The next three days passed in a haze of dust, ink, and dread. Shanane remained in the secret passage almost entirely, emerging only to eat something small or snatch an hour of sleep when exhaustion finally pulled her under. The air in the hidden room never changed, always warm, always thick, like it was pressing against her skin just enough to remind her she was not alone.
She wasn't.
The shadows still moved at the corners of her vision. They slithered across the shelves like smoke, curled between cracks in the stone, watched her with a silence that was almost thoughtful. Once, when she looked up too quickly, she swore she saw fingers curled just beneath the edge of the bookshelf. Another time, a voice rasped her name softly from behind the far wall. She didn't turn. She didn't scream. She simply whispered back: "Not now."
And it listened.
It didn't leave. But it listened.
Her focus was iron. The terror never left her not really but she buried it beneath her need for answers. She read everything. Every page. Every line. She traced the descent of her grandmother's handwriting, from elegant and steady to frantic and broken. And through it all, a single truth grew clearer with each note.
She'd grown used to being watched.
What she hadn't grown used to, what she couldn't was the truth of what she had read over the last three days.
The pact hadn't been made out of curiosity. Or for power. Or even to gain something forbidden.
It had been made in the aftermath of blood.
Her grandmother's handwriting was clear in those entries, though every word trembled with weight.
Years ago, when her grandmother was young and the village was still raw with old grudges, there had been a dispute over a land, rich, fertile farmland that both her family and another claimed by right.
It began with threats. Then theft. Then came the fire. Someone burned a field. Then someone shot a cousin in the woods. Then came the night they killed her husband.
He had gone out to settle things. To "be the man of the house." They sent him back in a shroud. Her son, twelve years old, had seen his father's body and never spoken again. And by morning, the boy was dead too. Poisoned, they suspected.
The village almost fell apart. Sides were drawn. Families armed themselves. Blood spilled in the streets. And through it all, she had only one thought left: her two-month-old daughter.
She wrote it simply:
"I could not lose her too. I could not lose myself either."
She begged the gods. She tried every herb, every circle, every name whispered by firelight. None answered.
Desperate and half mad, she did the irreversible.
She summoned something ancient, older than the names carved into the forest stones. Something no god would face. Something even other demons feared.
His name was Atheramond.
And he answered.
The notes described the moment with a clarity that chilled Shanane to the core. The circle drawn in bone. The symbols etched with her own blood. The words spoken: unholy and trembling. The air had torn open like skin, and he had stepped through.
He was scary, terrifying and demoniac. She didn't know how she didn't collapse when she saw him.
He had asked for her name and she gave it.
He asked for her lineage. She offered it.
He asked what she would sacrifice. And she said everything that comes from her.
That was how it began.
In exchange, the village lived. Her daughter who is Shanane's mother lived. The land grew. The hatred passed.
But her soul was no longer her own. And more than that, neither were her descendants.
She'd bargained with it for peace. And the cost was now sitting in her granddaughter's skin. Waking in her dreams. Burning in her blood.
Shanane gripped the edge of the desk as the weight of it settled inside her. Her hands were cold, her throat dry, and the mark on her wrist ached like it had been carved anew.
Atheramond ruled over a world not visible to human eyes. A plane of shadows and fire where hundreds of lesser demons bowed to him, twisted creatures bound to his will. Other demon lords feared him. Witches refused to speak his name aloud. His domain was hunger, unending, crawling, devouring. And once a pact was sealed, it did not end until every drop of the debtor's blood had been spent.
One page, a loose scrap tucked between the pages of a broken journal, detailed his habits. His presence. His wrath.
"He will wait. He will watch. He will bend your dreams until you crack, and when you do, he will wear your voice, your memories, your flesh. He is patient, but he does not forget. He takes what is owed."
And another, even worse:
"He will not stop at one. If he is not paid, he will take all who bear your name."
She could barely breathe. This wasn't about her grandmother anymore. This was about her.
And whatever had been keeping quiet for the last week had only been giving her time. Time to read. Time to know. Time to realize that ignorance was no longer protection.
She flipped to a final section. The writing here was messier, slanted with panic. These were the instructions.
How to summon him.
A single circle. Drawn with blood and ash. Not chalk. Not salt. It had to come from the one who called him. It had to be willing.
Then the markings, twisted symbols she recognized now from her dreams. Spirals of teeth. Eyes split in halves. Words that made her mouth ache when she tried to speak them.
And then the offering: "Burn something loved. Something once warm. It will draw him."
There was no reversing the pact by prayer. There was no way to destroy Atheramond.
Her grandmother never once claimed otherwise.
Because what he owned, he never gave back. What he marked, he watched.
And now, he was watching Shanane..