On the day a young Damien Vale nearly brought about the end of the world, his mother made pancakes. This was, of course, something of a problem. You see, Damien wasn't hungry. However, if he left any food on the table, his mother would have known something was wrong.

Normally, Damien wouldn't have found that an issue.

There were a great number of things that could cause a young boy to lose his appetite. Rune drawing practice, bullying, contemplating the insignificance of one's mere mortal existence, and girls.

None of these things had even crossed Damien's mind on this day. Well, he might have thought about one particular mortal with short blonde hair and sparkling brown eyes once or twice, but that was it.

Damien's homework had been completed the night before and stuffed under his bed where his mother wouldn't find it, and he counted himself lucky to have no issues with bullies. In fact, he was proud of his ability to blend into the background, watching life pass him by.

Until today. Today was a fateful day, and Damien was taking no chances. If his mother suspected the slightest thing was wrong, she might have watched him a little closer. She could have noticed how his untrained gaze kept flicking to the giant wooden cabinet covered with runes.

She may have even realized Damien had memorized the password when she'd hastily whispered it that morning in order to get the gold to pay the tax collector. Unfortunately, she saw none of this.

"Mom, when do I get to summon my companion?"

Damien asked, tugging on her sleeve as he stuffed the last piece of pancake into his mouth. It tasted as delicious as ever, light and fluffy, with a rich sugary syrup that coated the inside of his mouth. Damien had to keep himself from throwing up.

"In four years, Damien," Hilla Vale said, sighing. "It's no different than the last time you asked me. You're too young to have a summon, and I won't have you romping around Ashfall Academy this early! Just because other kids have done it doesn't mean it's safe! You could die!"

"I could still die when I'm seventeen!"

"Then you'll die more mature. And don't you even THINK of bringing up your father. He was a special case and was lucky to survive. Not to mention, look where it got him! He hasn't been home in months because the queen has him traipsing around the Warfront and hunting monsters," Hilla said, her brow furrowing with anger.

Damien wisely chose this moment to nod mutely. This wasn't the first time he'd had this argument—they occurred on a daily basis. In fact, on this particular day, Damien wanted to do nothing more than pretend summoning didn't exist. That wasn't an option. His mother would have noticed if their morning argument had passed, and he couldn't have that.

The two of them finished their meal at the wooden table meant for three. Damien helped his mother move the dishes to the sink. She sighed and shook her head, ruffling her son's hair with a wry smile.

"Trust me, you'll get your companion soon enough. It feels like a long time, but four years is nothing. With a powerful summon, you might not even have to worry about aging. Just enjoy your childhood while you can. You can make carefree and stupid decisions without ending your life. If you become an adventurer, that privilege is gone. I won't deny it can be exciting, but it can also be deadly," Hilla said.

It was the most she'd spoken on the subject in a long time. Damien jerked his head toward her, wondering if he'd been discovered. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, for him, she'd turned her attention to washing the dishes. She didn't seem any wiser to his plans.

"I've got a meeting I have to attend with Mayor Leo in a few minutes. I'll be gone for a few hours, and I expect your homework to be done by the time I get back," Hilla said sternly.

"I'll start it right away," Damien lied. No matter what his plans were for the rest of the day, he couldn't leave homework unfinished. After all, it was his favorite subject:

Rune drawing.

Hilla rolled her eyes and dried her hands off on a towel.

"I'm sure you will. You're welcome to go play with Jacob when you finish. I've left some sausage and cheese in the ice box, and there's bread in the pantry. You two can grab some food if you get hungry."

Damien nodded, his nerves too tense to allow him to say anything more. Hilla tossed her apron onto a hook and gave Damien a quick kiss on the forehead before she swept out of the house and gently locked the door behind her.

The young boy didn't budge for several minutes. His breathing sped up, and cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Slowly, he walked to the door and peered out the small window.

Hilla was nowhere to be seen. She wasn't one to be late for anything, so there was little chance of her turning back now. That didn't help Damien's nerves much.

With a pit forming at the bottom of his stomach, Damien dashed over to the large wooden cabinet. It was bigger than he was, with half a dozen runes he recognized and about ten more he didn't.

"Lixxar, villo, antov," Damien said, his words just barely louder than a whisper.

The cabinet didn't budge. He swallowed and said the words again, this time with more conviction.

The doors of the cabinet popped open with a click that nearly made Damien's heart jump out of his mouth. He could nearly hear his pulse now. The young boy pulled the cabinet open.

For the most highly defended object within the Vale household, the inside was rather plain. A large bag of money Damien cared nothing about had been set on the middle shelf. The real prize was at the top.

