He steadied the churning in his head, drew a slow breath as he completed the triangle, then went downstairs and brought up everything he needed to begin the ceremony.
Following the steps in order, he placed all four glasses in the four corners of the room, filled to the brim, each with its piece of paper bearing one of the four symbolic phrases submerged inside. He sealed the room until no light seeped through.
Then, as he had the day before, he took his position at one end of the room, formed the strange symmetrical hand sign, and began moving clockwise from corner to corner — whispering the inscribed words at each glass in turn, in their respective order.
***
Yohan, in fact, knew what he was whispering. He wasn't just repeating meaningless sounds—he was chanting exactly what he had learned from those strange pictures of the text.
What surprised him, however, was the language itself.
The ritual was written in a language called Saerin—a very old language, though calling it merely old felt insufficient. Ancient would be a better word.
It wasn't some forbidden or forgotten tongue hidden in myths. People still knew about it, though mostly through history, literature, and old records.
What mildly astonished Yohan was that Saerin had once been the most reputed and prosperous language of Iystoria.
Long before Iystoria became an official nation, before the end of the Great Colonial Era, Saerin was the language of prestige. It was used by scholars, nobles, administration, and the educated class. It carried influence, identity, and status.
But after the Great Colonial Era ended and Iystoria was formally established as a nation, that gradually changed.
Saerin was significantly replaced by a more modern script, heavily inspired by the Westrosh Republic of the Eastern World—a nation that held the greatest influence during the colonial age and the wars fought throughout it.
That period was also known as the Westrosh Era of Industrialization.
For centuries, Westrosh expanded its power by monopolizing trade, controlling human resources, and colonizing wealthy kingdoms and culturally rich regions. They used those stolen resources to strengthen their own industries, expand further, and tighten their political influence across the world.
It became a cycle that seemed endless—colonization feeding industrialization, and industrialization feeding more colonization.
And somewhere in that process, languages changed too.
As Westrosh influence gradually spread across Iystoria and remained dominant for centuries, the Westrosh language began to grow more vital and influential throughout the nation. It became the language of administration, trade, diplomacy, and advancement, while the number of people speaking Saerin slowly declined.
With time, Saerin was pushed further into history.
However, in an effort to preserve the originality and cultural identity of Iystorians, anti-colonial nationalists sought a middle path. Instead of reviving pure Saerin entirely, they developed a new language—one that carried the soul of Saerin but adapted itself to the practicality of the modern age.
Its structure and expression were heavily influenced by Saerin, while its script took inspiration from the writing system of the Westrosh language.
After the formation of the Iystoria Nation, this new language was officially named the Iystorian Language.
Yohan could read Saerin script. Its writing system was different from both Westrosh and modern Iystorian, older and less intuitive, but still readable if one had studied enough. Understanding it completely, however, was another matter. Reading symbols and grasping true meaning were two different things.
Still, the similarities between Saerin and Iystorian were noticeable enough that he could navigate through it with effort.
Iystorian was his first language, naturally. But he was also well-versed in Westrosh.
Even after the end of the Great Colonial Era, Westrosh had left an enormous mark on the world through its language. It had spread far beyond politics and empire, becoming the practical bridge between nations.
Trade, diplomacy, academics, military affairs, international law—Westrosh was everywhere.
Without any formal declaration, it had slowly become the world's standard language. Not because everyone respected it, but because everyone had to use it.
And by this era, almost every country taught Westrosh alongside its native language—for diplomacy, globalization, and the simple necessity of being understood beyond one's own borders.
***
"𐌃𐌄𐌉𐌔𐌉𐌄𐌓 𐌏𐌅 𐌓𐌐𐌉𐌓𐌉𐌔𐌕𐌀𐌋 𐌓𐌉𐌎𐌆𐌕𐌋𐌀𐌓𐌉𐌔𐌙"
[ Deities Of Spiritual Singularity ]
Yohan whispered the first inscription 37 times with an eerie calm, standing before the first glass containing the same writing. As he kept moving and whispering, something began to feel colder and heavier around him, as if the air in the room had taken on a weight of its own, while his mind settled into a strange soothing tranquility, feeling every sound distant including his own.
His focus gathering inward toward a single point in the void of his thoughts.
"𐌇𐌏𐌋𐌙 𐌌𐌄𐌓𐌓𐌄𐌍𐌆𐌄𐌓 𐌏𐌅 𐌇𐌄𐌀𐌖𐌄𐌍"
[ Holy Messenger Of Heaven ]
He whispered the second inscription 31 times as he approached the second glass, and as he continued the distorted flickering in his head began dissolving into something hazy and dreamlike, like he was sinking into warm water with no desire to swim back up.
