The night wasn't dark anymore.
It was alive.
Elora stood at the center of a clearing deep in the forest, barefoot, her hands bloodstained from drawing the runes in the dirt. Around her, the trees bent unnaturally, creaking like they were breathing. Shadows moved, not from the wind but from what watched them.
Behind her stood Clara, shaking, and Emmanuel his wrists bound, eyes pleading.
"Elora, don't do this," he begged. "You'll rip the world apart."
She turned her head slightly, a smirk twitching at the corner of her lips. "Maybe it's time it broke."
She raised the blade.
The chant began.
And the sky split open.
The Gate Opens
From above, a deep, thunderous moan echoed like the earth itself crying out. A rift tore through the sky like torn fabric, spilling unnatural light and something else something writhing, whispering, hungry.
Clara screamed. "What are you letting in?!"
Elora's voice was calm. Too calm. "What was always supposed to return."
The ground trembled. From the earth, arms long, ash-colored arms began to reach upward. A dozen. Then a hundred. Pulling themselves out.
They had no faces. No eyes. Just wide mouths filled with whispering black mist.
They weren't demons.
They were echoes of every soul ever lost to the curse.
And Elora? She commanded them now.
The Price
A voice echoed from the rift not human. Not divine.
"Blood opened the gate. Blood must seal it."
Elora looked at Emmanuel. Then at Clara. Then at herself.
But she had made her choice.
"No more sacrifices," she said.
Then she cut the ropes on Emmanuel's wrists and pushed him away.
"I won't be a prisoner or a puppet," she declared. "I'll be a god, or I'll burn with them all."
With a final scream, she stepped into the rift.
The light swallowed her whole.
And then...
Silence.
Just Clara and Emmanuel, kneeling in a clearing of ash, the sky above sealed once more.
But Something Stayed Behind.
Back at the house… the mirror in the hallway cracked.
And from the crack, a whisper:
"I'm still here."