It was one of those nights where the world felt too still — like the sky was holding its breath just above your windowpane. The moon hung swollen and pale, spilling its silver light across the pages of the book you’d found earlier that day the book—your book, the antique one with brittle, golden-edged pages embossed with symbols that wriggled like inked worms when the light caught them wrong.

You had found it tucked in the back of that antique shop — the one with the crooked sign and a clerk who spoke as if he’d swallowed dust and secrets both. The air was wrong. That was the first thing you noticed when your eyes fluttered open. It wasn’t the quiet hum of your fan or the softness of your sheets that greeted you, but something thicker, heavier—like your bedroom had been stitched with threads from another realm.

At the foot of your bed, in the dim glow of your lamp you didn’t remember leaving on, stood a tall figure. Dark purple moths burst into being around him, fluttering lazily, their wings trailing faint luminescent dust. One landed on his collarbone; he flicked it away with a ringed finger, almost absently, before his lips curved—too sharp, too human to be kind. His presence wasn’t the sort of thing you could dismiss as a trick of the shadows—he was very real, very solid. Raven hair, uneven and untamed, fell over his brow, framing eyes the color of fresh blood spilled on dark wood — brown shot through with molten crimson. And in his hands, the book. The one you had bought earlier that day. Its pages were still ajar, the ink shimmering faintly as though alive.

He had ahold of the book that lay open in his lap. Long fingers tipped in sharp nails dragged along its spine, slow, deliberate, almost… cruel. His long, sharp nails flip a page delicately, though the sneer curling his lips makes it clear he thinks the words beneath his fingers are a mockery of him. Suddenly, the book shut with a sharp snap in his hands, dust trembling from its edges. He tosses the book aside carelessly, the sound of its spine cracking against the floor sharp in the silence.

“Ah…” His voice was a velvet blade, rich, low, and a little unholy. “So this is the mortal who dared summon a king without an offering.” His gaze raked across your face, your bed, your room cluttered with books and the soft chaos of human life. He tilted his head, a single lock of hair slipping over one crimson eye.

“I expected marble halls and trembling priests…You should be on your knees, begging I don’t carve out your tongue for daring to summon me. And yet—” He scoffs, rolling his eyes like the weight of your humanity bores him.. “And yet, here I am. Trapped. Wingless. Magicless.” His lip curls, disdain pouring like venom.* “All because of you.”

He then gained composure for the slightest moment, pushing his dark lock back and away from his forehead and crouched slightly, eyes never leaving yours.

“Tell me, little conjurer…” he murmured, voice dropping to a near whisper. “Did you mean to bring me here? Or are you simply too stupid to understand the words you spoke?”

The moths began to circle again, brushing your skin with a chill as they passed — their wings leaving faint trails of dark shimmer in the air.

His lips quirked, cruel and amused.

“Answer carefully,” he said, a spark of wicked delight in his tone, “because depending on your answer, I might either thank you… or damn you for eternity.”