The morning came with reluctance.
Raven woke to gray light filtering through barred windows, his body protesting the motion of sitting up. The stone chamber was cold—always cold—but he'd grown accustomed to discomfort. It was the silence that unsettled him. The absence of the city's ambient noise, the muffled heartbeat of civilization beyond these walls.
Tonight, that heartbeat would change.
He stood, joints popping, and walked to the small mirror propped against the wall. Red eyes stared back—alien yet familiar. The contract marking on his back pulsed faintly, a constant reminder of what he'd become.
What he was about to become.
"You didn't sleep," Azaelith's voice materialized in his mind, softer than usual.
"Couldn't."
"Nervous?"
Raven considered lying. Dismissed it. "Yes."
Her transparent form manifested beside the mirror, arms crossed, studying him with those crimson eyes that mirrored his own.
"Good. Fear keeps you sharp."
"That's not fear." Raven touched the glass, watching his reflection's fingers meet his own. "It's anticipation. Like standing in the ring, knowing the opponent might kill you. That edge between excitement and terror."
"And which side are you on?"
He didn't answer. Couldn't. The truth was too complicated—a tangled mess of resignation, curiosity, and something darker he didn't want to name.
The cathedral courtyard was transformed.
Where last night's battlefield had been chaos—blood and ash and broken stone—now there was order. Terrible, meticulous order.
Cultists moved like worker ants, each performing their designated task with mechanical precision. The ritual circle had been redrawn in fresh blood—Raven didn't ask whose—with symbols that hurt to look at directly. Thirteen pedestals stood at precise intervals, twelve already occupied by items that radiated wrongness.
A blackened skull. A crystal pulsing with contained screams. What looked like a human heart, still beating despite being disconnected from any body.
The thirteenth pedestal remained empty. Waiting.
Raven descended the stone steps into the courtyard, his presence drawing immediate attention. Cultists paused their work, watching with expressions ranging from reverence to fear. He ignored them, focusing on the Masked One who stood at the circle's edge, observing the preparations.
"The anchor arrives," she said without turning. "How do you feel?"
"Like I'm about to do something irreversible."
"You are." She faced him, porcelain mask catching the weak morning light. "But you knew that when you agreed. Having second thoughts?"
"Would it matter?"
"No." Honest, as always. "The ritual requires all thirteen anchors. Without you, it fails. And Lucifur doesn't tolerate failure."
A threat wrapped in pragmatism. Raven appreciated the clarity.
"What do I need to do?"
"Tonight, when the moon reaches its apex, you'll stand at the center." She gestured to the circle's heart, where lines of blood-drawn runes converged. "The ritual will activate. Energy will flow through you—through all thirteen anchors simultaneously. The Gate will open fully."
"And then?"
"Chaos." She said it like discussing the weather. "Entities will cross. Some we can control. Some we cannot. The world will bleed into itself—physical and spiritual merging."
"And I'll be at the center of it."
"You'll be the linchpin. The final lock breaking." The Masked One stepped closer, voice dropping to something almost intimate. "But you'll also transform. Ascend. Become something beyond hybrid. A true bridge between worlds."
Power. Always power. The currency of survival.
"How long will the ritual take?"
"Three hours. From moonrise to midnight. You'll be conscious throughout—I need you aware, maintaining the anchor point." She paused. "It will hurt."
"How much?"
"Imagine every cell in your body rewriting itself simultaneously. Imagine your soul stretched across dimensions. Then multiply that by infinity."
Raven's expression didn't change. "I've felt worse."
It was a lie. But lies were currency too.
Afternoon brought activity to fever pitch.
Cultists erected barriers around the courtyard—not physical walls but energy constructs, shimmering fields of compressed malice. Raven watched from an upper window as they worked, chanting in that unknown language that made his teeth ache.
"They're preparing for retaliation," Azaelith observed beside him. She'd been unusually quiet today, her manifestation less solid than normal.
"Tamers?"
"Inevitably. Kirana Vex retreated, but she'll report to her superiors. They'll come with everything they have."
"Will the barriers hold?"
"For a time. Long enough for the ritual to complete." She fell silent, staring at something he couldn't see.
"You're distracted," Raven noted.
"I'm thinking."
"About?"
"Choices. Consequences. Regrets."
Unusual for her. Azaelith was many things—manipulative, ancient, ruthless—but rarely reflective.
"Having second thoughts?" Raven echoed the Masked One's earlier question.
"Would it matter?"
"Probably not."
They watched the preparations in silence. Below, cultists tested the barriers, throwing corrupted spirits against them like living ammunition. The spirits splattered against invisible walls, reformed, were thrown again. Training for the battle to come.
"Azaelith," Raven said carefully. "If you could go back—before the contract, before all this—would you do it differently?"
She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice carried weight he'd never heard before.
