Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was a bad idea from the start, but at the same time, after gathering so many stories about what Arwan called Sympathy, and what it could do, I knew it was my best shot to survive.

Two weeks had passed since that creature had taken possession of my body, kicking me away from my life, till I drew the first Sympathetic Link in the basement of my newfound home. I still felt weird saying it out loud, everything related to Sympathy, this strange system in which you were able to work wonders through Links, was.

It happened in the split of a second after I placed my hand on top of the Hex —yet, another one of these weird Sympathy terms— its shakily drawn strokes on top of the paper started to shine, just about the same time it expelled my hand so hard that I heard my shoulder crack.

That was the moment I realized that the Unified Theory of Totems that Arwan, my anonymous unaware mentor, had formulated during half of the extent of his “comprehensive guide” didn’t apply to this specific case, my case, or else the case in which I had become.

That moment, I felt like the luckiest person in the world, I was somehow not only gifted among the Archive users, many of whom had a whole life studying, working, and documenting supernatural affairs in this sort of… community, if I had to name it one way. But I had also discovered the closest thing to magic I could think of.

I knew what I hadn't been able to admit to myself since I had started to walk in my dreams… that my life wouldn’t be the same from that moment on.

Then I just felt sorry, sorry for the fact that my life and everyone in it were doomed. Unless of course… I managed to find a way to beat that unknown creature inside my body, who I was only able to call under the name of… “Him”.

My main goal had become to make an arsenal for myself, weapons to fight, in which at least there was a Hex able to contain Him once and for all. How would I make him give me back my life, I would solve it later.

It was at that moment when I had an idea, one that would put me the closest to dying I’ve been this last summer. Or at least one of them.

I would craft my own Hex using Arwan’s instructions. An experiment for which I needed four things.

First, a Command, one that I pulled out of Arwan’s original example of a Sealing Hex, this Hex, drawn on a piece of paper had the form of a few arrows pointing in an ‘eccentric directional flow’, meaning they were all pointing to the same direction while creating a circle.

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Second, a Nature —the nature of the link— represented by a Rune, of which I chose one from the List Arwan had left in his Guide.

Third, an Area in which the effects of the Sympathetic Link would work, represented by a Hexagon, which I drew on the floor using salt.

Fourth, an emergency breaking mechanism that consisted basically of a bucket set off in a stiff on top of a chair and under a water tap, open at its minimum.

The idea was that it would eventually be filled enough to throw the water down on the floor, diluting the salt, a process that I tested by letting it fill and watching how it dropped a few times.

My idea was, as you could guess by this moment, to put myself inside of the Hex, and prove it’s effectiveness on my own flesh.

All of this took me a morning, and part of the afternoon, so when the night came in, my little experiment was completely set.

There were some issues with what the words ‘restricted or contained in’ could actually mean in practice. In Arwan’s Comprehensive Guide for Sympathy, everything related to Hexes and their effects was narrated both vaguely and in a theoretical context, that encouraged you to make your own assumptions. And of course, none of Arwan’s instructions were thought to be applied to oneself, so there were no “be careful not to touch the pot while it’s heating” instructions like there would be in any other modern device.

It all went down to a leap of faith, in which I needed to take my chances.

When I finally decided to launch the experiment, I already knew that whatever would happen, it would last at least ninety seconds, a minute and a half of absolute, unknown mystery. I was all sweat even before going in.

When I made the first step inside of the Hex and nothing happened, I felt so relieved that I walked straight to the middle.

It was at that moment I realized… that I didn’t exactly know how to activate a Hex, nor how I had done it with my previous “kitchen” experiments.

Arwan instructions about the casting effects were limited to saying “Hold the Totem in”, something that didn’t seem to apply to me.

I leaned then and touched the salt of which the Hex was made of… but there was no shining that time. instead, it must have taken about five seconds when I felt my body heavier than usual, and it wasn’t until the clock reached the thirty seconds mark that I realized that I had a problem.

It seems to be that the way in which this specific trap worked was by increasingly applying a sort of invisible force upon the subject, a sort of “pressure” made of thick, invisible to the eye, air.

Barely perceptible at the start, then bothering, till it became a strikingly painful pressure coming from all directions.

If I had to describe it, it was as if I was being pushed by a thousand hands, in an overwhelming feeling that made me shrink in my spot, till I fell on the floor thinking I might end up crushed by the pressure.

When I searched with my eyes for my phone on top of a table across the other side of the room, where I had put it, only one minute had passed.

What happened during the last thirty seconds I cannot describe, I would realize it only later when I’d open my eyes, that lead by the pain… I had fallen unconscious.

I woke up fifteen minutes later, all wet and with the taste of salt in my mouth. For a second, I thought about how close I had been to dying… Surely it was luck that I had set the weather stream to reach its limit only after ninety seconds, but I would be lying to you If I didn’t tell you that I wished It would have stopped long before.

When I found the strength to stand up and clean myself, I looked back at the floor. The Hex had been completely erased, and only a puddle of dirty water remained in its place.

A couple of minutes after, still groping myself, a thread of hope shone inside my head. I had now a weapon… a base strong enough to set a plan upon, one that could give me back my life. I had this thing called… Sympathy.

The next thing I had to do it was obvious, I had to face Him again.