Of Blood and Darkness

Prologue

Nico awoke in the middle of the night, awoken by the rampant screams of his brother. He was on his feet in a split second, sword already in hand. However, there was no one there bar them, at least not to his knowledge.

Valen was floating mid-air, not with the help of wind magic, but by the sheer amount of energy he was exuding. His stygian iron sword clattered to the floor as he gazed at the Darkness—the terrors it housed and the comfort it brought.

He could see what he could never before, Valen's soul was visible in the physical realm, and he could do nothing but watch—his limbs petrified in a bizarre mix of terror and serenity. His soul was nothing like any in the underworld nor like the souls of the demigods Valen had described to him.

It was completely cloudy black, with the occasional lightning. He could swear he saw some hellfire at its core. But before he could confirm it, his soul split, and the resulting explosion threw him back and into the obsidian wall of the cabin.

He hit his head on the rock, and his vision became dizzy, but he could still see how Valen's soul was split into three parts. The one on the right looked to be made purely out of black fire, the one on the right was like a mini thunderstorm with dark clouds and thunder roaming within.

He blinked and the two parts of his soul disappeared, leaving behind an unmarked grey canvas. The darkness claimed his soul and the room grew quiet.

Nico lost consciousness.

.

.

.

'Something's wrong,' Valen thought, and it was not the fact that he could not see anything. And that the goosebumps that would not leave him, although he could sense no soul nearby.

No, it was the fact that he could not feel his powers. The demigod abilities he got from his father and grandfather, neither shadow nor storm was anywhere to be found.

If he could see himself, he would notice how his hair lacked any color, like he had grown old in the span of seconds. Or how his blue and black heterochromatic eyes were replaced with dull grey ones.

The rest of his body was the same, he could feel that. He retained his demigod physiology, and the coldness of his ring brought him a sense of comfort.

He pushed on the ground, feeling it ripple beneath his fingers as he stood up. He had never been blind in the darkness, not even in Daedalus' Labyrinth, so why was it that he was blinded now?

The answer is, that he wasn't blinded at all. There was simply nothing but pure darkness around him, nothing to see, nothing to recognize. Valen almost jumped when a figure appeared out of the darkness, seemingly out of nowhere.

He was hard to look at, it was like he kept changing between appearances. It made Valen's head hurt. After a while, the man settled for a young appearance, looking to be in his mid-twenties. He had medium-length pitch-black hair that fell freely over his head, bar the back where he had it tied in a rat-tail. He wore a black suit accompanied by what seemed to be a mantle made of pure darkness.

Valen gulped, he could not sense his soul. Normally, that would imply him to be a monster, but he did not feel the same empty void from him that monsters had. No, it was like he couldn't see his soul because if he did, he would go mad.

"We meet again, edgewalker." His voice was like a million shades speaking at once, voices of all ages, genders, and races flooded Valen's ears and his vision became dizzy.

The being seemed to have caught his mistake and coughed into his fist. "Ahem, now, this is better I suppose?" He said, his voice settling on a deep bass, yet faint like a whisper.