On the inside, the Hall of the Divine was not yet fully complete—only smooth, polished marble stretched out beneath their feet. But in its simplicity, there was beauty. The pristine floor reflected the filtered light with a quiet, almost sacred reverence, and the absence of ornamentation lent the vast space an austere, breathtaking grandeur. It also allowed room for the thousands now gathering for the inauguration.

  There were no words adequate to describe it. A soft, ethereal glow shimmered across the towering cupola and pristine walls. The stained glass windows—set between the massive columns and extending into the dome—caught the sunlight and refracted it in impossible ways, guiding the beams to cast halos over the colossal statues that shouldered the pillars. The frescoes painted in light seemed to stir and breathe. Saints and angels looked down from above with serene, knowing eyes, their gazes suffused with otherworldly judgment.

  Such majesty weighed heavily on the crowd. The sheer scale and sanctity of the hall silenced them. No one dared raise their voice. Only hushed whispers and reverent murmurs rippled through the assembled masses, as if even speech might profane the space.

  Still, one detail gnawed at Baratak’s elation: the low, steady rumble emanating from the far end of the temple, where the containment vessel lay buried beneath layers of spell-forged stone. It was a faint sound, like water boiling in a deep, sealed cauldron.

  No one else seemed to notice it, he saw no startled glances, no furrowed brows, perhaps they didn’t hear it at all. But he did. And he knew what it meant: the demon was restless, clearly. But that was expected. The molten metal should be cooling by now, solidifying, binding it. However, the demon didn't seem to want to accept the sacrifices. It'll have to if it wanted to survive. And they always did. The sound would fade soon. Surely.

  The hall swelled with bodies—thousands upon thousands pressed into the sacred space. Once the crowd had settled, forming little clusters ordered by their self-perceived importance, the high priests raised their hands, and silence fell like a velvet curtain. Then, in clear and steady voices, they began the first sacred chant. As they sang, light bloomed in the air.

  Baratak resisted the urge to chuckle. Ants. All of them. Ants scuttling through a divine mechanism he had forged—wielding a power they couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  Just as he’d intended, the temple responded. The walls answered the chant with a harmonious echo, as if the structure itself had found its voice. A cascade of magic unfolded in response to their faith: glowing runes spiraled across the arches, constellations spun above in midair, and radiant angelic figures shimmered across the walls in halos of light.

  It was breathtaking. Sublime. His masterpiece… alive.

  And that had been only the first chant.

  As the priests began to understand—truly grasp—how the temple responded to them, the second chant rose even more magnificently. The structure seemed to breathe with the rhythm of their voices, each note unlocking another layer of wonder. The sermon escalated, weaving magic and devotion into a crescendo of divine spectacle.

  He didn’t notice the change at first. Not exactly. It was subtle—a soft dulling of color, a fading of brilliance. The notes lost just a hint of their resonance, a slight flattening of their once-perfect pitch.

  Then the stained-glass windows began to dim. Their vibrant hues dulled, as if a fine dust had settled upon them, leeching the colors into a spreading gray. One of the priests faltered mid-chant, stumbling over the expected response. A ripple of silence followed, uncomfortable and raw.

  And in that pause, the light dimmed further. A cold shadow crept across the hall like breath on glass. Murmurs stirred through the gathered crowd, eyes drifting upward to the now-bleeding windows. The sky outside had darkened as if something was leeching the color from the world itself.

  The lead high priest tried to resume the chant, his voice steady at first—but the magic no longer responded. The radiant displays sputtered and failed. The runes across the dome flickered wildly, stuttering through patterns Baratak had never etched, reshaping themselves into symbols he didn’t recognize. Symbols that shouldn't have been there.

  And then there were screams. Distant yells outside the hall. Baratak turned toward the great doors, heart lurching, as if expecting something—someone—to force its way inside. A chill ran down his spine.

  Something had gone terribly, fatally wrong.

  A sharp crack split the air above, and his eyes snapped upward. Fissures snaked across the dome, branching like veins of lightning. A heartbeat later, fragments rained down. Shouts turned to shrieks as the crowd panicked, surging toward the exits in a chaotic tide of fear.

