Chapter 7

Chapter 7 The entity manifesting before Svetlana was no flesh-and-blood man, but a dark spirit. Around her, the witches continued their feverish prayer, their voices weaving a language that sounded like the scraping of dry scales. Yet, amidst the guttural alien tongue, one word cut through the air with terrifying clarity: Djävul. She knew that name. She knew it in every language, across every century. They were calling upon the Devil, and they believed with a fanatical, blinded certainty that this shadow was him. “Eto ne dyavol!” (That’s not the devil!) Svetlana’s voice cracked like a whip across the clearing, but the cloaked figures didn't so much as flinch. They remained lost in their trance, their eyes fixed on the hollow space where the spirit loomed. “Eto ne dyavol!” (That’s not the devil!) She screamed again, but it was as if no one could hear her. For a fleeting second, Svetlana wondered if she had slipped into a waking nightmare—a trance induced by the witches' chanting. But the illusion shattered when the dark entity pivoted with a sharp, unnatural grace to face her. The terror that gripped her then wasn't born of the spirit’s size or its coldness, but of the void. Where a face should have been, there was only a gaping black hole. Svetlana froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins. She knew this darkness. Like a ghost rising from a shallow grave, a memory from three hundred and ninety years ago surged to the surface. She had looked into that same abyss once before, when she was only ten years old, on a night that had been etched into her soul with acid. She had never forgotten it. “You…” The word was barely a breath, a fragile gasp that died in her throat. The spirit lunged, its shadowy limbs extending like smoke to seize her. But Svetlana did not hesitate. Before it could grab her, she unleashed a blinding surge of raw power. The force of the blast tore through the ritual circle, throwing the entity backward into the trees. She didn't wait to see if it would rise. With a desperate, gut-wrenching pull of her will, she collapsed the space around her and vanished. A heartbeat later, Svetlana stumbled into the center of her bedroom in Russia. Anatoly was already there, his face like thunder. He had been pacing, preparing to unleash centuries of frustration over the flippant note she’d left behind about "exploring the world." But the lecture died in his throat the moment he looked at her. At the sight of her bloodless face and the hollow, haunted depth of her eyes, his anger vanished. “Svet moy, chto s toboy? Chto sluchilos’?” (My light, what’s wrong? What happened?) Anatoly asked, holding Svetlana by the shoulders. Her eyes found his, and when she saw it was her father, she lunged and hugged him tight. “Doch’ moya...” he whispered, his voice cracking. He didn’t need to hear the details yet; he could see the trauma written in the frantic pulse at her throat and the way she was trembling. He knew this look—the look of raw terror and fear. He had seen it once before, the day Svetlana met a dark shadow in the woods. “Svetlana, talk to me, Doch’ moya. What did you see?” Anatoly’s voice was a low, steady anchor. “I… I saw it…” she stammered, her voice thin and fragile, sounding more like the ten-year-old she once was than the woman she had become. “Saw what?” he asked, his caution warring with a rising sense of dread. “The shadow,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on something he couldn't see. “The dark figure that tried to take me when I was a child.” For Svetlana, the experience was a sickening loop of déjà vu, a haunting echo that stripped away four hundred years of mastery. She loathed the feeling; she was a witch of immense power, a woman who had outlived empires and commanded the elements, yet in a single heartbeat, that void had dismantled her. “Svetlana, breathe. Where did you go? Where did you see this thing?” Anatoly’s voice was sharp, his mind already racing through maps and memories. “S-Scandinavia,” she stammered, the name of the place feeling cold on her tongue. “I was deep in the forest. I found an altar, and then—” “You stumbled into the Blåkulla,” Anatoly interrupted, quickly recognizing what she had seen. “The what?” “The Blåkulla,” he repeated, the word heavy with dread. “It is an ancient, blackened ritual. Dark witches gather there to pierce the void, to summon the Devil himself and bargain in blood.” “But it wasn’t the Devil,” Svetlana insisted, her voice rising with a sudden, sharp, adamant edge. She grabbed his forearm, her grip tight enough to bruise. “I know what they were chanting, and I know what they believed they were calling. But I saw its face, Papochka. Or rather, I saw the lack of one. It was the figure from the woods, the same one that came for me when I was a child. I know it was.” “I know, Svetlana. I know. I believe you.” Anatoly pulled her closer, his voice low and urgent. “The Blåkulla is a farce—a theater for those who think they can control the abyss. They believe they are summoning the Devil, but the names humans give to darkness don't change the nature of the beast that answers. Promise me, Svet moy, promise me you will never return to those woods. Whatever that entity was, it didn’t just appear. It was drawn to you.” “Why me?” she asked, the question sounding small against the silence of her room. “This is what your mother and I have warned you of since your first breath. You are a neutral witch of immense, unaligned power—the golden goose of witches. The Light may leave you to your own devices, content in your balance, but the Dark is not so accommodating. It is a predator that craves power to tip the scales. They want as many powerful souls as they can tether, and you, daughter... You are the very epitome of the power they seek to claim.”