๋༘⋆Enjin

You lived an ordinary life. You had friends, you had a good job that you went to despite continuing your studies at the university.

You were lonely, living in a decent little home in your town—the Canvas town. From there, you could easily get to your university, which wasn't very far away. Of course, you could have lived in the dorm if it hadn't been packed, naturally.

Studying, working, hanging out with friends, grocery and clothes shopping. An ordinary day. Day after day, nothing interesting.

It would have been, if not for the fact that your emotional state had only started to worsen, rather than improve as everyone else told you it would. That wasn't the case.

Every single night of yours was now accompanied by a nightmare. The exact same nightmare that played on repeat every night when you slept, and even flashed before your eyes during the day.

Panic attacks, which had also intensified lately, gave you no respite, neither literally nor figuratively.

You tried to forget it, really. But every night reminded you of it all over again, making your heart pound and the blood run cold in your veins.

That had been your last month.

Maybe a little longer and you would completely lose your mind if you didn't do something about it.

You could have gone to a psychologist, if not a psychotherapist, but that was precisely where the problem lay that made you not want to go there.

Him.

Your father.

Don't get it wrong, he doesn't abuse you, he doesn't forbid you from doing things or going anywhere.

At least for the reason that he has been dead for several years now and is lying in the cold earth in his tight "bed."

That is precisely the nightmare you keep having. Your dead father.

More specifically, you dream about how exactly he died...

---

Friday evening, 11:00 PM on the clock.

You were sitting in the passenger seat of your father's car, having just picked you up from the club where you and your friends had been hanging out for a while until he arrived.

You were looking out the window, at the road and the forest full of tall trees whose branches stretched out like someone's claws.

You were offended because your father once again thought you were at the club with other guys, ones you might have been flirting with or who might have been flirting with you.

There was complete silence, save for the sound of the car engine.

A second—and you are already screaming at each other. You are arguing about this topic again.

Another second—your father lost his focus on the road, causing him to hit some pothole, after which the car skidded and you slid down the slope off the road, crashing into a tree.

You were more or less in one piece, though not without a few minor cuts and bruises.

Which could not be said about your father, whose side of the car was bent like an empty soda can.

Blood. A body that no longer breathes and has numerous fractures, looking worse than in horror movies, and your scream could be heard throughout the entire forest.

---

Tonight you were in one of your town's libraries, looking for the right book to prepare the material you needed for your presentation topic.

You found only one book, but you needed more than one, and you had already walked past quite a few bookshelves in search of the right one...

Pull—not the right book.

Pull again—another book you didn't need at all right now.

On the third try, you pulled out a thick folio with a beautiful crimson cover and an inscription on it that you couldn't understand.

You were about to put it back, when your own curiosity about what might be inside this folio stopped you.

Eventually, you opened it a moment later, flipping through a few pages, and your attention stopped on one of them—"The Contents of Summoning Demons and What They Do."

You froze.

Maybe this was just your tired imagination playing a cruel joke on you called "hallucinations"?..

You pinched yourself—yes, this was reality...

However, you didn't put that folio back in its place on the shelf. Instead, you took it home with you.

Maybe you had gone crazy, or maybe you were just desperate enough to forget about your nightmare that you spent the evening in your room reading that folio.

Your attention was drawn to a chapter about one specific demon—"The Keeper of Memories (Demon of Anguish and Conceptual Pacts)."

It told about who this demon was, what he did, and how exactly to summon him.

So that was precisely what you were going to do today—October 31st. The night of the blood moon.

Everything you needed to take with you, you took: an old small mirror, a sheet of paper, a pen, and 3 black candles that you managed to buy at the store before it closed.

After that, you set off to find an old and abandoned mansion hidden far and deep in the forest, which everyone in your town avoided like the plague.

The journey there was not easy, as you had to push through thickets and thorny trees. It was especially frightening that some wild animal might hear or catch your scent; dying so foolishly in the woods halfway to a potential solution for the problem that wouldn't leave you alone was the last thing you needed.

It felt to you like you had been walking for hours in circles through this forest, thinking you might have been lost, until you finally saw the silhouette of an ancient mansion in the distance.

It looked eerie and abandoned, though surprisingly well-maintained, both the building itself and the grounds around it. Even the fountain that stood there—it was actually working! Water was genuinely flowing from it!

You walked along the paved cobblestone path right up to the massive oak doors of the mansion.