  The massive double doors groaned open—but beyond them was only darkness. A living, breathing darkness that spilled inward like smoke, devouring the golden light.

  And then came the true screaming, the terror and pain. The sound of lives unraveling. The air filled with crashing stone, yells, prayers choked into sobs. The temple had become a cage.

  And there was nowhere left to run.

  The ground shuddered beneath his feet, and the stained-glass windows exploded outward in a cascade of shimmering shards. The air thickened. It turned dry, oppressive, sulfurous, each breath burning in his throat.

  Through the collapsing dome and broken windows, Baratak glimpsed an alien sky.

  A single, enormous black star loomed in the heavens, churning with slow, unnatural currents—like molten asphalt stirred in a dying basin. Where once sunlight poured in, tendrils of celestial magma now crept across the sky, veining the firmament with sullen glow. Between those strands, new constellations flickered—twisted, unknown, watching.

  Then came the final sound: a groan of tortured metal, a bellow from the deep.

  The containment vessel ruptured with a deafening roar that split the world open and rattled the marrow in his bones.

  And Baratak understood, at last. He had not raised a monument. He had opened a gate.

  A gate to hell.

  *

  The moment I answered the summon, I felt it - a wrongness coiled deep in my marrow - but by then, it was too late. There was no turning back and no undoing what had already begun.

  Darkness swallowed me whole - an absolute void, with no sight, no sound, and not even a whisper of magic to guide me, as if I had been cast into the gullet of oblivion itself. My limbs refused me and my will meant nothing.

  I clawed for the threads of the summon, desperate to sever them, but they slipped through my grasp like smoke. Nothing answered. No echo, no resistance. Just silence. And then with cold, creeping terror, the realization settled like frost in my veins: I had been taken.

  But why? What did they want with me?

  Every instinct raged against it. Every fiber of my being howled for escape. I was not meant to be shackled, I was meant to be free. And in that suffocating horror, I understood myself more truly than I ever had before.

  There had to be a way to break the summon. Summons weren’t meant to be one-way chains—there was always an exit, I told myself that over and over.

  I tried to whisper my name—my true name, but nothing happened. There was no flare of power, and no echo through the veil. Only silence answered me, silence and a bone-deep chill.

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  It was as if I had been sealed. Bound in something too deep for me to understand. Could they really have done that?

  Then came the molten metal.

  For a fleeting instant, I saw the vessel, the thing meant to cage me.

  Then the metal poured in, drowning everything and my senses exploded in fire. I saw nothing but the glow - burning red and gold, and then white - scalding through my eyes.

  Or maybe… my eyes had already burned away. Maybe it was only memory that made me think I could still see.

  Panic hit me like a wave. I thrashed, mind and spirit, like a cornered animal, and then the truth struck me. The vessel wasn’t just meant to hold me. It was meant to reshape me.

  To mold me into something I refused to become.

  But... I was dying. I was sure of it. And yet, I didn’t die. Somehow, my life force held.

  Then I understood. It was me—or rather, the higher self I still remembered being. The true me, the greater whole. She was still there, still tethered somehow, pouring strength into this broken, low-level vessel I’d been forced to inhabit.

  That’s what kept me alive. But it couldn’t last.

  This wasn’t sustainable.

  How many deaths could one soul endure? How many fragments of “me” could I burn through before the core was gone?

  Was this how I would end? Trapped, melting, forgotten. A tormented spirit sealed inside some madman’s relic, screaming into eternity?

  The torment had no end.

  Time slipped from my grasp, losing its meaning. Pain stretched out endlessly, folding over itself like a tide with no shore. Had there ever been a beginning? Or had I always existed like this: burning, bound, erased?

  No.

  I forced the thought forward like a blade and shook my head with all the power I had left.

  This is not me.

  As the molten metal cooled, hardening into my final, suffocating prison, I began to whisper my name again. It was all I had left—my anchor in the void. And there was power in that name.

  Few demons had a true name. Most were little more than beasts, wild and nameless. Even among the intelligent, only a handful had earned such a thing. Because a true name had to be earned. It was forged if you earned it, and with it came power.

  As I repeated mine, over and over, I began to understand.

