Chapter 20: Desperate Times

The Severance Team crept toward the ritual site, feeling the air thicken with a dark, pulsing energy that was almost suffocating. Shadows twisted in unnatural shapes around them as they approached the clearing, where the bound, unconscious woman lay on a rough stone slab in the center of the ritual markings. She was a gruesome sight, her skin pale and bruised, streaks of dried blood tracing from her wrists where her bindings had cut into her flesh.

A jagged, red glow from the symbols on the ground threw eerie shadows across the clearing, casting the patrolling creatures into an even more monstrous appearance. As George's team readied themselves, he felt a sickening churn in his stomach, an instinct warning him that they had ventured too close to something truly vile.