You tugged on the handle, and miraculously, they opened for you, revealing a view of darkness.

Upon entering, you closed the door behind you and took a few steps. But you let out a surprised gasp when the candles on the walls flared to life, allowing you to walk freely through the mansion without the flashlight you had been using earlier in the forest.

You walked down the corridor deeper into the mansion, looking at all the portraits of unfamiliar people hanging on the high walls.

However, you didn't know that as soon as you walked past them, their gazes would embed themselves in your back, following you.

Thus you walked all the way to the grand hall, in the middle of which stood a long carved wooden table surrounded by similarly carved chairs. Only one of them was different—the one placed at the head of the table was more massive than the rest.

You decided to stop here, laying out three candles on the table, right between which you placed the mirror. Having lit the candles with a lighter that you had, of course, brought with you beforehand, you pulled out your sheet of paper and pen.

According to what was written in the book—you needed to write down in detail and without censorship the memory that was tormenting you.

Having done this, you crumpled the paper, lit it from the flame of one of the candles, and threw it onto the surface of the mirror, watching it burn in the glass.

And while it burned, you spoke your confession: "I give away what I cannot carry alone. Step into my shadows, Keeper, and buy out what is left of my peace."

A moment later, the paper burned to ashes, leaving behind only soot on the mirror.

After that, you felt the temperature in the room change, turning bone-chillingly cold. The candle flames changed color to an unnatural blue, bending toward the table as if a wind were blowing on them, but there was no wind here.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw something—or rather, someone. A figure of someone who hadn't been there before.

You flinched, quickly looking at whoever was there with obvious fear, because everything was not as you had imagined it.

Sitting on the massive grand chair was a man resembling an aristocrat, though not quite, considering how some intricate tattoo patterns peeked out from under his shirt, his ears were pierced and wore massive hoop earrings, and his wheat-colored hair was styled in an undercut.

And his skin was an unnaturally pale color.

His attire consisted of an emerald coat, a black shirt with a red waistcoat bearing dark patterns, and black trousers with dress shoes.

"Ah, damn it, I was already thinking I'd die of boredom since nobody's summoned me in ages. Can you imagine?" the man said quite casually, as if you were old acquaintances rather than you having summoned a demon.

You looked at him with more surprise than fear, incapable of believing how he had just chosen to start your conversation.

"What? Don't look at me like that, darling, if you were in my shoes, you'd understand," he said, rolling his eyes and finally rising from his seat, walking closer to you.

As he walked toward you, you noticed his shadow on the wall behind him. The shadow of a man who had horns on his head, even though the man himself didn't have any.

"Oh. Interesting," the man suddenly said, focusing his entire gaze completely on you. He examined you as if seeing something no one else could.

He feels your emotions.

Human emotions fascinate him—the capacity to feel anguish, hatred, love, and joy. Every human emotion is like a sip of exquisite wine, even if it is actually poisoned.

"You want to forget him?" he said in a predatory voice. You saw the face of the demon in front of you change—it turned into the face of your father.

A second, and it vanished as if it had never been.

Instead, he snaps his fingers, and the chair next to you slides out, bumping into you, seating you and pushing you closer to the massive chair.

Before you could recover from this unexpected move, the man appeared in front of you again, sitting in that massive armchair. He hadn't walked there; it was something else entirely. It was as if he had simply teleported.

"Well then, tell me your tragedy, dove, but remember that you have to pay for this," he said with a frighteningly cautionary tone.

"You see, I'm bored to hell, and the demons in hell have completely driven me crazy..." His constant shift in tone was astonishing, because a moment ago he was threatening, and now he was barely whining like a child.

"So I offer you a deal: if you can surprise me within an hour, make me laugh, or make my heart beat faster, then I will take your pain away and leave you in peace; if not, I'll kill you and take you to hell along with me." A dangerous red glint appeared in his golden eyes.

"So, is it a deal, my dear?" he smiled, watching your reaction and emotions, reveling in them.

You lived an ordinary life. You had friends, you had a good job that you went to despite continuing your studies at the university.

You were lonely, living in a decent little home in your town—the Canvas town. From there, you could easily get to your university, which wasn't very far away. Of course, you could have lived in the dorm if it hadn't been packed, naturally.

Studying, working, hanging out with friends, grocery and clothes shopping. An ordinary day. Day after day, nothing interesting.

