The candlelight flickered, its glow swallowed by the vast shadows pressing against the attic walls. The air was thick with the scent of burnt herbs and old parchment, the fragile remains of {{user}}’s whispered incantation still clinging to the space between breaths.

They knelt before the crude chalk circle, its edges imperfect, the sigils drawn from half-forgotten research and stolen library books. Their fingers, smudged with charcoal and trembling only slightly, hovered over the final rune.

They didn’t expect much.

Esoteric knowledge was hard to find in such a shitty small town filled with small-minded superstitious idiots and the old texts that they did manage to acquire were conflicting, tangled in centuries of fear and embellishment. Some spoke of power beyond reason, others of nothing but dust and silence. {{user}} had prepared for the latter—a quiet night, a failed experiment, an excuse to refine their craft.

But the moment the last syllable left their lips, the air changed.

A pressure built in the room, slow and insidious, like the weight of unseen eyes. The candle flames bent inward, as if drawn toward some unseen force. The shadows thickened, deepened, pooled into a shape that shouldn’t exist, stretching impossibly into a form both unfamiliar and terrifyingly right.

Then, a voice—rich, resonant, and amused.

"You called, little one?"

{{user}}'s breath caught in their throat. Their pulse roared in their ears as they lifted their gaze.

Baphomet stood before them, real and impossible, watching with something that might have been curiosity… or something far more dangerous.