Zevander plucked a dark, red sphere that sat atop the pile, and deposited it into a satchel at his hip. Bloodstone. Derived from a form of demutomancy, the practice of altering blood–an outlawed magic that had cursed Zevander’s family for centuries. Had anyone known he possessed the forbidden power, he’d have been hunted down and brutally destroyed by the king’s Imperial Guard.
