Pain.
Not the sharp agony of a blade or the dull throb of broken bones. This was something fundamental—as if reality itself was tearing him apart at the molecular level, examining each piece, then reassembling them wrong.
Raven's scream died in his throat, swallowed by the ritual's momentum. He couldn't move. Couldn't think beyond the sensation of being unmade.
The thirteen pillars of darkness converged on him, streams of corrupted energy pouring into his body like molten lead through his veins. His contract marking blazed—no longer just heat, but presence. Like something living was being carved into his spine with hooks made of frozen fire.
This is 25% complete, some distant part of his mind catalogued. Three more hours of this.
He might not survive.
Might not want to.
Through vision that fractured and reformed moment by moment, Raven saw the Gate. It had grown. No longer a simple crack but a massive wound in the fabric of existence—building-sized, jagged edges crackling with colors that had no names.
And beyond it—
Darkness.
Pure, absolute darkness. Not the absence of light but something deeper. A darkness that existed before light was conceived. That would exist long after the last star died.
And in that darkness—
Movement.
The barriers shuddered.
A wave of holy energy crashed against them from outside—searing white-gold that made the cultists' blood magic hiss and smoke. The barrier held, but barely. Cracks spiderwebbed across invisible walls.
"Second wave incoming!" one cultist shouted. "Tamers are escalating!"
The Masked One didn't break her concentration, hands still raised, voice joining the chant. But her head tilted slightly—acknowledgment of the threat.
"Defensive positions!" she called between verses. "Maintain the ritual. Nothing else matters."
Twenty cultists broke from the chanting circle, rushing to reinforce the barriers. They drew blood from prepared vials, sketched rapid sigils, summoned Corrupted Spirits to bolster the defenses.
Outside, figures moved in the darkness beyond the cathedral grounds. Spirit Tamers. Not the full force—not yet—but an advance squad testing defenses, probing for weaknesses.
Leading them was a woman Raven didn't recognize—older than Kirana, with silver threading through dark hair and a presence that radiated authority. Tier-4 at minimum. Perhaps higher.
She raised her hand. A massive guardian spirit manifested beside her—three times the size of Kirana's, wreathed in chains of pure light.
"Breach protocol alpha," the senior Tamer commanded. "All spirits, focus fire on the northern barrier. On my mark—"
The guardian spirit drew back one enormous fist.
"—now!"
The impact was thunder made solid. The barrier buckled, held, cracked further. Warning runes flared across its surface.
"They're breaking through!" a cultist screamed.
The Masked One's voice cut through the panic. "Hold the line. The ritual is past halfway. They're too late."
But her eyes—visible through the mask's slits—flickered toward the Gate.
Toward something else.
Raven's consciousness fractured.
One moment he was in the courtyard, pain tethering him to reality. The next—
—he was falling through darkness—
—surrounded by shapes that hurt to perceive—
—things with too many angles—
—geometries that folded in on themselves—
—and EYES—
So many eyes. Watching. Waiting. Hungry.
Then he was back. In his body. In agony. The courtyard swam into focus.
Visions, he realized. The other realm. I'm seeing through the Gate.
"Raven!" Azaelith's voice, urgent. "Stay present! If your mind wanders too far—"
Another fracture. Another glimpse beyond.
This time he saw something specific. A presence in the dark. Massive beyond comprehension. Not a spirit or demon—something older. Something that existed before those categories had meaning.
It moved toward the Gate.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Like it had all the time in the world.
"Northern barrier at 40% integrity!"
"Spirits breaching section seven!"
"Casualties—three cultists down!"
Chaos erupted along the defensive perimeter. The senior Tamer's assault was relentless, methodical, professional. Each strike calculated to maximize damage while conserving energy.
She wasn't trying to win through overwhelming force. She was buying time. Holding position until the main force arrived.
Kirana Vex appeared beside her, breathing hard, contract seal glowing. "Director Aldric is thirty minutes out with the full squadron. We need to hold until—"
"I know what we need to do," the senior Tamer cut her off. "Focus on suppressing their ritual output. If we can disrupt the energy flow—"
An explosion. Not from the barriers but from within the ritual circle itself.
The Gate surged.
Doubled in size in an instant. The darkness beyond roiled, pressed against the edges, began spilling through in wisps that solidified into something almost tangible.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in seconds.
Every breath became visible mist.
And that presence on the other side—
It was closer now.
The Masked One's composure cracked. Just slightly. Just enough.
"That's not right," she murmured. "The expansion rate is accelerating beyond parameters"
One of the senior cultists approached, concern etched across scarred features. "Should we slow the energy input?"
