Shards of shattered glass suspended themselves eerily in the mid-air, each sliver reflecting the bruised, blood-violet sky bleeding outside the windows.
I slumped in the shadows of the bed corner, my breath hitching so violently it felt as though my lungs would tear. The sheer exhaustion from having the soul-pact forcibly drained left my head spinning, yet I couldn't avert my gaze. Alaric, the man before me, had utterly shed his mask of the polished, gothic gentleman.
A pair of tattered, obsidian wings erupted from his back. They weren't made of flesh and bone; instead, the edges bled a mist so thick it resembled spilled ink, and every beat of them brought a freezing draft from the lowest pits of hell. The floorboards beneath his bare feet began to wither and blacken, as if the very wood was recoiling in terror from his presence.
A gargantuan, multi-limbed tentacle from the Gatekeeper smashed through the ceiling, descending with ruinous force toward Alaric's head.
"Watch out!" I shrieked.
Alaric didn't even turn. He merely let out a cold, raspy chuckle—a sound so deep and arrogant it defied the gods. He slowly raised one slender, porcelain-pale hand, fingers splayed.
"In Blackwood, I am Death."
With that sentence of judgment, a crevice of deep violet flared in his palm. It wasn't light; it was pure, all-consuming Nothingness.
With a thunderous roar, the tide of wraiths crashed into an invisible wall. Those wailing ancestral spirits, the moment they touched the obsidian aura radiating from Alaric, vanished like snowflakes dropped into a furnace. They didn't even have time for a final scream. The massive tentacle, upon reaching three feet from his body, began to crumble and disintegrate inch by inch, turning into black dust.
But the outburst of power carried a price. I watched as Alaric's skin turned a sickly shade of bluish-purple. Spiderweb-like cracks raced up his neck, threatening to claim his exquisite face. He was overtaxing this broken, borrowed vessel.
The Gatekeeper let out one final, soul-vibrating roar. Its singular, gargantuan eye opened within the void, projecting a malice sharp enough to drive a mortal to madness.
"Get back to your Red Door!" Alaric bellowed. He spun around, his hands coming together in a forceful, ritualistic motion.
In that instant, gravity within the bedroom ceased to exist. I felt my body floating upward, while all the mist, the glass shards, and the remaining wraiths were sucked into the vacuum Alaric had created—a black hole of pure void. The resulting shockwave slammed the Gatekeeper back into the dimension behind the Red Door.
With a heavy, metallic clang that shook the manor, the Red Door in the attic slammed shut, sealed once more.
Silence returned to the estate. A dead, ear-stinging silence.
The blood-violet sky faded as darkness reclaimed the world. The wings on Alaric's back dissipated like smoke. His heavy frame collapsed, his knees hitting the floorboards with a dull, sickening thud.
I scrambled off the bed and rushed to him. He was gasping for air, the dark, viscous liquid seeping from the corners of his eyes and his lips. His gaze was still trapped in a frantic, unyielding state of slaughter—the raw, untamed ferocity of a wild beast.
"Don't come closer..." he rasped, his voice a guttural growl of suppressed violence. "Right now... I want to tear everything apart..."
I ignored him, lunging forward to wrap my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek against his back, which was as cold as a block of ice.
"Alaric, it's me. It's Evangeline," I whispered through my tears, my arms tightening around his waist.
He froze. For a moment, I could feel the violent energy within him thrashing like a caged animal. But as the mark on my nape flared with a sudden heat, the darkness in his eyes finally began to recede. He turned abruptly, pinning me against the freezing floorboards. His hands clamped onto my shoulders, the pressure so intense I feared my bones would snap.
"You are mine," he hissed, staring into my eyes with a desperate, pleading obsession. "Never, never open that door again. If you ever dare to risk my life like that again, I will drag you into the void with me. Do you understand?"
He leaned down, kissing me with a desperate, punishing intensity. The kiss tasted of copper and cold sandalwood, so dominant it stole the very air from my lungs. Amidst the ruins of the bedroom, I finally realized: I wasn't just his sacrifice. I had become the only anchor for his shattered soul.