How Hex Magic Works
Hex magic is Coen's primary supernatural tool during the day. To use magic in this world, a practitioner needs a gate to let it flow. That gate is carved runes. Coen's left arm bears rune scars, inscriptions carved into his flesh that make him a living conduit for supernatural energy.
The magic is described as grounded and ritualistic, tied to blood, heat, and pulsing air rather than flashy fantasy effects. Hexes are only available during daylight hours. At night, Coen's vampiric regeneration kicks in and his rune scars seal over, rendering hex magic inert. This is the biological reason for the day/night ability split. His vampire nature actively heals the very wounds that channel his human magic.
Spell Categories
Hex magic divides into categories:
Category | Effect |
|---|---|
Offensive | Direct damage and combat control hexes such as Burning Blood and Ravenous Flock |
Defensive | Protective abilities such as Life Lock, which blocks incoming damage and reflects it back |
Investigative | Information-gathering spells like Compel Soul |
Utility / Traversal | Movement and field hexes like Mercurial Fervour |
Known Hexes
Post-launch coverage of the shipped game counts ten Witchcraft abilities. No official roster has been published, but databases compiled from the game's own text list the same ten, so the count is well supported. Four of the ten are taught to Coen by Anca towards the end of the prologue. The other six are locked behind manuals that have to be found or bought before they can be learned and levelled.
Hex | How It Is Unlocked | Effect |
|---|---|---|
Compel Soul | Taught by Anca at the end of the prologue | Lets Coen speak with the dead. An investigation tool rather than a combat one. |
Astral Communion | Taught by Anca at the end of the prologue | Activates dormant magic at places of power. Each exorcised place permanently improves Witchcraft ability damage. |
Burning Blood | Taught by Anca at the end of the prologue; further manuals are scattered across the valley | Deals damage over time to a single target. |
Mercurial Fervour | Taught by Anca at the end of the prologue; a second manual sits in the convent library at St. Tyna’s Grove | Grants haste while exploring by briefly slowing the world around Coen. |
Ravenous Flock | Manual, from either of two quests in the A Pilgrimage for Power series | Area attack that stuns a target with a flock of crows. Attacking the target triggers further area attacks. |
Cycle of Ruin | Manual, from the Ancient Circle at the west end of the Cursed Chasm, among other places | Extends the duration of active Witchcraft abilities with every landed attack, block and Perfect Block. |
Soul Reaping | Manual, from the Ancient Circle east of Maragir, among other places | Drains health from the target over time and keeps it at a distance. |
Unholy Vitality | Manual, from the Haunted: Site of Crucifixion in the southern Maragir Wealds, among other places | Regenerates health after an ability is used. |
Soul Stigma | Manual, from the Ancient Circle in northeast St. Tyna’s Grove, among other places | Raises critical chance and critical damage against the marked target. |
Life Lock | Unlocked automatically during the Manumit questline | Blocks incoming damage and reflects it back at the attacker. |
Compel Soul
An investigative hex that lets Coen speak with the dead. Useful for unraveling mysteries, gathering information about NPCs no longer alive, or learning details about past events. It is a quest-and-exploration tool more than a combat tool, and it ties into the game's investigation systems alongside the new focus mode detective vision.
Burning Blood
An offensive hex that boils the blood of enemies and burns their skin, dealing physical damage over time. The name is literal. Coen heats the target's blood until it starts to cook them from the inside. It is one of the first hexes shown in gameplay demos.
Mercurial Fervour
Mercurial Fervour grants faster overland movement during the day. Double-tap Sprint to use Haste. Wolf transformation provides faster movement at night, and unlocked blue shrine icons in the Map menu provide fast travel.
Ravenous Flock
An area attack that stuns a target with a flock of crows, with follow-up area hits triggered by attacking that target. Before launch this ability was filed with the night-side vampire abilities, on the strength of a dev-stream clip that showed it among a run of combat moves without naming a tree. Coverage of the shipped game places it first among the six manual-locked Witchcraft hexes, with its own manual locations and vendors, which is the stronger evidence of the two. The dev-stream appearance is real and is not in dispute; only the tree it was filed under has changed.
Compel Soul is confirmed by its own achievement, awarded for speaking with a dead person using it. That places it firmly in the investigative half of the toolkit rather than the combat half, and confirms the dead are a usable source of information rather than set dressing.
Where Manuals Come From
The six manual-locked hexes are gated by a physical book rather than by perk points. Manuals turn up as rewards for Ancient Circles, Haunted Sites and the quests of the A Pilgrimage for Power series, and loose copies sit in bookcases around the valley. Duplicate manuals are not wasted: a second copy raises the level of an ability Coen already knows.
