The chamber had been constructed to Silenos’ exact specifications, demanding every scrap of House Shaiagrazni’s not-inconsiderable technologies to ensure that it conformed to every minutiae of his designs. The work had been long, tedious, slow. But now it was finished, and he gazed upon the result with a scrutiny born from self preservation.

A dull, silvery surface extended outwards, elliptical in shape and rounded on each of its faces. At its broadest point, the room was thirty feet across. At its tallest it measured eighteen from floor to ceiling. Silenos strode through the interior and noted the absence of any strong reverberations or yield within the ground.

Tungsten was its composition, over a foot thick and worked with the most powerful magics available. It would have turned aside cannonfire at point-blank range without so much as a scratch, withstood engulfment in temperatures able to burn iron into vapour without losing its solidity, and weathered forces able to collapse mountains with its mass barely shifted at all.

Silenos estimated that it might be enough, should the worst occur, to slow the Entity down long enough for his ritual to be halted from the outside. If not, disaster would reign.

But there could be no progress without risk, he’d learned that during his earliest days in House Shaiagrazni.

“Are the sigils prepared?” Silenos asked, glancing at his idiot apprentice. Adonis was short, squat and black-haired, with a pudgy face that betrayed poor control over his gut’s impulses and sweaty, clammy skin born from a life of living close to the limits of his stress threshold. It was not an uncommon appearance for Shaiagrazni apprentices.

House Shaiagrazni was the greatest and oldest institute of magic the world had ever known, and it achieved this position through its unending demand of excellence. To gain the name Shaiagrazni, and be adopted into the Household, an individual would have to prove themselves a prodigy beyond prodigiousness and amass knowledge and power that most experienced magicians could only fantasise about.

The process of achieving such things was not easy, even for those with the inherent gifts that made it possible. Silenos’ own studies had lasted him forty years, then another sixty to advance once he earned the name Shaiagrazni and become a House Elder.

In the half-century since, he had taken on over a dozen apprentices. Only Adonis had remained with him for more than a year. Talent and resilience keeping him in place.

“The preparations are complete, Master.” Adonis replied hastily, as he always did. The boy didn’t meet his eyes, which was good, Silenos had already punished an act of just such defiance one month prior, and twisting the boy’s spine had been tedious enough that he was in no mood to find another, more creative punishment.

Moved by instinct, he took another glance at the room around him. It remained as blemishless and resilient as his first study had betrayed, but something still gnawed at Silenos. He crushed the sensation. Now was no time for abstract worries and insubstantial fears, there was work to be done. Work that would shape the next century of human history.

The chamber was assembled, the bindings complete. All that remained was for Silenos to draw the Entity out into his world, and strike his bargain. He stepped forwards, readying his magic and calling out to all present.

“Leave.” He ordered. “Save for Adonis, I want none here to disturb me.”

At best, the attendants and servitors would distract him, and at worst their fragile, inferior minds would provide the Entity with a handhold on the world. The magics it could unleash through a human vessel were limited, but an Entity of the magnitude he was calling on might well overpower him regardless, or shatter its bindings from the outside to bring forth the full volume of its power.

The former would kill him, the latter would kill millions.

Silenos inhaled, focused, then let his magic ooze out to infuse the sigils carved around him. They drunk it hungrily, feeding on the nourishing flow of his power, refracting arcane energies into light, heat and every other facet of electromagnetism Shaiagrazni had yet discovered. The chamber was sealed behind them, cutting off the flood of light from its open door, but by then the interior was already illuminated by raw power.

Adonis kept silent, and Silenos used the quietude well. Continuing to supply the lattice of runes with power, patiently waiting as he measured volume and frequency, allowing the chamber’s sigils to swell and glute themselves upon it. Moment by moment, the preparation all came to fruition. Ritual nearing completion, he felt a bead of sweat upon his brow.

It had been years since true worry had racked Silenos, he’d almost forgotten how it felt.

The Entity manifested with a crack of air, the atmosphere crystallising solid, then snapping in half. A choir sang out from nowhere, their voices straining to sing a note of purple colouration, their vocal chords tightening amid muscles made of snakes. Something slithered up from the universe’s ceiling, yet somehow descended in doing so, and its form grew corporeal and substantial before Silenos’ very eyes.

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It was not a thing of matter, or at least not any matter that could take sustainable shape under the harsh governance of physical law. More akin to some interaction of forces and principals, though even that implied a degree of consistency not native to the Entity’s nature.

