Void's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Mary led him to the east wing after sunset. The room was bare except for the pentagram she'd already drawn on the floor in chalk. Two circles waited inside it, one marked with his name, one with hers. She placed the black glass knife at the center and gestured for him to take his position. Void stepped into his circle and knelt. Mary took hers across from him, her hands already bleeding from cuts she must have made before he arrived. She reached for the knife and pressed it to his palm. The hunger stirred as soon as the blood hit the floor. It rose fast, searching for something to latch onto, but instead of flowing toward Mary like the ritual text promised, it turned inward. Wrong. The hunger coiled tighter, and Void felt it pull harder — not from him, but through him. Mary gasped. Her body went rigid, and the chalk lines on the floor began to glow red. Outside the window, the iron cross in the courtyard cracked down the middle. Thorned vines erupted from the split, wrapping around the stone until a carved heart appeared at the center, pierced with two black daggers. Mary's blood dripped from her nose. The hunger wasn't binding to her — it was feeding on her. Void tried to pull back, but the ritual had already started, and stopping meant the binding would collapse entirely. He watched her face go pale. At her feet, a small cloth doll tumbled from her pocket, its stitched smile unchanged even as a red pin pushed through its chest on its own. Void broke the circle. He kicked the knife away and grabbed Mary's wrist, dragging her out of the pentagram before the glow could spread further. The light died instantly. Mary collapsed against him, breathing hard. Behind them, the chalk turned to ash, and the courtyard cross stopped growing. A pile of old bones scattered near the window — skulls that had been stacked there long before tonight, now marking exactly where Mary had stood when the hunger reached for her instead of binding to her. Void looked at the burnt pentagram, then at Mary. The ritual had failed, but he'd learned something the text never mentioned: his hunger didn't want an anchor. It wanted a source. And if he tried this again without understanding why, Mary wouldn't survive it.