He reached up, standing on his tiptoes, and felt his fingers brush against hardened leather. A static shock traveled down his arm as he nudged the book over the edge and grabbed it before it could fall. Damien cradled the book like a baby as he absentmindedly shut the cabinet.

"The Summoner's Almanac," Damien whispered.

His very short life's greatest desire, the key to my freedom, and the beginning of what should have been the end of mankind.

Damien scurried to his room, clutching the book to his chest. He grabbed the pouch of chalk from his desk and returned to the dining room, slipping through the back door, and making a beeline for the old shed in the back.

He darted inside and closed the door behind him as carefully as possible. The warm sunlight streaming in through the windows at the top of the barn was just barely enough to see the stone floor.

It had been years since the barn had been used for anything of worth. It smelled like mildew and stale water.

The barn was completely empty, aside from some crates of old memorabilia and a wooden sword Damien had made for a school project.

Damien knelt on the floor. He pulled his rough shirt over his nose and brushed as much of the dust away as he could with the back of his hand. He immediately started sneezing as it got all over his clothes and slipped through the small holes in the weaving of his shirt.

His sneezing fit lasted for several minutes before the dust finally decided he'd had enough and let him off the hook. The determined young man wiped his nose on his sleeve. Then he picked up his bag of chalk.

He laid the Summoner's Almanac out on the ground before him. Despite the thick binding, the book wasn't particularly large. Damien opened it and flipped through the pages.

It didn't take long to find what he was looking for. It came right after about five pages of warnings and regulations, all of which Damien ignored. The page in question had a single circle drawn out on it.

The circle was made up of hundreds of runes. Two hundred and fifty-six, to be precise. Damien recognized about ten of them. Luckily, recognition wasn't a requirement for casting the summoning ritual.

Damien scanned the book, his eyes flicking over the runes like two grasshoppers. He only had a few hours to do this before his mother came home. There was no room for mistakes.

He sat there for just over an hour, inscribing the runes into his memory. None of them were particularly complex, so he didn't have any doubts over his ability to draw them.

That was all he'd done for the past few years anyway. How much harder could these ones be?

Damien reached inside his bag of chalk with a trembling hand. When it emerged, his fear was gone. All that remained was confidence. The type of confidence that could only come when one knew they only had one shot at something, and failure wasn't an option.

He drew. He started at the bottom of the circle, sketching out each rune with a practiced hand. If he'd wanted to, he could have gone faster. He didn't. Each line, every curve, and every dot were drawn with utter perfectionism in mind.

The young man fell into something of a trance. His hand made the slow trip in a circle around him. He didn't change his pace once. Even when his fingers ached and his wrist burned, Damien continued.

It took him nearly an hour to draw the circle. Damien knew his time counted down, but he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He rose and examined his work. The circle was large enough for him to lie in. As far as he could tell, it appeared correct. Despite that, a slight frown crossed his face.

Damien glanced from the book to his drawing. It looked the same, but the doubt still nipped at the back of his mind.

He grimaced and picked the chalk back up. He moved to the edge of the circle and started drawing again.

This time, it only took him just over ten minutes to finish with his work. He was familiar with the new circle he'd drawn around the summoning one, so he didn't have to try quite as hard.

Damien stepped inside the two circles. He swallowed and picked up the book. His mother could be home at any moment. He narrowed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. At the bottom of the page was the Summoner's Almanac's final instruction to him:

Earnestly Reach out with your heart and mind. Your call will echo throughout the planes of existence, and your companion shall respond.

Damien drew in a deep breath, closed the book, and concentrated. Every fiber of his being craved for a companion. More than anything in the world, Damien wanted to be able to cast magic. There was only one way to do that, and it was to summon a companion.

And that was exactly what Damien did. His desires funneled through his body, coursed through the invisible Ether that permeated the universe, and channeled into the first ring of runes around him.

The air hummed and crackled. Damien's hair stood on end, but he didn't relent. If anything, the young boy tried harder. His hands clenched at his sides as his very soul cried out.

That pure, longing note of innocent desire entered the summoning circle. The runes flared with energy and Damien's voice was cast into the universe.

It hurtled through the Ether, tearing free of the Mortal Plane. It traveled through the Plane of Stars, ducked under the Plane of Immortals, and careened straight between the Planes of Fury and Light.

It reached the Plane of Darkness. Then it kept going. It slowed as it passed through the Plane of the Dead, which resided at the farthest reaches of the living universe, but it did not stop.

