Cabal’s study smelled like dried herbs, old leather, and formalin.
The fire in the hearth burned low, all orange coals and quiet crackle. Books lined the walls in perfect order—some bound in vellum, others wrapped in chain. It was the only room in his house untouched by ritual blood or dark magic. A pocket of precision in a world going to rot.
Kassadin stood at the desk, staring at the photos Cabal had laid out. The blood trail. The sigil. The mirror.
“She scratched it in herself. It wasn’t a message to anyone else. It was a warning.”
Cabal didn’t look up. He was flipping through the soulwork charts, frowning deeply. A half-drunk cup of espresso sat forgotten beside him.
“Or a confession.” Cabal murmured.
The necromancer set the page down.
“One implies guilt. The other implies loss of control.”
Kass exhaled sharply, starting to pace.
Cabal steepled his fingers, staring at the flickering candle between them.
“Her soul was returned intact by all appearances. No tear, no external anchor. But the damage may be internalized.”
“Meaning it’s not a case of what’s possessing her. It’s what she’s become.”
Kass turned, resting his knuckles on the edge of the desk.
“She’s can’t stand blood, Cabal. For a very long time now. Since we were kids. I saw her lose it in our 10th year when someone got a nosebleed in gym. She passed out cold.”
He pointed at the photos.
“And now she wakes up vomiting formaldehyde and crawling across a murder scene. Covered in someone else’s blood. Healing in real time while feeling every second of it. You think that’s just… re-entry trauma?”
“No. I think it’s worse.”
He rose and walked to a cabinet. Retrieved a thin vial and held it up to the light. Inside: a curled ribbon of soul residue suspended in liquid crystal.
“I took a sample from her body before she woke. Something clung to it. Not a parasite. Not an entity. A… duplicate thread. Like her essence was knitted twice.”
“ Perhaps. Perhaps an unraveling. Perhaps A fusion.”
Cabal returned to the desk, uncorked the vial. As the contents drifted into the air, they shimmered—and spoke.
A laugh. Lilting. Feminine. Kat’s voice—but too smooth. Too perfect. Echoed with heat.
“It’s a piece of her now. What came back… came back threaded.”
Cabal looked him in the eye.
“Hell? Another being? Another version of her from another plane of existence. The possibilities are numerous.”
Another silence. Not tense now—dreadful.
“ Not exactly . It is her head. The trauma’s real. The magic is real. But the boundary’s blurred. What she fears? She’s living through it. Over and over. A walking phobia. Her own worst nightmare turned inward.”
“Infernal regeneration. Agonizingly fast. She’ll survive wounds that should kill her, but she’ll feel every moment of recovery. And with her sensitivity to blood…”
“It’s torture.” Kass whispered.
“She’ll vomit every time. Panic. Break. And then do it all again.”
Cabal stared at the flame again.
“You don’t fix what Mephistopheles reshapes. You adapt. Or it destroys you.”
“We won’t let it destroy her.”
“Then you had better start treating her like two people,” Cabal said flatly. “Because one of them is already learning how to lie to you.”
The fire had burned lower.
Only embers remained now, casting long, spidery shadows across the spines of Cabal’s library.
The echo of Cabals words still rang in Kassadins skull.
Behind him, Johannes Cabal moved with quiet precision—placing the vial back into its protective casing, sealing it with a runic lock, returning it to the case beside the necromantic archive.
Only when the click echoed shut did Cabal speak again.
“You said nothing could fix it.”
“I said we cannot undo what Mephistopheles remade. But Katherine’s contract binds her soul to him. Not her body. Not her mind.”
Cabal returned to the desk, opening an old, thick volume—hand-bound, its pages a parchment so old they looked brittle with age.
“If we can isolate her soul’s nomen, the essential arcane signature tied to her identity, there is a theoretical path forward.”
“Souls are threads. Everything a person is—from memory to magic—spins out from a single strand of true name. It is how demons track their contracts. How they bind and twist identities.” He paused, flipping carefully through the book. “If the name is changed… the contract may become unstable. Or invalidated.”
“You want to rename Katherine’s soul?”
“In theory, it could sever the arcane link. Loosen Mephistopheles’ hold. Possibly even restore her true self—untangle what has been woven into her.” He closed the book with a soft thud. “But I stress: this is untested magic. Even in theory, it’s volatile.”
Kassadin paced. The idea was mad. Reckless. Dangerous.
“We’d need to study soulwork texts,” Cabal said. “Not just necromancy. Namecraft. Ancient rites. Most of what we know comes from the Sybilline Orders, or deeper fae traditions—those who treat names as living things.”
“You’ll need druids. Dreamwalkers. Linguists. Scholars mad enough to believe a soul can be rewritten.”
“And what about Mephistopheles?”
“If the soul breaks free, he’ll feel it. He’ll fight it. Possibly… retaliate.”
Kassadin’s voice turned hard.
Cabal studied him a moment.
“You understand this won’t just change Katherine’s bond with him. It could change her. Her memories. Her magic. Her mind. This is not restoration. It is transfiguration.”
“If it gives her a chance to stop waking up screaming—if it quiets the voice in her head—then I don’t care what it costs.”
Another silence. A rare one where Cabal didn’t fill the air with technical precision.
Instead, he simply nodded.
“Then we begin at first light. I have a few texts… and I know where the rest are buried.”
Kass’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“Is this something that can break my contract too?”
Cabal looked down at the closed book beneath his hand.
His voice softened—rare for him.
“Then Katherine and Kassadin Bishop are already gone.”
Then Kassadin’s voice, quiet but firm, cut through the space between them.
Kass stood still, gaze locked on the fire. But his voice carried now, full of quiet weight.
“After our father did what he did to our mother—we agreed to abandon his name. Katherine and Kassadin Bishop are dead.”
His eyes turned to Cabal, unwavering.
“We only go by our mother’s name now.”
And then—he nodded. Just once.
The fire flared quietly in the hearth, casting fresh shadows across the shelves.
And for the first time since the resurrection, Kassadin allowed himself to believe there might still be something left to save.
