For a half-second after Sam spoke the name, nothing happened except a white-hot pain lancing through her palm where the pendant’s chain bit deep. The air in the chamber seemed to compress, then invert, and runes on the walls burst into frenzied light—blue at first, then flickering through the color spectrum like a glitching monitor. Every torch guttered in sympathy, wind howling around the stone and then dying out as if the house itself held its breath.
The world narrowed to the point of a pin. Sam didn’t realize she was screaming until her throat went raw and she tasted blood at the back of her tongue.
Something tugged her from her body—hard, insistent. The basement, the circle, even the mass of writhing darkness at the center, all faded out in a shudder. Her skin fizzed with static as she was yanked sideways through memory and bloodline, all the way back to the same cold stone vault, but a hundred and fifty years earlier.
The air was filled with the stink of oil lamps and something sweet and rotten beneath it. Sam looked down at her hands and saw a child’s fingers, thin and trembling, blue veins like pencil lines under the skin.
A man stood in the center of the floor, sleeves rolled to the elbows, face smeared with sweat and blood and desperate hope. Emil Ravencrest. The resemblance to the old photographs was uncanny, but in life he was a force of nature, voice a gunshot through the thick, churning dark that battered the brass circle at his feet.
At his side, Lilly Ravencrest—her namesake, her ancestor—clutched two children, a boy and a girl, to her dress, both so pale they looked nearly transparent. The girl’s hair was wild and curly, the boy’s slicked to his scalp with sweat and tears.
The binding stones, set in their sockets, glowed with a faint sickly blue, but cracks splintered every surface. Some were shattered completely, the chalk lines and iron filings at their bases scattered and useless.
Emil chanted in a language Sam’s borrowed brain recognized but could never hope to repeat. Each word landed with the force of a hammer on an anvil, sending up sparks of blue fire that traced the sigils in midair before guttering out.
Sam could see it: the thing they faced. Nyxalloth, raw and unbound, a nightmare of black smoke and hungry red eyes. It clawed at the edges of the circle, oozing through any gap in the pattern, reaching for the family with a hundred mouths and hands that looked almost human.
Sam felt herself clutching at the edge of Lilly’s skirt, a child again, as the thing shrieked and hammered at the barrier.
Emil’s voice never faltered. “We must hold! Lilly, the counterspell!”
Lilly tried—her voice thin and brittle as glass—but the entity’s howling drowned her out. One of the broken stones exploded, showering the room with razor-edged fragments. Nyxalloth surged forward, shadow fingers curling around Lilly’s ankle, her dress, her throat.
Sam watched, powerless, as Lilly fought free for a moment—then a shadow-tendril stabbed through her chest, and she collapsed without a sound. The children shrieked, their cries echoing through Sam’s borrowed skull.
Emil froze, staring at his wife’s body in shock. He knelt, gathering her in his arms, and for a long, gut-wrenching moment, the world paused. Sam felt the devastation, the guilt, the cold resolve crystallizing in Emil’s chest.
He stood. His face was hollowed out, all the fear and warmth sucked away, leaving only focus. He turned to the children and, with hands that barely shook, pulled them in close.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he drew a razor from his pocket and cut a line across his own palm, then across each of the children’s. The blood welled up bright and urgent, pooling in the shallow runes at their feet.
Sam wanted to scream, to run, to do anything but stand there and watch—but the ritual was set, the circle complete. Emil grabbed both children’s hands in his, mixing their blood, then slammed his palm onto the brass inlay.
He spoke the words again, but this time they were different. A new power, awful and final, poured through the chamber. The runes on the walls ignited, burning hot enough to sear flesh and bone. Nyxalloth howled in agony, its form shrinking, withering, drawn in by the sudden magnetic pull of the circle.
The pain was indescribable. Sam felt it in every atom, every scrap of borrowed flesh. She watched as the thing was crammed, inch by inch, back into the wall—its claws and mouths leaving streaks of blood and bile on the stone, its eyes never leaving hers.
Emil collapsed, dragging the children with him, both of them limp and barely conscious. The last thing Sam saw before the vision shuddered and collapsed was Emil dragging himself up, spitting blood onto the stone, and whispered to his children or maybe even to the world, “Please forgive me”.
The world snapped back.
Sam hit the ground in the present with enough force to send her sprawling, the air in the chamber gone thin as an airplane cabin. Her vision swam, spots and zigzagging lines blotting out everything but the sound of her own breathing. The runes on the wall still pulsed, each flicker matched to her heartbeat, each throb a little weaker than the last.