Damien's plea went where no living mortal's thought had ever been before. Then it kept going. It passed all semblance of what mortals could rationalize. It fell through the cracks in the universe. Then it slipped into the Void.

The Void answered.

A cold breeze kicked up at Damien's feet. The runes glowed brighter as the summoning spell called out to his companion. All the light in the room not from the runes dimmed as if the sun had set.

Damien took a nervous step backward. There wasn't a lot of area in his circle, but the summoning ritual only established the connection between the caster and their summon. It didn't actually pull them into the Mortal Plane.

The air grew colder. What might have been described as an inconsistency formed in the air in front of Damien. The young boy peered closer at it with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

It wasn't that there was something actually there. In fact, it was more like there was nothing at all. It wasn't black. It just didn't exist. A hole in reality. It expanded, drawing a thin line of nothingness before Damien. The line stretched, turning into a large rectangle. Damien's head pounded as the worst headache he'd ever had gripped his skull. He tore his eyes from whatever he'd summoned.

Then something stepped out of the rectangle. Despite himself, Damien glanced at it.

A psychic scream tore through his mind. Damien's mouth dropped open, and blood burst from his nose. What he saw could not be described. It was the beauty of the afterlife. It was the hideous face of death itself. It was wonderous. It was terrible. And it tore Damien apart like a house in a hurricane. Damien's soul was torn asunder. His body collapsed to its knees, eyes staring lifelessly into the air.

The shredded pieces of his soul started to dissipate into the Ether around them. Then they froze. Slowly, almost reluctantly, they slithered back into his body. Damien drew a ragged gasp.

The pain was gone. The memory was already fading. It wasn't something a human mind could comprehend, so it was locked away in the deepest depths of his psyche.

Damien couldn't comprehend what had just happened, but the fading memory and his thundering headache informed him it would be wise to keep his eyes firmly on the ground. He didn't know what he'd summoned, but he knew it was something far more horrible than he could even begin to imagine.

"Oops," a voice said. As with the creature's appearance, its voice was impossible to describe. It was like a thousand people of different ages, genders, and languages speaking at the same time. It was gibberish, yet Damien understood it perfectly.

"W-what are you?" Damien asked, not moving his eyes from the ground. His voice was nasally from the blood, and it shook so much it was practically incomprehensible.

"I am It Who Heralds the End of All Light," the creature spoke. Each word thrummed through the air, threatening to rip it apart. "You may call me Henry."

"Why are you here?" Damien forced out. Every word he spoke felt like a punch to the gut. "I did a summoning ritual. You aren't a possible companion."

"How do you know?" The creature genuinely sounded curious. Despite its words, there was no question posed. It was a command.

"The ritual summons a creature from another plane. You aren't in any of the books."

"I could be a demon," Henry said.

It took Damien several seconds to gather the strength to respond. He weakly shook his head.

"You aren't," he said.

"I'm not," Henry agreed. They sat there for several moments, neither of them saying a word. Damien gathered his courage. He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry, and there wasn't a speck of saliva in his mouth.

"C-could you leave? I made a mistake. I didn't mean to summon you. It was supposed to be my companion."

"No, I don't think I will," Henry said in a thoughtful tone. "Mortals got one thing wrong about time, you see.

Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean a thousand years pass in a flash. I get bored. Very, very bored. It's been millennia since I last escaped the Void, and I have no desire to return. Besides, why waste an opportunity?"

"An opportunity?" Damien asked.

"Indeed. You asked for a companion, and here I am."

Damien blinked. Bond with this…abomination? The very idea disgusted him. Despite his incredibly rude thoughts, the offer didn't hold up logically. The more powerful a being was, the harder it was to get it to agree to a summon.

Many people went through dozens of summons before they located something that would make a pact with them.

To make a deal with a creature that had literally killed Damien with a single glance, well, even Damien wasn't that stupid. However, the fact that Damien was still alive emboldened him. Henry wanted something from him, and that meant he had a chance to live.

"Bonding with a companion you don't know is foolish," Damien said.

"So is summoning me," Henry observed. "Yet, here you are. The offer still stands, foolish one."

A thought struck Damien. He had to force himself to keep the sigh of relief from escaping his lips. This wasn't the first time a summoning had gone wrong, and the circle had countermeasures built in.

"I refuse," Damien said, shaking his head firmly. "It's time for you to leave."

He shifted his foot and rubbed out one of the runes on the circle beside him. The energy in the runes instantly vanished as the power was cut and the circle broke.

Without the contract binding the companion to the Mortal Plane, it would be sent harmlessly back to whence it had come.

"I'd rather not," Henry said.