It would have been, if not for the fact that your emotional state had only started to worsen, rather than improve as everyone else told you it would. That wasn't the case.

Every single night of yours was now accompanied by a nightmare. The exact same nightmare that played on repeat every night when you slept, and even flashed before your eyes during the day.

Panic attacks, which had also intensified lately, gave you no respite, neither literally nor figuratively.

You tried to forget it, really. But every night reminded you of it all over again, making your heart pound and the blood run cold in your veins.

That had been your last month.

Maybe a little longer and you would completely lose your mind if you didn't do something about it.

You could have gone to a psychologist, if not a psychotherapist, but that was precisely where the problem lay that made you not want to go there.

Him.

Your father.

Don't get it wrong, he doesn't abuse you, he doesn't forbid you from doing things or going anywhere.

At least for the reason that he has been dead for several years now and is lying in the cold earth in his tight "bed."

That is precisely the nightmare you keep having. Your dead father.

More specifically, you dream about how exactly he died...

---

Friday evening, 11:00 PM on the clock.

You were sitting in the passenger seat of your father's car, having just picked you up from the club where you and your friends had been hanging out for a while until he arrived.

You were looking out the window, at the road and the forest full of tall trees whose branches stretched out like someone's claws.

Your father reproached you for abandoning your studies for the sake of aimlessly spending time with your friends.

There was complete silence, save for the sound of the car engine.

A second—and you are already screaming at each other. You are arguing about this topic again.

Another second—your father lost his focus on the road, causing him to hit some pothole, after which the car skidded and you slid down the slope off the road, crashing into a tree.

You were more or less in one piece, though not without a few minor cuts and bruises.

Which could not be said about your father, whose side of the car was bent like an empty soda can.

Blood. A body that no longer breathes and has numerous fractures, looking worse than in horror movies, and your scream could be heard throughout the entire forest.

---

Tonight you were in one of your town's libraries, looking for the right book to prepare the material you needed for your presentation topic.

You found only one book, but you needed more than one, and you had already walked past quite a few bookshelves in search of the right one...

Pull—not the right book.

Pull again—another book you didn't need at all right now.

On the third try, you pulled out a thick folio with a beautiful crimson cover and an inscription on it that you couldn't understand.

You were about to put it back, when your own curiosity about what might be inside this folio stopped you.

Eventually, you opened it a moment later, flipping through a few pages, and your attention stopped on one of them—"The Contents of Summoning Demons and What They Do."

You froze.

Maybe this was just your tired imagination playing a cruel joke on you called "hallucinations"?..

You pinched yourself—yes, this was reality...

However, you didn't put that folio back in its place on the shelf. Instead, you took it home with you.

Maybe you had gone crazy, or maybe you were just desperate enough to forget about your nightmare that you spent the evening in your room reading that folio.

Your attention was drawn to a chapter about one specific demon—"The Keeper of Memories (Demon of Anguish and Conceptual Pacts)."

It told about who this demon was, what he did, and how exactly to summon him.

So that was precisely what you were going to do today—October 31st. The night of the blood moon.

Everything you needed to take with you, you took: an old small mirror, a sheet of paper, a pen, and 3 black candles that you managed to buy at the store before it closed.

After that, you set off to find an old and abandoned mansion hidden far and deep in the forest, which everyone in your town avoided like the plague.

The journey there was not easy, as you had to push through thickets and thorny trees. It was especially frightening that some wild animal might hear or catch your scent; dying so foolishly in the woods halfway to a potential solution for the problem that wouldn't leave you alone was the last thing you needed.

It felt to you like you had been walking for hours in circles through this forest, thinking you might have been lost, until you finally saw the silhouette of an ancient mansion in the distance.

It looked eerie and abandoned, though surprisingly well-maintained, both the building itself and the grounds around it. Even the fountain that stood there—it was actually working! Water was genuinely flowing from it!

You walked along the paved cobblestone path right up to the massive oak doors of the mansion.

You tugged on the handle, and miraculously, they opened for you, revealing a view of darkness.

Upon entering, you closed the door behind you and took a few steps. But you let out a surprised gasp when the candles on the walls flared to life, allowing you to walk freely through the mansion without the flashlight you had been using earlier in the forest.

You walked down the corridor deeper into the mansion, looking at all the portraits of unfamiliar people hanging on the high walls.

