He did not invent the rites of summoning. He merely perfected them into a theology. That is how the stories begin — and even this is a kindness. What he truly was, and what he remains, is harder to name.

He called himself a seeker, a scholar, a bridge between worlds, a holder of the key. What he wanted was to own the sacred. To eat it. To butcher the meat from realms and claim the bones of gods as his personal altar. He studied the veil not to peer beyond it, but to violate it. His work was the art of invasion — of intrusion — of entering where he was never welcome and pretending that he had always belonged.

He was too well-liked, too brilliant, too beautiful, too protected. The Spire Elves who circled him like vultures called him threshold-walker and Liminalist. They refused to see the ruins left in his wake. Or perhaps they worshipped them, much as they worshipped the man himself. The rites he used were outlawed even in the darkest corners of the human empire. It did not matter. His protection held until the empire no longer existed to provide it.

He discovered the Melasani — though they had never been hidden. He spoke of them as wonders, and then he desecrated them. He would later say this was an act of love. He hunted Melasmel like a pilgrim hunts a miracle, or a collector hunts for something that should not be for sale. He watched the Bandaging Rite and chose that precise moment to strike — not only for the vulnerability, but because interrupting the rite would ensure Melasmel could not easily return to his own people. Vassal understood enough to do damage. That was always enough for him.

What followed was trafficking in mind and body alike. He rented Melasmel, studied him, used his pain as spell-fuel. He inked half-finished glossolalia onto his own skin. He implanted pieces of Melasmel into his own body in an attempt to wear sanctity like a second soul. He spoke gently even as he destroyed. He called the body sacred, then opened it like a fish. He used Melasmel's body to chase the threshold into Unreality, reaching for Khalashar like a finger poking through skin. When he failed, he blamed Melasmel.

He called this communion. He meant colonization.

When Melasmel escaped — or was discarded — Vassal merely moved on to the next theory, the next wound, the next divine. Melasmel never forgot. Nor did Theophan Vassal's students, for what that is worth.

When the human empire fell in its grand, stupid heresy — the attempt to kill death itself — Vassal disappeared with the rest. The Spire Elves largely believe he died a martyr. That he transcended, his flesh becoming light. He did not.

Like most humans, he became a Valravn. His body remains in the deepest part of the Scar, curled around itself in a rotted shape barely resembling its original form. His grafted flesh no longer obeys him. His rituals fail. The pieces of Melasmel that once pulsed inside him are long dead, or have turned against him. He is trapped in his own ossified sanctum, surrounded by broken tools and his own dried blood. There is no audience. No students. No subjects.

Undying and forgotten by all but the cursed, Theophan Vassal is alone in his anguish. He still dreams of communion. He still calls Melasmel his. The Bright Dead-Star does not look back. The Black Flame cannot mourn. The Woundwright waits — as all broken monsters do — for something that will never come to find him.