Back in the dimly lit inn, silence reigned.
But it was not peace, it was the kind of silence that clings to the walls after something unspeakable has occurred.
The room smelled of iron and blood. Heavy. Suffocating.
Ishtar's body-dead, hung upside down from the ceiling beam, naked and pale. Her throat was a torn seam, the skin around it stretched open like the petals of some grotesque flower. Blood dripped steadily from the gash, cascading down her hair and pooling into a wide, shallow bronze bowl beneath her.
The bowl was nearly full.
Kneeling beside it, Zander moved with a calm, mechanical precision. His hands slick with drying blood, he dipped them into the crimson pool and began to draw.
First, the circle. Wide, perfect, no hesitation in the sweep of his arm.
Then the star. Sharp points. Symmetrical. No deviation. No flaw.
And then the text.
He began inscribing symbols along the circle's edge. Unearthly letters, ancient and obscene, glyphs that should not be known, not by any mortal tongue. Their edges burned faintly in the air, as if reality itself recoiled at their presence.
The language was dead.
Yet Zander spoke it aloud, each syllable thick with resonance. The floorboards groaned under him not from weight, but from resistance. As if the very structure of the world fought to keep those words unsaid.
His voice was cold. Flat. Monotone. As if it wasn't Zander speaking, but something inside him using his mouth.
The blood within the circle began to stir. It didn't flow it crawled, twitching toward the center like it had a will of its own.
Zander's eyes once human, now glowed faintly with crimson light, veins pulsing under the skin like ink spreading through parchment.
The final symbol was drawn and then he stopped.
He whispered a single word.
" bahih aagacchhantu "
The room exhaled.
The lanterns died.
The shadows twisted inward.
And from beneath the floorboards, something ancient began to knock.
Once.
Twice.
Then silence.
Zander smiled.
And the circle responded.
Outside, the night changed.
What had been a clear, quiet sky just moments before was now a canvas of roiling, blackened clouds. They surged unnaturally fast, spiraling inwards above the Ravenhart district, eclipsing the moon in a matter of seconds.
No storm brought them.
No wind carried them.
They simply arrived, as if summoned.
Then came the silence.
A deep, unnatural hush that blanketed the world like a burial shroud. The kind of silence that made the air feel wrong too heavy, too still.
And then… chaos.
The animals were the first to sense it.
Crows erupted from the trees in flocks, screaming and flailing in the air and vanishing into the clouded dark. Dogs howled in unison—high, panicked wails that spoke of something they couldn't see but instinctively feared. Horses bucked and thrashed in their stables, eyes rolling back, foam frothing at their mouths. Rats poured from alleys and gutters, swarming the cobblestone streets as if fleeing an unseen inferno.
The city itself shuddered.
Candles flickered, then extinguished. Mirrors cracked without touch. Wells ran momentarily dark with the taste of rust and ash.
And above it all, circling unseen in the gathering sky, a low hum began to build. Not sound. Not quite. More a vibration that settled in the bones, in the teeth, in the mind, a pressure that made people clutch their heads and fall to their knees.
Something had been invited.
And the city, in its primal terror, knew it.
Back in the inn, Zander stood in a bit far from the circle, head tilted back, arms stretched wide. The blood symbols glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with the storm outside.
His lips parted once more.
He whispered again.
And the ground beneath him cracked.
From the blood-drenched circle, the shadows deepened.
It twisted, writhed stretching outward like fingers through smoke until they congealed into a single form. Humanoid, yet inhuman. Faceless. Featureless. Just a silhouette carved from pitch, taller than any man, its outline pulsing with slow, dreadful rhythm.
It looked at Zander with something that could be called curiosity… or hunger.
Then it spoke.
Its voice was not sound it was a pressure, a chill in the marrow, an echo that crawled behind the ears and stayed there like an unwanted whisper.
"You… mortal. Introduce yourself."
Zander's lips curled into a wicked smile. His eyes gleamed with crimson reflection as he raised his bloodstained hands, standing like a conductor before a choir of horrors.
"I am Zander," he said, his voice like oil on water.
"The Copy of the Divine Bane."
The shadow paused, as though considering ancient knowledge.
Then it spoke again, slower this time.
