As per plan, Team One secured the perimeter, removing all civilians from the hazardous radius of the summoned god.
"Perimeter secured," Team One reported. "Zone is clear. Ready to seal, cut power, and lock down all escape routes on your order."
"Team Two, over. We've reached the underground chamber. Twelve sigils identified. Our people are positioned and ready to destroy them on command."
"Team Four here. Holy water mixed with salt has been deployed. The church is slowly flooding—unnoticeable at this stage. External noise has been introduced: cars, movement, chaos. No one will hear what happens inside. Electrical current is primed. Awaiting your signal. Over and out."
I looked at Malcolm.
He was fully geared in priest's robes, flanked by four others dressed the same. In his hands rested the SOLARIS ANCHOR.
It looked… ordinary.
Nothing like the illustrations. Just a small glass locket, wrapped in gold and silver filigree, etched with a cool, symmetrical design. Power disguised as decoration.
Beside him stood trained men, ready to drag out the cultists.
The chanting began.
"O Dim Binder—Our savior.Our love.Our heart.We call upon you—"
The air filled with the stench of blood.
A corpse—mangled flesh, organs twisted, soaked in crimson—lay at the center of the ritual circle.
These people were freaks.
The atmosphere dropped instantly. Cold crawled across my skin. The candles flared, their flames turning an unnatural blue. Black-blue tendrils leaked into the air, writhing, swinging, searching.
They weren't just moving.
They were feeding.
Drinking. Absorbing. Drying the life out of the space itself.
The glowing circle slowed… then stabilized.
The summoning had succeeded.
The air collapsed inward. Frost skinned the stone. Breath turned white. Candles guttered, their flames stretched thin and blue, bending toward the circle as if afraid to look away.
The thing finished coming through.
It did not arrive all at once.
First came absence—a hollow where the world should be. Then the black-blue tendrils thickened, braiding together, tearing light apart as they moved. They drank heat. Sound. The taste of iron filled my mouth.
The corpse at the center didn't explode.
It emptied.
Skin shriveled. Blood crawled backward into the veins. Bone softened, sagged, folded inward like wet paper.
Something stood up wearing what was left.
No face. No edges. Just a suggestion of a torso, arms branching and re-branching, joints forming and unforming. Where a head should have been, there was a vertical seam—slowly opening.
Inside it: motion.
Not organs. Memories.
The sigil circle dimmed, steadied.
Too steady.
"It's anchored," Malcolm whispered. "Fully here."
"Then move," I said.
CUT.
"Team Two—now."
Explosions didn't come from underground.The sigils didn't shatter.
They screamed.
Twelve voices—human, distorted, layered—howled through stone as the markings burned out one by one.
The entity reacted.
The seam split wider.
Sound died.
A cultist nearest the circle lifted off the floor, bones pulling free of his skin, rearranging mid-air. He didn't even get to scream before he was folded inside the thing.
Gone.
"Lines are down," Team One snapped. "No power. No exits."
"Flood it," I said.
CUT.
Water crept faster now, salt biting at stone, crawling over pews, licking the ritual circle. The entity recoiled—not from the water, but from what it carried.
Containment.
Limitation.
Electricity hit.
The church lit up white.
Stone cracked. Metal screamed. The thing convulsed, tendrils snapping and whipping, punching through pillars, shredding banners, splitting altars like wood.
Cultists burned where they stood. Some fell. Some were lifted, held twitching as the current danced through them, then dropped smoking into the rising water.
The seam-mouth opened fully.
And looked at us.
Not with eyes.
With attention.
"Current destabilizing," Team Four yelled. "We've got seconds!"
"Team Three—GO!"
CUT.
We moved.
The second the current dropped, the thing surged, tendrils lashing blind and furious. One clipped the floor where I'd been half a second earlier—stone dissolved, leaving nothing but steam.
The combatants dragged the fallen cultists outside, bodies still convulsing, mouths working soundlessly as if trying to finish prayers their tongues no longer remembered.
