I opened the book on my desk and began to leaf through it cautiously, with a hint of panic. Its interior was no less ominous than its pale green cover; words crowded and intertwined in sinister chapters with seemingly healing titles like "The Crimson Potion" and "Eternal Extracts," but the content was an incomprehensible enigma. Strange symbols and language that sounded like ancient Hebrew made the prescriptions and incantations seem like codes from another world.
I continued leafing until I came across a page that made my whole being recoil; it was stained with crimson blood, still warm and sticky, so much so that it stained my fingertips. I knew for certain that it was the page where Suntra had just been spitting the poison of her spell. The page bore a title steeped in cruelty and darkness:
(The Birth of the Tyrant from the Ashes of Nothingness... So that Might might be embodied in the Vessel of Annihilation)
(Invocatio Diaboli: Resurrectio Malitiae Aeternae)
Although blood obscured half the words, I used my intellect to decipher this strange linguistic concoction and the inverted numbers. The picture began to emerge bitterly; the ritual performed by the old woman, Sauntra, was nothing but an incantation to summon and renew the spirit of Joseph. He was dead, then, but this accursed book indicated that these rituals applied only to the "Leader"... and Joseph was the pole around which this curse revolved.
He was being brought back to life through this continuous bleeding, and in order for his spectral presence to remain full of power, Sauntra must remain a servant to this talisman. They had chosen Saturday specifically because, according to their dark texts, it was "the day on which the god of power gathered the scattered remnants of the first sect."
Now I understood the secret behind Joseph's coldness towards me in the library; he didn't care about his severed hand or his flowing blood, because he knew for certain that Sauntra would bring him back to life the following Saturday, so the talisman could repair what humans had broken.
But questions multiplied in my mind like snakes: Why Sauntra of all people to undertake this suicidal task? And why were they so insistent on bringing back a monster they trembled before, yet dared not mention as a member of the family?
The explanation of the talisman ended with a phrase that was like a final nail in the coffin of my peace of mind.
(Until the threat is fulfilled... and the devil ascends his throne in his true form, freed from the shackles of absence)
(Ut tenebrae carnem sumant: reditus diaboli in forma sua vera)
They want him back in his true form?
I studied the book; Joseph wrote it himself, but he speaks of the "leader" as if he were someone else, or perhaps he wrote these rituals decades ago, before he himself became this entity that haunts the living from behind the graves.
Hellish thoughts crowded my mind, threatening to shatter it. Not a single minute in this palace could be described as normal. My life here is an endless sequence of analysis, discovery, shock, and then helplessness. I buried the cursed book deep in the drawer and crawled, my body utterly exhausted, to the bed. The events had drained me completely.
From the outside, it seems like an exciting game, and it might even seem amusing when told as a story, but living it and swallowing its details is a devastating torment that slowly gnaws at the soul.
I collapsed onto the bed fully clothed: in my shoes, my dress, and my phone, its light still flickering beside me. This is how one falls into the embrace of sleep after a grueling ordeal. Although my day had begun peacefully, the dose of terror I had swallowed in that tomb was enough to freeze the blood in my veins and completely exhaust my being.
And so, I sank into a deep sleep—a sleep as still as death.
They say that the nightmares that terrify us in our sleep hold meanings and symbols; this is what my father used to whisper in my ear when I was little. He told me that a nightmare is our innate radar for sensing danger or safety, good or evil, based on the symbolism of what we see.
Because I was a child living in a warm environment and surrounded by rosy dreams, my dreams were limited to Disney princesses and holiday gifts, and I—with foolish innocence—longed for just one nightmare to break the monotony of that happiness. Then my father would smile and say, "Nightmares are a mirror of reality, my baby ; when you are surrounded by real danger, between danger, you will wish you could return to your rosy escape, to survive merciless nightmares."
And it seems he was right...
The Limbo of Visions... and the Cry of Nothingness
It began with utter emptiness; a solid, pitch-black floor, and a deafening silence that swallowed the place. I tried to move forward, but my legs betrayed me. I felt a paralysis coursing through my veins, binding me to this impenetrable darkness.
Suddenly, from the depths of nothingness, a faint voice emerged, like the hiss of snakes:
"Bring him back to life..."
The fog lifted, and I suddenly found myself before a clear blue sea, caressed by a gentle, serene sky. But the peace was short-lived, for the voice returned, more insistent than ever:
"Why did you bring him back to life...?"
In an instant, the sky was stained with a somber blackness, and the tranquil sea transformed into a raging volcano spewing lava. I screamed inwardly, "Run! Run!" I began to run, but the sand transformed into hungry mouths, dragging my feet down. I was trying to survive, but all of nature seemed determined to execute me.
Then, the scene changed again; I found myself in a lush, verdant forest, like a paradise lost on Earth, filled with pink flowers and birds singing joyfully. But the accursed voice didn't hesitate to shatter this tranquility:
"Bring back the monster..."
The echo reverberated through the air, and paradise turned into hell. The trees unfurled their branches all at once like thick ropes to bind me, and the grass twisted around my wrists and ankles. The earth began to slowly absorb and swallow my body.
"Because of you, evil returned... and because of you, evil vanished."
As the earth swallowed me whole and my screams filled the horizon, he appeared... a man wearing a long white robe, like a priest from ancient Rome. His round face dripped with malice, and the features I had known in my waking life were even more terrifying here.
It was the same man; The same man I saw the day I left the hospital, the one I glimpsed following me while shopping, stood before me like the Grim Reaper, a knife dripping with fresh blood in his hand. He uttered his soul-frozing threat:
"Restore our beast from the void's deep rest,
Or fall as torn flesh at our ghastly feast."
He raised his knife high toward the dark sky, then plunged it with all his might into the center of my heart.
"Haaaah...!!!"
I awoke with a stifled scream, my breath coming in gasps as if I'd just run a death marathon.