PROLOGUE
The room smelled like blood and burnt incense.
Six people stood around the circle in silence while black candles dripped wax onto the stone floor. Ancient symbols covered every inch of the walls. They had been carved deep into the stone, surviving centuries of decay.
Nobody dared to move or breathe too loudly.
A man in dark robes tightened his grip on the knife in his hand. A bead of sweat slid down his cheek despite the freezing air.
“Read it again,” someone whispered.
“We already did.”
“Do it again.”
The woman near the altar opened the book with shaking hands. The pages were charred around the edges. Thin trails of smoke curled into the darkness above.
She swallowed and began to read. The words sounded rough and unfamiliar at first. As she continued, they twisted in her mouth as though human tongues were never meant to speak them. Around the altar, the candle flames bent sideways as if caught in a powerful wind and someone near the back of the room broke into a coughing fit.
One of the younger cult members kept glancing toward the exit. “Are we sure this is a good idea?”
Nobody answered him.
The chanting dragged on, each word scraping against the chamber walls. Dark red light seeped through the symbolscarved into the floor. A deep vibration shuddered through the chamber. The stone beneath them shifted hard enough that a few cult members nearly lost their balance.
The youngest member stumbled backward. “Nope. I changed my mind.”
“Stand still,” the robed man snapped.
A sudden chill swept through the room. Several people near the altar recoiled as the candle flames pulled inward toward the circle. The woman holding the book nearly lost her grip on it. Her voice fractured as trembling hands struggled to keep it steady.
“It’s working,” she whispered.
A sharp laugh cracked through the darkness. Every candle in the chamber died at once. For a heartbeat, darkness swallowed everything. The candles lit themselves again, one after another, revealing the empty symbol carved into the floor. Nothing had come through. The circle stood empty.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Finally, the youngest cult member broke the silence. “So… did we do it?”
The robed man stared at the empty circle. His grip tightened around the knife.
“That’s impossible.”
“We followed every step.”
“The offering was correct.”
“The ritual was complete.”
The woman holding the book glanced down at the page again and whispered, “Maybe he refused.”
The room went quiet. A demon refusing a summons was rare. An ancient demon refusing to answer at all was something else entirely.
The robed man's jaw tightened as he spoke.
“He does not forgive us.”
Far beneath the chamber, somewhere deeper than Hell itself, something opened its eyes. A man sprawled across a black throne as though eternity had bored him.