Merchant | Where To Find Them |
|---|---|
Becomes a vendor at the Crossroads Inn in St. Tyna’s Grove once Echoes of Silenced Bells is done. | |
Vera | East of the swamp in the Briar Sloughs, southeast of Mert’s Mill. |
Peddler of Wonders | |
Mevasser | Lives in Neustadt in Svartrau and is not marked on the map. |
Uriash Matriarch | Reached through Lacra’s Song of the Mountain quest. |
Sanzhana merchant | Opened up by completing Good Home north of Svartrau, then helping the Sanzhana through Letters to Lunka until Pearly and Precious is finished. |
Names Outside the Counted Roster
Two hex names this page has carried since before release do not appear among the ten Witchcraft abilities counted in the shipped game. One of them has since been placed: Acrid Dust was never a hex. The other, Feral Mind, is still unaccounted for, and it is kept here with its provenance rather than dropped.
Feral Mind
Named directly as a spell in the publisher's own community bulletin question-and-answer, which describes it as prompting an enemy to start attacking random targets including their own allies, and shown under hex magic in the June 2025 gameplay deep dive with the same effect. Both of those are dated first-party attestations, so the name and the effect are not in doubt. Feral Mind does not appear under that name in the shipped Witchcraft roster as of September 2026, and no account of the shipped game says whether it was cut, renamed or moved, so the hex classification in particular should not be relied on.
Acrid Dust
Acrid Dust, the dust-throwing stun shown in the June 2025 gameplay reveal, is a Swordmastery technique rather than a hex: Coen throws dust into an enemy's eyes to stun it. Guides to the shipped game list this stun as Dirty Trick, which stuns and damages a target and leaves it open to active abilities. Its manuals are sold by Swordmastery teachers, and it belongs in the Swordmastery roster rather than here. Acrid Dust is best read as the stun's earlier name.
Activation Charges
Hex magic uses Activation Charges rather than mana. Attacks and successful blocks replenish charges, and passive restoration, equipment, perks and consumables provide further support. These charges are shared with active abilities from the other trees. Defensive timing helps replenish them, while a build can also improve recovery through other means.
Charges are shared across the ability bar, which means a hex slot competes with execution moves like Artery Strike for the same charge budget. Each tree has its own ability-slot limit, expandable through skill tree progression. The intended loop is fight well, charge up, dump a hex at the right moment, charge again.
Day Versus Night
Hex magic is one half of Coen's Dawnwalker toolkit. At sunrise the rune scars on his arm open and the hexes become available; at sunset they seal and the vampiric powers toolkit takes over. Mercurial Fervour belongs strictly to the day side. Players who push to do the bulk of a quest at night will lose access to the hex layer for the duration; players who push the day-only route lose access to Shadowstep, Planeshift, and the vampire combat layer for the duration.
The skill tree splits along this same line: Witchcraft deepens hex magic, Swordmastery deepens sword combat, Vampirism deepens claw combat and supernatural mobility, and a band of generic perks spanning all three contains passives that work in both forms.
Named Witchcraft Perks
Perks on the witchcraft side of progression are bought with skill points and time at a road shrine, once the matching manual has been found or purchased. Several are confirmed by name.
Perk | Notes |
|---|---|
Frugal Witchcraft | Restores health after an enemy affected by Witchcraft dies, based on the health spent casting. Its ranks restore 40%, 80% and 120% of that health cost. |
Forbidden Sigils | Opens an additional ability slot on the witchcraft side. |
Amalgam | Lets more than one consumable buff stay active at the same time. |
Runic Bulwark | A Perfect Block has a 15% chance to apply a random hex to the opponent. Requires 35 skill points invested in Witchcraft; buying the chosen Ultimate Perk costs 4 skill points and 2 time segments. Only one ultimate can be chosen in the tree. |
Entwined Torment | The first Witchcraft ability used in a combat targets two enemies. |
Aether Cascade | Each Witchcraft ability used adds 20% Witchcraft ability damage, up to 100%. The bonus resets after combat. |
Font of Life | Granted by choosing to drink from the Font of Life in Anca's quest Stronger Than Achilles rather than bought with a manual. The game's own text describes it as passive health regeneration in human form. |
Perks and active abilities are separate layers of the same tree. Mercurial Fervour and Life Lock were once listed here as perks; both are active Witchcraft abilities and belong to the roster above. Perks are the passive and slot-level upgrades that sit around them.
Perks carry a timing label of Daytime, Nighttime or Anytime. See Ultimate Perks for the full set of nine.
Building around hexes
For a practical setup, see Witchcraft Build. It covers charge generation, the progression from early hexes to sustained combinations and the choice between Font of Life regeneration and Ancient Greaves.