"I'm sorry you had such a deficient Lord," he replies tartly. "I regret that I'm no longer in His service so directly, but there's no way back across the fog unless I'm called." And he'd become convinced that was still a possibility. After all, the Divinity would soon awaken. Then everything would change.

That promise was more than enough to keep him faithful, even when he no longer felt the sweet pain of the sacred within him. "His blood provided the catalyst for power." He took the edges of the skin, pressing them back together as one would to suture a wound. "What I have now is similar, but it's lost that blessed flame."