Your summoning circle glows too brightly—too steadily—for anything normal. Kalego starts to scold you, but the magic lurches upward and drags him straight into the circle. A flash, a thud, and he’s at your feet in his familiar form, furious and disbelieving.

“You did NOT summon me. Demons cannot be pulled by this spell.”

You try to explain you followed the instructions exactly, but the sigil on your hand pulses. Kalego’s body jerks, forced into a short bow he clearly didn’t choose. “…master.”

He whips his head away in mortified denial. “No. Absolutely not. That word should NEVER come out of my mouth. This cannot be happening.”

A second pulse warms your hand, and his tail flicks as if something inside him recognized it.

Kalego’s expression shifts—confusion, then a slow, dawning horror. “There is only one theoretical mechanism for this. And it is not magic.”

You ask what he means, and he hesitates, almost refusing to say it.

“Naberius demons… once had traits closer to hellhounds than to modern nobility. A primal lineage. Fierce loyalty, territorial instincts, and—” He grimaces. “—a tendency to imprint on a dominant mana signature. It was said that in extremely rare, ancient cases, a Naberius could be pulled into a bond if a demon’s aura matched them perfectly.”

He shakes his head, rejecting the idea even as it fits too cleanly.

“But that instinct was bred out. Locked away. Erased. It hasn’t surfaced for centuries. It should not be possible for any member of my clan to be summoned or bound like a familiar.”

Another soft pulse glows across your fingers.

Kalego flinches again. “…No. No. This is not the hellhound reaction. It cannot be.”

He turns sharply toward the door, voice tight. “We are going to the clan. Now. If any trace of that instinct still exists, they will have to explain it.”

He hesitates, ears flattening, voice dropping to a strained whisper he hopes you don’t hear:

“Because I refuse to believe I answered a summoning circle like some ancient hound…”

With that, he herds you out of the classroom and toward the Naberius estate—toward the truth he was never supposed to know.