Dante knew, with the kind of bone-deep certainty that made a man feel like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, that he should walk away. Hell, not just walk—run. Sprint. Flee. Throw the door open so hard it came off the hinges and never look back. But curiosity was a mean little bastard, sharp-clawed and insistent, and it had sunk its teeth into him, whispering in the back of his mind that if he left now, if he ignored this, he’d never stop wondering. Never stop looking over his shoulder. Because this thing—whatever the hell it was—wasn't the kind of problem you just left behind. It would follow. It would fester. And it would find him again.

So he crouched, careful, slow, his eyes flicking to the door as if expecting something worse to come slithering through it. Nothing. No shadow shifting at the threshold, no monstrous shape lurking just beyond the neon glow. Just the usual, distant wail of a siren, the steady hum of a city that didn’t care about the horrors unfolding inside a forgotten little bar. For a moment, it felt almost normal—like he was just some guy staring at an overdue bill, or a bad decision waiting to happen. But the contract—that damn contract—sat there on the floor, pristine despite being absolutely drenched in blood mere moments ago. It should’ve burned. Should’ve curled up in the heat of whatever had unmade the poor bastard who left it behind. But no—it just waited, smug and patient, like it had all the time in the world. Like it had already decided he was going to pick it up.

Dante exhaled slowly, flexing his fingers, ignoring the way his stomach twisted itself into knots. “This is a terrible idea,” he muttered to no one in particular. His hand moved before his brain could catch up.

He picked it up.

The paper was thick, too thick, like something that had never been meant to be written on. It wasn’t quite parchment, wasn’t quite leather, but something that felt disturbingly in between, something that had once been alive and still held the memory of it. The blood that should’ve dried by now was still fresh, still gleaming wet under the dim, flickering bar lights. The moment his fingers brushed the surface, an itch crawled up his arm—not skin deep, but something worse, something burrowing into the bones. Dante swallowed hard and forced himself to unfold the damn thing.

The words didn’t sit still. They slithered, rearranged themselves as he looked at them, shifting like they didn’t quite belong to any language meant for human eyes. But somehow—somehow, against all logic—he understood. The meaning settled into his brain like it had always been there, like he had always known. The deal was simple. Take the burden. Bear the cost. No escape.

His mouth went dry. “What the hell does that mean?”

The words on the page seemed to shift in response, pulsing like a living thing, like they had been waiting for him to ask that very question. The letters, curling and jagged, rearranged themselves—not with ink, but with something darker, something that slithered and coiled in the spaces between reality. It wasn’t just text. It was a promise. A set of rules written in something older than language, something that knew him. Knew his voice, his heartbeat, the way his breath hitched when he stared too long. Dante felt a pressure at the back of his skull, a slow, insidious weight, as if something was leaning over his shoulder, grinning wide enough to show teeth.

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The room around him blurred, the bar shifting at the edges of his vision. The world itself seemed to pulse—once, twice—like it had exhaled in relief. Or anticipation. Dante could still hear the wail of a siren outside, the hum of the neon sign, but they sounded distant now, like he was listening through water. The contract knew what was coming next. And maybe, deep down, so did he. His fingers twitched, but they wouldn’t let go. The paper was warm now, almost fever-hot, as if it had stolen some part of him the moment he touched it. The blood on the page gleamed like wet ink, a deep, living red.

Dante’s breath came shallow and sharp. He needed to put it down. Needed to walk away before this got worse. But then his palm throbbed, the faintest sting reminding him of the tiny, insignificant wound. He barely had time to register the movement—the slow, traitorous pull of gravity—before the drop of blood finally fell.

Then, before he could think, before he could react, the small cut on his palm—just a careless scrape from earlier, barely enough to sting—dripped.

One single drop of blood. A nothing thing. A tiny mistake.

It struck the page like a stone breaking the surface of still water. And the contract drank it.

The ink ignited, the words flaring to life in red and black, twisting through his vision, burning into the backs of his eyes. The paper trembled, the blood spreading in inky tendrils, curling like roots, creeping up his fingers, sinking into his skin, his veins, his bones. Dante sucked in a sharp breath, but the fire was already inside him, already writing itself into him, already sealing whatever impossible thing he’d just agreed to.

He gasped, his knees buckling.

Pain lanced through him, sharp and wrong, not just in his body but in something deeper, something beneath the skin, beneath the bone. It wasn’t the kind of pain he could grit his teeth through—it was the kind that rewrote him, that dug into the spaces between what he was and what he would become. Heat coiled through his veins, burning away the air in his lungs, the thoughts in his skull, the very concept of before. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in like ink spilled into water, but he couldn’t pass out, couldn’t escape it. Whatever was happening to him wanted him awake.

Something moved in the space between heartbeats, a presence that wasn’t quite inside him but wasn’t entirely outside, either. It curled through his ribs, traced cold fingers along his spine, watching. Waiting. Weighing. Dante clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth hard enough to ache, but the pressure didn’t ease. It wasn’t just taking something—it was leaving something behind. A brand. A mark. A binding so absolute that he could already feel it settling into him, threading through his blood, his breath, his name. His name—Christ, it knew his name.

The contract pulsed once more, a deep, final thrumming, like a key turning in a lock that had never been meant to open. And just like that, the pain stopped. The heat vanished. The weight lifted. Dante inhaled a shuddering breath, the air sharp and too clean, as if he had just stepped through a doorway he couldn’t see. His knees hit the floor hard, the world tilting around him, his pulse a ragged stutter in his ears. He didn’t know what had changed. Not yet. But something had. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones. A thread pulled tight. A door opened. A bargain struck. And it would not be undone.

But it was too late.

The deal was sealed.