Silenos watched and waited as the shifting volume of nothingness found itself, congealing and writhing, spending its earliest moments in his world becoming master of its laws. Then it spoke.

The creature’s voice ran through him, bypassing the air entirely and carrying itself on waves of magic rather than sound. It was a million things, the sound of steel grating on flint, acid eating lime, a wife being beaten and an old man’s life ending at last. Silenos spent his own time accustoming himself to it, adjusting and interpreting the alien tones, picking out the sentiments and words they conveyed.

I have been summoned. What for.

The Entity’s voice did not contain any semblance of emotion or impression, yet it was far from stoic. An inconsistent, shaking tone that seemed to begin each syllable at a different volume and pitch from the last, entering Silenos’ mind like nails scraping across a chalkboard. He was well used to such effects from Entities, however, and moved past them to recite his introduction.

“I am Silenos, Senior of House Shaiagrazni, and I wish to make a bargain with you. Ask of me what you will and I will grant it, provided you meet my terms.”

It was not necessary to speak with vocalised words, the Entity would hear any thoughts Silenos directed its way. Still, habit held strong. He waited for the Entity to respond. Sometimes they took as long as a human, sometimes no time at all. And sometimes they could take years to answer. Silenos had no intention of giving it that long, but he was well prepared to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of such things. The rewards were well worth it.

What is your request.

He told the Entity. Silenos had dealt with two of its kind already, and walked away stronger from each encounter. One had allowed him to see magic itself– an ability so vanishingly rare that most among his own Household still did not believe he had it. The other had lengthened his lifespan, and thus allowed for centuries more knowledge to be accrued before death began its approach.

This time, however, he wanted something more. Raw power, that rarest, innate gift that segregated the strongest of magicians from the rabble at birth. Among the thousand Named of House Shaiagrazni, close to a hundred exceeded him in magical strength. He aimed to fix that.

I can grant this.

Silenos waited for more, and sure enough the Entity continued.

I demand five thousand beating hearts be cut from their owners while they still live, and for you to pledge yourself to me. In exchange, I shall grant you the power you seek.

He almost laughed. Entities asked for pledges of servitude constantly, it was always the gold standard of deal-making for them. To earn a permanent mortal puppet was to gain some long-standing means of influencing the world. Even House Shaiagrazni’s tolerance of forbidden magic and dark knowledge did not extend so far as to permitting that.

“I will not be making such a deal.” Silenos said, forcing himself to look straight-on as the conjured Entity spasmed against the corners of reality. He could see the world liquefying somewhat where its body intersected, and forced himself to ignore it.

As a Senior, it would be well within your powers, and your mentor would be no issue.

He froze, thinking for one long moment at the Entity’s words, as the truth slowly dawned on him. Lethargically, Silenos turned to look at Adonis, and found the boy staring with wide eyes at the conjured presence before them.

Decades in House House Shaiagrazni had taught Silenos many things, and the sight of terror was chief among them. He saw it in the boy’s face, and he saw an undeniable direction to it. The look of one who had been caught, and knew they were guilty. He took a step towards him, preparing his own powers.

The Entity didn’t need a person to speak vocally, it could communicate by simply hearing the words in their mind. Adonis had been speaking with it from the start, not Silenos, and a deal was about to be struck.

His power reached the air, thickening, drawing close to wrap around Adonis and burst him like an overripe grape. The Entity’s was quicker still.

Silenos felt the world itself split like a jagged wound torn across taut skin, the air churning and boiling as it was snatched into a roaring gale and dragged into the schism. He felt it tugging at his body almost instantly, pulling like great, invisible fingers hooking their way into the robes about his frame and the hair atop his scalp.

Adonis smiled. Damn him, he smiled! A sneering, smug rat in human skin, actually daring to feel pride for overturning a ritual painstakingly designed by his superior. Silenos could feel the weight of power at play, it was an amount he had no hope of matching.

Through making its contract with his apprentice, the Entity had managed to exert more of its strength upon the world. Such was the basic function of summoning it at all- and yet finding it turned against him, Silenos could only curse the fates for letting such an irony strike him down.

His feet didn’t leave the ground. Rather, the ground left his feet, and then the world left his skin. Silenos observed it all with a distant, sick fascination. He felt himself drawn high, long, low and inwards. Felt himself unmade, then remade, then shuffled back to how he’d started. He felt an uncountable volume of events and non-events pass him by, and through it all a blinding light grew ever more intense as it coalesced around him.

The last sight he caught of his reality was the triumphant, arrogant grin of an upstart apprentice.