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Grandfather by Grady Frederick

Fire is a primitive thing. The application of heat to a combustible substance, until the flash point is reached and a self perpetuating cycle begins. A fire, if hot enough, burns and burns and burns until nothing is left but ash. Still, it is a primitive thing. Man has always been searching for new fuel, advanced and modern and sophisticated, to burn with the same primitive fire. What if man made his own fire instead?

Let's get a few disclaimers out of the way...

• If your character is corrupted, they are going to permanently die. It is a matter of when, not if.
• The only way to stave off Corruption is to corrupt more things. You can doom others not to save yourself, but to prolong your existence.
• Being corrupted erodes what the character is. Try hard to resist it, and it devours your willpower first. Give into it with debaucherous glee, and find all pleasure stripped away.

How is Corruption spread? Something which has merely been corrupted is unable to spread its infection natively. It must find the shard of pure Corruption that infected it, and then use that shard to infect others.

Pure Corruption is, obviously, extremely dangerous. Attempts to handle it magically infect the handler. Attempts to handle it with tools infect the tools. This effect can be slowed with the proper tools and it is possible to safely contain a shard of pure Corruption, but should the containment ever waver, its spread is immediate and dangerous. To destroy pure Corruption, everything which has ever been infected by that particular shard must be destroyed first. Which is to say, must be allowed to run its course. 

Corruption In Mortals
Corruption spreads slowly through the physical, and like wildfire through the metaphysical. A mortal's mind is gone long before their body. While corrupted, a mortal is many times more powerful than they would be otherwise. A human who could lift 100kg can lift 300kg, a journeyman mage is now stronger than a master, and the more they draw on Corruption's power the faster they burn out.

This isn't always to their advantage. Corruption doesn't make a person any more durable than they would be otherwise. Were they to punch someone with enhanced strength like this, their hand would shatter just as well as whatever they hit.

The damage that Corruption does is visible. It's like the person is disintegrating, as parts of their body slough off into a substance first sticky and bubbling, and then solidifying into a spongy mess. Their eyes glow. Their appearance changes.

Harnessing Corruption
When Corruption combusts something, be that the soul of a mortal or something as mundane as a block of wood, it produces a great deal of energy. This energy is pure, and with the right knowledge and skill, may be converted into any other kind of energy as part of a spell. This is functionally the same principle as siphoning energy from a leyline, but more accessible and differently dangerous.

Assuming the shard of Corruption is contained within something that corrupts exceedingly slowly and is slowly fed energy from a more easily combustible source, this is a means of achieving abundant magical energy. Enough to accomplish tremendous things. At a small risk of permanent death and corruption, but a small risk.

The more intrinsically powerful the thing being corrupted, the more power that is produced. A literal block of wood will produce much more energy than just burning it would, whereas something like the soul of a mortal would produce the kind of energy to rival the power of the divine if that soul is burned all at once instead of slowly over time.