"𐌓𐌏𐌖𐌄𐌓𐌄𐌉𐌆𐌍 𐌀𐌍𐌃 𐌓𐌋𐌀𐌖𐌄 𐌏𐌅 𐌇𐌄𐌋𐌋"
[ Sovereign And Slave Of Hell ]
Whispering this one 17 times, his own voice became something insidious and unrecognisable even to himself, as though it were echoing through some vast, empty hall back inside his own body.
He could hear himself, but also something beneath it.
He felt drugged — couldn't hold a straight thought — while countless memories of his life flashed through his mind in a messy, contorted blur, bleeding into entirely fabricated ones that had never existed.
"𐌀𐌍𐌆𐌄𐌋 𐌏𐌅 𐌃𐌏𐌏𐌌"
[ Angel Of Doom ]
As he began repeating the final inscription, an overwhelming listlessness crashed over him — he wanted to sink to the floor and sleep right there.
To be fair, he was already exhausted, having barely slept properly over the last few days, and hardly at all the night before. That part had been intentional— one of the conditions of the ritual required the performer to be in a state of lethargy beforehand, but what he was feeling now went well beyond that.
The closer he moved toward the fourth glass, repeating the final chant, the more his mind began to narrow into a single instinctive line of thought, as if everything unnecessary was being stripped away.
Then, as he drew closer to the fourth glass, still chanting, he began hearing whispers beyond his own voice. Not one, two, three, four...
Hundreds of whispers repeating the same words with him, layered over each other in a low, unnatural chorus that grew louder with every repetition. They weren't synchronized, yet somehow they were. Some sounded distant, some too close, almost against his ear.
Whether the voices were human or something else entirely, or whether he was simply imagining them, he couldn't say.
The coldness had by now seeped through his entire body, raising every hair on him, and yet he gave no reaction to any of it — his mind too frozen to respond to anything around him. The ominous feeling swelling inside him was edging toward something frantic, something that wanted him to stop. But he didn't.
If the voices were real, they signalled that the ritual had begun. And one of the conditions had been explicit: whatever happens, do not pause the chanting once They have started to follow. If you stop, They will not like it.
But who were 'They' ? That part was redacted.
Finally completing a full rotation and chanting the last inscription 13 times, he came to the centre of the triangle and sat down cross-legged.
He began murmuring something that sat somewhere between a plea and a prayer, speaking in Iystorian while weaving certain words and names in Saerin throughout.
"The eternal inheritors and sustainers of the will of the absolute, who uphold the preordained laws of inevitability — I mean no sinister defilement or interference with those laws. I seek guidance from the four obscurities to awaken my core, under the perpetual watch of—
𐌔𐌇𐌄 𐌂𐌓𐌄𐌀𐌔𐌏𐌓 𐌏𐌅 𐌂𐌓𐌄𐌀𐌔𐌉𐌏𐌍
[ The Creator Of Creation ]..."
While Yohan sat enclosed in his dark room performing this strange ceremony, outside his room in the sky a visually eerily baleful but cyclic phenomenon was occurring.
Sunlight lost its warmth and turned pale, metallic, as if the world had been washed in thin silver instead of gold. Shadows in all the surroundings in the street stretched with unnatural precision.
Further at the end of the street, A woman watering plants on the third floor balcony of an apartment stopped mid-motion, staring at the ground where the shadows of leaves had changed.
Beneath the neem tree outside, dozens of tiny crescents danced across the pavement—small curved fragments of light, trembling like broken moons.
Someone pointed upward.
The noise of the street softened, not because it vanished, but because people unconsciously lowered their voices. Even stray dogs that barked at everything had gone still.
Above the city, the Sun was being eaten or simply losing its cadence.
The Moon had crossed into perfect alignment, but not enough to grant darkness—only distortion. A black disc rested at the center of the blazing Sun, surrounded by a burning ring of white-gold fire.
It was an annular eclipse.
The Ring of Fire.
It hung in the sky like an eye in the hell—watching without blinking.
It was a rare phenomenon, not just merely for its timing but because it could only be witnessed from within a specific geographical corridor of visibility known as the Path of Totality. Helid city fell within that path.