Two men stayed behind.
Flamethrowers roared to life.
Fire washed across the entity, buying seconds—nothing more. The flames didn't burn it. They outlined it, revealing too many limbs folding through one another, tendrils recoiling and striking back like whips.
Malcolm stepped forward.
He positioned himself directly in front of the shrunken Dim Binder and opened the SOLARIS ANCHOR.
Light spilled out—not bright, not holy—focused. Heavy. Like gravity given shape.
The priests formed up behind him, voices rising as one, chanting the holy names, syllables sharp enough to cut through the air. Malcolm began walking—slow, deliberate—toward the entity, Anchor held out before him, ready to draw it in.
I stayed to the side, covering the flank.
Then—
Movement.
Too fast.
One of the priests broke formation.
Before I could shout, he lunged—not at the entity—but at one of our combatants. The knife flashed once, twice—
Throat of the combatant and then at himself at his Heart.
Blood sprayed hot and sudden.
The priest screamed, eyes wild."To the Dim Binder I offer blood and body—my sacrifice to destroy this heretic! Long live the Dim Binder!"
Fuck.
Everything went wrong at once.
Malcolm froze—pure shock on his face.
The fallen god fed.
You could feel it—like a breath drawn deep after starvation. The air thickened. The light warped. The entity swelled, tendrils thickening, movements sharpening with purpose.
Then it released its domain.
Reality rotted.
A corrosive wave blasted outward, invisible but absolute. Tendrils lashed through space itself, striking us all at once. I was lifted off my feet and thrown hard into the wall—bone-crushing force, air ripped from my lungs.
Something screamed.
I think it was me.
A pressure slammed down—spiritual, crushing—pinning us to the ground. My vision tunneled. My ears rang. Every thought felt like it had to push uphill just to exist.
Through the blur, I saw Malcolm.
He was trying to stand.
Shaking. Bleeding. Still gripping the Anchor.
The priests were down—broken, twisted, not moving right. One crawled. One didn't move at all.
The combatant—the one who'd been stabbed—was gone.
Thrown clear. Or dissolved. Or worse.
The entity loomed, attention turning outward, searching—
An exit.
"Malcolm," I gasped, teeth grinding as the pressure crushed my chest. "Get up… you old bastard… you have to move."
He staggered.
He looked at me.
"Kyle," he said, voice tearing through the pressure, "I need time. Can you buy me some?"
"God damn it," I muttered.
Chains—now.
I hurled one upward. It caught the ceiling beam with a shriek of metal, and I hauled myself off the ground as another chain lashed out, wrapping the Dim Binder, biting into whatever passed for flesh.
I slammed my boots down.
The impact detonated outward—compressed air ripping across the flooded floor. Stone cracked. Water exploded away from me in a ring.
I dragged in a breath so deep it burned.
Then I threw it from my lungs.
The force slammed into the Dim Binder, driving it back—just enough.
I began to chant.
"In the brightest day,in the darkest—"
Light tore free from me.
Not clean. Not pure.
It descended like pressure made visible, pressing down on the thing, forcing its tendrils inward, chaining motion to hesitation. The Dim Binder shrieked—high, fractured—fighting every inch.
It wasn't enough to destroy it.
But the spiritual weight lessened.
I felt it—my knees buckling, muscles screaming, something inside me starting to tear as I held the Dim Binder in place.
"Do it," I rasped. "Fast."
I couldn't breathe right. Blood ran from my nose. My vision pulsed.
"I can't hold it—"
Malcolm staggered forward.
Each step cost him. His chant grew stronger as he closed the distance, the SOLARIS ANCHOR blazing now, lines of gold and silver burning like living script.
He raised it.
The Dim Binder twisted, sensing the trap.
And Malcolm kept coming.
Before Malcolm could get close enough—
The suddenly bled from my mouth.
Hot. Metallic. Wrong.
