The church was hollow, without any form of sanctity left, smothered in dust and decay. Little critters scurried across the cracked stone floor, and vermin rustled in the shadows, unfazed by the rare visitor.
The grand hall where sermons were once held was deserted—every window shattered, the wooden doors barely hanging from their rusted hinges. Pews were long gone, stripped for firewood or profit, leaving only deep grooves in the floor where they once stood. Cobwebs swayed in the beams overhead.
Inside, the rest of the structure fared no better. Every room had been picked clean—no altar, no sacred books, not even a candlestick left behind. All that was left was empty dilapidation and silence.
Reginald could guess who was worshipped in this church. He walked closer to a defaced mural on the wall. The mural was of an Eternal Phoenix. The head was carved off in frantic strokes; someone really wanted that mural destroyed.
The walls were stained, the restrooms dried out and abandoned, coated in grime. A stone well sat near the rear, but the water reeked of rotten meat and bile. It was useless.
Yet tucked deeper in the building were three inner rooms. Their doors were still intact, newer wood bolted into the stone—signs that others had lived here recently or tried to. Those rooms offered at least a little bit of privacy, and in a place like this, he had paid 1 pound for it.
Reginald moved deeper into the church, mentally mapping his immediate surroundings. He walked on and was soon in the bush surrounding the church. Clearing this would definitely take some effort.
Reginald noticed a rotten smell oozing from the edges of the church grounds. The smell was extremely rancid, so he couldn't help but squint his eyes and cover his nose. He walked toward the locale of the smell to investigate and soon came upon the source of the smell.
By the fence were two bodies sprawled on the overgrown grass; they were both naked, all valuables stripped from their bodies. Disgust washed over him as he saw the maggots wiggling in their eyes while some moved around in their mouth.
They both had brown hair, and one was visibly taller, like an elder brother.
Reginald felt the contents of his last dinner abandon his stomach as he bent to the side and retched. Only one thought echoed in his mind:
"That could be me."
Feeling better, he turned to the bodies. Whoever brought them here must have thrown them over the fence. This again reminded him how dangerous Eggot Harbor was.
After he could catch his breath again, he moved toward the body. He whispered in a soft voice:
"I'm sorry this happened to you, please help me avoid such a fate."
He grabbed the shorter of the men by the legs and dragged him into the church, through the bushes, the corridor, and the steps to the bigger of the inner rooms. He returned for the other.
Soon it would be nightfall. Evil Descends With The Night.
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The church was swallowed completely in perpetual darkness, its broken windows letting in only fragments of moonlight that barely touched the filthy floors.
Dust hung thick on the floor, barely disturbed by the scurrying of vermin between crumbling walls.
The dark ambiance was suffocating, heavy with mold, dried blood, and the stench of rot.
From beyond the ruined fence, faint footsteps echoed, and hushed voices whispered—low, deliberate, watching. The night pressed in, heavy and listening.
"It's time."
In the inner room, Reginald sat on the floor in total darkness. To his right was the box from Acquisitions, and to his left were the two corpses. A situation he never foresaw himself in.
To carry out the ritual, he had to go back to the internal space of the Book of Blood. To go in there, he needed Miasma. And due to the kind donation from Eleanor earlier today at the station, he had more than enough.
The only downside to entering the internal space of the Book of Blood is that, by default, the book is in his spiritual sea. If he goes inside the book, the book becomes visible and appears in the material world and can be taken away.
Blood-soaked soil, purple sky, and a red sun. Reginald, still dressed in his oversized cloak and hat, started drawing an array on the soil with his bare fingers until they were raw.
The moment the array was done, he could feel the Miasma from the locale flowing into the array, forming a mini cyclone.
Originally, he planned to create Velroths with the vampire hearts.
Velroth are a guardian-agility class monster—silent, fast, and deadly. They are usually bound to an artifact, floating out when summoned.
The Velroth form was a half-mist, half-shadow. Its major form of attack was to possess targets, twisting their blood flow into thick musk that crushed organs from within. It could also strike directly, using sharp spectral claws that tore through flesh with ease.
A dark protector, it emerged only when danger was near, loyal only to the one who bound it.
Reginald picked out the pseudo-Baron and a bigger Heart of Vampire and set them aside. He took the other four from the box and placed one in the eye of the array.
The moment Reginald placed the heart into the center of the array, the entire formation reacted violently in a surge of Miasma. The Miasma surged inward—a cyclone of sickly black vapors converging on the leathery heart.
The heart pulsed violently, its veins bulging ever slowly, its color deepening from dried crimson to a glowing, visceral red. Heat radiated off it in waves. The smell of burning leather filled the air, acrid and old.
It grew hotter and hotter, and in turn, redder and redder. The surface cracked and hissed, smoke seeping through each fracture as the heart began to break down before his eyes.
It didn't burst. It crumbled—disintegrating slowly, deliberately—like a ritual offering being accepted piece by piece. The smoke didn't disperse. It churned in place, thick and alive, curling inwards upon itself as if kneaded by hand into something unspeakable.
From within the dense swirl came a low, eerie hum—mumbling in a tongue no human should know. Yet Reginald understood. The Book had given him that much. Each word scraped against his mind.
Then, stillness. The churning ceased.
Before him stood a cloaked figure, formed entirely of smoke. Its presence loomed and floated in unnatural silence, its long, double-edged claws dragging lightly against the stone floor. From the heart of the fog, a voice rasped in a tone colder than death:
"Hart tjou summoned me?"