It was all black.
For a moment, Lilly had no notion of whether she was sleeping or awake. She felt so weightless as if her body had been thrown somewhere in an endless void into total disengagement with everything that surrounded her. The air was thick and cold, and however hard she tried, she just could not manage to move or breathe.
Then, slowly, the darkness began to lift.
Sounds filtered in first, distant murmurs, like voices being carried along on the wind, though she couldn't quite make out the words. The weightlessness in her limbs was dissipating, and something firm pressed against her feet. She gasped for air, though it didn't feel as if she were breathing. Her chest was tight; her thoughts were muddled.
Suddenly, the black void flickered, and Lilly was inside a spacious stone chamber. Everything was different around the same colder air, but it now seemed to fill with the acrid scent of burning herbs, the heavy tang of something metallic, of blood. Torches on the stone walls fluttered; their long flames danced in unnatural patterns. Lilly blinked hard, trying to clear her sullied mind. She wasn't in the mausoleum anymore.
Where am I?
She attempted to take a step back, and tried to move; however, her body wouldn't listen to her. Her limbs felt foreign, no longer part of her. Then panic flared in her chest, and she could do nothing except stand there, unable to escape the strange dreamlike paralysis that had stolen over her. Her feet moved, not of their own accord, and carried her forward toward the center of the chamber.
She was trapped inside another person's body, looking through that other person's eyes, feeling through them.
This isn't real…can't be.
But it was too vivid, too intricate to be a dream.
She finally looked down at her hands-or rather, the hands of the person she was inhabiting. They weren't hers. The skin was rough and thick-skinned with calloused ridges, older. Immediately, her heart hammered in her chest as she realized what was happening was taken back in time to witness the ritual that set everything in motion through someone else's memories.
The chamber was filled with figures, all of them clad in long dark robes; their faces hid behind the shadows that theaters from flickering torchlight. They stood in a circle, their voices low and rhythmic, chanting some language that grated on her ears-low and guttural. It felt like something was wrong, the words themselves infused with dark magic, trembling in the air like a malevolent force.
Lilly's body, the body she was inhabiting-moved closer to the circle. She was being pulled into the ritual, inexorably drawn to the center of the room where a tall figure stood, his hands raised above his head. The air was heavy in the chamber, thick with tension, and the weight of the magic being performed pressed on her like a physical force.
Her eyes found the figure standing in the middle of the circle-Thomas Grey.
Even without fully seeing his face in the poor light, she knew who he was. He exuded command with every inch of his presence; each manipulation was calculated and purposeful as he guided the ritual. The artifact, placed firmly in his grasp, was held high over his head. It was the same artifact she had just touched in the mausoleum, only here it looked untouched by time, its jagged, metallic edges gleaming in the firelight.
The red gemstone at the center pulsed faintly, casting an eerie glow across the chamber. It was a focal artifact for the ritual-a conduit for the power they were about to unleash. The other figures in the circle chanted louder; their voices grew stronger in intensity as they reached the climax of the summoning spell.
Lilly felt the energy in the room ramps up. It crackled in the air, making her skin prickle and her heart race. The earth beneath her feet had shaken, and the room turned colder as the shadows in the middle of the circle started to move. The darkness curved and twisted like smoke swirling in the breeze, and from within the depth of the shadows, something took shape.
Instantly, her breath caught her throat as she saw the entity.
It was no more than a vague, amorphous mass of darkness to begin with-primarily churning and undulating like some sort of living storm cloud. Then it began to solidify, taking on a vague shape: tall, menacing, its form flickering between human and something far more monstrous. Two glowing eyes burned through the darkness, staring out from the center of the swirling shadows.
The chanting grew louder, more frantic as Thomas raised the artifact higher and his voice rose above the rest. He was speaking directly to the entity now, calling it forth, commanding it to obey. But even Lilly could feel something was wrong: the miscalculation in the air between the power they would summon and the ability to control that power. The tension in the room grew thick, and the magic chaotic.
They didn't know what they were doing, Lilly thought, her heart racing down her spine. This is going to go wrong.
But she couldn't stop it. She lay helpless, trapped in this vision, being forced to witness as the unfolding ritual took place.
Yet again, the shadows within the circle stirred as the figure coalesced with greater clarity. Huge, its body entirely of dark mass, twisted and writhed, as if it seemed little contained by the magic binding it. Glowing eyes went straight to Thomas, seething with malevolent intelligence. For one instant, the air was still, as if the entity was weighing up its captors as to whether it was obliged to obey.
Tension mounted, with Lilly's heart seeming to pound against her chest with each shallow breath. The presence weighed upon her, cold and suffocating; it watched and waited. Thomas stepped forward, and above the final incantation, his voice was firm and commanding. A device in his hand flared with light as a red gemstone shone bright, pulsing with energy that sent shivers down Lilly's spine.
For one fleeting moment, it all just seemed to balance on air: a perfect balance of the magic, the power, the entity. It was working.
Then, the balance broke.
The shades around the being contorted and flailed madly; in an instant, the temperature in the room fell below zero. The being's form flickered from solid to smoke in the blink of an eye. A hoarse growl echoed through the chamber, churning Lilly's bones with suppressed energy. She felt the shudder of the ground beneath her feet and how the tension in the air snapped like a taut string.
The entity was breaking free. The chanting faltered, voices breaking as panic rippled through the circle. Thomas's face went pale, but he pressed on, attempting to regain control, shouting orders at the others. But it was too late; the entity was beyond their bind now. Its eyes flared bright with malignant light as it beamed its gaze upon the robed figures that surrounded it. A dark surge of energy swooped through the room, tossing several of the participants to their knees.
The ground cracked beside Lilly's feet, and the air vibrated with the weight of the entity's power. Her body—no, the body she was trapped in—stumbled backward, fear raking her throat. The vision flickered again, and for a moment, Lilly thought she might wake up, might break free of this nightmare.
But then the world went black again around her.