The Devil’s Stone

Journal of the Arch — 17 June, Year of Our Source 2011

The Devil’s Stone

17th of June, the Year of Our Source 2011

Father came to me tonight in the flesh.

Not as that sweeping pressure across the Mantle or the whisper through stone — no. He walked into my chamber as though the darkness parted for him out of respect. There is something profoundly unsettling about seeing him take a shape, because he so rarely chooses to. Flesh is a courtesy he extends only when he intends the moment to be remembered.

He carried with him the weight of ages and a lesson carved out of history.

He spoke to me of Potency Stones, not as rumor, not as relic, but as fact.
He explained what the ancients discovered centuries ago: the small pink princess-cut diamonds scattered near their crypts after Embrace — fragments of power the newly risen shed unknowingly, still laden with his potency. Each one able to grant a single point of power per undead touch.

He made it clear that the only stable source for true Potency Stones is either:

1. The tomb of an Arch Vampire
2. An Arch Vampire themselves

And he said this not because many have died — but because there were never many of us to begin with. The supply was born scarce, ordained to be scarce, and remains scarce because the very nature of the Arch is rarity incarnate.

He spoke of the three known sizes — 1 carat, 5 carat, and the legendary 50-carat stones — and the catastrophic consequences suffered by the Arch who attempted to replicate them. Dust. Disappearance. Erasure. Whatever the truth behind that tale, the message is the same:

Potency is not a toy.

When he finished his accounting of their history, their dangers, their uses — I thought the lesson complete.

It was not.

He reached into his coat and withdrew a stone I had never seen before in my life, and hope never to see casually again:

A black Potency Stone.

Not pink. Not of the usual cut.
Black — like obsidian swallowing the light, with a pulse deep inside it like a heart still beating.

He pressed it into my hand.

Its weight was wrong for its size — heavier, denser, ancient in a way that made even the Mantle lean toward it. And when his fingers left mine, I felt it recognize me. As though it had been waiting.

He told me only what mattered:

“Fifty potency.”

A number few ever even hear spoken aloud, let alone hold in their palm.

These black stones exist solely because he wills them into being.
They cannot be found in tombs.
They cannot be bought.
They cannot be looted.
They cannot be forged.
They are gifts of the Source Himself, and they are always intentional.

I tucked it inside my coat, near the flask bound to my thigh.
It hummed against me the entire time.
A living power.
A responsibility.

A weapon, if I choose it to be.

He didn’t tell me why he gave it to me.
He never does.

But when Father arrives in person, bearing a relic made of his own potency, the world is about to shift. And he expects me to stand ready when it does.

— Zoe
Arch of the Harbingers of Blood
Daughter of the Source, like it or not