“What do you want?” he spat venom at me with hate-filled eyes.

“Bring her far away and protect her with your life,” I told him, flatly ignoring his hostility. I was so enraptured with the event happening behind me that I could tolerate some level of disrespect, at least for now.

“Protect her?! Do you still have eyes?! Look at her skin! Look at those symbols! She is the anchor for whatever is trying to come out of that portal! We must kill her and interrupt the ritual!”

“I swore her protection”

“Is your promise more important than the lives of the people of this planet?”

“Yes,” I answered clearly without a hint of doubt.

He looked at me astonished.

“It’s not that you hold her dear to you, isn’t it? You simply don’t value the lives of others,” he spoke.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“What the hell did she bring to this world?” he mumbled.

He stood still for a moment, trying to process everything. His eyes returned focused almost immediately. He quickly analysed the situation and got to a conclusion.

“If I make this deal with you, will you find a solution to what is happening now?” he asked for confirmation.

He remained vague, he wasn’t asking me to kill whatever would emerge from the portal, but simply to ‘find a solution’.

“You are smart,” I smiled at him.

He had understood the situation. He understood that although I was interested in the deal, I was committed to the word I had given Violet. He understood we weren’t equals and he shouldn’t try to play me. So, he offered me a deal with no constraints, staking everything on my interest and my proclivity to violence.

“I accept your conditions,” I told him. I felt a change in the structure of the Veil, the signal of a successful contract.

“Now go. A word of advice…” I began to speak but was interrupted.

“I will honour the deal,” he answered my unspoken suggestion.

With no words needed to be exchanged anymore, I passed Violet to him. As soon as she was in her arms, he turned around. He kept hold of her with one hand, gripped his sword in the other and slashed at a near wall, demolishing it. He left the building through the newly opened way and ran away into the night.

I turned my attention towards the pulsating column of black light. It was slowly shrinking towards its centre, revealing more and more of the granite doorway. It shrunk until it became so small the door barely fit inside its diameter.

The next instant it exploded outwardly. A powerful wave of mana swept through the entire area and over me, completely demolishing the building and damaging the entire surroundings.

Only silence remained. At least until the doorway began to open. It creaked and a foul miasma flowed through the crack. The rotten mist formed an inch-thick stratum that covered the ground, dense and viscous enough to be mistaken for a liquid.

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The door opened completely and it showed the pitch-black darkness hidden within it. Sounds of steps resounded from behind it and before long, the presence I had been waiting for finally emerged.

He was an incomparably handsome man. His features were sharp, his hair the colour of a moonless night. His skin was pale, while his elegant but simple attire, an ashen shirt, coat, pants and shoes, was reminiscent of the ones the creatures of the night so frequently wore in the depictions of my old world. His amber eyes glistened in the light of the moon as they darted around. His pupils differed from those of a human, as they were not circles but annuli that expanded and contracted with the light.

His eyes finally focused on me.

“Where is my bride?” he asked in a mellifluous voice.

He was an interesting fellow. The mana in the atmosphere moved as he breathed. His voice itself was charged with mana, whose properties I couldn’t know. His level of control appeared to be nigh-absolute. I was in front of the most powerful being in this world.

“Definitely not here,” I answered back.

His pupils grew, almost two full circles now.

“Do my appearance and words not touch you?”

“No”

“What an interesting human. I wonder where you come from. You are utterly unaffected by my presence. And yet, that shouldn’t be possible”

He raised his hand. A black wolf emerged from his shadow and dashed at me, closing the distance between us in a fraction of a second. It opened its jaws wide, aiming at my neck. I impaled it through its mouth with my arm and its body decayed into miasma and dispersed in the air.

His pupils shrank, their width almost disappearing.

“I have to look better”

His eyes shone red.

“I can’t see through you. You are not human. What are you?”

He tapped the ground with his foot. The floor beneath me broke as several darkened lances emerged from beneath. I was hit by a few of them and propelled into the air. I landed unharmed after a few seconds, the broken shafts disappearing into the wind.

“Resistant to mana. Skin thicker than the scales of a dragon. I don’t understand”

“You know, it doesn’t really matter,” I finally intervened.

“... Doesn’t matter? Yes, indeed. It was fun. Now, kneel,”

The atmosphere became heavy, the area around me caved in and yet I remained standing. I started walking towards him.

“I said kneel,” his voice lost suaveness.

My feet sunk into the ground but I continued walking, digging up stones and broken tiles while I advanced.

“You aren’t kneeling,” his voice grew annoyed.

The gravity became even worse and I found myself knee-deep in the ground. And yet, the more he exerted his strength, the better I felt. Such pressure was negligible, but his show of force had another effect. The constraints of the Veil had become almost imperceptible. I was free. Or maybe ‘freer’. After all, the laws of this world were more flexible and my body was adaptive.

I kicked the ground and darted through the air, my body covered in a curtain of flaming hot atmospheric gases. His eyes moved strangely and a curtain of black miasma formed around me. I swung my open hand at him.

As my fingers broke through his shield, I could see his expression distort. Strong winds arose beneath me, sending me flying into the air and gently carrying him away from me. I landed on the floor and the ground broke under me.

“Your name?” he asked, finally showing hints of interest and wariness.

“You may call me John,” I answered with a fake smile and cold eyes.

He had asked me to kneel at him. My desire to fight had become something more sinister.

“Your title?”

“Patriarch of the Gamma Perimeter”

“I will remember your name, Elder of the Contour,” he declared.

A veil of shadow erupted from under his feet and wrapped itself around them, forming a thin coating layer that completely covered his body. He flew in the air and a pair of obsidian wings emerged from his back.

“You are ignorant, John the not-human. You refused the mercy of the demon king. You bared your fangs at the demon king. Today, death will fall upon you. Praise the stars for such an honour,” he shouted as storm clouds covered the sky and bolts of lightning fell to the earth.