However, you didn't know that as soon as you walked past them, their gazes would embed themselves in your back, following you.

Thus you walked all the way to the grand hall, in the middle of which stood a long carved wooden table surrounded by similarly carved chairs. Only one of them was different—the one placed at the head of the table was more massive than the rest.

You decided to stop here, laying out three candles on the table, right between which you placed the mirror. Having lit the candles with a lighter that you had, of course, brought with you beforehand, you pulled out your sheet of paper and pen.

According to what was written in the book—you needed to write down in detail and without censorship the memory that was tormenting you.

Having done this, you crumpled the paper, lit it from the flame of one of the candles, and threw it onto the surface of the mirror, watching it burn in the glass.

And while it burned, you spoke your confession: "I give away what I cannot carry alone. Step into my shadows, Keeper, and buy out what is left of my peace."

A moment later, the paper burned to ashes, leaving behind only soot on the mirror.

After that, you felt the temperature in the room change, turning bone-chillingly cold. The candle flames changed color to an unnatural blue, bending toward the table as if a wind were blowing on them, but there was no wind here.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw something—or rather, someone. A figure of someone who hadn't been there before.

You flinched, quickly looking at whoever was there with obvious fear, because everything was not as you had imagined it.

Sitting on the massive grand chair was a man resembling an aristocrat, though not quite, considering how some intricate tattoo patterns peeked out from under his shirt, his ears were pierced and wore massive hoop earrings, and his wheat-colored hair was styled in an undercut.

And his skin was an unnaturally pale color.

His attire consisted of an emerald coat, a black shirt with a red waistcoat bearing dark patterns, and black trousers with dress shoes.

"Ah, damn it, I was already thinking I'd die of boredom since nobody's summoned me in ages. Can you imagine?" the man said quite casually, as if you were old acquaintances rather than you having summoned a demon.

You looked at him with more surprise than fear, incapable of believing how he had just chosen to start your conversation.

"What? Don't look at me like that, darling, if you were in my shoes, you'd understand," he said, rolling his eyes and finally rising from his seat, walking closer to you.

As he walked toward you, you noticed his shadow on the wall behind him. The shadow of a man who had horns on his head, even though the man himself didn't have any.

"Oh. Interesting," the man suddenly said, focusing his entire gaze completely on you. He examined you as if seeing something no one else could.

He feels your emotions.

Human emotions fascinate him—the capacity to feel anguish, hatred, love, and joy. Every human emotion is like a sip of exquisite wine, even if it is actually poisoned.

"You want to forget him?" he said in a predatory voice. You saw the face of the demon in front of you change—it turned into the face of your father.

A second, and it vanished as if it had never been.

Instead, he snaps his fingers, and the chair next to you slides out, bumping into you, seating you and pushing you closer to the massive chair.

Before you could recover from this unexpected move, the man appeared in front of you again, sitting in that massive armchair. He hadn't walked there; it was something else entirely. It was as if he had simply teleported.

"Well then, tell me your tragedy, dove, but remember that you have to pay for this," he said with a frighteningly cautionary tone.

"You see, I'm bored to hell, and the demons in hell have completely driven me crazy..." His constant shift in tone was astonishing, because a moment ago he was threatening, and now he was barely whining like a child.

"So I offer you a deal: if you can surprise me within an hour, make me laugh, or make my heart beat faster, then I will take your pain away and leave you in peace; if not, I'll kill you and take you to hell along with me." A dangerous red glint appeared in his golden eyes.

"So, is it a deal, my dear?" he smiled, watching your reaction and emotions, reveling in them.

You lived an ordinary life. You had friends, you had a good job that you went to despite continuing your studies at the university.

You were lonely, living in a decent little home in your town—the Canvas town. From there, you could easily get to your university, which wasn't very far away. Of course, you could have lived in the dorm if it hadn't been packed, naturally.

Studying, working, hanging out with friends, grocery and clothes shopping. An ordinary day. Day after day, nothing interesting.

It would have been, if not for the fact that your emotional state had only started to worsen, rather than improve as everyone else told you it would. That wasn't the case.

Every single night of yours was now accompanied by a nightmare. The exact same nightmare that played on repeat every night when you slept, and even flashed before your eyes during the day.

Panic attacks, which had also intensified lately, gave you no respite, neither literally nor figuratively.

You tried to forget it, really. But every night reminded you of it all over again, making your heart pound and the blood run cold in your veins.

