Ludwig exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "I'd like to," he admitted, "but I'm tapped out…"
Van Dijk arched a brow. "No mana, I would guess?"
"Yes," Ludwig replied.
Van Dijk took a moment to consider before speaking. "Do you even realize what you just did?"
"I tried to mimic your spell, I suppose I failed," Ludwig replied.
Van Dijk scoffed. "That much is obvious," he said bluntly. "In mimicking my spell, yes, you failed. But what you did wasn't a failure—it was something different"
With a casual flick of his wrist, Van Dijk snapped his fingers, summoning a swirl of deep, abyssal black flames that coiled around his palm. They burned without flickering, steady and unnatural, as if feeding off something more than just magic.
