Dust motes danced in the single beam of moonlight slicing through the crypt's fractured ceiling. Corbin knelt, knuckles white on the cold stone. Blood, not his own, still seeped into the arcane symbols carved into the flagstones, glowing with a faint, putrid light. The air tasted of ozone and ancient death. He’d done it. The ritual was complete. His vision blurred. Not with fatigue, but with raw information. A thousand futures fractured, reformed, then settled into one stark image: a serpent-coil sigil, etched onto a rusted vault door deep beneath the Silent City. Beside it, a grotesque shadow, its form indistinct but its intent clear – possession. Then the price struck. Not as a gradual decay, but as a sudden, shattering assault. His optic nerves screamed. Pinpricks of pure blackness erupted at the edges of his sight, rapidly expanding. His thoughts turned to gibberish. Names became sounds, objects became textures. The stone beneath his hand felt like cold, wet ash. He gasped, a strangled noise. This was the curse of the Eyes of Aethel. To see all, then see nothing. To know all, then know nothing. Most would succumb, their minds dissolving into a babbling, sightless wreck. Corbin Rhys was not most. He didn't fight the blight. He embraced it. It poured into him, a torrent of chaotic energy. The darkness consuming his sight did not blind him. It merely passed through, a cold current. The mental dissolution did not break him. It filled him, a roaring cacophony. His skin prickled. Veins beneath his forearms pulsed with a faint, sickly green luminescence. He clenched his teeth, channeling. The essence of the Eyes of Aethel, stripped of its consequence, coalesced within him. He pushed. The darkness, the un-seeing, erupted from his left palm. Not as shadow, but as an active absence. A bolt of pure, annihilating blindness, a void made manifest. It slammed into a weathered stone pillar near the crypt entrance, consuming the intricate carvings on its surface, leaving a smooth, black scar that seemed to drink all light around it. The babbling madness, the fracturing of thought, coalesced from his right hand. Not as sound, but as a psychic scream. A wave of raw, incoherent terror. It ripped through the stagnant air, vibrating through the bones in the sarcophagi, rattling the forgotten tools on his makeshift altar. He felt it echo back, a faint hum of residual insanity that made his own mind feel dangerously sharp. The price was paid. Diverted. Weaponized. Corbin rose, his breath ragged. The serpent-coil sigil burned behind his eyes. The vault. The shadow. He had to move. --- Footsteps echoed from the passage above, heavy and numerous. They were tracking him. They always were. The Guild of Scrutiny, ever watchful, ever hungry for nascent power. He’d left a trail, too potent to hide, even with the residual magic of the ritual. He moved fast, favoring the crypt's deeper tunnels. The air grew colder, drier. He pressed his hand against the rough-hewn rock, feeling the subtle vibrations of their approach. They were close. Six, maybe seven. Heavily armored, judging by the thudding cadence. A narrow fissure opened to his left, leading into a black void. A perfect choke point. He grinned, a humorless twist of his lips. He waited. The first two Scrutiny guards rounded the corner. Helmets obscured their faces, but their movements were precise, practiced. They carried short, bladed staves, their tips glowing with minor enchantments. Corbin didn’t hesitate. He thrust his left hand forward. The bolt of weaponized blindness shot out. It hit the lead guard mid-chest. He didn’t scream. He simply went dark. His eyes, visible for a second through the helmet's slits, were twin pools of active nothingness. He stumbled, arms flailing, his stave clattering against the stone. The second guard stopped, confused. His head tilted, trying to process his partner’s sudden collapse. That was his mistake. Corbin unleashed the other blight. The wave of madness. It hit the second guard like a physical blow. He staggered back, his hands flying to his helmet. A guttural scream ripped from him, formless, raw terror. He began to claw at his own face, tearing at the buckles of his helmet as if to rip his skull apart. Footsteps behind him faltered. The remaining guards had heard the screams. Corbin was already moving. He vaulted over the first blind guard, ignoring the frantic thrashing. He kicked out at the second, sending him sprawling into the third, who was just peering around the corner. The third guard wore a more ornate helm, suggesting rank. He hissed, drawing a short sword. His eyes narrowed. He saw Corbin. Corbin didn't engage directly. He aimed a focused burst of weaponized blindness at the ground directly between them. The stone dissolved into a swirling vortex of utter blackness, a localized void that threatened to consume anything dropped into it. The guard captain stopped short, a frustrated grunt escaping him. He tried to circle the void, but Corbin was faster. He slapped the man’s arm, not with force, but with a residual touch of the babbling blight. The captain froze. His eyes rolled back. He dropped his sword, a string of incoherent whispers tumbling from his lips. He clawed at the air, seeing enemies where there were none, his body jerking in a grotesque dance of paranoia. The remaining three guards were now hesitant. They saw their comrades’ fates. Blindness, madness, terror. Not wounds, but something far worse. Corbin pointed his open palm at the wall beside them. The weaponized blindness tore a ragged hole in the ancient masonry, revealing a faint, shimmering light beyond. Not sunlight, but something magical, ancient. An escape route. He didn't need to fight them all. He just needed to delay. He unleashed a broader wave of the babbling blight, not targeted, but a pulse across the entire corridor. Chaos erupted. The remaining guards clutched their heads, their formations shattering. One charged headlong into the stone wall, another started laughing hysterically, and the third dropped to his knees, weeping like a lost child. They would recover, eventually. But by then, Corbin would be long gone. He slipped through the newly created opening in the wall, the strange light beckoning him. The space beyond was a forgotten passage, air thick with unseen spores. The glow emanated from carvings on the far wall, a faint, pulsing azure. He walked, the echo of the Scrutiny’s madness still lingering in the air behind him. The foresight burned in his mind. The serpent-coil sigil. The vault. The Silent City. But the foresight had given him more than just a destination. It had shown him a fragment of the entity lurking beside the vault. A glimpse of its true form, not just a shadow. It was not a creature of flesh and blood, but of solidified avarice. A being that consumed not gold, but ambition. And it knew him. Not as Corbin Rhys, the Blight-Seeder. But as the conduit. The one who bent damnation to his will. The one who stood between it and its ultimate prize. The azure light intensified as he reached the passage's end. It was not a vault. It was a chamber, barely larger than a sarcophagus. And within it, suspended in a crackling field of energy, was the source of the glowing light. A heart. Not a living, pumping organ, but one of pure, solidified azure crystal. It pulsed with a steady, rhythmic beat, resonating with a silent hum that vibrated through Corbin’s very bones. Around the crystal heart, almost invisible against the shimmering light, were faint, dark tendrils. Like roots, or grasping fingers, they pulsed with a hunger he knew instinctively. He recognized the hunger. He had felt it in the blight he diverted. This was not just a relic. It was a lure. The chamber pulsed brighter. The crystal heart’s beat quickened, resonating with an unseen force. Then, from the very air around it, form began to coalesce. Not the shadow he had foreseen, but a being of pure, solidified *want*. Its eyes, if one could call them that, snapped open. They stared directly at Corbin. And then, a voice, not heard but felt, filled his mind. It was ancient, cold, and utterly devoid of mercy. *“The conduit arrives. You carry the stench of a thousand broken souls. A pity. I had hoped for a clean sacrifice.”* The crystalline heart pulsed violently, and the tendrils lunged, not for the heart, but for Corbin. From the very walls of the chamber, forgotten seals began to glow, then crumble, releasing a thick, black vapor that coiled and tightened. Corbin felt a pressure on his mind, a different kind of blight, insidious and all-consuming, seeking to empty him, not break him. The true keeper of the Blight-Seeder’s prize had awoken, and it intended to collect its due.

The Sight Diverted