​Stepping through the massive doors, I felt the immediate, embrace of warmth. It was a relief from the cold. So profound it made my stiffened limbs felt alive and my weak knees knew strength. 

​As we walked down the central promenade, I was dumbfounded by the scale of the building. Vast enclosed fields stretched out beneath the ceilings. To our left, I saw a flock of cockatrice. Their head bobbing in a back and forward motion as they walked. One turned, its slit like eyes tracking our every movement. It opened its beak slightly, and I could see the serrated edge that projected within its beak.

​Further in, a tusked beast shifted its weight. The floor beneath my boots rumbled with enough force to rattle my teeth. 

As I passed the cages of the mountain trolls, I felt a clash of auras. These weren't the subservient, broken creatures I had expected. Their auras were predatory and arrogant. I felt inferior to their raw, untamed power which filled me with disdain.

​The menagerie had a magical effect. A scent-dampening field that kept the air smelling of clean. However, as I stepped closer to a troll's enclosure, crossing the drawn demarcation on the ground, the smell hit me. It wasn't the wet, acrid smell of a swamp, but a dry, choking odor. 

"Welcome to the menagerie." Greeted a lamian with a bulky frame. A jagged scar ran across his left eye, pulling unto his skin. My breath caught as I looked at it. In a city of the world's greatest healers, where flesh could be knit back together in seconds, why did this scar remain? What kind of beast possessed a toxin or a curse so potent that even the high-level rituals of Stygia couldn't erase its mark?

"Damon Bloodborn, you've brought your friends here to get a beast. I've forgottenthe Noden's name. Was it Auro-?" He said holding a slate of reports, his eyes flicking from Ariadne to my face with a look of indifference.

"Ariadne" she said coldly.

"Yes. And thus here must be Kalon. The newly named Bloodborn. The name is Ren"

He knew I was a survivor of the mana-shift, but to him, I was likely just another traumatized child. My parents, while proficient scholars, hadn't been legends in the Citadel's public records. Their theories on the remained locked in private journals, unreleased to the public, leaving them as mere footnotes in the instructor's eyes.

​"So, the boy from the ruins wants a pet," the instructor grunted. "Don't expect the beasts to go easy on you just because you've had it tough. They don't read reports. You must establish dominion over them. Dominance."

​He led us toward the another sector. It contained Blood Wyrms. The air here was so saturated with life essence that I felt a tingling sensation in my fingertips.

"You'll have to win one yourself. Do not fear, I'll protect you if they retaliate." Ren promised.

​The gate open, and I stepped into the enclosure. Almost immediately, several baby wyrms slithered toward me. They were small, barely a foot long, with scales that looked like wet rubies. I reached out a hand, a gesture of peace, but they hissed and recoiled, slipping back into the crevices of the stone rocks. 

'They don't want a master. They wanted a feast, and I offered not. How presumptuous'

​I realized then that I had to show them the depth of my will.

​Drawing on the ambient blood mana that Damon had explained was being funneled from the domes above, I closed my eyes. I reached into my memory, back to the outskirts of Bloodville where the massive oak trees used to grow. 

It began to manifest. I manipulated the very contents of the blood-mana in the air, agitating the particles to produce a spectrum of light that shouldn't have existed naturally.

​A shimmering tree of blood began to grow from the floor of the enclosure. Its trunk was a deep, pulsing with crimson red, but as the branches spread, I forced the mana to refract, creating leaves of violet, rose gold, and ebony black. 

I heard the gasp from Ariadne and Damon at my masterpiece from pure manipulation. This was refined control over the essence of life. Surely, it must have caught the instructor by suprise. 

The tree emitted a gentle, pulsing warmth that filled the enclosure.

​The instructor stern expression was no where to be seen. He stepped forward, his eye filled unfiltered appreciation and acknowledgement. "Intricate mana manipulation at such a young age... it might look as simple colors from the ambient field, but the ability to react blood mana with the other mana forms... that's profound talent. Kalon Bloodborn." He whispered the last part.

​From the darkest corner of the enclosure, a wyrm emerged that made the others look like common snakes. He was longer than the rest, his scales not red, but a terrifying ebony that seemed to absorb the light of my mana tree. A crown of prickly, dark hair ran from his head down his spine, standing up like the mane of a lion.

​"Careful, boy," the instructor whispered, his hand going to the hilt of his staff. "That is a Soul Reaper. A rare subspecies of blood wyrm. They don't feed on common mana. They feed directly on the life essence within the blood of other beasts. They grow more deadly with every kill. They are usually too arrogant to bond with anyone under the rank of a Master and in so doing, have a short lifespan without one to provide them with continuous supply of pure blood mana."

​The Soul Reaper slithered toward the tree. He looked at my creation, then up at me, his eyes reflecting the violet and crimson light. I began to wondered if it was attracted to the complexity of my mind, or simply the instinct that I was worth following.

​The Soul Reaper climbed up, his ebony scales scraping against the branch. It reared it tiny fangs down at the other wryms and the slithered away.

I could feel my manifested withering, as though it was soaked away by the soul reaper. 

Contolling the branches to converge towards the wrym as it turned into thorns. Tiny, needle thin tethers of blood mana caged the wrym. It struggled to resist.

"You've been doing well. Don't ruin your struggle by cornering it." Ren shouted.

The thorns moved towards me, and I place a hand on the soul reaper's head. A tingling sensation beneath my skin. The was a dominant, fierce resistance dropped. The beast had submitted.

​"I merely asserted my dominance," I said to the instructor, my voice sounding deeper, through my connection with the wyrm. "I can't have my beast brandishing its fangs at me. It accepted me the moment it took a liking to my magic. Now, it knows who the heart of this connection is."

​The instructor looked at the soul reaper coiling around my shoulder and then back at me. "Well said, Bloodborn. You've acquired the beast. Now, let's see if you can survive the training. Because a Soul Reaper doesn't just follow a master. It consumes a weak one."

​As I walked out of the blood wrym enclosure, I felt the beast presence in my head. It felt strange, my body heat slightly higher and my heart throbbed heavier. Ambient mana flushed toward my blood greater than before.

I looked over at Ariadne and Damon. Ariadne was wearing a grin I had never seen. One of genuine, startling admiration.

Damon shoke his head, amazed by my little feat. A smile on his face. 

The Soul Reaper opened its mouth as though basking in the sun and more mana drew in towards us.

​The scholar had found his weapon. And the weapon was hungry.