"W-will this really give me what I want?!" The trembling voice of a man echoed in the room so dark that even the burning candles appeared as if they were about to be swallowed by the darkness itself.
The scents of despair, hope, old books, wood, oil, and ink blended so perfectly with the scent of death and deceit that one could not even tell the difference between them.
Slumped on the cold hard floor was a haggard man, his face covered under the thick locks of long hair. Beads of sweat were rolling down to the ground as a pair of bloodshot eyes peered into the darkness in front of him with determination and something deeper…
Something very dark.
Just when it seemed that the man with the haggard appearance would not be getting any response, an enchanting chuckle sounded from the other side.
"Haha! HAhA!!"
With time, the melodic laugh twisted and turned demonic, and the hysteric laughter shook the resolve in the man's eyes. No matter how long the guffaw went, the man did not dare to speak and only gulped audibly.
Once the tension in the room peaked, the laughter abruptly stopped. The room returned to the unholy silence once more…
Thud!
The broken man flinched upon hearing a faint dull thud in the darkness before him. His body shook when something rolled towards him from the shadows. With the help of the flickering light from the candle nearest to him, he was able to get a look at what it was—
An old-looking scroll.
Before he could even start reading, the voice returned, "As long as you can afford the price, there is nothing in this world that I cannot grant."
The allure in the voice made him gulp once more and glance at the piece of parchment that held promises of changing his life.
All his hesitations were devoured by his greed for rewards highlighted on the scroll. He frantically nodded and immediately agreed, saying, "I will do anything!"
With his desperate trembling hands, he picked up the thing and noticed another line.
The Offering…
Just like that his excitement faded as he stuttered, "What d-do you need of me?"
Words barely escaped his lips when he noticed a pair of crimson eyes glimmering faintly in the gloom, their glow intensifying with each heartbeat until they snapped open.
Looking into those eyes, he felt as if his whole body had been frozen inside a block of ice. His heart twisted as if someone were squeezing it in their grasp.
His smothering atmosphere finally choked breath when a twisted smile appeared under those pairs of bloody orbs.
He could not see the lips at first, only a thin line of teeth, but then as he watched unblinkingly, they thinned into a bleak white line that curved so high that it almost touched the eyes.
"What I want—what I have always wanted—is only one thing, and you know it." The enchanting voice pulsed through the darkness. The scary face within the darkness slowly rose upwards.
With no will to even moan, the man could only look around silently in fear.
His eyes followed the only candle left burning in the room as it suddenly returned to life. The flame flared up, turning so red that it felt like it was burning blood. It rose high enough to illuminate a heap of bodies, mangled, decapitated, twisted, and torn, lying one above the other.
A stale stench of decay hit him, mingled with the coppery tang of blood. His stomach churned, spilling bile on the stone-cold platform, and a gruff sob finally tore from his throat.
"Umm…"
With no time to adjust to the sudden bright light, another flame appeared behind him. Then another, followed by yet another fire. Soon the man realized that he was no longer in the same room he once stood in.
He was surrounded by nothing but a mountain of bodies; the scent of the ink and wood had long disappeared. There were so many bodies around him that even a city would seem too small to accommodate them.
"Nothing satisfies me but your soul." The darkness spoke, continuing to make the man raise his head up slowly. Despite the amount of light, the shadows prevailed where he looked.
His mind was too sluggish to even comprehend anything.
'W-what?!' One second he was staring into the darkness, and the next, he saw a pair of claws carved from it reaching out for him. His breath was still, and his eyes were dilated.
He could not take it anymore and fell backwards….
Right before he was on the cusp of losing his consciousness, he saw a towering figure that reached the skies and touched the thundering clouds above him.
The lightning flashed, and an outline of this demonic being bloomed in the darkness. Thin horns, wings as wide as mountains, claws that could unearth humanity.
Finally his eyes could no longer stay open, and his body struck the cold, hard floor underneath.
Even as his consciousness slipped away, a cold whisper tore into his mind—"Or have you forgotten, you made a deal… with the Devil?!" —along with a vision of his face, hollow and grinning.
The man finally realized the price he had paid for his greed.