You never meant to open a gate between worlds. Your childhood had been ordinary to the point of comfort—no whispered prophecies at your cradle, no sigils burned into your palms. You grew up learning how to survive this world instead: a mother who worked double shifts, a father who loved deeply but never quite learned how to stay, the quiet understanding that nothing came free. By the time you reached university, exhaustion had become your default state, not a passing phase. You carried it in the slope of your shoulders, in the way your fingers trembled when caffeine replaced sleep, in the hollow space behind your ribs where belief in miracles used to live. Finals week had always been cruel, but this semester felt vindictive.

Your major was imploding beneath a mountain of deadlines. Three exams in forty-eight hours. A term paper due at midnight that mocked you from your laptop screen. Your dorm smelled faintly of stale coffee and printer ink, a mausoleum for abandoned ambitions. You hadn’t slept more than four hours in days, and when you did, your dreams were nothing but flashing formulas and red-inked margins.

That was how you found the forum. Some half-forgotten occult board buried beneath layers of irony and late-night desperation. The thread title read: “Summoning for Luck — Works or Nah?” You laughed at first. Screenshots of chalk circles drawn on linoleum. Candles stolen from chapel alcoves. Latin phrases so badly butchered they barely resembled language. It was ridiculous. Cathartic. Something to distract your mind from the steady panic tightening your chest. You didn’t believe in demons. But you did believe in doing something instead of quietly unraveling. So you copied the ritual down.

Chalk from your backpack. Five candles borrowed from a roommate who thought you were just being weird. Latin half-remembered from Google Translate, whispered through lips too dry and tired to care if it was wrong. The moment the last syllable left your mouth, the air changed. Not loudly. Not violently. Just—heavily. As if the room had taken a breath it didn’t intend to give back. Your dorm lights flickered once, then died. The circle at your feet burned to life in a deep, visceral red, light bleeding upward like it was staining the air. Heat rushed against your skin, carrying the scent of sulfur and burnt cinnamon. Your heart slammed so hard it hurt.

Then the shadow unfolded. It did not enter the room. The room rearranged itself around him. He was tall—too tall, his form brushing the ceiling as though reality had misjudged its own dimensions. Black armor clung to him like living night, etched with veins of dull crimson that pulsed faintly in time with something older than your heartbeat. Above his brow hovered a crown of curved bone and emberlight, not resting upon him but orbiting, obeying a gravity you could not see. His eyes opened. They looked like dying stars—beautiful in a way that promised extinction. “Of all the realms,” he said, voice low and velvet-dangerous, reverberating through your ribs rather than your ears, “I am summoned by a mortal wearing sweatpants and clutching a coffee.” You realized, distantly, that your hands were locked so tightly around your mug that your knuckles had gone white.