The room was black as a coffin.
The only light came from a forest of candles arranged in crooked circles along the walls, their weak flames trembling like frightened children.
Melted wax dripped in long stalactites, pooling on the floor like pale flesh. The air was thick with smoke and sap, the iron stink of blood as followed.
At the far end of the room Beatrice entered within, stood a wooden statue.
A throne carved from living bloodwood, its surface veined and slick, as the wood by some miracle was constantly bleeding, as if it had been ripped straight from a wounded of a living being. Sitting upon it was a figure with four arms pressed together in eternal prayer, its body grotesquely human, but its neck ending in nothing.
No face, a result of the statue having no head, only the suggestion of something absent, yet horribly present.
The faceless prayerer, gave sinister vibe.
Beatrice's shoes stuck to the damp floor as she walked forward, her breath hitching. Even with her umbrella closed and dripping at her side, she couldn't keep the chill from sinking into her bones. "…I really owe Auntie for this." She whispered, forcing her voice at a steady pace. "Few humans alive today know the Dark Arts the way she does."
Still, she knelt before the headless statue, setting the reliquary gently down. Her fingers trembling, as she unwrapped the stained cloth. The flayed infant's head stared back at her with its stitched eyelids, the thorns still digging into its tiny skull. The stitched limbs that formed the reliquary box creaked wetly as if flexing.
Her stomach lurched. Yet she forced down her internal sickness.
"This is the price." She reminded herself. "And I've already done too much to turn back now." She placed the reliquary at the statue's feet. With careful precision, she pried open the infant's mouth. The lips cracked apart, oozing thin strands of dark, clotted blood. Beatrice bit her own finger and let the drops fall inside.
And the moment she did that, the head burst into flame.
At the same instant, the statue pulsed with light, its bloodwood veins glowing red-hot like iron fresh from the forge. A thick heat rolled through the room, and Beatrice's lungs seized with smoke.
Her lips trembled, but she forced a breath and began.
She wasn't an exorcist. She couldn't perform a Calling Ritual the permitted way. What she was doing was older, as it was filthier, a method that demanded her life as kindling.
The moment the statue lit, she felt something tear loose inside her. A burning at her ribs, her heart pounding too fast to be considered normal. She could feel the reliquary burned itself as it burned her own lifespan, as her life energy was being offered up as fuel to make the ritual possible, the invisible candle of her soul burning down grain by grain.
She knew it wouldn't stop until she canceled the rite. Or until she was nothing more, but cancelling it would destroy the artifact.
Her voice the cracked in the silence. As proceed to recite the incantation.
"By the blood that drips eternal, by the flame of the unborn." She said, and the candles went from yellow to red at each passing syllables. "I summon the ear of Vlad the Resonator. He who walks between soul and the will. He who makes all spirits hear and tremble. Take these bound ones, trapped in flesh and thorn. Devour them as tithe, and bridge my voice into the black."
The reliquary shuddered. The infant's mouth yawned wider than it should have, as if her blood had given it new life, its jaw stretching until it split with a wet snap. A keening wail spilled out, not hers, not the child's, but dozens of voices layered together, a chorus of different expressions as many Negative Spirits had entered upon the calling the ritual impose upon the world.
The walls shook, and the candles blew sideways in their sockets. From the shadows above, whispers began to crawl like spiders, voices grinding against her skull.
"…she bleeds…she begs…"
"…a child eating child…delicious, delicious…"
"…we hear, we hear…"
Beatrice pressed her forehead to the damp stone floor and prayed harder, her body trembling as her strength leeched away.
"Any of you please! I offer myself! Just answer me! Bind to me! Give me power, or I die here!" Her vision blurred, black creeping at the edges. Her skin burned, as though her veins were candles too. Still she refused to break the chant.
The reliquary's flames reached higher, red as arterial spray, licking the statue until the bloodwood throne began to drip and darken. The whispers grew louder, merging into one deafening roar, an ocean of spirits pressing close, clawing, listening.
Her life was pouring out of her by the second. But she wouldn't stop. Not until something answered.
The whispers swelled, thousands of voice's gnashing inside her skull. Their voices rose and fell like the tide, gnawing at her ears until she swore blood would pour from them.
Yet even as they circled, even as their presence suffocated the air in her lungs, none reached for her.
They saw her. They knew her for what she truly is. And because the knew, they mocked her.
"Oh an…impure…"
"…a child who cries for monsters, but cannot feed them… how selfish, I am sorry I even come here."
"…She prays, she cuts, she bleeds, and still she has no marrow of cruelty."
"…wasted flesh…wasted time."
