Tyran Kingdom, The 1205th Year; Second Month Of Aquarius
Arkan City
Inside of a lavishly wealthy and exceedingly luxurious mansion, a middle-aged couple were dressed quite extravagantly while accompanied by a crytic elderly man draped in weathered and torn crimson robes.
"Old man, you are our last resort and therefore the only hope me and my wife now have. Are you absolutely sure this will work?" The middle aged man spoke in a hurried but hushed tone as he glanced at the cloaked elder beside him.
His wife, standing on the other side of him was frantically grabbing onto her husband's shoulders as this cult-ish environment was completely unnatural and frightened her quite a bit.
"There is no doubt in my mind that you both won't get what you have come for."
"I am quite sure of it."
The old man's voice carried a kind of deep inhuman tone that only darkened the atmosphere around them, just adding onto his already uncanny appearance.
Now, all three of them were all intently staring at the ground in front of them. As if waiting for something to suddenly crawl out of it.
For on the numerously candle lit marble floors laid out before them, was a circle crossed over a pentagram dotted with strange symbols that were incomprehensible to the ordinary man and would even start to shift when focused on for too long. To the left of the circle was a rusted grey bucket with dark red liquid dripping out of it.
It was blood.
Not a human's blood however, but the blood of a goat mixed with that of a snake's and raven's.
The old man suddenly stepped forward while the couple was gazing expectantly at the ritualistic circle. Waving his hands up in the air like a priest, a dark red miasma began to pour out from his palms into the area surrounding them while his otherworldly voice boomed with power as he began to speak.
"Lord of Darkness and Depravity, I summon you to this mortal realm in the name of Ebon, descendant of The Unholy One. For my sacrifice, I offer the blood of three beasts and the absolute devotion of two noble souls!"
The dark crimson fog thickened, coiling around the pentagram like a living vortex. The symbols etched into the marble floor began to glow with an eerie phosphorescent light, pulsing in an eerie rhythm as the miasma started to swirl around the magic circle and became sucked into it almost instantly.
The wife's grip on her husband's shoulders tightened until her knuckles turned white. She wanted to look away knowing whatever was making its appearance would be a terrifying horror, but her eyes remained transfixed as if held by invisible chains.
The temperature in the room instantly plummeted. Quickly dropping down to just below thirty degrees.
Frost began creeping across the white marble floors, spreading outward from the pentagram's edges. The candles lining the walls flickered violently, their flames turning from warm orange to a sickly green hue.
As all of this happened the man's gaze remained steady while both of his arms tightly embraced his shaking wife.
And the elderly man just watched. The top portion of his face was covered by the shadows of his own hood, but on the bottom half - a wicked grin slowly made its way across his heavily wrinkled face.
A sound—neither scream nor roar, but something far more terrible—erupted from within the circle. It was a noise that shouldn't exist in the mortal world, a cacophony that seemed to tear at the very fabric of reality itself.
The couple felt their sanity threatening to slip away just from hearing it.
And then, something began to emerge from the center of the pentagram.
A small black shadow in the form of a tentacle extended its tip upward, reaching halfway into the air before falling back down. It melted onto the pentagram, covering it fully in darkness. Within this pitch-black void, a swirling mass could be seen—an infinite abyss that seemed to go on forever.
The three onlookers didn't even dare to breathe as they gazed into the supernatural murk below.
From the portal of darkness that had consumed the pentagram, a small orb of glowing black light emerged. It hovered in the air before them, emitting a faint, otherworldly luminescence that seemed to devour the surrounding shadows rather than illuminate them.
"Bow down if you want to live!" the elderly man shouted.
All three of them immediately dropped to their hands and knees, foreheads pressed against the cold marble.
The old man's voice trembled as he spoke to the hovering mass of dark light. "Great One, we thank you for descending to the Cardinal World to speak with mere mortals such as we."
The light orb remained silent, and unmoving.
Taking the continued existence of his life as permission to proceed, the elderly man spoke again, his words hurried and wary. "These two mortal souls behind me humbly request an audience with the Lord."
The orb floated soundlessly for several long moments.
Then words—not spoken, but implanted—entered their minds directly: SPEAK.
The voice held no characteristic that could identify it as human or otherwise. It was simply there, processed by their brains as if it had always existed within their thoughts.
"My Lord," the noble couple spoke in unison.
Sweat dripped down their backs and faces despite the frigid atmosphere. Lady Sandra felt as if she might die right then and there, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Duke Raphael forced himself to continue. "My Lord, I am Duke Raphael Vermillion, and this is my wife, Lady Sandra Vermillion. We have been desperately trying to conceive, but the Gods themselves seem to be against our ability to do so." His voice cracked slightly. "Please, bless us and bestow my wife with fertility. You shall have our everlasting devotion for life. We need only your orders, and we shall carry them out most devoutly and efficiently."
He audibly gulped, then dared to glance upward.
The orb of light remained unchanged.
Raphael had thought it hard to believe that something so small could be so terrifying, but after witnessing it firsthand, his perspective had shifted dramatically. There was no rule that powerful, mysterious existences had to look human. And honestly, he was just grateful their lives hadn't ended the moment the summoning ritual began.
They waited. And as they did so, the elderly man was exhilarated—the chances of the summoning ritual actually succeeding were below twenty percent, yet here they were, in the presence of something beyond all mortal comprehension.
Another word then materialized in their minds: "MORE."
Confused, the elderly man gazed up at the hovering orb. "What do you mean, My Lord?"
More words followed, intenser than before: "I NEED MORE."
That single sentence sent an enormous shiver down the couple's spines.
Lady Sandra, despite her terror, began to speak. Her husband reached out to stop her, but she pressed forward anyway. "My Lord, what else do you desire from us? We shall surely give it to you!"
Silence greeted them once more.
Then: "I DESIRE WHATEVER YOU HOLD MOST DEAR."
The two looked at each other. Before Duke Raphael could fully process what the entity was asking—before he could even agree—his wife had already responded.
"We agree!" Sandra's voice rang out with desperate conviction. "Whatever we hold most dear, you shall take from us. In exchange, I will gain the power to bear children!"
"IT IS DONE."
A massive flash of black light erupted, temporarily blinding them. When their vision returned, the magic circle was gone. The existence had vanished. Even the elderly man had disappeared without a trace.
Only a sentence written in crimson blood remained on the pristine white marble floor.
Duke Raphael read it aloud, his voice hollow: "An initial soul was needed for my Cardinal descent—and an unholy one's descendant tastes quite nicely."
The couple turned to look at each other. Sandra noticed her finger had somehow been nicked and was dripping blood, though the flow quickly stopped on its own.
They said nothing more about it.
Instead, they called the servants back from their day off to clean up the mess, then retired to their sleeping chambers for the night.
---
Nine Months Later
A blonde-haired woman with a few strands of violet screamed intensely in labor. She was quite gorgeous, with natural dimples and beauty marks scattered across her face.
Beside her stood a man in grand bed robes worth more than a common house. His brown hair bore a few grey streaks from age and stress, and his deep azure eyes contained years of accumulated knowledge and worry.
"Push, my lady! Just a bit more!" the midwife urged.
With one final, agonizing cry, Lady Sandra gave birth.
"It's a girl! A healthy, beautiful daughter!" the maidservant announced, carefully cleaning and wrapping the infant.
As she handed the baby back to the exhausted mother, something strange occurred.
The same finger that had been pricked on the night of the summoning began to mysteriously bleed again—fresh crimson welling up from seemingly nowhere.
At that exact moment, the baby daughter's mouth spread open into an impossibly wide smile.