The pain in her hand was real—she looked down and saw the Ravencrest Heart had burned a perfect spiral into the skin of her palm. Sweat dripped from her brow, stinging her eyes. She sucked in a breath and realized she was crying, not with fear or grief but with pure, animal exhaustion.
A voice—Tyrone’s, close and rough, like sandpaper—cut through the fog. “Sam! Are you with me?”
She forced her eyes open, blinking away tears. Tyrone knelt beside her, one hand on her shoulder, the other clutching the ASP baton. His face was smeared with blood from a cut above his eyebrow, but his focus was absolute, all cop now, no room for doubt.
“You blacked out,” he said. “The whole room went dead for a second. Then you started screaming. I thought you—”
Sam managed a shaky laugh. “I’m not dead. Just got a fast-forward tour of family trauma.”
Tyrone grunted. “Lucky you.”
The pendant at her chest was still molten-hot, but it felt different now—like it had burned off the last layer of fear and left only determination. She remembered every detail of the vision: Emil’s face, the horror of the blood binding, the cost.
She looked up, searching for Lilly. Her sister was still suspended, barely, in the thinning grip of the shadow, her face twisted in silent agony.
Sam understood. The circle couldn’t hold with just one. It never could.
Her hands shook as she pushed herself upright. “Ty,” she said, voice raw, “if I do this alone, it’ll kill me.”
He nodded, already knowing what she meant. “Then we don’t do it alone.”
The next wave of cultists and possessed townsfolk were gathering at the edge of the circle. The chanting was back, louder than before, the words all sharp angles and hate. Angelica and Patricia loomed at the head of the pack, both in full ceremonial regalia, masks of painted bone and sashes slick with something that looked like blood.
Sam wiped her face, grit in her eyes, the taste of iron on her tongue.
She let the pain in her hand and the memory of Emil’s sacrifice guide her. “I know what to do,” she said. “But we need to buy time.”
Tyrone grinned, a flash of white teeth. “Time’s my specialty.”
She almost laughed, but the humor burned away in a second as the cultists rushed the circle. The final act was coming. Sam could feel it in every cell, the knowledge thrumming in her bones.
She took one last breath, locked eyes with her sister, and started the incantation.
The assault came all at once, like a storm front crossing a field. The possessed townsfolk hit the edge of the ritual circle and broke against it, half of them writhing in place as if they’d slammed into an electric fence, the other half pouring around it with animal single-mindedness. Their faces were blank masks, eyes rolled back, but every muscle in their bodies was strung tight as piano wire.
Patricia led the charge, arms outstretched, the obsidian dagger gleaming in her hand like the promise of a bad end. Angelica was right behind, the ceremonial robe streaming out behind her, mouth twisted into a grin of joy and hatred.
Tyrone stepped forward without hesitation. He swung the ASP baton in a two-handed grip, catching the first cultist in the ribs with a sickening crack. The man folded, air whooping out of his lungs, but another took his place instantly, fingers clawing for Tyrone’s throat.
“Stay back!” Tyrone barked at the line of glassy-eyed townsfolk. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to!”
He fired a warning shot into the stone, the report echoing off the ceiling. Two townsfolk flinched but then, almost mechanically, resumed their shamble forward, arms wide as if ready to pull him down by sheer mass.
Sam barely registered the chaos. Her focus was fixed on the Codex, the ancient text alive in her mind like a fever. She racked her memory, searching for the spell she knew Emil was planning on using on the entity after he summoned it but was never able to. It was all about the draining, the siphoning—bleed the entity of power, then bind what was left.
She found the page, nearly blank but for a single line in a script that made her eyes hurt to read. She started the incantation, voice trembling.
“Ex anima, ex sanguine, ex umbra. I call the shadow by its hunger…”
At the words, the pendant at her chest blazed to life, searing heat through her sternum and ribs. She bit back a cry and kept chanting, forcing each syllable out through chattering teeth.
A figure broke free from the mob and came straight for her. Tyrone caught it just before it reached the circle, slamming the baton down on the attacker’s hand. Bones snapped, and the figure—one of the town’s teachers, Sam realized in horror—collapsed, still reaching for her even as she writhed in pain.