Beatrice's body trembled against the cold stone, her forehead slick with sweat. The reliquary's flames hissed higher, screaming like a forge consuming its last coal. She felt herself thinning, her very years being shaved away, curling into smoke above the candles.
And still, no hand reached for hers. In this world, affinity was everything. The cruel flourished the brightest here, alongside the depraved, the violent, the cruel, and the merciless bloomed the greatest here. To kill, to betray, to consume the suffering of others, that was what drew the Negative Spirits like moths to flame. That was the law of this world, and the only law of power that matter's above all else. That was the truth of reality.
But she… she was what they named Impure.
Those who could commit atrocities, yet never digest them. They killed, but their souls gagged on the taste. They sinned, but their blood never darkened enough to ferment into true Negativity. They could not farm despair, no matter how many corpses they piled.
And the spirits laughed at her for it.
"…You murdered many mothers, and still your womb is empty of us. Hahahaha... What a failure."
"impure meat, no flavor, no potential, me sad, me sad."
"…leave her to rot… it would be amusing and a fitting end for someone who dare waste our time." The room shuddered as the cacophony pressed harder, until it was like being trapped inside the chest of a thousand insults.
Beatrice clenched her teeth, choking on her own bile.
"Noooooo! I won't stop here. Even if they spit on me, one has to answer."
Her body sagged, half-collapsing over the reliquary, but still her voice croaked through cracked lips.
"Please… any of you… I'll offer more… I'll kill more… I'll become more… Just, don't let me die here unseen… I can't die, not yet atleast."
The chorus answered only with cruel mirth.
"We hear you, little corpse."
"But we will not stay."
"Better to let you burn yourself hollow… We can atleast feed on your despair."
The reliquary flared, consuming itself in a violent jet of fire, and for an instant she thought she saw the spirits peeling away, drifting like vultures that had grown bored of a carcass.
Her time was nearing as soon as the reliquary burn fully, it also spells the end of her own life. Terror clawed her throat raw.
This was it.
This was how the ritual would end.
Not with a single bond it would seem, but with utter silence. She would wither here, drained to nothing, a nameless husk whose death would not even be notice be her own family.
And still she did not release the rite.
Even if no spirit wanted her, she would burn herself alive before she crawled back to home with empty hands.
Her head struck the floor as her strength gave way, her body twitching as blood seeped from her nose and lips. The candlelight blurred into smears of red. The statue loomed faceless above her, its four hands forever locked in mock prayer.
And beneath the fading roar of the spirits departing, she heard something else.
'Is this really how I die... M-Mother it would seems, that I truly wasn't worthy of your love at all.'
'But if I die here, then...
With the last bit of energy, she began to pray one last time. Putting all her desperation into this, even if she must clown herself, or make herself look pitiful for a fighting chance, to complete her mother final wishes, there absolutely nothing she would not do to awaken as a Spirit Warrior.
"Please, even if it is a low level one, I just need one to answer, I am not smart, I am not strong, and I am not talented, and I have nothing worth while to offer, but I asked you ohh spirit to make a contract with me, I can't stand that bitch, my pride and pettiness cannot allow it... All I have is determination. So come out, show yourself already, and answer my call."
This was her last serious plea, but now she felt weak.
Her nails scraped against the slick stone floor as she tried to lift her head again. Her vision had narrowed to a pulsing tunnel of red candlelight.
Her heart beat so hard it rattled her teeth. The reliquary's flames were eating faster now, clawing at her finale essence like paper burning quickly to fire.
Half her lifespan, a good chunk of it was officially gone. She could feel it, a hollow ache behind her ribs, years of herself torn out and burned to ash just to keep the chant alive.
And still, nothing.
Her lips cracked and bled. Her words had lost their strength, reduced to a pitiful whisper.
"Please… any of you… please…
The spirits laughed louder, their voices rippling through her skull like shards of glass.
"Look at the meat, she is already dying."
"I'm out... Hunger must eat."
"Impure, impure, impure."
Her stomach clenched, her chest heaving with sobs she refused to voice. Every plea she gave only earned more ridicule. As the voice became less and less, her body felt numb.
And then, that was when it happened.
Everything stopped.
The laughter cut off mid-word. The hiss of the flames seemed to draw inward, the world around her was starting to stop, or I'm better yet her perception of reality was speeding up so fast it appear to her that time came to a half, as the blood-sap dripping from the statue's wood froze in place, suspended in the air.
Beatrice's head jerked up.
"What!?"
She said softly.
"W-What is going on!?"
She said as her head lolled sideways as her vision blurred. She could feel her consciousness slipping, her very blood slowing.
And in that thick, suffocating silence, just before darkness took her, she heard a voice inside her head.
"Ok I think this how you do it right, now let just picture her here before me."