Revision 6

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 three categories:

Known Hexes

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.

Feral Mind

An offensive hex that forces enemies to attack their own allies. This is crowd control through confusion. Turn a group of enemies against each other while Coen deals with individual targets. The spell was revealed during the June 2025 gameplay deep dive.

Compel Soul

An investigative hex that lets Coen speak to certain corpses and squeeze secrets from the dead. Not every corpse can be questioned. Valid targets are marked by moths gathering above the body. The hex functions like a detective tool, uncovering details about murders, hidden locations, and character backstories through interrogation of the deceased. It can open up entirely new quest branches and reveal paths that would otherwise stay hidden.

Artery Attack

An execution move that decapitates the final enemy in an encounter. Unlike the other hexes, this is a finisher rather than a mid-combat ability. It consumes activation charges and is a punctuation mark to particularly well-fought battles.

Learning New Spells

New hexes are not unlocked through leveling alone. Players must find ancient magical scrolls scattered throughout the world and then invest skill points to learn the spells. This ties spell acquisition to exploration. The best hexes are hidden in the world rather than handed out at predetermined level thresholds.

How Hexes Are Powered

Hexes consume activation charges, built up by landing successful attacks, blocks, and parries during combat. This creates a gameplay loop: fight well with your sword, earn charges, spend charges on hexes or execution moves. Players start with three ability slots, expandable through progression. You cannot spam hexes without engaging in melee first.

Hex magic vs. vampiric powers

The two systems do not overlap. Hex magic works during the day. Vampiric Powers (Shadowstep, Plane Shift, Voracious Bite) take over at night when the rune scars seal. The Shared skill tree bridges the gap, but the core abilities are locked to the time of day. This means players need to think about when to tackle specific challenges, since their entire toolset rotates every sunrise and sunset.