THE DEEPER THE WOUND,
THE GREATER THE SCAR
Prologue
The young man screamed in pain, as the searing hot blade pierced the flesh of his arms, drawing the dark symbol deeper into his skin. The pain was tremendous, unbearable, but he refrained from fighting back for the sake of his loved ones.
His captors finished their fiendish operation, and he awoke later that day in his room. It wasn't so much a room as it was a cell. He had grown accustomed to it over the years, since it was the only thing he ever saw. Except for those books. Those strange books they left outside the door just within his reach. He would spend hours examining those pages, the different symbols. Then one fateful afternoon, he did exactly what they wanted him to; he drew one of the symbols on the door, out of sheer boredom. Then, all of a sudden, he flew into a fit of anger. He began cursing his captors, wishing all kinds of evil upon him, for what they forced him to endure. In his rage, he thrust his open palms against the steel door. A second later, the door was gone, having disappeared in a surge of yellow light.
They were waiting however for him to do that; they needed to see if he could. After they saw it, they grabbed him and led him into a room. He had not seen this room before. The walls and floor had strange symbols drawn on them, similar to those in the books, and the walls looked as if they had been made of glowing red glass. They took him closer to the center of the room and he saw people, many of them, bound together in the middle of the big symbol on the floor. They grasped his hands and thrust them down upon the outside of the circle, releasing a blind flash of surging red light. As he raised his head, he saw the people begin sucked into some elaborate door floating the middle of the air. He looked deeper within the maelstrom, and suddenly knew. He knew everything, about the books, the people, the blood stones… he even knew what he had just performed. Alchemy, the science of understanding, decomposition, and reconstruction.
Then he saw it, in the middle of ground where the humans once stood. It was dark now, the eerie glow of the Crimson Stones no longer there. He saw a stone, red, glowing with the same glow as the light that devoured the people. He heard his captors behind him, laughing their cruel, heartless laugh.