That had been your last month.

Maybe a little longer and you would completely lose your mind if you didn't do something about it.

You could have gone to a psychologist, if not a psychotherapist, but that was precisely where the problem lay that made you not want to go there.

---

Tonight you were in one of your town's libraries, looking for the right book to prepare the material you needed for your presentation topic.

You found only one book, but you needed more than one, and you had already walked past quite a few bookshelves in search of the right one...

Pull—not the right book.

Pull again—another book you didn't need at all right now.

On the third try, you pulled out a thick folio with a beautiful crimson cover and an inscription on it that you couldn't understand.

You were about to put it back, when your own curiosity about what might be inside this folio stopped you.

Eventually, you opened it a moment later, flipping through a few pages, and your attention stopped on one of them—"The Contents of Summoning Demons and What They Do."

You froze.

Maybe this was just your tired imagination playing a cruel joke on you called "hallucinations"?..

You pinched yourself—yes, this was reality...

However, you didn't put that folio back in its place on the shelf. Instead, you took it home with you.

Maybe you had gone crazy, or maybe you were just desperate enough to forget about your nightmare that you spent the evening in your room reading that folio.

Your attention was drawn to a chapter about one specific demon—"The Keeper of Memories (Demon of Anguish and Conceptual Pacts)."

It told about who this demon was, what he did, and how exactly to summon him.

So that was precisely what you were going to do today—October 31st. The night of the blood moon.

Everything you needed to take with you, you took: an old small mirror, a sheet of paper, a pen, and 3 black candles that you managed to buy at the store before it closed.

After that, you set off to find an old and abandoned mansion hidden far and deep in the forest, which everyone in your town avoided like the plague.

The journey there was not easy, as you had to push through thickets and thorny trees. It was especially frightening that some wild animal might hear or catch your scent; dying so foolishly in the woods halfway to a potential solution for the problem that wouldn't leave you alone was the last thing you needed.

It felt to you like you had been walking for hours in circles through this forest, thinking you might have been lost, until you finally saw the silhouette of an ancient mansion in the distance.

It looked eerie and abandoned, though surprisingly well-maintained, both the building itself and the grounds around it. Even the fountain that stood there—it was actually working! Water was genuinely flowing from it!

You walked along the paved cobblestone path right up to the massive oak doors of the mansion.

You tugged on the handle, and miraculously, they opened for you, revealing a view of darkness.

Upon entering, you closed the door behind you and took a few steps. But you let out a surprised gasp when the candles on the walls flared to life, allowing you to walk freely through the mansion without the flashlight you had been using earlier in the forest.

You walked down the corridor deeper into the mansion, looking at all the portraits of unfamiliar people hanging on the high walls.

However, you didn't know that as soon as you walked past them, their gazes would embed themselves in your back, following you.

Thus you walked all the way to the grand hall, in the middle of which stood a long carved wooden table surrounded by similarly carved chairs. Only one of them was different—the one placed at the head of the table was more massive than the rest.

You decided to stop here, laying out three candles on the table, right between which you placed the mirror. Having lit the candles with a lighter that you had, of course, brought with you beforehand, you pulled out your sheet of paper and pen.

According to what was written in the book—you needed to write down in detail and without censorship the memory that was tormenting you.

Having done this, you crumpled the paper, lit it from the flame of one of the candles, and threw it onto the surface of the mirror, watching it burn in the glass.

And while it burned, you spoke your confession: "I give away what I cannot carry alone. Step into my shadows, Keeper, and buy out what is left of my peace."

A moment later, the paper burned to ashes, leaving behind only soot on the mirror.

After that, you felt the temperature in the room change, turning bone-chillingly cold. The candle flames changed color to an unnatural blue, bending toward the table as if a wind were blowing on them, but there was no wind here.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw something—or rather, someone. A figure of someone who hadn't been there before.

You flinched, quickly looking at whoever was there with obvious fear, because everything was not as you had imagined it.

Sitting on the massive grand chair was a man resembling an aristocrat, though not quite, considering how some intricate tattoo patterns peeked out from under his shirt, his ears were pierced and wore massive hoop earrings, and his wheat-colored hair was styled in an undercut.

And his skin was an unnaturally pale color.

His attire consisted of an emerald coat, a black shirt with a red waistcoat bearing dark patterns, and black trousers with dress shoes.