"The Divine Bane... so the prophecy has begun."
Zander nodded once, firm.
"Yes. It has already begun to unravel."
The entity's presence deepened, shadows thickening in the corners of the room, consuming what little light remained.
"why did you summon me mortal " the shadow intoned.
Zander stepped closer, unflinching before the creature's sheer wrongness. He extended a blood-slick finger toward the pale, lifeless body of Ishtar.
"To offer you a body."
zander points to Ishtar body
"And to make a deal."
The shadow tilted its head ever so slightly. The air groaned with tension.
"What do you desire, mortal?"
Zander didn't hesitate.
"Her body and my soul in exchange for your authority ."
A silence followed long and unnatural. Not hesitation, but something ancient weighing him. Testing the boundaries of pact and consequence.
Then the entity whispered again.
"Before the pact is sealed… you must answer my three questions, mortal... "
The room grew colder.
"Lie, and you will be devoured. Speak truth, and the pact shall hold."
The air trembled as the first question was spoken, each word pressing down like an iron weight against the soul.
"My history… and the summoning text you carved in blood, they are forgotten. Burned. Erased from all records. So tell me, mortal… how do you know them?"
The circle flared with a sudden pulse, casting the room in a deep crimson hue. Every shadow seemed to lean in, listening. The silence wasn't empty—it was watchful.
The entity's voice dropped.
"Are you… an anomaly?"
Zander's expression remained still for a moment, unreadable. Then a slow, sardonic smile crept across his face. His voice, when it came was calm measured and terribly honest.
"Yes," he said.
"I am an anomaly. Or rather…"He stepped inside the edge of the circle, letting the glow stain his pale skin.
"My original is.The current Divine Bane is cursed to regress,"
he began, voice steady. "Each time he dies before fulfilling his destiny, he is reborn, carrying the memories of every previous death."
He paused, letting the weight of the truth settle.
"But we, his copies… we don't retain those memories. Each cycle wipes us clean."
The shadow stirred slightly, its voice low and cold. "That doesn't answer my question, mortal"
Zander gave a thin, knowing smile.
"You're right. In the last regression, my original self didn't tell me about his ability. But I sensed it, something in him, something fractured. He could see the pattern. I couldn't prove it, but I knew."
He stepped forward, just enough for the light to graze the edge of his face, casting sharp shadows across his features.
"So I made a deal with an entity that bends the threads of fate. I sealed away all of my original's regression memories… and in return, I was given a curse of my own: to remember everything from my past life in this one."
His gaze sharpened, voice dipping into something near reverence.
"In that life, I studied your summoning . though i don't understand it or can read it , all i can do is just speak few lines of this ancient language." He smiled faintly, cold and certain.
The shadow didn't speak immediately. The circle pulsed once, the star inside trembling ever so slightly, as if the entity were… amused.
Or disturbed.
Then, in a voice that rumbled like bedrock shifting beneath the earth, the shadow spoke again.
"Second question."
It paused. The silence lingered, taut.
"How many times have you died, Zander?"
The words did not echo but they hung, sinking like iron into the marrow of the room.
Zander's smirk wavered.
His gaze dropped. His shoulders tensed. He drew in a breath, slow and ragged—like a man dredging something ancient from the bottom of a grave.
"We copies are immortal," he said, voice low and hollow.
His hands clenched at his sides. Frost crackled under his feet.
"The one who dies… is my original. Zed."His voice was low, almost reverent.
"He doesn't remember any of it, not in this life. All his memories, including every regression, have been sealed away." Zander raised his head slightly, the faintest glint in his eyes.
"The only memory I have… is of the last cycle."Zander's voice was quiet, hollow."Everything before that is a void." He paused, then added with restrained frustration
"So I can't answer that question."
The shadow fell still. Then, with eerie grace, it leaned forward, its form flickering like smoke trapped in shape. The silence deepened around them, and when it spoke again, its voice was slow, deliberate, and heavy. Not curious now… reverent.
"Your eyes…" it said, almost gently,
"hold more hatred for this world than even I do."
The shadows curled tighter, drawn inward like a breath pulled through the ribs of a crypt.
"Then tell me…" it continued, voice dipping lower,"What did you experience in your past life… that birthed such loathing?"