It was a cool morn, the air heavy and damp. Thael stood alongside the other men and women, staring straight ahead, past the scowling man before him. The enveloping mist was as white as their hooded cloaks, pale as bone. The fog swirled over the gnarled branches which spiked overhead, the Murkwoods that separated the Elder Forest and the ritual grounds of the Wraiths' Order.

The man’s scowl deepened into a sneer. His hood did not cover his beaky face. He wore a dark cloak, the mark of a fully-fledged Wraith; trained since birth to do things that would make a man either pale, retch, piss, or all three, in fear. Thael had trained for but three years, and was just one step away from reaching Wraithhood.

“Just seventeen,” the man muttered, shaking his head in disgust. “Osbern best be right about you, boy.”

He waved over an the initiate who carried a box filled with shadow. The man clawed out a fist sized mass that wilted black in his grasp.

“What do you do?” the man asked flatly.

“I serve the Empire. I stand united. I die forgotten,” Thael replied, bowing his head, offering his hands out in service.

“So will you be free,” the man ended the rite.

He felt it slip into his fingers, something between air and liquid, darkness in supple form. Thael readied himself for the Bonding. The Wraith was a creature of the world beyond. The Ether to humans, the Spirit Realm to sylven, Voldunak to the dwarves. Another plane of existence known only amongst mankind to the Circle of Orders. What now joined with Thael would either be tamed or consume him.

The Wraith wrapped and twisted round his hands, strings of darkness that crawled past and into his skin. Thael bit down the urge to scream, for he saw the man grin with relish at his pain. He could feel the Wraith traveling up his arm, flowing through his blood. Thael’s eyes turned black as the creature melded within him, within his mind. Twisting visions echoed in his eyes, yet he still could see the man gesture for the longsword and stabbed into the ground, hands clasped over its hilt, eyes squinting upon Thael as a buzzard waiting for his death. He would kill him should Thael lose this duel of wills, should the Wraith possess him in both mind and body.

Thael stood painfully straight, teeth gritted as he resisted the Wraith’s possession. It screamed ragged in his being. He fell into a bottomless chasm, falling eternal whilst grappling for his soul. It was a creature that wanted to be free, to escape from the endless void it had spent eternity in. The Wraith wanted to take Thael and experience the light. It fed him soothing whispers as it strangled him into a door thought lost in its dormancy. The door opened, and the memory of sky blue eyes stared back at him before blood rained down to drown it all.

The Wraith screamed once more and tried to close the door, but Thael flung it open. The creature wailed and writhed for escape but he held it with his clawing consciousness. The Wraith begged for solace, for the end of all that Thael unleashed into its understanding. Pain. The very state of being. So bafflingly agonizing to the cold unfeeling darkness it had ever known. Its first experience with the world within would be its prison. It was now his. He told where it would stay and be bound forever.

Thael grinned with feral glee, his eyes clearing to their original umber hue. The man facing him frowned.

The hooded white cloak draped down his shoulders seeped black, stitching and threading into the cloth until its entire form was dark as the man’s own cloak. It was a richer shade of darkness however, seeming to suck in all faint light that managed to pierce through the veil of mist.

The man grunted with begrudging approval, hefting the longsword flat over one shoulder. “Welcome into the Order, Wraith.”

He walked over to face the next beside Thael awaiting the ritual.