Chapter 1: A Bargain with a Devil

The basement reeked of mold, desperation, and something that might charitably be called ambition. Leo Martinez pushed his glasses up his nose for the dozenth time in the last hour, squinting at the arcane symbols he'd painstakingly chalked across the concrete floor. His roommate Finn stood opposite him, nervously bouncing on his heels like he was preparing for a particularly difficult midterm rather than attempting to tear a hole between dimensions.

"You sure about the binding circle?" Finn asked, his voice cracking slightly. "Because if we mess this up—"

"We won't mess it up," Leo snapped, more to convince himself than his friend. His laptop sat open on a rickety folding table, displaying a dozen tabs of occult forums and digitized grimoires he'd found in the darker corners of the internet. Three years of computer science and a lifetime of feeling invisible had led him here, to this grimy Salem basement, chasing something that would finally make him matter.

The candles flickered as a draft whispered through the foundation cracks. Leo had positioned them according to the specifications he'd found on a forum called "True Power Seekers"—black candles at the cardinal points, red ones forming the inner pentagram. The whole setup had cost him his textbook money for the semester, but what was Linear Algebra compared to reshaping reality?

"The binding should hold anything up to a Class C demon," Leo muttered, consulting his notes. "And we're only calling for a minor imp. Something that can grant wishes, maybe teach us a few tricks. Nothing major."

Finn laughed nervously. "Nothing major. Right. Because there's definitely such a thing as a minor deal with hell."

Leo ignored him, focusing on the ritual components. Sulfur—check. Sea salt mixed with graveyard dirt—check. A silver dagger he'd bought from a pawn shop and blessed under the new moon—check. The incantation itself was written in what the forum claimed was authentic Enochian, though Leo suspected it might just be really pretentious Latin.

"Look," Leo said, settling into a cross-legged position at the northern point of the circle, "we've both been nobody our entire lives. Finn, your own girlfriend doesn't remember your name half the time. And me? I'm the guy professors don't notice even when I'm the only one who shows up to class."

"Harsh but fair," Finn admitted.

"This is our chance." Leo's voice gained strength. "Real power. Not the fake kind you get from having rich parents or being born good-looking. Something that's actually ours."

The words hung in the air like smoke. Both young men had spent their lives watching others succeed effortlessly while they scraped for every small victory. Leo had been coding since he was twelve, had a perfect GPA, had built apps that should have made him rich—but somehow, he remained invisible. Unremarkable. Forgettable.

Not tonight.

Leo began to chant, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar syllables. The Latin—or Enochian, or whatever it was—rolled off his tongue like broken glass. "Ego voco te, daemon minorus... I call to thee, lesser demon..."

The candles fluttered but held steady. A faint scent of ozone began to mix with the basement's mustiness.

"Per sanguinem et shadows..." Leo's voice grew stronger. "By blood and shadows, I summon thee..."

Finn shifted nervously. "Leo, maybe we should—"

"Shut up," Leo hissed. He could feel something building, a pressure in the air like the moment before lightning strikes. His laptop screen flickered, the Wi-Fi signal bars dancing erratically.

The chalk lines began to glow.

It started as a barely perceptible shimmer, like heat waves rising from summer asphalt. But as Leo continued the incantation, the lines brightened, shifting from white to blue to something that hurt to look at directly.

"Holy shit," Finn breathed. "It's actually working."

Leo's heart hammered against his ribs. The forum posts had been real. The grimoire fragments, the binding circles, the carefully calculated astronomical timing—all of it was real. He was about to speak with something from beyond the veil, something that could grant him the respect and power he'd always craved.

"By the ancient compact," Leo continued, reading directly from his screen now, "I offer fair exchange. Knowledge for knowledge. Power for—"

The basement exploded.

Not with flame or sound, but with presence. The air didn't just thicken—it became something solid and oppressive, pressing down on them like the weight of deep ocean. The temperature plummeted so fast that Leo's breath misted, and every candle guttered out simultaneously, plunging them into darkness.

But it wasn't truly dark. A sickly, ember-like glow emanated from within the circle, casting writhing shadows on the walls. The glow grew brighter, more intense, until Leo had to shield his eyes.

Something was rising from the center of the circle. Not materializing—rising, as if it had always been there, buried beneath layers of reality that were only now peeling away.

The figure that emerged was nothing like the minor demon Leo had expected.

He stood nearly seven feet tall, lean and powerful in the way of apex predators. His hair fell in silver waves to his shoulders, and his eyes—God, his eyes—smoldered with the constant, faint glow of dying coals. Intricate tattoos covered his arms and throat, dark grey markings that seemed to move in Leo's peripheral vision, depicting broken chains and symbols that made his brain itch to look at them directly.

He wore what looked like a modern black jacket over dark pants, but the clothes seemed wrong somehow, as if they were approximations of human garments rather than the real thing. A thin scar cut across one eyebrow, ethereal and somehow luminous.

