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The crimson light from the runes was not illumination; it was a physical weight, a syrupy, oppressive energy that sought to press Jack to his knees. The air itself thickened with the stench of old blood and ozone, the very atmosphere rejecting his presence. The cultists' chant resumed, a low, guttural drone that vibrated through the stone floor and into his bones.
Lissa's terrified eyes met his across the chamber. In them, he saw not just fear, but a dawning, horrified recognition of the world he lived in—the world he had tried to shield her from.
The lead cultist, the Hierophant, smiled, a skeletal stretching of lips. "Do not struggle, Prodigal. Your sacrifice will open a door that has been sealed for millennia. Your lineage was always meant for this glory."
Jack didn't speak. Words were a currency of the world above, and down here, in this buried temple of madness, only action mattered. The beast within him, feeling the hostile energy, did not rage blindly. It coiled, a spring of pure, focused power waiting for his command. The unified calm he had found was his anchor in the psychic storm.
He took a step forward. The crimson light pulsed, pushing against him. It felt like wading through setting concrete.
"Elsa. Morbius. The circle," he gritted out, his voice strained but clear.
He didn't need to say more. While he was the obvious threat, the focus of the ritual, they were the variables. The Hierophant's arrogance had made him blind to the allies at Jack's back.
From the shadows of the staircase, Elsa's rifle spoke twice. The shots were not aimed at the cultists, but at the manacles binding Lissa's right wrist and ankle. The high-impact rounds shattered the glowing green locks with twin bursts of sparks. One of Lissa's arms and a leg were free.
Simultaneously, Morbius became a whirlwind of motion. He did not attack the cultists directly. He flowed around the periphery of the chamber, a blur of darkness moving counter to their chant. His target was the intricate patterns of ground-up bone and ash that formed the ritual circle on the floor. With swift, precise movements of his feet and hands, he scuffed, smeared, and broke the lines.
The response was immediate. The crimson light flickered. The chanting faltered, losing its unified rhythm as several cultists stumbled, their connection to the shared power momentarily broken. The Hierophant snarled, his concentration fractured.
"You insects! You interrupt a symphony with your noise!"
The distraction was all Jack needed. The pressure against him lessened for a critical second. He surged forward, crossing the remaining distance to the altar in two powerful strides.
He reached for Lissa's remaining bonds, his claws extending to shear through the metal.
The Hierophant was faster. He slammed his bony hand onto the open page of the Darkhold.
The book reacted. A tentacle of pure shadow, cold and solid as iron, erupted from its pages and wrapped around Jack's outstretched arm. It wasn't just holding him; it was draining him. He could feel the unified energy of man and beast, his hard-won peace, being siphoned away, pulled into the hungry void of the book.
The Darkhold wasn't just a tool. It was a predator. And it had just tasted its preferred prey.
Agony, cold and profound, lanced up Jack's arm. It was not a physical pain, but a spiritual violation. The shadow-tentacle was a siphon, drawing out the very essence of what he had become. The brilliant, unified energy that had banished Mephistos and cured the city felt like it was being unraveled, thread by thread, and fed into the infinite hunger of the Darkhold.
The beast within roared, not in fury, but in panic. It felt its existence being erased. The man fought to hold on, to cling to the consciousness that gave his power purpose. The fragile symbiosis he had achieved was being torn apart at the seams.
The Hierophant watched, his eyes blazing with triumph. "Yes! Feed the sacred text! Let it drink the power of the bloodline! It is the only destiny your curse was ever meant for!"
Lissa, with her one free arm, grabbed desperately at the shadowy bindings, but her hands passed through them as if they were smoke. Her screams were muffled by the gag, her eyes wide with horror as she watched her brother being consumed.
From the edge of the chamber, Elsa fired again. This time, her rounds were aimed at the Darkhold itself. They had no effect. The bullets vaporized inches from the book's cover, consumed by the same dark energy that was draining Jack.
Morbius abandoned his sabotage of the circle and lunged at the Hierophant. But two cultists intercepted him, their robes falling away to reveal bodies covered in the same infernal runes as the walls. They moved with an unnatural, jointless speed, their hands glowing with the same crimson energy. They were not mere fanatics; they were empowered, their flesh and souls given over to the Darkhold's power.
Jack was on his knees now, his vision graying at the edges. He could feel the memories fading—the feel of the desert sun, the sound of Elsa's voice, the weight of his promise to his mother. The man was being erased, leaving only the raw, terrified beast.
No.
The thought was a single, defiant spark in the encroaching darkness. It was not the man's thought, or the beast's. It was theirs.