I felt the pressure spike, then break.
Something hit me from behind.
I staggered and saw it—the other combatant, eyes glassy, knife already buried in my side.
"For the Dim Binder," he hissed.
Fuck.The heretic.
The chains unraveled.
They didn't snap—they dissolved, light draining out of them as they vanished mid-air. The Dim Binder surged, tendrils flaring wide.
"Kyle—NO!" Malcolm shouted, turning just in time to see me stumble.
The combatant lunged again.
I didn't think.
I used the powers of the ring.
Every ounce of pain I'd stored—every cracked rib, every burn, every breath I'd forced past fear—released at once.
The air screamed.
A tearing, crushing wave erupted from my hand and slammed into him, folding his body backward and hurling him across the chamber. He hit the mangled corpse pile with a wet, final sound and didn't move again.
I locked my knees, barely stopping myself from collapsing.
Blood poured from my mouth and my back.
I dragged in a breath and roared, "Damn heretic!"
The Dim Binder turned.
And this time, it was fully awake.
It screeched.
The sound hit like broken glass inside the skull.
The Dim Binder lashed out and threw Malcolm across the church. His body slammed into stone—once, twice—then stopped moving. Barely responsive, bleeding, he still forced himself upright just long enough to meet my eyes.
"Kyle—catch!"
He hurled the locket.
"The SOLARIS ANCHOR," he gasped. "You have to seal it. I'll chant. You just—push it inside its chest."
I caught it.
The looked at Dim Binder through my battered body, dark vapor pouring from rents in its form. It inhaled—slow, dragging breaths—as if learning pain for the first time.
It sensed me.
Tendrils lashed out.
"Staff—come. Enlarge."
The staff snapped into my hands, extending as I met the strikes head-on.Right. Left. Down. Across.
A full parry exchange.
Each blow carried crushing force, driving me back step by step. Stone shattered beneath my boots.
No—damn it.I had to get close.
"Old man," I shouted, teeth clenched. "Get ready. Begin the chant on my count."
I positioned myself, sword ready at my side.
"One."Two."
I grit my teeth.
"Three."
I slammed the staff downward—enlarge—the recoil launching me clear across the church. I skidded, stopped, inhaled.
Deep.
Burning.
Lightning Breathing—First Form.
The world narrowed.
I exploded forward.
Air cracked as I rushed the entity at lightning speed, cutting through tendrils as they reached for me—severed, burned, gone. I closed the distance, raised my sword—
And it melted.
The heat, the force, the pressure—steel failed in my hands.
I didn't stop.
I drove the broken blade into its chest, wrenching open a gap, and jammed the locket inside.
The Dim Binder wrapped around me instantly, tendrils coiling tight, trying to pull me with it.
I fought to push free.
Couldn't.
Blood loss. Power drained. Limbs heavy.
Darkness crept in.
Sleep.
Then—
A voice.
"Raj… Raj, my son."
Warm. Familiar.
"It's okay if it's hard. I know someday you'll make me proud."
My eyes snapped open.
Kyle. Kyle shouted the old man. " wake up you brat, If you don't I will smack your ass"
"fuck… yes I'm Kyle not raj."
The Dim Binder was dragging me—but it was being dragged too, sucked toward the locket, screaming silently as it clawed at the seal.
Rage burned through the fog.
"How dare you," I whispered, then roared, "touch my memory."
"In the brightest day—In the darkest night—Hope burns bright!"
A circle ignited beneath us.
A column of light erupted skyward, obliterating shadow, evaporating what remained of the entity. It resisted—then chose containment, collapsing inward as the Anchor sealed shut with a sound like a tomb closing.
Silence.
I collapsed.
Through blurred vision, I saw Malcolm crawl toward me. Blood poured from his mouth, but he was smiling.
"We… did it," he rasped.
I chuckled weakly.
"Yeah," I said. "We did."
And then—
Everything went dark.