Patricia shouted from the rear of the crowd, her voice rising over the chanting and the cries. “The sisters’ blood will free our master! The cycle ends tonight!”
She raised the dagger high and surged forward, pressing into the circle’s boundary with a look of absolute conviction. The ward flared, blue fire licking along the chalk and iron, but Patricia didn’t slow.
Angelica, meanwhile, turned her attention to Tyrone. She bared her teeth and lunged with impossible speed, hands curled like talons. Tyrone shot her, point-blank, in the shoulder. The bullet hit with a wet thud and spun her sideways, the robe blooming red at the wound. She landed hard, but her face didn’t even register pain. She simply got up, slower but relentless.
Sam’s head swam with power, every word of the incantation a blowtorch on her mind. She could feel Nyxalloth inside the circle, the entity’s agony like a screech of nails on glass. Its body twisted and lashed, every mouth on its surface gnashing in unison, every eye wide with panic.
The more Sam chanted, the brighter the runes burned, until the whole chamber was awash in a frigid blue glare. The air filled with the smell of ozone and singed hair, and the voices in her head multiplied—some whispering, some shrieking, some begging her to stop.
Lilly, still caught in the thinning shadow-cocoon, began to struggle. Her hands clawed at the darkness, nails biting deep and pulling away strings of greasy smoke. Her face was contorted with effort, lips moving in a frantic, silent plea.
Sam’s throat was raw now. She could barely hear her own voice over the riot in her ears, but she knew she had to keep going. She gripped the pendant with both hands, feeling the metal bite deep, and wrenched the next lines from her chest:
“By the name of my blood, I take from you. I claim your power. You are the servant, I am the master—”
Nyxalloth screamed. The sound was everywhere at once, rattling the stones and bringing every cultist and townsperson to their knees, hands clasped to their ears in agony.
Patricia, still standing at the edge of the circle, fought her way through the sound. “You can’t! You’re not enough!” she howled. “It will burn you out! Your family is weak! You are—”
Sam finished the incantation, voice clear and final. “Ravencrest. I am the last and I am enough.”
The pendant exploded with light, and Nyxalloth convulsed, black smoke pouring off its body in wild, spitting streams. Some of the eyes on its surface glazed over and popped like soap bubbles, the mouths stretching in a desperate howl.
Many tendrils of the black smoke that peeled off from Nyxalloth rushed toward Sam and started to circle her like a tornado, then quickly surged towards Sam’s mouth and nose. They rushed into her and filled her with power. Sam tasted cold ash and hot embers, felt the power surge through her like a bolt of lightning. She then stood, fully anew, completely healed and rested. Her eyes glowed blue, the same color as the runes.
Lilly’s cocoon split down the center, and she tumbled free, landing hard on the flagstones. She coughed, eyes wild, then pushed herself up on trembling arms.
Sam faltered, the sudden silence in the room more violent than the chaos. Her vision shrank to a tunnel, and all she could see was her sister, alive and whole. Patricia screamed and charged toward Sam with the obsidian dagger raised, ready to plunge it into Sam’s chest. Sam could feel Patricia moving quickly towards her more than she saw her. Sam raised her hand like a stop sign.
“Enough,” she said.
Patricia was hit by an invisible wall, bounced back, and collapsed to the ground, the dagger spinning from her hand.
Angelica crawled toward the stairs, trailing blood. The remaining townsfolk slumped to the floor, blank and gasping, the connection to the entity severed.
Sam stood up, the Codex falling from her hands and skittering across the floor. Her mouth tasted like ash, her eyes felt like fire, but the pressure in her skull was gone. She could hear her own heart again, pounding and erratic.
She walked to Lilly, who was shaking but alive, and wrapped both arms around her, pulling her close.
“We’re okay,” Sam whispered. “We’re okay, I promise.”
She didn’t know if it was true, but for now, it was enough. The light in the chamber faded, the runes dulling to a gentle, almost friendly blue.
Nyxalloth, with some of its power drained, a mass of black tentacles, eyes, and mouths, swelled its form trying to encompass the whole ritual circle. It was still alive and Sam could feel it still wanted their blood. Sam quickly got Lilly on her feet and they moved back to where she originally was, next to the Codex and a battered Tyrone.
“What happened to your eyes”, Lilly asked. Sam just smiled and picked up the codex. She could feel a newfound connection between the codex and her, almost like it was an extension of her being.
“Now we need to finish this”, Sam barely whispered, knowing what had to come next.