Some people stood on rooftops wearing protective glasses, whispering in excitement. Others made quiet prayers out of old instinct, because something ancient in the human body still distrusted eclipses. Elderly neighbors muttered about omens. Children laughed until their parents told them not to.
And in the middle of all of it—
—inside a dim room with curtains drawn.
Yohan sat alone on the floor—completely oblivious to what was happening just beyond his window, which made his supposedly scammy ritual feel more promising than it had any right to, lending it a cinematic, surreal quality straight out of a dark fantasy.
He whispered the final line of the ritual at the exact moment the eclipse reached its peak.
"...And seek protection from the conscience corruption of 𐌋𐌉𐌆𐌇𐌔 𐌏𐌅 𐌃𐌀𐌓𐌊𐌍𐌄𐌓𐌓."
[ Light Of Darkness / Hope Of Darkness ]
By this moment he didn't even realise when he fell asleep.
After an uncertain stretch of time, Yohan finally opened his eyes.
Huh?!
Yohan's eyes saw nothing extraordinary,
Just night...a mundane night in front of his eyes, but night that did not feel real.
The sky was black and vast and empty, not a single star or cloud, holding a moon far too large to belong there. It hung low against the horizon, only half visible, a massive white semicircle pressed into the edge of the world. Its light was not soft—it was pale, and absolute, almost blinding, pouring across the dark sea in a long silver path that trembled over the surface, like a road leading to somewhere.
The ocean barely moved. Slow, sleeping waves rose and fell without sound, carrying an unnatural calm, as though the sea itself had been forced into silence. No wind. No birds. No distant life. Only that inconceivable moon watching over black water and endless stillness.
Yohan stood barefoot at the shore, the cold sand sinking softly beneath his feet. The grains clung to his skin, damp and strangely soothing, grounding him against the unreal vastness ahead.
A small wave rolled forward, calm and deliberate, brushing the tips of his toes.
Instinctively, he stepped back.
"Did I… succeed?" His voice sounded too small here. "But where am I—"
He turned mid-thought and something slipped across his peripheral vision as he did, as though the world had passed through a seamless transition in the fraction of a second it took him to move.
"What?!"
For a moment, he simply stood there, unable to process what he was seeing, as if reality had been replaced in the single instant it took him to turn his head.
Behind him, where the silver moonlight had been pouring across the black sea beneath that monstrous moon, there was now a narrow corridor pressed between walls of snow-laden trees.
Their branches bowed so low they nearly touched overhead, sealing the passage like the throat of some dead giant. The path sloped gently upward, winding higher and higher into a distance his eyes couldn't fully follow. He searched for a peak, a break, any kind of end and found nothing. The incline simply continued until it was swallowed by the dark.
The ground beneath his feet was nearly white, though he couldn't say with any certainty whether it was snow, ash, or salt. It resembled all three and none of them, and there was no biting coldness seeping up through his soles.
The sky above the slopes was a bruised dark gray, and at its center hung something surreal — a black sun.
It radiated darkness the way ordinary stars radiated light, and that darkness poured from it the way heat pours from a fire, pressing outward, consuming whatever faint sourceless illumination still clung to the world below it.
Everything resolved into gray shapes. The trees were gray. The snow was gray or something that looked like snow, white only in the abstract, color leached out of it the same as everything else around it. He couldn't be certain of any of it.
Then something warm touched his feet.
A thin stream of liquid ran along the center of the path, slipping between the white ground like a vein beneath skin. It moved slowly, almost lazily from somewhere far high above reaching all the way down to where he stood, brushing against the edges of his feet.
It was warm.
Eerily warm.
The warm liquid continued brushing past him.
He looked down but couldn't tell what it was. It was warm, and that was all he knew.
A chilling thrill ran through his spine as he took in the full contrast of it — a sky devoured by darkness hanging above white earth and a strange river of sombre liquid winding through it all.
The moment the liquid touched his feet he spun back around to face the silver sea.
"What the..."
There was no sea, no moon, no view that he had previously seen—only the same slope streching far behind him inclined downward gently and disappearing into the abyss below.
"...f*ck?! I'm f*cked!" He mumbled, stumbling a step or two backward into the puddle.
This wasn't supposed to happen like this. Did I make a mistake somewhere? What is this place... where are the humans?
There was no monster waiting, and... no human.
Only a suffocating stillness blanketing everything as far as he could see.
Did some variable actually disrupt the procedure, or...
Yohan gritted his teeth, his expression darkening.
...that ritual used me as some sacrificial pawn for something else.