Exchange

The liquid portal stabilized and everyone gathered their eyes on the other side. There, they saw a chained, dried corpse. However, it wasn't a corpse; it still moved and breathed.

A grated human voice escaped from the wormhole.

"Why.....why do you wish for this? You will gain nothing."

Lyns squeezed his hands as he yelled back, "I haven't gained what I want! This is the secret of Sacrifice, the thing I have chased after! I used so many lives just for this moment! I gave up so much to see this!"

The voice responded, "But you will not get what you wish. What you believe the path to be is a lie."

"What?!" The werewolf scowled.

"I know what you think, but it is not this place that is the key but me. It is why I was sealed. And although you down there, the one with the mark of Stars, yes you. You think the gods and the being above them sealed me, but even that False God of yours wouldn't know I did this to myself, to escape."

"Escape?" James questioned. He didn't hide that the strange creature was talking about him.

The being didn't answer the question and continued to speak. 

"Don't you know this world has no foundation? It's just a tree with one fruit, waiting to be plucked. The paths you think exist do, but they are disembodiments of sorts, only able to exist from the fruit and its sheer energy. Then there are the main paths you know of, that have foundations that allow them to stand above the rest and make this world exist longer than it should. Yet, I do not know everything either, and maybe this was all that being's plan.

"But....for this path, this shell of sacrifice, it relies on me. It relies on my gift of exchange, and for you, this exchange turns into sacrifice."

Everyone went deep in thought about the words of the voice, but Lyns only cared about the Path he saw before him.

"T-Then why make us sacrifice so much if the power is of exchange?!"

The voice chuckled, "Don't you know? Supply and demand, my powers are endless with the energy from the fruit, even the gods use it. Though I am less than happy about it, the cons of being imprisoned. But to mere mortals, my status is more than enough to get a good deal. Sacrifice and Exchange are mere inches from being the same thing."

Isaac awakened in the conversation, his mind had already been listening but now he was consciously present. It was then he took a turn and presented a question.

"Why did you seal yourself? What are you scared of?"

The voice didn't respond. This caught the attention of all, and everyone began to repeat the question, they were all curious for the answer.

"Alright." The voice gave in, "It is a being similar to the one above the gods, the creator of this farm harnessing a singular fruit. The being I hide from is also my creator, the Scales that Represent Fairness, the Dogma of Greed and Balance, the Concept of Exchange."

No one seemed to understand the gravity of those words as Isaac did, he was frozen on the spot. His lips were not as cold as the rest and he blurted out another question.

"Isn't there concepts like Fairness and Greed? How come Exchange is described as them as well?"

"Oh? Do you know of Concepts?! Oh yes! You are that child!" The voice became intrigued, but it continued to speak in riddles.

It answered, "All paths have roads to another, everything is the same if you can connect the dots."

Isaac lowered his head in thought.

The voice became more distant, "Time is up. It seems I must go. This conversation turned out nice, I hope all of what I have said can help you mortals find peace, for I know I shall never have it."

"Wait!" Brandon Lyns jumped off the catwalk and towards the wormhole. He couldn't give up his dream, his desire he cultivated into obsession.

The voice found this amusing, "Little one, you are not even a proper Vessel, you are destined to die in this place. Go back and find peace."

Lyns refused, "No! I must enter your cage, I will become Sacrifice!"

The voice sighed and its mood switched completely, its tone soured, "Then die trying to reach for the heavens."

The one beyond was still a being beyond understanding, the Child of Exchange was not like humans, yet it did learn from them. Still, a mere being like Brandon Lyns had too high an ambition.

The werewolf's hand touched the wormhole, and his fur, flesh, everything except his eyes, vanished.

Afterward, the portal closed and the black liquid trickled, burning a hole in the ground. The two eyeballs of a giant wolf were left, their eyes still filled with obsession.

"Freaky..." James picked up the eyes and turned towards Isaac. "So, will you join us?"

At that moment, everyone gazed at Isaac. It was obvious they were all on the same side now. 

'T-This...' Isaac was stunned. 

Everyone before him was from the same organization, Flickering Star. Through James, they took up jobs in the facility and lived until this point like rats hiding in the walls. It was not the prisoners the Warden had to be weary of, but this hidden threat. 

"I...I...." Isaac was flustered. His eyes stopped sporadically sporadically at some point as he met James's gaze.

His knowledge of himself and his position filled his mind, and he made the only choice he had.

"Yes, I will join you."

James smiled, "Then from this moment forth you are reborn. What is your new name, brother?"

Isaac thought for a moment, in that split second he seemed to melt and become one with himself. All the memories in his being merged and so he became whole.

"Kain...my name is Kain."

...

Cain sat at his desk in his new office. He had recently moved to a small manor in the inner part of the city. The last few years were good to him.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Come in."

A young woman stepped through the door, her hair reaching her hips. On her ears, she had black feather earrings adorned with jewels.

"Raven, your goons are here again." She wasn't pleased.

Cain didn't look up from his work, "Darla, don't call them goons, they are the leaders of my organization. Technically, they are your subordinates as well."

"You just lie to them about some great god, why don't you just act like the god instead of making one up? It's so stupid. If you were the god they believed in we wouldn't have to lie." She argued.

"Well...have you seen a real god? I have seen something close, and I am far from that level. For now, we let them believe in the Limitless Raven, you already have the boon so you understand my grace is believable for a god's blessing, at least for now while the organization is still young. Later on, I will figure something else out. Could you bring them up now?"

"Ugh, fine." Darla left to bring Cain's guests up.

The boon Cain spoke of was his Mark, the willow branch. Under some reconstruction and Dream Core use, he changed the mark into the feather of a raven and increased the mark's effects while also detaching it from himself.

This way, he won't gain deep connections to his subordinates and they could use the mark to grow stronger through killing or other means Cain made available through manipulating the power.

'What to do, the mark takes too much energy per person, right now only the upper echelons have it, but its power isn't that impressive, the enhancement is too spread out and although good overall, it can't let someone break through a realm of specific power. I have to get stronger to open more avenues, only then can my cult grow faster and I can take on the big players.'

He was reminded of the time he tried to intervene in the resource war in a naturally rich region. The three countries were fighting for control, one being the country with the Bureau resided in.

Cain had had some early success and used the people still trapped in that place as his first cult members, but the cult could not grow further in that place. Another power intervened that rapidly grew and swallowed the whole region.

That was the day the world knew of Flickering Star and the Empire of Stars, and the day Cain took a massive hit in his retreat out of the region.

'We weren't even involved but the cult was caught between the fighting. I hope I can grow in time before the real war starts. The world is on its way to destruction at this point. The path of Sacrifice has taken a strange change and the Bureau has been recruiting en mass.'

Knock! Knock!

"Come in."

Darla entered the room again, this time she brought with her a man and a woman.

"Thank you, Princess." The man took off his hat and bowed to Darla before turning to Cain. "Herald, I have some information you will be thrilled to hear, this might change everything."

Cain smiled in delight.