### Dark Harvest I've gathered the pulse of the unwilling. A hundred hearts, still hot, still trembling. Torn free beneath the blind eye of Loom. They fall together, their final cries braided into one final song. Ash must cradle them, black and endless, else the soil will drink them for itself. When the circle is closed and the last flame of mercy snuffed, speak the *Word* that has no echo. Once. The air will forget to move. The sun will forget to smile. Those within the harvest shall crumple like brittle reeds, their breath stolen, their wills lost. At the falling of dusk, the harvest will breathe anew. They will rise from hunger, their hearts bent to your will. They will not speak. They will not rest. They will not live any longer. The harvest consumes. Trees wither, river sours, worms writhe. The land forgets how to live. *Right Margin: I am lessened. The harvest took half of me to covert the thousands.* *Footnote: It hungers again.* ### Thousand Eyes One thousand eyes. No more, no less. Fresh. Weeping. Plucked from their sockets while they slept. Unfathomable pain and suffering. They lay in a circle, turned towards the center, gazing into nothing. Speak their names. Do not falter, for each name will gnaw at the air, each syllable an unspeakable horror. When the final name shudders, life aching from sin, place your hand in the center. You will see. Through ever window, through every creature's gaze, you will see. Through every beast, bird, and being, you will see. Secrets will shiver naked before you. Lies will crawl from mouths as worms from graves. Until you can stand no longer, you will see. They will try to break you. Your mind, haunted by every last scream, every last secret. Their voices press into your marrow. Should you falter a little, your mind will tear like silk, and [[The Knowing Eye]] will take you. *Footnote: The first day was bliss. The second was pain. One the tenth I could see no longer. I recoiled, but the eyes wished to keep me.* ### Drowned King's Crown Gather the skulls. Seventy-seven, each kissed by the sea’s hunger, each plucked from sailors who met the black tide. Bleach them, bind them, and crown yourself with their grin. Then sink. Not a moment upon the surface. Let the tide clutch you whole, let the brine claw its way down your throat. For one day, you must dwell in drowning — breath gone, heartbeat staggered, flesh clammy and still. Speak the hymn of scales through choking silence, until the last word is lost in the abyss. When the day breaks, the sea will bow. Tides will writhe at your command, storms will howl your name, and every scaled creature from guppy to leviathan will bear your crown as their own. For thirteen years, you are monarch of the abyss. Yet when you rise again, air will forsake you. Your lungs remember only salt. The sea will never release you, for you are its child, its king, and its prisoner. ### Meld Planes You must choose that of the highest holy order. Plucked from their home and kept in captivity, broken beyond recognition. Only when they concede their planar life forfeit, their will shattered, can you forge the bridge. Twenty-five days of ritualistic chanting and bleeding, invoking the souls of the planes. On the final word, the horizon itself shall split like canvas under blade. The planes will not kiss. They will entangle, emerging anew. Fire may pour into green meadows. The sky may drown in oceans. Angels awoken in pits of shadow. Demons lost in gardens of light. Nothing is spared. A willing sacrifice is necessary, for your soul is the anchor — a magnet drawing in the eternal expanse. But for that brief delirious span before your will is sundered, you will stand an architect of a new reality. *Left Margin: This is not creation. This is hunger dressed as power.* ### Master of Undeath To unmoor the soul, one must pay a price no god will forgive. First, take three things most beloved to you — child, lover, or friend, the anchor that makes you human. Their death must be slow, their final sight fixed upon you, so their love curdles into terror. Only in that fracture can the tether of the heart be severed. Second, choose vessels. They must be objects that have known your touch for years: the quill that inked your first spell, the ring worn until it carved a groove in your flesh, the goblet from which you drank as a youth. Each must be filled with your blood until they thirst no longer. Then, carve your true name upon your own bones. Not with ink, but blade. As the blood runs, speak the unmaking litany: not to summon, not to bind, but to split. You will feel yourself crack, your essence tearing and pouring like oil into the chosen vessels. The moment of death follows, swift and cold. And if the ritual is unbroken, you will rise again. A husk animated not by breath, but by the venom of eternity. Flesh will rot, but you will not. Sleep will abandon you, but knowledge will never fade. You will hunger. Always. The price is not only memory and mercy, but the taste of life itself. *Right Margin: I buried my daughter’s toy beside her corpse. It whispers still from the soil.* *Footnote: The vessels must be secret and safe. For they whisper the secrets to your demise.* ### Ascendancy Discovered in the whispers of the void, screamed through the chaos of Limbo, and echoing in the halls of the mountain, gather your disciples to a place of power. The flow of arcane must be taxed, like a river overflowing. Three weeks of repetition will create a pool, a well of flowing power. Bask in the pool, let it overwhelm you. A lesser man would sunder, you mustn't. Your bones will hum with songs of [[Elysium]], blood will boil with the heat of [[the Hells]], heart will tick with the timing of [[Mechanus]]. Your body a beacon of light, your disciples must chant the ritual of devotion. Sung with passion and fury, they mustn't waver in their beliefs, for a single dissident will topple the tower. You will see everything, feel everything, exist in everything. With the guide of the [[Astral Sea]], you must navigate through the temptations of mortals and realization of beyond. Once you have shed your mortal whims, the well of power will flood your body like an open dam, tearing your mortality asunder, passing your mind beyond the gates of divinity into your new home. ### Soul Shackle To bind a being, begin by bringing it to it's knees. A hearty soul resists easily. Once succumbed to your will, two planar rods must pierce flesh. Existence will attempt to escape, flooding the chamber with the sorrowful souls trapped without a home. Let the tuning fork ring, and if the chorus matches pitch, you have prepared their new home. Complete the ritual by naming their prison. A strength of wills will ensue, but only divinity can completely seal the soul. Upon completion, silence. Even the air will quiver in your strength. Be weary of release. Speaking the prison's name will release those bound within, but will seal away part of you. *Right Margin: I found alcohol works best.* *Footnote: The being within trembles still. Perhaps it dreams, perhaps it waits.* ### The Stitched Stitching is a careful art — a sculptor in its own right. They must be breathing, crying out in pain. The stitches bear the agony of the dead, animating life into the bag of bones. Shaped into the creature's which form it, the arcana of stitching creates a dreadful abomination. Several sacrifices must be combined into a whole, creating that of the shell. Fueled by a spirit, you will need an unwilling sacrifice who is good aligned. Within a pool of blood the Stitched will be place, where it will be reborn at the burning of the last of ten candles. There will be no memories, no feelings of past or self. A empty husk prepared to pilot undeath. Drown your unwilling sacrifice in the pool of blood, and when their heart beat stops, and soul leaves, it will latch to it's new home. And the Stitched will be. If damaged, the soul will escape it's prison. To reanimate, you must find a new sacrifice, each better than the last. ### Black Storm Consumed by death, the storm rages with the power of ashed bodies and boiled blood. Ten thousand dead will start the storm, ten more a day will keep it happy. The storm is something more, a personality beyond that of mortality and immortality. Although fragile, it whispers of the beyond and sings of the eternal — a veil of impossible comprehension. Struck by lightning, the nine thousand deep black pit of ash and bone will stir and roil. Fuel must be added until the ten thousandth, after which the tornado of death will sweep and consume. But beware its hunger, for all are within it's purview of meals, and it will not discriminate against those who would run from, and those who run towards.