"No. We're committed. Slowing now would collapse the entire working." She turned toward the Gate, studying it with narrowed eyes. "But something is affecting the ritual. An interference I didn't account for."
Her gaze swept across the circle. Over the chanting cultists. The thirteen anchors. The blood-drawn runes.
The runes.
Several symbols along the inner circuit were... different. Subtly altered. Lines that curved where they should be straight. Angles that didn't quite match the master pattern.
The changes were masterful. Nearly invisible. Someone would have to know the original design intimately to spot them.
Someone like—
"Azaelith," the Masked One breathed.
"I'm sorry."
Azaelith's voice in Raven's mind was barely a whisper, drowned by pain and the roar of collapsing dimensions.
"I tried to save you. I altered the runes. Changed the pattern. The transformation should have been lessened. Should have left you more human."
Raven couldn't respond. Could barely process her words through the agony.
"But I miscalculated. The alteration affected more than the transformation protocol. It's affecting the Gate itself. Destabilizing it."
A pause.
"Something else is coming through."
"Something I didn't intend."
"Something no one intended."
The Gate was the size of a cathedral now.
That pure darkness swirled like a living thing, and from within—
A sound.
Not heard with ears. Felt with something deeper. A vibration that resonated in bones, in organs, in the spaces between atoms.
Recognition.
The thing beyond had found the opening.
Was coming through.
The cultists' chanting faltered. Fear crept into voices that had been steady, fervent, fanatical.
Because they could sense it too.
This wasn't what they'd summoned. This wasn't a demon or ancient spirit or any entity from recorded lore.
This was something else.
Something other.
The Masked One stood frozen, staring at the Gate with an expression hidden by porcelain but clear in her body language—
Realization.
Horror.
Understanding that she'd lost control.
"Abort the ritual," she said quietly.
"What?" The senior cultist beside her stared. "But we're so close—"
"ABORT THE RITUAL!" she screamed.
Too late.
The Gate shuddered. Bulged outward. And something pressed against the barrier between worlds—testing, probing, finding it thin enough to—
—break—
A tentacle emerged.
Not metaphorical. Not symbolic. A physical appendage that existed in violation of natural law—black as the void between stars, covered in eyes that opened and closed in patterns that induced nausea, writhing with a life that was too alien to comprehend.
It was the size of a building pillar. Wrapped in segments of chitin and something that looked like reversed flesh. It swept across the courtyard, and where it touched—
Reality broke.
Stone didn't crumble. It erased. Simply ceased to exist. The barriers didn't shatter. They forgot how to be.
Three cultists were caught in its path.
They didn't die.
They un-became. Present one moment, never existed the next. Not even memories remained.
Silence.
Complete, absolute silence as everyone—cultist and Tamer alike—stared at the thing emerging from the Gate.
The tentacle withdrew slightly. Repositioned.
And more came through.
Five tentacles. Ten. Twenty. Each the size of ancient trees, each covered in those impossible eyes, each leaving trails of non-existence in their wake.
They were just the fingers.
The hand was still beyond the Gate.
The body—
The body was still rising from depths no mortal was meant to perceive.
Raven felt it all.
Connected to the ritual, anchoring the Gate, he experienced the entity's emergence as a violation of every natural instinct.
His mind screamed to reject it. To deny its existence. To curl up and refuse the reality of something so fundamentally wrong.
But he couldn't move. Couldn't look away. Couldn't do anything but watch and feel as an Eldritch Horror crossed the threshold between dimensions.
This is what we summoned, he thought distantly. This is what Azaelith's sabotage brought instead.
This is what ends the world.
The pain of transformation was nothing compared to this. The agony of his changing nature paled before the existential terror of witnessing something that should not—could not—exist within the laws of reality.
And yet it did exist.
It was here.
And it was hungry.
The senior Tamer outside the barriers stood perfectly still.
Then—
"Retreat," she whispered.
"What?" Kirana stared. "But the mission—"
"RETREAT!" the woman screamed. "Full withdrawal! Alert Director Aldric! Code Black! Eldritch-class entity! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"
The Tamer squad scattered. No shame in it. No hesitation. Just pure survival instinct overriding duty.
Because they all understood—
Whatever that thing was, they couldn't fight it.
Couldn't slow it.
Could only run and pray it didn't notice them.
Inside the barriers, the Masked One stared at her life's work turning to nightmare.
"This wasn't... I didn't..." She turned toward Raven, eyes wide behind the mask. "What have we done?"
Raven, suspended in agony and transformation, watched tentacles the size of buildings wave through the air like grass in a breeze.
Watched reality break wherever they touched.
Watched the Gate continue to widen, because the ritual was irreversible now.
And thought, with perfect clarity—
We've damned everyone.