He stopped pulling away from the siphon. It was a counter-intuitive act of sheer will. Instead of resisting, he focused all that remained of his unified consciousness and pushed.
He didn't send raw power. He sent a memory. A single, specific memory.
The memory of Albrecht Mephistos's face the moment Jack had broken the Crimson Covenant. The moment an ancient, absolute claim had been rendered null and void by the power of a single, stubborn soul.
He channeled the feeling of that victory—the sensation of a chain snapping, of a debt being forgiven, of freedom.
The reaction from the Darkhold was instantaneous and violent. The shadow-tentacle recoiled as if burned. The book itself shuddered, its pages flapping wildly. The siphon broke.
The Darkhold, a entity of binding pacts and absolute dominion, had just been force-fed a pure, undiluted dose of liberation. It was an existential poison.
Jack collapsed forward, gasping, his arm free but feeling hollowed out. The connection was broken, but the damage was done. The perfect symbiosis was fractured. He could feel the man and the beast as separate entities again, both wounded, both terrified.
He was still himself. But the effortless control, the peace... it was gone. The war within had begun anew.
The Hierophant stared in stunned disbelief. "You... you defiled it!"
Jack looked up, his eyes now holding the familiar, separate glints of human resolve and bestial fury. The Prodigal Son had not been consumed.
He had, instead, given the ancient evil a taste of something it could not stomach.
And he was just getting started.
The cavern descended into pure, unscripted chaos. The Darkhold, offended and agitated, pulsed with erratic waves of dark energy that lashed out indiscriminately. The perfect ritual circle was now a scarred mess, its power source corrupted. The cultists, their unified chant shattered, devolved into a frantic mob. Some fell to their knees, weeping and clawing at their own faces as the borrowed power in their runes turned against them. Others, their minds broken, attacked each other with ritual daggers and bare hands.
In the eye of this storm, the Hierophant shrieked with impotent rage. "You ruined it! You ruined everything!" He clawed at the air, as if he could physically grasp the unraveling ritual and force it back together.
Freed from the immediate metaphysical threat, Jack's focus narrowed to a single, primal point: the altar. He surged to his feet, the fracture between man and beast making his movements sharper, more jagged, but no less powerful. The man provided the direction; the beast provided the force.
He reached Lissa in two strides. With a single swipe of his claws, he severed the remaining glowing manacles. The metal shrieked and fell away, the corrupt energy within them sputtering out. He tore the gag from her mouth.
"Jack!" she sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck, her body trembling violently.
"No time," he grunted, his voice a rough blend of his own and a lower growl. He shoved her behind him, putting his body between her and the disintegrating cult. "Stay close."
Elsa and Morbius capitalized on the bedlam. Elsa switched to controlled, precise shots, picking off the few cultists who still possessed the presence of mind to be a threat. Morbius was a phantom of retribution, moving through the chaos, disabling the empowered acolytes with brutal efficiency, his own restored vampiric strength more than a match for their unstable gifts.
The Hierophant, seeing his congregation torn apart, made a desperate gamble. He snatched the trembling Darkhold from the air and held it before him like a shield. "If I cannot have the ritual, then I will have your soul as compensation, Russell!"
He began to chant again, a single, piercing incantation. The book glowed, and a vortex of shadows began to swirl in front of him, a miniature black hole that started to pull everything in the room toward it—stone dust, discarded robes, and the bodies of fallen cultists.
The exit, the staircase, was now directly behind the growing vortex. To escape, they would have to go through it.
"Jack! We have to go, now!" Elsa yelled, bracing herself against a sarcophagus to avoid being pulled in.
Jack looked at the vortex, then at the terrified Lissa clinging to his back. He couldn't fight that. Not in his current state. Not with her here.
The Hierophant laughed, a sound of pure madness. "Run, Prodigal! Run from the darkness you were born from!"
Jack's eyes met Morbius's across the room. The vampire gave a sharp, understanding nod.
"The foundation!" Morbius shouted over the howling wind. "The support!"
Jack understood. He turned from the vortex, away from the exit, and instead slammed his shoulder into the central pillar of the cavern—a thick column of natural rock that held up the ceiling of the burial chamber.
He hit it once, twice, the stone cracking under the impact. The entire cavern groaned in protest. Dust and debris rained down.
The Hierophant's laughter died in his throat, replaced by panic. "No! You'll bury us all!"
"That's the idea," Jack snarled.
With a final, thunderous blow from both man and beast, the pillar shattered.
The ceiling of the cavern, and the several tons of cemetery earth above it, gave way with a roar that drowned out the Darkhold's hunger and the Hierophant's final, terrified scream.
To Be Continue...