03 All he could do was endure.
The pain was unbearable, but he stayed still, reciting the words in his head, clinging to the belief that this was the moment that would change everything. His eyes felt as if they were being torn apart, liquefied and reformed into something foreign. His breath came in ragged gasps, and the room seemed to spin around him. The ritual had promised power, but all he felt was agony.
When it was finally over, the pain didn't immediately fade. The boy blinked, slowly, as his vision gradually cleared. His eyelids felt tender, almost swollen, and there was a strange heaviness to his eyes. But there was something else too—his appetite had grown insatiable. He was ravenous, devouring anything he could get his hands on, but it wasn't like the usual hunger he'd experienced. This was something deeper, something that gnawed at him from the inside, like the hunger of a creature never satisfied.
He couldn't explain it, but the changes didn't stop there. Over the next few days, his senses felt sharper, more attuned to his surroundings. His eyes seemed to pick up on the smallest details—the flicker of movement in the corner of his vision, the whisper of wind in the trees, the distant sounds of footsteps on snow. But he chalked it up to exhaustion, a side effect of the ritual.
It wasn't until he went out to forage that the true extent of the ritual's effects revealed itself.
He was walking through the forest, his breath visible in the cold air, when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was as though something was watching him, something unseen but very much present. The forest, once familiar and calming, now seemed unnervingly alive with an unseen presence. He thought he heard a rustling in the trees, but when he turned to look, there was nothing there.
Then, he saw it.
A figure emerged from the mist, pale and translucent, its form flickering in and out of existence like a flame in the wind. It was a ghost, its hollow eyes staring directly at him. The moment their gazes met, the boy froze. His heart raced, his body went cold, and the overwhelming urge to run surged through him.
His breath caught in his throat, and his legs trembled. He was frozen in place, unable to look away from the ghost's hollow eyes. The creature didn't speak, but the terror it radiated was palpable. For a moment, the boy felt his insides twist with fear so intense it felt like his stomach was being squeezed in a vice.
He could feel his bladder release in a rush of panic—he had almost pissed his pants. The sheer horror of it overwhelmed him.
The ghost didn't approach, didn't speak, it simply stood there, watching him. His instincts screamed at him to run, but he couldn't move. His body was as stiff as stone, paralyzed by fear. Then, after what felt like an eternity, the ghost flickered, its form vanishing into the swirling mist as quickly as it had appeared.
The boy stood there for a long time, trembling, trying to make sense of what had just happened. His mind raced as he struggled to reconcile the fear with what he knew. Ghosts were real. The book hadn't lied, and his ritual had worked. But this wasn't just about seeing ghosts.
He forgot that now ghosts could see him too.
Normally, ghosts could see humans, but they couldn't sense them too clearly or interact with them. Humans were like background. They lingered on the edges of the living world, shadowy and intangible, barely more than whispers in the wind. Only the stronger, more powerful spirits could manifest themselves or make direct contact with the living. But now, with the ritual complete, it was different.
Now, the boy was like a flame in the dark, visible to every ghost in the vicinity. He wasn't just a bacu; he was a beacon to them. The moment the ritual had altered his perception, it had marked him, like a glowing signal in the empty night. To the weaker ghosts, he was now as visible and tangible as any living ghosts. They could sense him, feel his presence, like a heat radiating from his body, cutting through the shadows that once concealed him.
The boy's heart pounded in his chest as the realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He wasn't just seeing them anymore. He was exposed.
He regretted going out before he mastered the next steps in the scroll. Concealing.