Elias's fingers trembled as he lifted the black-bound tome from the altar. The leather cover felt colder than the surrounding air—too cold, as if the book itself rejected being touched by a living hand. Embossed across its surface, written in a script that looked carved rather than inked, were the words:
"Pact of the Demon."
The title alone made Elias's stomach tighten. Something primal, instinctive, deep beneath his consciousness whispered that this book was not meant for mortal eyes.
But he had already touched it.
He had already opened the door.
The moment he cracked the cover open, a faint sound escaped from between the pages—a soft sigh, like someone exhaling after centuries of holding their breath.
Elias froze.
Daren and Lyra stood behind him in the dim red glow of their improvised firelight. Shadows danced across their faces—worried, confused, bracing for anything.
Elias swallowed hard and looked at the first page.
Dust drifted upward like ash.
The ink was old—older than anything he had ever seen—yet it glimmered faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.
And the story began.
The Demon's Tale
"There once was a demon who had not always been a demon."
That was the first line.
Elias read it again to make sure he hadn't misread it. The script was jagged, almost frantic, as though written by a trembling hand. He continued.
"Before the corruption of the abyss claimed him, he was merely a man. A father. His name forgotten, erased even from his own memories, but the echo of what he once loved remains: a child lost to the forest."
Elias felt a cold shiver run through his spine.
The page described a vast forest—this forest, the very one surrounding the abandoned watchtower. In his previous attempts to escape the forest, Elias had only glimpsed fragments of how endless and merciless it truly was. But the words in the book illustrated it with terrifying clarity.
The demon, while still human, had searched for his child.
And searched.
And searched.
Days bled into weeks.
Weeks bled into months.
And months… into years.
"…for in that forest, time twists and coils like a serpent. He walked paths that looped into themselves. He traced the same trees hundreds of times, yet each time felt like the first."
Lyra muttered under her breath, "What kind of hellish forest does that…?"
Daren remained silent, jaw set tightly.
Elias kept reading.
The next passages grew darker—descriptions of despair swallowing the man whole. His mind decayed. His body followed.
Finally, the forest itself rejected him.
And at his final breath, as he collapsed in a place where no sunlight reached—
"…the world embraced his agony. His grief birthed a new being, shaping his sorrow into a demon whose wail would echo eternity."
A demon born from loss, not malice.
But the story didn't end there.
The Demon's Tower
As his humanity slipped away, the newly formed demon, desperate and maddened, dragged himself to an empty clearing—an island of silence within the twisted forest.
There, he used the remnants of his dying strength to carve stone from the earth. Unnaturally shaped, jagged like broken bones, a tower took form under his claws.
Elias felt his heartbeat slow.
It was this tower.
The watchtower Veran had brought them to.
The place they slept.
The place Daren and Lyra had nearly died in.
The place he had died in.
But the demon had not built the tower as a home.
It was built for a ritual.
And the next page described it.
The Summoning
"For the demon believed that only by returning to the abyss, the hell from which his corrupted soul now drew breath, could he search for his child again."
But to descend to the deepest circle of the underworld…
He required a ritual.
A ritual fueled by blood.
"One hundred souls must be fed to the sigil. One hundred deaths to open the gate. One hundred sacrifices so the demon may walk between worlds."
Lyra exhaled sharply.
Daren muttered, "So that's what he was trying to do…"
Elias tightened his grip on the book, knuckles whitening.
He kept reading.
The ritual required a circle drawn in the demon's own blood—etched with symbols that devoured light. Once complete, the demon lay upon the sigil and offered his own life first.
Not out of sacrifice.
Out of necessity.
"The demon must die willingly. His essence becomes the anchor, his corpse the first key."
A chill crawled across Elias's arms.
Before dying, he wrote this book.
"My body decays. My voice fades. But my pact remains."
"The one who continues my ritual shall inherit my hatred, my strength, and my gate."
At the bottom of the page, written in ink darker than the rest—almost blacker than black—was a single word:
"Demon."
No name.
Just the title of what he had become.
---
The Final Page
Elias turned to the end of the book.
The script was clearer there, as if the writer had spent his remaining clarity on this final warning.
"Take heed. This ritual binds both worlds. Once begun, it cannot be undone. If the sigil awakens, it will demand blood. If starved, it will take blood by consuming the nearest soul."
Elias felt his heart stop for a second.
So Veran hadn't simply chosen to kill Daren and Lyra.
The tower itself—
The sigil—
The demon's legacy—
They demanded it.
And Veran had become the next heir to the ritual.
"…the one who reads these pages shall bear witness to the unfolding pact."
The very last line:
"And the tower shall not release its prey until the pact is completed."
The book snapped shut on its own.
A gust of stale air swept across the room.
Elias staggered backward.
His breath stuttered, vision trembling.
Lyra and Daren both stepped closer, trying to support him.
But Elias barely heard them.
His mind was drowning in one horrifying realization:
They weren't trapped with Veran.
They were trapped inside the demon's pact.
And the tower was never abandoned.
It was never empty.
It was waiting.