…
Ruby gnced at the empty wastend around her.
“…repce the soul with will.”
She pced both hands on the hell hound’s ribcage.
“Let’s try something.”
Dark mana flowed from her chest into the beast.
At first nothing happened.
Ruby pushed more energy into the body, guiding it through the creature’s internal structure. She couldn’t see the organs, but she could feel them faintly through the mana pathways.
Torn muscle.
Colpsed lung.
A heart that had stopped beating.
She focused.
Her mana reinforced the damaged tissues, stitching torn muscle fibers together like invisible thread. She didn’t really know what the inside of a hell hound looked like, but the mana seemed to understand her intent.
It responded to her will.
Ruby continued.
The hellfire inside the creature had been extinguished when it died.
But hell hounds breathed fire.
Which meant there had to be some kind of fuel source inside them.
Some organ.
Some magical core.
Ruby sent mana searching deeper into the creature’s body.
There.
Something faint.
A dying ember.
Ruby smiled slightly.
“Found you.”
If will alone wasn’t enough…
Maybe fire was.
She began heating the body slowly.
Not burning.
Not cooking.
Just warmth.
Like breathing life back into frozen limbs.
Her mana wrapped around the fading ember inside the creature.
Come on.
She pictured the moment she had watched earlier.
The ember dying.
The light fading.
“…let’s bring it back.”
She pushed.
The ember ignited.
Ruby felt it.
A sudden surge of warmth.
Then—
The hell hound’s body twitched violently.
Ruby yelped and stumbled backward.
The beast gasped.
A deep, wet canine cough burst from its throat as its chest expanded with a ragged breath.
Ruby’s eyes widened.
“…no way.”
The hell hound slowly rose to its feet.
Its movements were stiff at first as its muscles remembered how to function. Ash slid from its fur as it stood fully upright.
Then its eyes opened.
They weren’t the deep infernal red from before.
Now they burned bright orange.
Ruby’s fme.
The hell hound blinked slowly.
It looked around the wastend.
Then it turned and walked toward the other corpses.
Ruby tilted her head.
“…doggy?”
The beast sniffed one of the bodies.
Then it began eating it.
Ruby gagged slightly.
“Gross.”
The hell hound tore chunks of flesh from the corpse with savage efficiency, devouring the remains like it had been starving for weeks.
“Wow.”
She folded her arms.
“…definitely hellish.”
The beast devoured the first body.
Then the second.
The speed was terrifying.
Within minutes only scattered bones and ash remained.
Ruby watched with uneasy fascination.
Then the hell hound stopped eating.
It slowly lifted its head.
And looked directly at her.
Its orange eyes narrowed.
It growled.
Ruby froze.
“…um.”
The beast lowered its body and began creeping toward her.
Slow.
Predatory.
Its muscles tensed.
Ruby raised both hands.
“Sit?”
The hell hound kept moving.
“Heel?”
Still moving.
“…stop?”
The beast crouched lower.
Ready to pounce.
Ruby felt something shift inside her chest.
A strange instinct.
Not fear.
Authority.
It felt eerily simir to the sensation she used when commanding mana through her spells.
But deeper.
Older.
For a moment it almost felt like Arkhavel standing beside her again.
A quiet whisper in her mind.
Use it.
Ruby inhaled slowly.
Mana surged into her voice.
“Down.”
The word rolled across the wastend like thunder.
Her voice deepened unnaturally, yered with dark authority.
The hell hound instantly colpsed.
Its back legs lowered to the ground while its head dropped submissively into the ash. It whimpered quietly and refused to meet her gaze.
Ruby blinked.
“…cool.”
She straightened slightly.
“Arise.”
The hell hound stood again.
Still trembling.
Still looking downward.
“Obey.”
The word echoed across the ash desert.
The beast froze completely.
Docile.
Still.
Ruby slowly released the mana from her voice.
A grin spread across her face.
“…woah.”
The rush of dopamine from successfully maniputing magic surged through her system.
That was new.
And extremely cool.
Then the hell hound began dissolving.
Ruby’s smile vanished.
“Wait.”
The beast’s body turned to mist.
“Wait wait wait—what’s happening?”
The creature dissolved into a swirling cloud of dark vapor that spiraled upward before being pulled straight into Ruby.
Well not her.
The Ruby neckce
The st strands of shadow vanished inside her neckce.
The world shattered.
The ash desert disappeared.
Sound returned.
Light exploded across her vision.
Ruby staggered slightly.
She was standing in the middle of the vilge road.
Midday sunlight shone overhead.
Vilgers walked past carrying baskets and tools.
The market stalls were gone.
No merchants.
No Lena.
Just normal vilgers going about their day.
Ruby blinked slowly.
Her heart was still racing.
“…okay.”
She looked around.
Confused.
“I’m back.”
But something felt wrong.
She scanned the road again.
The marketpce was empty except for a couple vilgers moving hay.
The traveling traders were gone.
Lena was gone.
Ruby frowned.
“…where did everybody go?”
