A Light in the Flame

In Chapter 37, as Sera reflects on her killing and subsequent resurrection of Thad, she is wracked by a deep grief. She begins to cry tears of blood, just as the legends say Primals do in their utmost sorrow. Weeping tears of blood symbolizes the extreme of the Primal’s despair, so profound that it extracts their life force from them. This moment in Sera’s chambers underscores the importance of blood as a symbol in the text. Representing life, empathy, and divinity, blood is an immensely powerful entity in the universe of the novel. A mortal begins to change after imbibing a single drop from the blood of a god or a Primal. The process of Ascending a godling—a mortal marked for godhood—involves a Primal draining them of all but one drop of their blood and reviving them with Primal blood. If too much blood is lost, such as in the case when Veses indiscriminately feeds on Nyktos, the Primal grows weak and cold.

Since blood is not just a physical substance but a divine essence in the book, there are extremely important rules around the process of feeding. Primals, gods, and other supernatural creatures have fangs that enable them to puncture the skin of mortals to feed from them; however, rightfully, the utmost caution must be exercised in the process.