Book One – Chapter 13

This revelation struck Midnight profoundly, though she could not discern its origin; it was certainly not from her wizard, who had never conveyed such an analogy. It was an irritating yet strikingly apt metaphor, aligning with her evolving understanding of essence, body, and Rothar. The body might diminish, grow, break, or shift, and Rothar could be depleted, replenished, or altered. Wizards, for instance, gradually expanded their capacity to hold Rothar over decades, which incrementally changed their all with each passing day. Yet, the wizard remained the wizard, even if his Rothar was depleted or if his body was irreversibly maimed. It was the essence that remained at the core of these temporal extensions, the arachnid at the center of its web, enduring through the cycles of receiving and losing, expanding and contracting, while always defining the space that was of the arachnid, tying together the fractured parts that were its whole, that were its existence.

This existence-defining space, the web of life surrounding the essence, was what Midnight began to discern in the fiator. She sensed him with a growing clarity that was both exhilarating and unsettling. Like him, all that lived was not a singular entity but, in truth, a fractured whole. The essence was the immutable center around which everything revolved, yet paradoxically, it seemed that it could not exist independently.

With this revelation, the hunt had unexpectedly transformed from a mere physical pursuit into a profound exploration of life’s very nature. Amidst the ruthless snowstorms and freezing heights, the pursuit of the fiator became an intellectual and existential challenge, an attempt to understand and claim the foundation of life itself. Moreover though, it remained a trial of patience and adaptation. With each moment of clarity, frustration mounted. Midnight wanted to entwine her darkness with the fiator’s essence, to rupture it out of him and make it her own. However, unlike the shadebeast, the fiator was not a being of darkness, and no matter how often she tried, she could not figure out how to reach and consume his essence.