Chapter 13 – The Demon’s Threshold

The ritual neared its apex.

The blood-drawn runes on the stone floor began to glow, pulsing with a deep crimson light that bled into the surrounding air. The temperature plummeted, and yet the atmosphere felt oppressively heavy—like standing beneath a collapsing sky. Every heartbeat echoed louder than the last. The veil between worlds thinned.

Agatha's face was pale, her breath shallow. She could feel it—the barrier tearing, the boundary between reality and the Outer Planes beginning to rupture. Campbell's madness had dragged them too close. If they didn't stop it now, Belathauzer would claw his way through.

Desperation flickered in her eyes.

She drew in a trembling breath and raised her hands, violet fire flickering at her fingertips. She had made her decision. Her lips moved silently, forming the ancient incantation that would unravel her own essence. A spell of obliteration—a magical detonation strong enough to disrupt the ritual by sacrificing her own eternal youth, the foundation of her power. It would cost her decades, perhaps centuries. But it might stop Belathauzer's descent.

She prepared to release it.

But just as the first words left her mouth—

Bang!

A shot rang out, sharp and decisive, cutting through the din of unholy chanting. Campbell staggered, a cry of rage and pain escaping his lips as the Black Art flew from his bloodstained hand, tumbling across the floor. His fingers had been torn open by Adrian's bullet, and with them, the spell's momentum shattered. The glowing runes flickered—unstable now, disrupted.

And then, with a sound like tearing flesh and cracking stone, the floor split down the center of the circle.

A single monstrous hand burst from the glowing sigil—a dark red, leathery claw the size of a man's torso, fingers tipped with jagged talons. It slammed into the floor, anchoring itself at the elbow as if trying to pull something colossal through. But it didn't move further.

It couldn't.

The ritual had been interrupted.

The arm trembled, fingers twitching violently. Runes sparked wildly beneath it, veins of unstable light crawling across the stone. Whatever lay on the other side of the veil had reached for this world—and now, for the moment, it was trapped.

Adrian stood with his revolver raised, smoke curling from the barrel. His shot hadn't killed Campbell. But it had stopped something far worse.

Agatha didn't waste a second.

The moment Campbell screamed and dropped the Black Art, she turned her attention to the clawed hand rising from the runes. Its presence warped the very air—heat and cold spiraled in waves, and reality bent around its form. But Agatha had prepared for this.

With a deep breath, she raised both arms, fingers glowing with violet flame, and invoked a name of power—one few dared to speak.

"Ostur," she intoned, her voice like thunder beneath the surface of a storm. "I call upon you—Ostur, Lady of Order, Flame of the Trinity of Vishanti. Grant me the light to banish the darkness!"

A radiant glyph ignited beneath her feet, swirling with celestial script. Agatha's body surged with power borrowed from the arcane aspect of the Vishanti. Her hair lifted, her aura blazing like a dying star. With a cry that tore through the ritual hall, she hurled a cascade of golden-white magic directly at the emerging arm of Belathauzer.

The energy struck the demonic limb with a force like a collapsing sun.

The hand recoiled, its talons scraping furrows in the stone as it shrieked in a language no mortal should understand. Inch by inch, Agatha forced it back—her magic a wall of divine light clashing against the raw, chaotic hunger of an ancient demon.

Meanwhile, Adrian crouched near a toppled column, revolver hot and almost empty. Only a few silver bullets remained.

But that was enough.

Three more vampires broke from the shadows, their fangs bared, driven into a frenzy by the interrupted ritual. Adrian gritted his teeth, lifted his weapon, and fired—each shot a calculated strike, guided by the flicker of his Seer's intuition.

One bullet to the chest—dust.

Another through the skull—ash.

The third vampire lunged as Adrian's last bullet fired, striking it mid-leap. It burst into a thousand embers, scattering like burning snow.

The fighting raged around them, but together, Adrian and Agatha held the line—one with divination and steel, the other with ancestral power and sacrificial flame.

And at the center of it all, the claw of Belathauzer began to falter.

Campbell realized it was over.

The summoning had failed—the demon's hand was being pushed back into the void, the ritual unraveling before his eyes. The Black Art lay too close to Agatha, its cursed pages flickering with unstable energy, but unreachable now. His gambit to bind Belathauzer had collapsed in the final moment, undone by a bullet and a burst of holy fire.

Snarling in rage, Campbell stepped back from the crumbling runes. Smoke rose around him as he traced a sharp sigil in the air—one laced with desperation.

Before the teleportation spell took hold, he turned toward Adrian, face twisted with hate. His eyes gleamed with unspoken fury as he spat out the words like venom.

"I'll have my revenge on you, boy—on you and that witch!"

With that, the spell activated. A burst of red light engulfed his form, and in an instant, he vanished, leaving only a scorch mark and the scent of sulfur behind.

Silence fell—broken only by the hiss of fading magic.

Agatha's shoulders slumped, her hands trembling slightly as the last of her power withdrew. The demonic hand had been fully banished, sealed beyond the mortal realm once more. The ritual was broken. The horror, for now, was caged.

Adrian stood for a moment longer, revolver empty, lungs burning, as if waiting for something else to rise from the shadows.

But nothing came.

And just like that, the rush of adrenaline drained from his body.

His knees gave out, and he dropped to the cold stone floor, breath ragged, heart pounding against his ribs like a war drum finally gone quiet. Ash, blood, and starlight hung in the air like dust caught in a dream.

The nightmare was over.

For now.