#pawns

Un Manipulador = a manipulator

Tu eres = you are

Un peón = a pawn

Mate.

moodboard for a new dark!pitt fic dropping soon on ao3 - "pawns"

And I became... desperate.

I know you don't. Leave me.

Viren uses dark magic to save his son, hence the Avizandum stone/reaching parallel, and ends up saving Katolis but playing into Aaravos' clutches (being killed and unable to sway Claudia away from the Startouch elf).

For Claudia, her sun staff represents dark magic. Her inability or refusal to let it go as a (literal) crutch and worldview, as well as its synonymity with her family ("You taught me how to do magic, how to love my family") is what causes her to fall into Aaravos' crutches.

We could even argue Callum's loop with the cube is closed in S7 through this lens. We know since S4 that dark magic use allows Aaravos to control people, both literally (possession) and emotionally (manipulation). In S7, the cube takes a similar symbolic place for Callum as the staff does for Claudia: it represents an option of doing dark magic, and doing it out of love.

In this way, the cube is probably the most straightforward. Much like how dark magic creates a pathway to Aaravos, the cube creates a map and is pulling him towards Elarion (which presumably has an object related to Aaravos: the Book of destiny primal magic). And, like Viren and Claudia, by the end of Arc 2, Callum has played into Aaravos' hands, letting himself be recorrupted and inadvertently allowing Ezran to be further manipulated ("If I can't do anything to help, Callum will do something terrible" etc etc).

Which, considering Callum hasn't canonically found the thing at the end of the line for the cube yet, I don't think that part of his dynamic with Aaravos is a closed loop yet, but.