The thing about forbidden runes is that they never arrive politely.
They don't knock. They don't wait.
They slither their way into your thoughts while you're trying to enjoy your mediocre wine and half-rotten cheese, rewriting the air in the room until it tastes like iron and inevitability.
That was the vibe tonight.
I stared down at the Grimoire of Patterns, its ink rearranging itself slowly, almost deliberately, like it wanted to be understood—but only if I asked the right questions.
A summoning pattern.
No spirit's name. No blood tithe or elemental glyph.
Just a circle. And within that circle—a door.
More accurately, a sketch of a door carved from obsidian, framed with symbols that didn't belong to any school of magic I recognized. They weren't from the high arcane tongue, or even the bastardized versions used in battlefield runes. They were older. Cruder. Desperate.
I touched the symbol at the base.
It was faintly warm.
Not good.