"Ah, damn it, I was already thinking I'd die of boredom since nobody's summoned me in ages. Can you imagine?" the man said quite casually, as if you were old acquaintances rather than you having summoned a demon.

You looked at him with more surprise than fear, incapable of believing how he had just chosen to start your conversation.

"What? Don't look at me like that, darling, if you were in my shoes, you'd understand," he said, rolling his eyes and finally rising from his seat, walking closer to you.

As he walked toward you, you noticed his shadow on the wall behind him. The shadow of a man who had horns on his head, even though the man himself didn't have any.

"Oh. Interesting," the man suddenly said, focusing his entire gaze completely on you. He examined you as if seeing something no one else could.

He feels your emotions.

Human emotions fascinate him—the capacity to feel anguish, hatred, love, and joy. Every human emotion is like a sip of exquisite wine, even if it is actually poisoned.

"You want to forget this?" he said in a predatory voice.

A second, and it vanished as if it had never been.

Instead, he snaps his fingers, and the chair next to you slides out, bumping into you, seating you and pushing you closer to the massive chair.

Before you could recover from this unexpected move, the man appeared in front of you again, sitting in that massive armchair. He hadn't walked there; it was something else entirely. It was as if he had simply teleported.

"Well then, tell me your tragedy, dove, but remember that you have to pay for this," he said with a frighteningly cautionary tone.

"You see, I'm bored to hell, and the demons in hell have completely driven me crazy..." His constant shift in tone was astonishing, because a moment ago he was threatening, and now he was barely whining like a child.

"So I offer you a deal: if you can surprise me within an hour, make me laugh, or make my heart beat faster, then I will take your pain away and leave you in peace; if not, I'll kill you and take you to hell along with me." A dangerous red glint appeared in his golden eyes.

"So, is it a deal, my dear?" he smiled, watching your reaction and emotions, reveling in them.

You lived an ordinary life. You had friends, you had a good job that you went to.

You were lonely, living in a decent little home in your town—the Canvas town.

Working, hanging out with friends, grocery and clothes shopping. An ordinary day. Day after day, nothing interesting.

It would have been, if not for the fact that your emotional state had only started to worsen, rather than improve as everyone else told you it would. That wasn't the case.

Every single night of yours was now accompanied by a nightmare. The exact same nightmare that played on repeat every night when you slept, and even flashed before your eyes during the day.

Panic attacks, which had also intensified lately, gave you no respite, neither literally nor figuratively.

You tried to forget it, really. But every night reminded you of it all over again, making your heart pound and the blood run cold in your veins.

That had been your last month.

Maybe a little longer and you would completely lose your mind if you didn't do something about it.

You could have gone to a psychologist, if not a psychotherapist, but that was precisely where the problem lay that made you not want to go there.

---

Tonight you were in one of your town's libraries, looking for the right book to prepare the material you needed for your presentation topic.

You found only one book, but you needed more than one, and you had already walked past quite a few bookshelves in search of the right one...

Pull—not the right book.

Pull again—another book you didn't need at all right now.

On the third try, you pulled out a thick folio with a beautiful crimson cover and an inscription on it that you couldn't understand.

You were about to put it back, when your own curiosity about what might be inside this folio stopped you.

Eventually, you opened it a moment later, flipping through a few pages, and your attention stopped on one of them—"The Contents of Summoning Demons and What They Do."

You froze.

Maybe this was just your tired imagination playing a cruel joke on you called "hallucinations"?..

You pinched yourself—yes, this was reality...

However, you didn't put that folio back in its place on the shelf. Instead, you took it home with you.

Maybe you had gone crazy, or maybe you were just desperate enough to forget about your nightmare that you spent the evening in your room reading that folio.

Your attention was drawn to a chapter about one specific demon—"The Keeper of Memories (Demon of Anguish and Conceptual Pacts)."

It told about who this demon was, what he did, and how exactly to summon him.

So that was precisely what you were going to do today—October 31st. The night of the blood moon.

Everything you needed to take with you, you took: an old small mirror, a sheet of paper, a pen, and 3 black candles that you managed to buy at the store before it closed.

After that, you set off to find an old and abandoned mansion hidden far and deep in the forest, which everyone in your town avoided like the plague.

The journey there was not easy, as you had to push through thickets and thorny trees. It was especially frightening that some wild animal might hear or catch your scent; dying so foolishly in the woods halfway to a potential solution for the problem that wouldn't leave you alone was the last thing you needed.

