Nord's eyes flickered open, her head pounding with an odd, unsettling buzz that seemed to emanate from her ear. It felt like an invisible insect was lodged deep within, vibrating with an anxious hum. With a cautious finger, she tried to dislodge whatever it was but found nothing tangible.

Beside her, Baal lay motionless, his arm a heavy band across her torso. His eyes were sealed shut, remnants of last night's tears crystallizing at the corners. He had sobbed himself into an exhausted slumber, like almost everyone else in the manor. Grief had settled over the house like winter snow, cold and unyielding.

Outside, she imagined Perdita, Merlin, and Kirara huddled against the icy wind, clutching hope as if it were a lifeline. A hope Nord no longer felt qualified to share. Bram was gone, irrevocably so, and it gnawed at her that she couldn't muster the courage to proclaim what everyone else feared: Nothing would bring him back.

Perhaps a symbolic funeral would offer a semblance of closure, a balm for raw and grieving hearts. But who was she to decree an end to their collective mourning?

Baal must have sensed her restlessness. His eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and puffy. "Good morning," he murmured, his voice a broken whisper. Instead of loosening his grip, he tightened his arm around her, nestling his head into the hollow between her neck and shoulder.

The warmth was comforting, yet it weighed on her like a loaded question.

"How do you feel?" she ventured, her own voice barely above a whisper as if afraid to shatter the fragile peace of the morning.

"Shitty," he replied, with a brutal honesty that matched the ache in her own heart.

Baal's eyes met hers, soft but clouded, as he gently brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. "What about you? Did you sleep alright?"

She grimaced, her finger still probing the depths of her ear. "There's this annoying buzz in my ear. Can't get rid of it."

"You want me to take a look?" he offered, already shifting as if to sit up.

"Nah, I'll go to the bathroom and try to clean it out," she said, carefully extricating herself from the cocoon of his arms. "This is driving me crazy!"

The wooden floor felt like a sheet of ice against her bare feet as she padded towards the bathroom. The mirror greeted her with a reflection tinged with sleeplessness and strain. She leaned in closer to examine her ear, half-expecting to see something—anything—that would explain the incessant buzzing.

Nothing. It was as empty and silent as the manor had been since Bram's disappearance.

Nord stepped out of the bathroom, her eyes squinting against the sudden brightness that now seemed too glaring in the corridor. The buzzing escalated, morphing into a chorus of murmurs that teased at the edges of her comprehension—whispers that danced perilously close to forming words.

As she took a step forward, her foot crunched against something grainy on the floor. Lifting her foot, she examined the curious substance clinging to her sole—crimson grains that resembled salt yet pulsated with an unsettling energy.

A pulling sensation engulfed her, emanating from every direction yet originating from nowhere. It was disorienting like being drawn towards an unseen vortex. Simultaneously, a hitch formed on her left thigh—a stinging itch that escalated into a burning sensation.

Pulling up her nightgown, her eyes met the image inked on her skin: a man smirking under a hat adorned with ram horns. The tattoo seemed more vivid than ever, the lines almost pulsating as the burning on her thigh intensified.

She attempted to shake it off, placing her feet back on the ground. But now, the floor felt as if it were made of shards, each step a wince-inducing jab.

The whispers crescendo in her ears, no longer just a murmur but a frantic chant. "I summon you, master... dreams... blood writes..." The words swirled in a chaotic mix, interspersed with static, like radio frequencies overlapping and distorting.

The corridor seemed to twist, its dimensions skewing as if the world itself was contorting. She staggered, her equilibrium shattered. It was as though the floor and ceiling had inverted, creating a dizzying vortex that threatened to consume her.

Nord gripped the wall, her knuckles white, as she fought to regain her balance and sanity.

Desperation clawed at her throat as she attempted to call out, to scream for Baal. Her mouth moved, lips shaping his name, but no sound escaped. It was as if the air had thickened, swallowing her voice before it could resonate.

As she clung to the wall for dear life, the whispering in her ears crystallized into clarity. "I summon you, master of memories, master of dreams, aid me now before my blood writes my tears. And so I call you. Come to my aid, so it is decreed, for my words are carved into my being—Baal Berith!"

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The chant looped, echoing as if broadcasted from some deep cavern of her subconscious. It called to her, for her, about her. And then she realized—her hands were clenched around her daggers, their hilt suddenly materializing as though summoned from the ether.

The world seemed to rip open, reality fraying at its edges. She felt a sensation akin to freefall as if the corridor had dropped away beneath her, plunging her into a void. Darkness enveloped her, punctuated only by the high-pitched screeching of bats that filled her ears, drowning out even the insistent chant that had started this whole ordeal.

When the spinning chaos finally stilled, Nord found herself anchored back in a disconcerting semblance of reality. The whispers had ebbed away, supplanted by the piercing cries of bats that swooped and spiralled around her. She took a moment to assess her surroundings, her gaze snagging on details that yanked at her memory—this was her old apartment.

With an agile flick of her wrists, Nord brandished her daggers and launched herself upward. Her feet skimmed the wall as she ascended, her blades swinging in swift arcs to slice through the airborne creatures. But each bat she cleaved seemed to respawn, their numbers inexplicably doubling.

A cold realization settled over her: she was ensnared in an illusion.

