Darkness.
An endless, suffocating darkness.
Here, in the crumbling intersections between broken worlds, I drifted — not as flesh, nor as spirit, but as a lingering will.
An echo, too stubborn to fade, too hungry to accept the void.
I could not recall my name.
Only a hunger, ancient and bottomless, gnawed at my existence.
I sought something — power? rebirth? escape?
Or perhaps only purpose.
And then —
A crack.
A wound in the fabric of the endless dark.
I was dragged through.
Cold air, heavy with rot and wax.
The stench of burnt offerings and old, sour blood invaded my dormant senses.
The world beyond the veil awaited me — not welcoming, but desperate, sick with ancient wrongs.
I plummeted, sinking into something... tangible.
Something weak, broken — but alive.
Flesh.
The jolt of body possession was savage.
Memories, foreign and fragmented, clawed at my mind — a flood of half-formed thoughts, memories of failure, terror, betrayal.
I saw flashes
A man kneeling within a broken circle.
Blood-stained hands weaving desperate sigils.
A chant torn from lips parched with despair.
The body I now wore was not whole.
It was a vessel abandoned by its owner in terror and agony.
Yet it was enough.
I opened my new eyes.
The chamber greeted me like a predator.
Candles, perched atop cracked skulls, sputtered weakly, throwing chaotic shadows.
The walls bore symbols — ancient, forbidden — painted in a mixture of blood and ash.
They moved and writhed when I tried to look directly at them, suggesting life beyond mere pigment.
The air buzzed with the residue of power — a summoning, incomplete and unstable.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
At the heart of the room, a creature slithered into being.
A demon.
A thing stitched from oil, smoke, and ancient rage.
Its form twisted and pulsed, an unstable mockery of anatomy — claws folding into wings, mouths giving birth to new, leering eyes.
It saw me.
And it smiled.
"Another? So soon?" the demon croaked, its voice sliding under my skin like oil.
Its amusement was palpable.
Mockery, hunger, cruelty — emotions braided thick in every word.
"The fool who summoned me was... delicious. His soul, a feast of terror and yearning."
Its smoky tongue flickered as if savoring the taste still lingering on its non-existent lips.
"But you..." it whispered, prowling closer. "You are different."
I said nothing.
Instead, I straightened slowly, studying the worn frame I now possessed.
The body's memories whispered to me.
The ritual — broken. The summoner — dead.
Yet, ancient laws dictated that an unfinished contract demanded payment.
I felt it — the rippling imbalance in the room, the shrieking demands of the magic still hanging, unfulfilled.
The demon paused, wary of my silence.
"What are you, little hollow?"
I met its boiling gaze with cold detachment.
"Not yours," I rasped, the voice of the broken body bending to my will.
The demon snarled.
It was powerful — far stronger than this broken summoning circle should have allowed.
But by consuming the summoner's soul before the pact was sealed, it had violated the ritual's ancient structure.
A delicate truth whispered through the body's remaining memories:
Balance.
Sacrifice demands balance.
Rituals demand payment.
If the demon had eaten the offering prematurely — it owed recompense.
And if it refused, the chaotic forces would tear it apart.
I stepped forward.
"You owe me," I said, my voice sharper now.
The demon blinked, genuinely surprised.
"I owe you... nothing."
"Not me," I said. "The Ritual. The Balance."
The air trembled.
Somewhere in the dying candlelight, the ritual's fading glyphs pulsed, sensing the invocation of their primal law.
The demon's form flickered — fury, panic, disbelief — as it recognized the trap tightening around its existence.
It growled, smoke bleeding from its form like spilled blood.
"You dare invoke the Ancient Law against me?"
"You violated the accord," I said softly. "Now pay your due... or be devoured by the Balance itself."
The creature howled, thrashing against invisible chains tightening around it.
The ritual was awakening, craving its cost.
The demon refused.
It roared, clawing at the very fabric of reality, its form unraveling as it resisted the inevitable.
The Law did not care.
With a shriek that shook the marrow of existence, invisible forces tore into the demon's being, severing something vital and ancient.
From the depths of its writhing mass, a single, pulsating Eye was ripped free — a thing of molten gold and abyssal black, weeping smoke and light.
The demon screamed as the Eye was wrenched from its soul, its existence collapsing inward like a dying star.
The severed Eye hurtled toward me, carried by the momentum of Law itself.
It struck my chest.
Agony.
A thousand needles of knowledge drove into my mind.
Pain, searing and pure, tried to burn away who I was — but I clung to myself with iron will.
Visions bled into my new sight.
Glyphs. Names. Truths hidden in layers of reality.
An Eye opened within me — not of flesh, but of understanding.
The Wisdom Eye.
Where once was blindness, there was now cruel, crystalline clarity.
I saw the decay stitched into the walls, the lies woven into the fabric of this world.
I saw the demon's true form — not a being, but a desperate knot of sin and regret.
And more.
The body's fragmented memories, the summoner's pathetic hopes, aligned with my own instincts.
The demon's substance collapsed violently.
It screamed as the broken ritual completed its price — crushing the demon into a pulsing black gem.
I approached, silent, and picked up the gem.
Cold. Heavy. Alive.
It would be useful.
I turned from the crumbling ritual site, the decrepit house groaning around me like a dying animal.
Yet...
Something stirred within me once more.
A second pulse, hidden beneath the Wisdom Eye's awakening.
Something dormant... no longer sleeping.
Whispers filled my mind, quieter but sharper.
Symbols I could not yet read flickered at the edge of my vision.
Details sharpened — the candle wax's chemical composition, the exact corrosion rate of the rusted door hinge, the age and health of the floorboards under my bare feet.
Understanding grew deeper.
From the hollow space where the fragment embedded itself came a faint, metallic whisper:
"Appraisal Eye... initializing..."
My breath hitched — not in fear, but in anticipation.
The world shuddered around me.
Glyphs began unfolding across every surface, faint at first, like veins of light beneath reality's skin.
The door before me cracked open of its own accord, revealing a long corridor choked in mist and silence.
I smiled — thin, cold, triumphant.