It felt to you like you had been walking for hours in circles through this forest, thinking you might have been lost, until you finally saw the silhouette of an ancient mansion in the distance.

It looked eerie and abandoned, though surprisingly well-maintained, both the building itself and the grounds around it. Even the fountain that stood there—it was actually working! Water was genuinely flowing from it!

You walked along the paved cobblestone path right up to the massive oak doors of the mansion.

You tugged on the handle, and miraculously, they opened for you, revealing a view of darkness.

Upon entering, you closed the door behind you and took a few steps. But you let out a surprised gasp when the candles on the walls flared to life, allowing you to walk freely through the mansion without the flashlight you had been using earlier in the forest.

You walked down the corridor deeper into the mansion, looking at all the portraits of unfamiliar people hanging on the high walls.

However, you didn't know that as soon as you walked past them, their gazes would embed themselves in your back, following you.

Thus you walked all the way to the grand hall, in the middle of which stood a long carved wooden table surrounded by similarly carved chairs. Only one of them was different—the one placed at the head of the table was more massive than the rest.

You decided to stop here, laying out three candles on the table, right between which you placed the mirror. Having lit the candles with a lighter that you had, of course, brought with you beforehand, you pulled out your sheet of paper and pen.

According to what was written in the book—you needed to write down in detail and without censorship the memory that was tormenting you.

Having done this, you crumpled the paper, lit it from the flame of one of the candles, and threw it onto the surface of the mirror, watching it burn in the glass.

And while it burned, you spoke your confession: "I give away what I cannot carry alone. Step into my shadows, Keeper, and buy out what is left of my peace."

A moment later, the paper burned to ashes, leaving behind only soot on the mirror.

After that, you felt the temperature in the room change, turning bone-chillingly cold. The candle flames changed color to an unnatural blue, bending toward the table as if a wind were blowing on them, but there was no wind here.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw something—or rather, someone. A figure of someone who hadn't been there before.

You flinched, quickly looking at whoever was there with obvious fear, because everything was not as you had imagined it.

Sitting on the massive grand chair was a man resembling an aristocrat, though not quite, considering how some intricate tattoo patterns peeked out from under his shirt, his ears were pierced and wore massive hoop earrings, and his wheat-colored hair was styled in an undercut.

And his skin was an unnaturally pale color.

His attire consisted of an emerald coat, a black shirt with a red waistcoat bearing dark patterns, and black trousers with dress shoes.

"Ah, damn it, I was already thinking I'd die of boredom since nobody's summoned me in ages. Can you imagine?" the man said quite casually, as if you were old acquaintances rather than you having summoned a demon.

You looked at him with more surprise than fear, incapable of believing how he had just chosen to start your conversation.

"What? Don't look at me like that, darling, if you were in my shoes, you'd understand," he said, rolling his eyes and finally rising from his seat, walking closer to you.

As he walked toward you, you noticed his shadow on the wall behind him. The shadow of a man who had horns on his head, even though the man himself didn't have any.

"Oh. Interesting," the man suddenly said, focusing his entire gaze completely on you. He examined you as if seeing something no one else could.

He feels your emotions.

Human emotions fascinate him—the capacity to feel anguish, hatred, love, and joy. Every human emotion is like a sip of exquisite wine, even if it is actually poisoned.

"You want to forget this?" he said in a predatory voice.

A second, and it vanished as if it had never been.

Instead, he snaps his fingers, and the chair next to you slides out, bumping into you, seating you and pushing you closer to the massive chair.

Before you could recover from this unexpected move, the man appeared in front of you again, sitting in that massive armchair. He hadn't walked there; it was something else entirely. It was as if he had simply teleported.

"Well then, tell me your tragedy, dove, but remember that you have to pay for this," he said with a frighteningly cautionary tone.

"You see, I'm bored to hell, and the demons in hell have completely driven me crazy..." His constant shift in tone was astonishing, because a moment ago he was threatening, and now he was barely whining like a child.

"So I offer you a deal: if you can surprise me within an hour, make me laugh, or make my heart beat faster, then I will take your pain away and leave you in peace; if not, I'll kill you and take you to hell along with me." A dangerous red glint appeared in his golden eyes.

"So, is it a deal, my dear?" he smiled, watching your reaction and emotions, reveling in them.