Affinities were like the bridge of essence and resonance between a gifted (awakened and others) soul and a specific element, concept, law, or god.
For humans, anyway.
Nobody had ever bothered to ask the dragons how they felt about it, apparently.
The Affinity determined how strong a chosen one would become, what shape their powers would take, how high they'd rise above everyone else, and which god or being they'd eventually serve when the bill came due.
A gifted soul with an Affinity Core was a different beast entirely from a gifted soul without one.
The coreless had to chant and grind and sweat their powers out like some red-faced try-hard wringing a dry rag, while the cored ones moved their abilities with a single thought, a flicker of will, the way a man might flex a finger he'd been born with.
Sylas Stormveil, the silver-tongued cocksucker is the perfect example of that smug, effortless control. The mere thought of his name still made Pryce taste copper at the back of his throat.
What Pryce was about to attempt wasn't uncommon.
Plenty of unchosen souls, after years of being passed over by the gods like a dish nobody wanted seconds of, threw themselves at the guilds to force-awaken whatever core might be sleeping inside them.
If they succeeded, if a dormant core actually stirred under all that spiritual scar tissue, their powers would unfold on their own—and sometimes, if the work was loud enough, some watching deity would lean down out of the higher realms and pluck them up like a ripe piece of fruit and make them a Chosen.
Awakening on your own first and getting chosen afterward was a different beast, though.
It was more pact than blessing.
Beyond the powers you'd already torn loose from yourself, the chosen god would offer more, and better, and—if the deity was generous—a measure of their own God Essence, poured straight into the well of your soul.
A few of the truly blessed bastards even awakened their Affinity Cores in the very moment they were chosen, skipping the years of bleeding and grinding entirely to force awaken.
So the people with powers fell into three uneven heaps: those chosen first who awakened their cores in the same divine breath—the absolute monsters of their generation, untouchable from cradle to crown; the chosen ones with no cores at all—the weakest of the lot, though never to be underestimated, since some of them had clawed their way into legend on sheer spite alone; and lastly the force-awakeners, the men and women who'd dragged their own cores screaming out of the dark, awakened their powers, and then caught a god'sattention along the way.
Pryce had been trying for years.
He'd thrown everything he had at it—every trick, every drug, every half-mad ritual the back-alley priests would sell him.
And every single time, the answer had come back the same.
Null.Empty.
Just like the rest of the seventy percent of humanity that the gods couldn't be bothered to glance at twice.
And just like that, he hadn't been able to give his sister a better life, or himself, or even the dignity of a fight on level ground. The only reason he was bothering to check again now was because the angel had promised him the real deal.
But it was time to try one more time.
Pryce glanced down at Lulu, who was still staring after the lightning-wolf rider with that hungry look burning quietly behind her good eye.
He squeezed her shoulder gently and muttered, more to himself than to her, "Watch this, Lu. Big brother's about to get a fucking promotion."
He steered them toward a quieter side street, away from the main flow of traffic.
The Sanctum of Aegis loomed in the distance like a white middle finger flipped at the sky—the biggest local guild HQ in Veyra City and, gods willing, the place where his luck was finally about to change.
That was where people went to be scanned, registered, and tested. That was where he was going to drag this dormant core of his out of whatever shallow grave it had been napping in and force the bastard to wake the fuck up.
Because if the angel chick wanted a champion, she was going to get one who didn't show up to the war empty-handed.
Pryce cracked his knuckles, feeling the new, terrifying strength humming just beneath his skin like a hive of bees that hadn't quite worked out who their queen was yet.
"All right, universe," he whispered with a crooked grin. "Let's see if you still remember how to say yes to me. Or if I've got to bend you over and teach you the word from scratch."
The lights of Veyra glittered around them, oblivious.
And somewhere deep in the locked basement of Pryce's chest, something ancient and forgotten began, very quietly, to stir.
Pryce knew exactly what to do and where to do it.
In the back of his skull, he was certain—certain in a way that frightened him a little, because certainty had never been his friend—that this time he'd succeed and awaken his Affinity Core.
There was no village, no city, no gods-forsaken corner of the world ruled by heroes and villains where an angel, of all things, would bother summoning a dead Null like him, drag him kicking back into the meat of his own body, and not slip in at least one freebie of real power along the way.
The improvement in his strength, his reflexes, his whole rebuilt frame was proof enough of that. His body felt tighter, hungrier, like it had been forged out of better steel.
Maybe—and this was his hopeful idiot heart talking, despite his knowing exactly how dangerous hope was for men of his particular life expectancy—maybe that was exactly what the angel was waiting on.
To see what shape of core he'd drag out of himself before she handed him his real mission and started layering on the proper gifts.
Hopefully, dangerously hopefully, she'd even share some of her own essence with him.
How many souls in the whole shimmering world had ever tasted essence anywhere close to that of the second-strongest angel in the higher heavens?
After that, he'd finish their first job.
He glanced down at Lulu. Her small hand was clasped tight in his so she could gawk around in lost abandon without fear of being swept away in the river of bodies.
Her scorched side was still hidden behind the makeshift scarf, but he could feel the small, stubborn tremor in her fingers with every step, the kind of tremor that came from pain a child had decided not to mention.
'Soon', he thought. 'Soon you'll be powerful too, Lu. And perfectly bloody whole.'
His plan was simple: get to the Sanctum of Aegis and force-awaken the core. Step one.
And he was deliberately choosing the guild over the flashier names.
Petty little bitch move, and he was at peace with it.
The Sanctum of Aegis only had houses on Storm's Reach and its handful of satellite cities, never anywhere beyond.
Its main headquarters stood right here in Veyra.
Plus, he'd never worked the place a single shift in his old life—and that was the other reason he'd picked it.
No old connections. No leering foreman with a long memory. Nobody to recognize the former porter from the Fringe and start asking the kind of questions that ended in a knife between the shoulder blades.
He steered them through the crowd, Lulu's head still on its endless swivel, when suddenly—
Everything froze.
A street vendor, mid-shout, his mouth locked in a perfect O around the word Essence, stopped dead. A sky-barge humming five feet above the cobbles hung suspended in the air, its momentum gone, its passengers frozen mid-laugh like flies in cooling amber.
Even the wind died. The constant hum of the city—the chatter, the engines, the distant thunder of the rune-trams—vanished into an absolute, suffocating silence so complete that Pryce could hear the blood moving inside his own ears.
His grip on Lulu tightened instinctively. His heart slammed against his ribs like it was trying to break out and run for cover.
Lulu had frozen too.
Her small body had gone completely rigid against his side, her one good eye still wide with the wonder of a second ago, now locked in place mid-blink. Her fingers, which had been clutching his hand, were motionless.
The small tremor of pain that had been running quietly through her was gone, replaced by a perfect, unnatural stillness. She wasn't breathing. She wasn't blinking. She was simply… paused, like everything else on the street.
"Lu…?" Pryce whispered, his voice obscenely loud in the dead silence.
Nothing. No twitch. No flicker. Not even the smallest answering pressure of her fingers in his.
A cold spike of fear shot through him, sharper than any rib he'd ever had broken and the moment he'd woken up in the rubble and seen the burns down her side.
For one ugly second the cocky mask slipped clean off his face and lay smoking on the cobblestones at his feet.
If this frozen bullshit had hurt her—if so much as a single hair on her grimy little head had been bent the wrong way by whatever cosmic prick had decided to play with the world's pause button—
Then the air in front of them rippled.