After emerging on the other side of the bridge,
from the darkness, Dan emerged. Like he'd always been there, flickering between states—solid enough to cast multiple shadows, but shallow as mist over graveyards. His eyes gleamed with hunger, lips curling into a smile both cruel and tender, his voice a chorus of drowned echoes slithering into minds. "This is only the first fracture," he whispered, stepping closer to Marietta, his form adjusting with predatory instinct, as if starved for centuries. "The deep adapts." Dan twiddles his thumbs, in an artistic manner.
He circled her, his presence a siren's song threading temptation. "You could be more than human. More than flesh. The deep will make your desires real—no more pain, no more fear, just eternal desire." His words hung like clothes, morally challenging, dangerously normal—not romantic, but a recognition of shared monstrosity. Dan was ambiguous: The Covenant's hand flickering with mania, his composed mask cracking. "We're already twisted, all of us. The only choice is whether we twist toward darkness or find our own light."
Marietta's hand trembled, the Mirror's shards clinging to her skin, their decaying light seeping into her veins like an insidious promise. She saw visions: drowning in endless waves, body dissolving, soul merging with the abyss. Doubt flickered...Dan's eyes, his promise, pulling her toward a choice. "Does God hear sinners cry?" he murmured, voice dropping darkly, a sly devil's echo.
Anne Faith anchored her, hands outstretched, pulling back with fierce love. "Fight it," she urged, her voice etched with fear and resolve. "You're more than this." But Dan's influence lingered, moral tension ripping psyche like chains, the door to Marietta's mind creaking open wider.
Marietta's chest tightened, grief raw and visceral. "Dan," she said, voice a blade, "you've led us here.
Now choose."Dans smile deepened, offering no easy way out.
The ritual's final words hung, a melody colder than water in the lungs, drawing the abyss close—close enough to brush the soul. Dan's eyes, striped with ambition, burned with a sickly green fire as he lifted the broken Abyssal Mirror to the heavens—arms trembling, corruption leaking from his skin. "The 7-year-old boy who once was baptized by his aunt behind his parents backs... An innocence who took the body of Jesus Christ rejoicing, that hope touched hope. And love touched love, is fading in and out of existence." The Holy Spirit GOD tugged at his heart.
"Daniel sees a flicker of his parents as babies, turned inside out and thrown into an eternal burning furnace. Daniel then hears a faint sound humming in his body from deep within. It was a song he used to sing as a little boy behind his parents back, when he still had hope. "Oh happy day when Jesus washed my sins away." Daniel sees a shadow of himself get lost within an endless light at the end of a tunnel full of lights sorrow and decay.
The ritual's final incantation hung in the air, a chilling melody that seemed to draw the very essence of the abyss into the church's desecrated sanctum. Dan's eyes, burned with a sickly otherworldly green fire. As he held the Abyssal Mirror to the heavens—arms trembling, duality of choices leaking from his skin.
"By the power of the Crowned-Deep, I call forth thy servant!" he declared, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "Grant me dominion over this realm, that I may reshape it in thy image!"
He pauses and slightly, and regrets his decision.
As the words left his lips, a blinding flash of eldritch energy erupted from the mirror, engulfing Dan in a vortex of swirling colors. His screams of triumph and agony merged into a single, eternal wail as he was consumed, his form dissolving into the abyssal void. He emerges not as Dan anymore but as a child of The Crowned-Deep. Sinew flesh, twisted bones, missing eyes.
The mirror, now freed from its master's control, began to shudder and convulse. Its surface rippled like a living thing, as if struggling to contain the horrors it had unleashed.
In the aftermath of the destruction, an unsettling silence fell over the church. The air was heavy with the scent of brimstone and and sulfur, and the shadows seemed to writhe with a malevolent life of their own. Dan appears in shadow form. "Marietta Anne Faith, use it—use the mirror. It consumes a part of your soul; ignore it. The Covenant will have its way anyway." Marietta and Anne Faith stood frozen, their hearts pounding in unison as they stood like deer in headlights.
It was Marietta who broke the spell, her voice low and urgent. "We need to get out of here, now. Before whatever's left of that accursed object decides to make its presence known."
As if in response, the church's bells rang. The women exchanged a look of pure terror, knowing they had to act fast if they were to escape the impending doom.