ONE MONTH AGO
The following night, he returned to the chamber.
By now, he no longer questioned how easily the dream came.
There was no gradual descent into sleep this time.
He simply closed his eyes in his bedroom and, when he opened them again, the ancient chamber stood around him.
The seven rings remained carved into the black stone.
Lilith’s voice reached him from somewhere beyond the pillars.
“The first seal is the easiest.”
He turned toward the sound.
“What do I need to do?”
There was no hesitation in her answer.
“Find a place where people once came to pray.”
He frowned.
“A church?”
“An abandoned one.”
“Why abandoned?”
“Because the first ring was built upon something humanity once considered sacred. The magic that sealed me has always depended upon the distinction between what is revered and what is forgotten.”
He listened carefully.
“Anything else?”
“Seven white animals.”
His eyebrows drew together.
“Animals?”
“Pure ones.”
“What qualifies as pure?”
“Healthy. Untouched by violence. Never used in blood rites. Never deliberately harmed.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Lambs?”
“Yes.”
“Seven?”
“Seven.”
He looked toward the stone door.
“And then?”
“You will take them to the church before midnight.
Draw the mark I showed you on the floor.
Place one candle at each point of the circle.”
“That’s all?”
“For the first seal.”
There was something almost dismissive in the way she said it.
He folded his arms.
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Nothing.”
That caught him off guard.
“No incantation?”
“Do you think the dead understand language?”
He didn’t answer.
Lilith continued.
“The first ring does not answer to words. It answers to innocence surrendered.”
He looked again at the seven circles carved across the stone.
“And the animals?”
“They are the offering.”
He studied the darkness where her voice seemed to originate.
“You said this would free you.”
“It will begin the process.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
He frowned.
“Seven sacrifices?”
“Seven rings.”
The meaning was obvious enough.
He looked at the sealed door for a long moment.
“And after the first?”
“You will return.”
“Why?”
“Because the second seal requires something different.”
She paused.
“You will know when the time comes.”
He wasn’t entirely satisfied with the answer.
But he had already crossed the point where curiosity had become commitment.
“Where do I find the church?”
“You will know it when you see it.”
He almost smiled.
“That’s not particularly helpful.”
“I have lived long enough to learn that people who need every answer before taking the first step rarely reach the end.”
The chamber began to fade around him.
Her final words followed him into the darkness.
“Tomorrow night. Before the moon reaches its highest point.”
He woke before dawn.
For several minutes, he lay staring at the ceiling.
Seven white animals.
An abandoned church.
Seven candles.
A symbol he had somehow memorised after seeing it only once.
It sounded absurd.
That was what made it easy to accept.
There was no grand sacrifice demanding a witch, a vampire or an entire bloodline.
No army.
No elaborate ceremony involving things he couldn’t possibly acquire.
Just seven animals.
He could manage that.
By the following evening, he had found the church.
It stood several kilometres outside the city, hidden behind an overgrown road that had not seen much traffic in years.
The building had once been beautiful.
Its stone walls were still impressive despite the damage, and the remains of coloured glass clung stubbornly to the upper windows.
Most of the roof had collapsed.
The altar was cracked.
Vines had taken over the back wall.
Nobody worshipped there anymore.
He walked through the doorway and looked around.
“This will do.”
The seven lambs were brought in shortly before eleven.
He had chosen them himself.
White coats.
Healthy.
Young.
No marks.
No injuries.
Nothing unusual.
They moved nervously around the ruined interior while he stood near the centre of the church, studying the floor.
He took the folded paper from his pocket.
The symbol Lilith had shown him was reproduced exactly.
He knelt and began drawing it in a mixture of ash and salt.
It took nearly half an hour.
When he finished, he stood and examined his work.
The symbol looked ancient despite being less than an hour old.
He placed the seven candles around it.
One at each point.
The lambs remained outside the circle.
His phone showed 11:48 p.m.
He still had time.
He walked toward one of the broken windows and looked outside.
Nothing moved beyond the church.
No cars.
No people.
Only the trees bending gently in the night breeze.
He wondered, briefly, whether he was being ridiculous.
He had spent the better part of a month listening to a woman who existed only in his dreams.
A woman who claimed to have lived for thousands of years.
And now he was standing in an abandoned church preparing to perform a ritual that was supposed to break an ancient seal.
There was no sensible explanation for any of it.
Yet he had come this far.
At midnight, he closed the doors.
The candles were lit.
The lambs were brought inside.
He placed them within the circle.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
He looked at his watch.
12:01.
Still nothing.
He glanced toward the ceiling.
“Is this supposed to—”
Every candle flame leaned toward the centre of the circle.
He stopped speaking.
The temperature in the church dropped.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for him to notice.
The animals became restless.
