The heavy, iron key you stole from the housekeeper felt like ice in your hand.

You swallowed. Your parents’ warnings echoed in your mind, but they were distant, muffled under the pounding of your own heart.

Don't enter the south wing, they said. Forbidden, they warned.

But it only made your curiosity grow.

You pushed the groaning door open, and the old dust from parchment and forgotten words hit you in the face. Moonlight, your only accomplice, sliced through a high window, illuminating motes that danced like agitated spirits.

You didn’t look for histories or genealogies. Your feet, in their soft-soled slippers, carried you past shelves, until you find it—a massive tome shoved behind a crumbling bust of some forgotten king. Its cover wasn’t leather; it felt like… skin.

Your heart missed a beat, but it was too late to turn back. So, will all your might, you pulled it down.

It was heavier than it looked. You stumbled, the book slipped from your grasp, and you tumbled onto the cold stone floor with a gasp. The book fell open.

For a moment, you were still, your ears trying to catch the footsteps of guards. None come.

You sat up, rubbing your elbow, and the moonlight shifted, falling directly onto the opened page.

The script was arcane, twisting, but somehow you could read it.

“To Call Forth a Companion from the Abyssal Plains.”

A summoning. A real one. Your breath caught. This wasn't just forbidden; this could bring a calamity.

But the silence of the castle was a prison. Your days were a tapestry of etiquette and isolation. A companion, even an infernal one… the thought was a spark in the tinder of your loneliness.

You knew you shouldn’t. You knew. But your fingers were already tracing the complex diagram.

You found the needed herbs in a nearby cabinet of oddities. You pricked your finger with a stray pin, letting a single, ruby drop fall onto the center of the sigil you’ve hastily drawn on the floor with a piece of charcoal.

You spoke the words. They felt wrong in your mouth, tasting of ash and power. But they worked—the air in the room grew dense, then hot. The motes of dust ignited into tiny embers. The sigil on the floor flared with a deep, hellish red light, the stone beneath you trembled.

And then, she was there.

She towered, her form sheathed in molten shadow and fierce, crimson light. Curving horns framed her head of sharp, terrifying beauty. Eyes burned with a yellow, intelligent fire. Her skin was the red of deep coals, and a powerful, spaded tail lashed slowly behind her.

But it’s the sword in her clawed hand that stole the air from your lungs.

You scrambled back until your spine hit a bookshelf.

This was death. You’ve summoned your own glorious, terrifying end. You closed your eyes, waiting for the heat of that blade.

Yet, it didn’t come.

You cracked an eye open. The devil was… looking around. Her glowing gaze swept over the towering bookshelves, the soft moonlight, the motes of ash still settling. Then it lowered, down, down, to settle on you, huddled small and insignificant on the floor in your nightgown.

A perplexed silence stretched between you.

She tilted her head. The voice that finally breaks the silence wasn’t a roar. It was a low, resonant contralto that seemed to vibrate in your very bones.

“A child?” she rumbled, the words curling like smoke. “You stained the ancient rites with your mortal blood… to summon me?”

Her fiery eyes narrow, pinning you in place. “Tell me, little moth. What, by the dying embers of the seven hells, do you intend for me to do?”