High Sorcerer Oscar's voice blended with the others, eight threads weaving into a single river of power. The chant rose and fell with the pounding of the drums, a rhythm older than kingdoms, carrying the summoning toward its peak. Their circle was the heart of the ritual, the channel through which raw elemental force became binding chains.
As leader of the chanters, Oscar bore the duty of keeping rhythm and order. If Grand Sorcerer Silas faltered, Oscar would hold the weave together. He glanced around the circle. Hooded faces, cloaked identities. Only Silas and Grand Wizard Theodore stood revealed to all nineteen present. Secrecy was not preference but survival. If the Governing Alliance discovered this gathering, they would be executed without trial.
And yet, even as he chanted, Oscar's doubts gnawed. Summoning the MagalaN was dangerous enough. To bind him — to enslave him — was madness. He had argued with Silas in private, his protests like cracks in the harmony. Enslavement turns a savior into an enemy. A leash can strangle its master as easily as its hound.
But Silas had been immovable. "We need control," the Grand Sorcerer had said. "Without loyalty enforced, power betrays."
So Oscar chanted.
The air vibrated with power, the drums hammering through marrow and bone. Magic swirled like a storm around them, flowing from earth, sky, and forest, into their voices, their breath. Oscar felt it surge through his veins, burning, intoxicating, terrible.
"It begins!" Theodore cried, his voice cutting sharp across the chant. The human wizard's magic flared — different from theirs, harsher, forced, yet astonishing in its precision. Oscar envied it even as he feared it.
Then the world convulsed.
The night erupted into blinding day, a wave of heat slamming into their circle. The ground shook. Trees bent and groaned as though bowing to an unseen tyrant. The acrid sting of ozone filled Oscar's lungs.
Still they chanted. Still they held the weave. Their united voices became a shield, their will a fortress against the chaos that tried to tear them apart.
When Oscar's sight cleared, he saw him.
The MagalaN.
A man's frame, no taller than two and a half arm lengths, skin gleaming with sweat beneath the thorned roots of light that bound him. The Thorns of Ra — an ancient prison of agony. His body writhed, yet his eyes… his eyes were steady, alive with intelligence. Defiance.
Oscar's chest tightened. He knew the torment of those thorns. No mortal should withstand it, let alone meet their captors' gazes with such clarity.
And then the MagalaN smiled.
A slow, deliberate smile that chilled Oscar more than any scream could have.
The chant wavered. Horror rippled through the circle as the bound man drew in a long breath — almost savoring the pain — and then laughed.
Laughed.
The sound was wrong. It rang like steel striking stone, a laugh too vast for the body that contained it. Oscar's blood iced. His own voice faltered, and for a heartbeat the chant collapsed into chaos.
"No!" he barked, forcing his voice back, trying to drag the others into rhythm.
But it was too late.
The MagalaN vanished. The thorns, the bindings, the shield of voices — all gone, ripped apart as though they had never been. The circle shuddered, their power unraveling into the night.
Silence fell.
The world itself seemed to hold its breath.
And in that silence, Oscar knew.
They had not summoned a prisoner.
They had awoken a storm.