  My name was a key. It was both a thread and a pathway. Through it, I could reach across the realms—back to the place of my birth: the Death Node of HaDes.

  I had used it before, instinctively, but now, I understood. This knowledge was given to me, because somehow I earned it. I didn't stop to ponder why, and I accepted it gladly.

  I also understood why it was said that knowing a demon’s true name gives you power over it.

  Because a true name is a thread—woven not into the world you're in, but the world the demon came from. If someone else were to speak my name, it wouldn’t call forth power from HaDes. It wouldn’t open the gate to the Death Node as it did now.

  No. It would simply send me back.

  Two or three repetitions—that’s all it would take. Say the name, and everything the demon did to cross the veil, every trick and spell and thread of summoned magic—it would all unravel in seconds.

  That’s the power of a true name.

  Dark streaks of magic converged toward me, coiling through the void. The world stirred. The prison didn’t open, not yet, but something shifted. The boundaries flexed and the anchor itself became part of me. The veil thinned. Through my magic-sight, I caught flickers of HaDes: the jagged, scorched land of my birth, the churning chaos of the Death Node responding to my call.

  I still couldn’t move. My mouth remained sealed, my limbs locked in metal. But the name still whispered in my throat—a voiceless mantra that echoed louder than any scream. And with each repetition, reality began to bend.

  The power of the Death Node surged toward me. It felt endless.

  As I continued to whisper my name, the magic intensified, gathering at my command, like iron filings drawn to a lodestone. The world that had captured me and the realm that had birthed me began to merge.

  At first, it was only a trickle, an echo of life force seeping through the cracks, but then, more came.

  I focused harder, pouring every thread of my will into that name, into that anchor of identity. The flow became a torrent. The torrent became a deluge - and hope exploded inside me like wildfire catching wind.

  Where once there had been fear and despair, now there was only power—raw, radiant, and seething. And beneath it all, a rising storm of rage. Rage at those who had dared to bind me. To burn me. To try and own me.

  Wave after wave of energy, magic and life force, crashed through me, furious and unrelenting, a tide I could scarcely contain. My body strained with it. My spirit roared with it.

  And then, with a scream that tore through both worlds, I stood.

  The molten prison shattered around me, erupting in a spray of incandescent shards that lit the night like dying stars.

  For the briefest flicker of a moment, I saw the aftermath of their folly: the ruins of a once-majestic temple, split and scorched, its stones bleeding ash and hubris.

  Reality twisted once more and I was elsewhere, suspended in darkness. The world was silent and heavy, like the white fog of my first summon.

  After a couple of seconds, weight returned.

  My legs were crammed into a sitting position—tight, twisted, forced. Something pinched at my ribs, trying to hold me in place.

  With the barest flick of effort, I rose, and the corset cracked apart with a sharp snap. My tail lashed out instinctively, striking something solid. Wood shattered, splinters spraying like shrapnel through the night air.

  I caught myself before a roar tore free of my throat.

  The world was no longer alien. I was back—in Fiona’s garden.

  And I was standing amid the wreckage of what had once been a charming wooden bench... and the splintered remains of the table beside it.

  I stood there, slightly dazed, staring at the shattered bench and the half-unearthed stone pillars - wreckage left by a single flick of my tail. The table lay in pieces, but - miraculously - the bottle had survived, rolling a few meters away and slowly bleeding its contents into the grass.

  In one smooth, fluid movement, I crossed the distance and snatched it up, rescuing what little remained.

  Above, the sky was still cloaked in night, but the eastern horizon had begun to pale. The blue moon had vanished, but Kargath and Demetros still hung high, silent witnesses in the heavens.

  I drew a long breath, my chest expanding.

  I was free. Free.

  It took every ounce of restraint not to leap into the air and scream it, to wake the entire palace with my victory. The nightmare was over.

  But instead of exhaustion, I felt... alive. Buzzing. Overflowing with power. My heart thundered in my chest, and mana surged through me like wildfire.

  For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I could see, not with magic-sight, but with my own eyes. And I was whole.

  I stood there gripping the bottle, breathing in the crisp morning air, until the knot in my chest began to loosen. The light crept slowly across the garden, brushing the world in silver. And at last, my thoughts began to settle.