This was no minor demon. This was something that had never been minor in its entire existence.

The being's gaze swept the basement with cold detachment, taking in the flickering laptop, the hastily-drawn circles, the two terrified college students cowering before him. When those ember eyes settled on Leo, he felt something fundamental inside his mind crack.

"Fools." The voice was quiet, almost conversational, but it carried the weight of avalanches. "You have no idea what you've done."

Leo tried to speak and found his throat had closed completely. Beside him, Finn had gone corpse-pale and was making small whimpering sounds.

The being stepped forward, and Leo realized with dawning horror that the binding circle wasn't holding him. Those carefully calculated lines of chalk and salt might as well have been suggestions for all the effect they had.

"Where am I?" the being demanded, his voice carrying undertones of barely-controlled rage. "What year is this? What world?"

"E-Earth," Leo managed to stammer. "Salem. Massachusetts. It's... it's 2024."

Something flickered across the being's face—surprise, perhaps, or calculation. "Twenty-four years," he murmured, then shook his head. "No. Time moves differently there. How long since the old gods walked openly among mortals?"

"The... the old gods?" Leo's voice cracked. "I don't... we don't have old gods. Not anymore. Not for... for centuries?"

The being's eyes flared brighter. "Centuries." He spoke the word like a curse. "They think I am dead. They think me safely trapped in the depths, broken and forgotten." A smile touched his lips, and Leo wished desperately that it hadn't. "How wrong they are."

Suddenly, the being's head snapped toward the ceiling, his entire body going rigid with alertness. Leo heard nothing, but whatever senses this creature possessed had detected something that made him bare his teeth in a decidedly predatory expression.

"Hunters," he growled. "They felt the summoning. Your pathetic little ritual has announced my presence to every sensitive within a hundred miles."

"Hunters?" Finn squeaked.

The being ignored him, his attention focused entirely on whatever distant threat he'd detected. "I need to move. Now." His gaze fell on Leo with the weight of judgment. "You summoned me, little mortal. That makes you useful. Barely."

Leo's laptop suddenly erupted in a shower of sparks, the screen fracturing into geometric patterns that hurt to perceive. But somehow, impossibly, it kept running, displaying information that definitely hadn't been there moments before—maps, location data, financial records.

"Your modern scrying devices," the being said with something approaching approval. "Crude, but effective. You will help me understand this world. In return, I will not kill you immediately."

"That's... that's not really a bargain," Leo protested weakly.

The being laughed, and the sound made the basement's concrete walls vibrate. "Child, you opened a doorway and pulled something ancient and furious through it. You bound yourself to me the moment you spoke those words. There are no bargains now. There is only survival."

Footsteps echoed from somewhere above—multiple sets, moving with professional precision. The being's head tilted slightly, listening.

"Three minutes," he said conversationally. "Perhaps four, if they stop to examine the magical resonance first." He turned back to Leo and Finn. "I am going to offer you a choice. You can remain here and attempt to explain to these hunters why your basement smells of hellfire and shattered dimensions. Or you can come with me and live long enough to regret your foolishness properly."

Leo looked at Finn, seeing his own terror reflected in his roommate's wide eyes. They'd wanted power, wanted to matter. Now something that radiated ancient fury and barely-contained violence was offering them a chance to matter in ways they'd never imagined.

Above them, the footsteps had reached the building's main floor.

The being extended one hand toward them, and Leo could see that his fingers ended in what might have been claws. "Choose quickly. The hunters of this age are likely far more efficient than those I knew before."

Leo thought about his ordinary life, his invisible existence, his desperate hunger for something more. He thought about whatever was coming down those stairs to find them. And he thought about the way this terrifying figure's eyes held depths of pain and rage that spoke of experiences beyond human comprehension.

"We're coming with you," Leo said, surprised by the steadiness in his own voice.

The being smiled again, and this time Leo caught a glimpse of something that might have been approval. "Wise. Perhaps you are not entirely useless after all."

The footsteps were on the stairs now.

"What do we call you?" Finn asked as the being moved toward the basement's back exit with fluid, predatory grace.

The figure paused at the door, his ember eyes reflecting the dim light from the fractured laptop screen. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of fallen kingdoms and divine betrayal.

"I am Daelan," he said simply. "Last survivor of the Court of Stars. Former Avatar of the God-King of the Celestial Throne. And your world's newest nightmare."

With that, he melted the basement door's lock with a touch that left the metal glowing cherry-red, and stepped out into the Salem night, leaving two college students to hurry after him into a world they no longer understood.

Behind them, the basement erupted with the sound of boots on concrete and voices calling out tactical positions. But they were already gone, swallowed by shadows that moved at the command of something far older and infinitely more dangerous than anything Leo had expected to summon.

The hunt had begun.