"I wonder what kind of reward this sacrifice will bring."
Ryan couldn't help but feel excited. After all, it was his first time offering up an evil spirit. Maybe it would surprise him.
Swish!
A sudden, searing pain shot through his eyes. Gasping, he clutched his face as an icy chill seeped into his vision.
The tearing agony faded as quickly as it came. When he lowered his hands, however, the world looked different.
"Huh, doesn't seem like much changed."
He glanced around. His sight wasn't sharper or farther reaching. Had it all been his imagination?
Then he turned back toward the villa and froze.
The once-luxurious, three-story home now stood in ruins, swallowed by a suffocating shadow. Thick black fog coiled around it like a predator's maw. The trees in the yard were twisted and grotesque, their grayish-black trunks oozing malice. The walls were stained yellow and the windows were smeared with bloody handprints.
The source of it all pulsed beneath the house.
Ryan's gaze locked onto the basement, where tendrils of darkness seeped upward.
So this is why it's haunted.
Something lurked down there—something evil.
The sheer weight of its hatred hit him like a physical force—resentment, despair, and a bottomless hunger for suffering. Just looking at it made his skin crawl.
No wonder so many had died here over the years.
Thankfully, its power seemed bound to the villa. Otherwise, the entire town would have become a graveyard.
Ryan exhaled, then grinned.
Sure, his instincts screamed that this thing outclassed him. But since when did that matter?
No risk, no reward.
That thing was a treasure waiting to be claimed. If he couldn't kill it with one strike, he'd chip away at it slowly. Slowly. Methodically.
After all, it was trapped underground. A blunt knife could flay flesh given enough time.
Ryan's eyes flicked to the cross necklace, the holy artifact that had shielded his new family somehow. The spirits here were bound by rules, and whatever lurked beneath couldn't touch them—yet.
He needed better tools.
The church might be worth a visit."
He rubbed his chin.
The evil spirits here weren't like ghosts. Sunlight? They shrugged it off. Peachwood swords and rooster blood? Useless.
However, crosses, Bibles, and silver were effective.
Ryan didn't understand how they worked, but he'd play by the locals' rules.
The problem was that most blessed items were weak—effective against minor spirits but worthless against the entity lurking beneath the villa.
The real power lay in ancient relics steeped in centuries of faith. The object itself didn't matter; what mattered was the belief infused within it.
And when sacrificed, that belief could become extraordinary.
Just like his cross necklace.
—