Nord's feet touched down on the floor. She pivoted sharply and dashed into the kitchen. Her eyes darted toward the window; it should have offered a way out, an escape. But all she saw beyond the glass was an endless expanse of cloud and the two moons, an opaque curtain that revealed nothing.

Turning back, she surveyed the room, still teeming with the illusory bats. She clicked her tongue in irritation, her mind churning. Somewhere on her body was an anti-illusion spell, a tattoo inked into her skin. She knew it. She could feel it and with all the tattoos that she had already used and learned, the thought made sense. But the specifics—what it looked like, what words to say—eluded her in that frenzied moment.

Her fingers clenched around the hilts of her daggers, the blades now seeming almost weightless in her grip. The cries of the bats reached a feverish pitch, filling the room with a dissonant cacophony that tugged at the edges of her sanity.

As Nord was about to take her next step, the bats reformed—this time with an alarming swiftness—and hurtled towards her in a coordinated strike. With no time to think, she threw herself onto the floor, feeling the wingtips graze her as they whizzed past. She rolled onto her back, and what she saw took her breath away—three pairs of eyes stared down at her from the safety of the shadow beneath the bed.

"Bram?" Nord's voice was tinged with disbelief as she scrambled to join them under the bed. "Is that really you? How the hell did you get here?"

"I got lost! But it's okay, now you found me!" Bram's voice was filled with youthful relief, a stark contrast to the surreal danger enveloping them.

Nord shifted her gaze to the other two figures. One was a goblin with an impish grin, the other a red-haired child with dark eyes that held flickers of orange flame. "Baal? Is that...?"

"I'm Tower," the redhead cut in, his eyes alight with awe. "That one is Dumdum. We were trying to summon my master, but you came instead. It's okay, though. You're more powerful than him!"

Nord looked around at the faces gathered in the confined space, the surreal nature of the situation not lost on her. Above them, the bats continued their chaotic dance, but it was as if they had temporarily forgotten the people hiding beneath the bed.

"More powerful than your master?" Nord raised an eyebrow. "Who exactly is your master, kid?"

"Baal Berith!"

"Baal Berith? You're trying to summon Baal Berith?" Nord's eyebrows shot up. "So you know who I am?"

"Yeah, you're his wife, Nord Morningstar."

"Right…" Nord glanced upwards, her eyes narrowing as she took in the swarm of bats blotting out the ceiling. She leaned in, whispering, "I think the bats are not real."

"Oh, no, no, the bats are very real!" Dumdum chimed in, eyes wide and earnest.

"And scary," Bram added, curling even more tightly into himself beneath the bed.

"So, Tower, how exactly did you manage to summon me instead of Baal?" Nord inquired.

Dumdum slid a notebook toward her. "We used this—something new, something borrowed, and something bloody." The goblin then pointed to a dead bat, a four-leaf clover, and an unused condom.

"Okay… I wasn't expecting this." Nord scanned the pages of the notebook, eyes widening in recognition. "I drew these! These are my tattoo designs!"

"I know!" Tower beamed as if he'd won a prize.

"You recognize these drawings?" Nord asked, flipping through the pages.

"Yep! Just like the horns on my head!" Tower touched his head, pointing the curve of horns with his fingers.

"Do you know any of these that work against illusions?" Nord asked, her eyes darting back and forth between the pages.

Tower leaned in to study the notebook more closely. "Hmm...no horns for that. But wait! What about this one?" He pointed to a sketch— of a woman blindfolded with half of a skull, "That's the one," he confirmed, "The Key of the Eye."

"Do you know the words?" Nord asked, her voice tinged with doubt.

The young demon smiled knowingly and began to recite, "Lighten mine eyes that I sleep not in death. Let my enemy say I can't prevail against them. Show before me so it is decreed, for my words are carved into my being—Baal Berith!"

Intrigued, Nord laid her palm over the drawing. She could feel a warm rash burning below her neck where the tattoo was probably inked.

Taking a deep breath, she repeated Tower's incantation, her voice barely rising above a whisper: "Lighten mine eyes that I sleep not in death. Let my enemy say I can't prevail against them. Show before me so it is decreed, for my words are carved into my being—Baal Berith!"

The room held its breath. The bats that had swarmed above them, a frenetic maelstrom of flapping wings and ear-piercing shrieks, ceased their chaotic dance. Silence replaced the cacophony, so heavy and profound it seemed to swallow the room whole. For a moment, the only sounds were the anxious inhalations and exhalations of the beings huddled beneath the bed.

Then, the faint echo of footsteps began to reverberate in the still air. They originated from the stairway that spiralled around the tower—soft, deliberate footsteps that climbed upward, growing louder with each step.

Light but purposeful, as though each footfall were measured and certain.

Nord exchanged glances with Bram, Tower, and Dumdum. Her hand instinctively moved to the hilt of her daggers, its familiarity grounding her. "Stay here," she mouthed silently, not daring to break the fragile quiet.

Tower and Dumdum nodded, their eyes filled with dread. Bram clutched onto a piece of the torn bedsheet, his knuckles whitening.

The footsteps reached the landing outside the room. A pause. A breathless hush fell over them, their hearts pounding in unison like a drumbeat.

Boots—worn, black, the leather scuffed—appeared at eye level as they remained crouched under the bed.