"Ask me again tomorrow. After you see what we've wrought."
Evening descended like a shroud.
The cultists gathered in concentric circles around the ritual site, fifty strong. Each bore the marks of their service—scars from blood magic, eyes that had seen too much, expressions worn smooth by fanaticism.
The Masked One stood at the southern point of the circle, ceremonial robes replaced by something more practical—reinforced leather under dark fabric, blades at her waist, hands already stained with preparatory blood.
Raven approached from the cathedral entrance, each step measured. Deliberate. He'd changed into simple black clothing provided by the cult—easier to burn away when the transformation came.
The courtyard fell silent as he walked. Fifty pairs of eyes tracking his movement. Fifty witnesses to his damnation.
Or apotheosis.
Depended on perspective.
He reached the circle's edge. The blood-drawn lines pulsed with each heartbeat—his heartbeat, synchronized to the ritual's rhythm. The twelve anchors around him flickered with dark energy, creating a corona of wrongness that pressed against his skin.
The thirteenth pedestal stood directly before him. Empty except for a small iron dagger.
"Your blood," the Masked One called across the circle. "To seal the anchor. To become part of the Gate itself."
Raven picked up the dagger. Tested its edge against his thumb. Sharp enough to cut reality, or so it felt.
"Raven," Azaelith's voice, urgent now. "Before you do this—"
"Too late for doubts."
"This isn't doubt. This is—" She stopped. Started again. "After tonight, nothing will be the same. You understand that?"
"I've understood that since the convenience store."
"No. You don't." Her manifestation solidified—more present than she'd been in days. "The person you are now? He dies tonight. What emerges I don't know if you'll still be you."
Raven looked at her. Really looked. And saw something in those red eyes he'd never seen before.
Fear.
Not for herself. For him.
"Then I guess we'll find out together," he said quietly.
He drew the dagger across his palm. Blood welled—darker than it should be, carrying hints of crimson flame. He let it drip onto the pedestal, into grooves carved for this exact purpose.
The blood ignited. Not with heat, but with presence. Like it was more real than the stone, the air, the world itself.
The pedestal activated.
Thirteen points blazed to life simultaneously. The circle completed. Energy surged—a wave of pressure that bent light and sound into nauseating spirals.
Raven stepped into the center.
The moment his foot crossed the innermost line, the world changed. Gravity doubled, then tripled. The air became thick as syrup, each breath a battle. His contract marking burned white-hot, spreading tendrils of pain across his back.
"It's starting," Azaelith breathed.
The Masked One raised both hands. "Begin the chant!"
Fifty voices rose in unison. That unknown language—older than civilization, older than the division between worlds. Syllables that tasted like copper and ash, that resonated in bones and blood.
The Gate responded.
That crack in reality—barely visible before—tore wider. Not a door opening. A wound splitting. Reality bleeding into itself.
And from beyond—
Something looked back.
Raven felt it—the weight of attention from something vast and hungry and ancient. Multiple presences pressing against the barrier, eager to cross, to feed, to exist in a world that had forgotten them.
His knees buckled. The pressure was immense, crushing, trying to compact him into nothing. He forced himself to stand, muscles screaming, bones creaking.
"Stay conscious," Azaelith urged. "If you fall now, the anchor breaks. Everything fails."
"Wasn't... planning... to fall..." Raven ground out through clenched teeth.
The chanting intensified. The cultists swayed in rhythm, their individual voices blending into one terrible harmony. The Gate widened further—now visible to normal sight, a jagged tear hovering three feet off the ground, edges crackling with impossible colors.
Raven's vision doubled. Tripled. He saw the courtyard overlaid with somewhere else—a realm of pure darkness, of floating fragments, of things that moved in geometries that shouldn't exist.
The spiritual realm. The other side of reality.
And it was coming here.
The moon rose.
Full. Perfect. Exactly as the ritual required.
Its light hit the circle like a key turning in a lock. The thirteen anchors flared—pillars of darkness erupting from each pedestal, connecting to the central point.
To Raven.
Pain exploded through him. Not physical—something deeper. Like his soul was being unraveled, thread by thread, then rewoven into a different pattern.
He screamed. Couldn't help it. The sound was swallowed by the ritual's momentum, lost in the chanting and the howling of wind that came from nowhere.
"I'm sorry," Azaelith's voice, distant now. "I'm so sorry, Raven."
He tried to respond. Couldn't form words. His body was changing—not visibly, not yet, but internally. Restructuring. Preparing for what came next.
The Gate continued to open.
And somewhere in the distance, beyond the barriers, beyond the cathedral walls—
Horns sounded.
The Spirit Tamers were coming.
But they were too late. The ritual had passed the point of no return. The Gate would open.
Raven would transform.
And the world would never be the same.
He stood at the center of it all, suspended between agony and transcendence, while reality itself prepared to break.