Seated in the audience below, Quinn Thorne felt his pulse quicken, but not because of the legends surrounding the dagger or the dramatic tale the auctioneer had just spun. What truly stunned him was what his clairvoyant sight revealed: the interior of that bloodstone dagger was saturated with ambient ethereal essence, dense and shimmering in a way he had rarely encountered.
More than that, he could clearly perceive the blade drawing in the faint traces of ambient ethereal essence drifting through the auction hall, pulling them inward like a living thing feeding on the energy around it. The process was slow, almost imperceptible to anyone without his particular gift, but unmistakable to him.
When his gaze settled on the strange symbols etched across the dagger's surface, his heart began t