He stepped closer.
The symbol beneath them had begun to change.
The ash lines darkened first, then took on a faint red glow.
He stared.
He had expected something.
He simply hadn’t expected it to be so quiet.
There were no voices.
No thunder.
No figure appearing from the shadows.
The ritual seemed almost disappointingly ordinary.
He followed Lilith’s instructions.
The sacrifice was completed without ceremony.
The moment the seventh life was given, every candle went out.
Darkness swallowed the church.
He stood still.
The silence that followed was so complete that he could hear his own breathing.
Nothing happened.
He waited.
A minute passed.
Then another.
He almost laughed.
Perhaps this had been the answer all along.
A dream.
A fixation.
A woman’s voice manufactured by a mind that had become too consumed by ambition.
He turned toward the door.
A deep crack sounded beneath his feet.
He stopped.
The stone floor trembled.
Another crack followed, deeper than the first.
Dust fell from the damaged ceiling.
He slowly turned back toward the altar.
A thin line had appeared in the floor.
It travelled beneath the ruined church, moving with unnerving precision until it reached the symbol he had drawn.
The seven candles reignited simultaneously.
He stared at them.
The flames were no longer yellow.
They burned almost white.
The line beneath the symbol darkened.
Then the stone began to bleed.
He took a step backward.
A thick black liquid seeped through the crack and spread across the floor in branching lines.
It wasn’t blood.
Not exactly.
It behaved like blood, but there was something unnatural about it.
It seemed to move toward the centre of the circle rather than away from it.
The seven candles flickered.
One went out.
The outermost mark of the symbol collapsed.
He heard something beneath the earth.
A groan.
Not from a person.
From stone.
He looked toward the altar as a section of the floor sank several inches.
Beneath it, far below the church, something had changed.
The first ring was no longer whole.
A fracture had appeared across the ancient stone.
It spread slowly from one edge to the other until the ring split.
The sound reached the church several seconds later.
A single, enormous crack.
He stood frozen.
Everything stopped.
The candles returned to their ordinary colour.
The church became still again.
He looked down.
The animals were gone.
Not their bodies.
Everything.
No blood.
No remains.
Nothing except seven small patches of white wool scattered around the circle.
He stared at them for a long time.
That hadn’t been part of Lilith’s instructions.
His phone vibrated.
He pulled it from his pocket.
The screen was blank.
No signal.
Then a single word appeared.
ONE.
He stared at it.
The word disappeared.
The phone returned to normal.
He slowly looked toward the altar.
“Was that it?”
Lilith answered from behind him.
“You have opened the first ring.”
He turned.
There was no one there.
“What did I actually do?”
“You gave the seal what it was built to consume.”
His eyes moved toward the floor.
“And now?”
“Now the first barrier is gone.”
He waited for her to explain.
She didn’t.
“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“For tonight.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“You said the first one was easy.”
“It was.”
He looked at the ruined church.
“If that was easy, I don’t think I want to know what comes next.”
A faint amusement touched her voice.
“You will.”
He frowned.
“What happens now?”
“You go home.”
“And tomorrow?”
“You will dream again.”
The voice faded.
He stood alone in the church.
For the first time since this began, he didn’t feel triumphant.
He felt as though he had crossed a line he couldn’t see.
He gathered his things and left.
He never saw the ancient stone beneath the church.
He never saw the fracture spreading beyond the first ring.
He never saw the blackness gathering inside the broken seal.
But someone did.
Far from the ruined church, Luca opened his eyes.
He had been sitting alone when the sensation reached him.
There was no sound.
No warning.
Just a sudden pressure against his chest, followed by a warmth that travelled beneath his skin.
He went still.
For several seconds he said nothing.
He already knew.
His sister had started.
Luca rose slowly from his chair and walked toward the window.
Outside, the city continued as though nothing had happened.
Cars moved along the road.
Lights burned inside apartment buildings.
Somewhere, people were laughing over dinner.
Somewhere else, someone was preparing for bed.
The ordinary world had not noticed.
But Luca had spent too long knowing what lived beneath it.
He closed his eyes.
One of the seven seals was gone.
Not damaged.
Not weakened.
Gone.
Lilith had found her way back to the surface through a human hand.
And whoever that man was, he had no idea what he had just begun.
Luca opened his eyes.
His expression had changed.
He reached for his phone.
There was only one person he needed to speak to.
Not Damien.
Not the witches.
Not the vampires.
Not yet.
He needed to find the place where the seal had been broken.
Because if Lilith had started with the first ring, the remaining six would not wait patiently.
And Luca knew his sister well enough to understand something the human carrying out her instructions did not.
Lilith had never been interested in freedom for its own sake.
She wanted the world she had lost.
And this time, she intended to return to it with an army.