"HELP US!"

A child's wail permeated the air, trying to stop the bleeding of the other child.

"Somebody!"

Cruel, empty eyes glared down at them in a jawless face as a floating cyan heart shape sat clenched in bone shard hands.

"P-please…"

Flashing red and blue lights drew the attention of the demon to outside the circle, away from the vulnerable children beneath the incomplete bone monster. The being quickly swallowed the soul before the DIU could capture and take the soul from him. The partially dislodged door was kicked down, the demon captured, and the children, one sobbing, one growing cold to the touch and crumbling slowly before the elder brother's eyes, sent to the hospital.

—

The young boy stood by the block of granite implanted into the ground, staring at the plot of upturned grass at its foot. It wasn't raining, despite the gloom that pervaded the very stalks of grass that shuddered from the gentle breathing of the air. A name was carved deep into the polished stone memorial, a name the boy knew all too well. "It should have been me…" whimpered the child, one that knew deep down that there was no possible way to possibly avoid this outcome.

The funeral had been a closed-casket ceremony; the boy knew first hand that the oak box with fine birch engravings had been empty, a waste of money. He stared at the stone monument, etching each detail into his mind. His parents let him help design the tombstone, a way to help the boy cope. He chose the coolest font he could find for the coolest brother a person could have. He absentmindedly scratched at the rough white bandages protecting the stitches in his arm and the cracked ribs in his chest, wishing for some way for his brother to come back.

A pair of good, black eyes tore away from the monolith and looked up at the only other mourners left, his parents. His petite mother sobbed into her husband's side while he stared somberly into the distance with misted eyes. After a few moments of watching them, the boy stumbled over to the heartbroken couple, hugging his mother around the waist; his father was startled out if his stupor when his mother choked on her own breath briefly. "Let's go home" offered the tall man after several beats of silence within the embrace, whom of which scooped up the child and led the family back to their vehicle. They drove off, leaving the sleeping bones around them to their comas as the boy kept his eyes locked on the newest addition to the lonely lot.

A wind pulled itself away from the breeze to watch the boy intently, sensing the whim and doing its best to make it come true. It would take some time though.

—

A loud, abrasive buzzing filled the once-dead room. A messy, dark brunette head poked its way out of the wrinkled, crumpled covers with a deep-throated groan of annoyance. How he despised that noise. He fumbled for the alarm so he could get a few more moments of peace. Finding the small plastic mesa he quested for, he clicked it neatly into the provided depression and attempted to return to sleep. The glowing blue numbers announced just how much day had been wasted this way. Between the nightmares about the accident and his work, he had barely any time to rest anymore since he moved to the college dorms. That spelled bad news as he was sometimes late to his morning classes and his thoughts would drift in class. It didn't help that he was naturally a little scatterbrained and tended to forget his homework altogether.

With a suffering sigh, the young adult heaved himself out of bed with the intention of being on time for once. He may be exhausted, but he wasn't going to waste his money on a demonology degree he didn't get because he was lazy. That, and he had nothing better to do since he couldn't return to sleep for the moment thanks to that stupid alarm his mother got him about five years ago.

The shower water was too hot this morning, probably because he made the mistake of using the toilet beforehand. His unruly chocolate locks fought against the teeth of his comb, a battle he eventually left for dead when the cheap plastic tines snapped and almost lodged themselves in its enemy. He held a bundle of faded, sooty red cloth close to his chest and inhaled the long-faded scent, trying to remember its owner in life preambling disaster and cursing a name he would never know. The door never got locked. He never had anything to steal and he'd misplaced the keys in his first month there. "Hey." he simply greeted the student across the hall. She'd always ignored him since she was usually listening to music in some form. Today, however, she waved back warmly to him as she knocked on the door for her roommate to let her in.

There was no elevator today, so he took the stairs down to the ground floor. Someone had spilled some form of red paint on the floor, leaving a huge splatter stain and streaks that looked almost like blurred out runes as the janitors tried to clean up the mess. The bottoms of his shoes were stained when he'd had to walk through it. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid stench of cheap acrylic.

One could follow the red shoe prints on the concrete to the science building of the college. The person that left them behind would be too much in a hurry to care, since the mess in the dorm lobby had held him up for a while, even if he'd woken up early for once. He'd managed to slide into a seat in the lecture hall just in time for roll call.

"Samson Fontenot?"

He'd indicated his presence when he'd heard his name. The class carried on without any preamble.

—

The milkshake vacuumed up the straw with a snrrrrrrrrk, a pair of intent hazel eyes trained on the student across from them. Said student was tan-skinned, though the tan was paler than usual due to the student's current health issues and lack of sleep; his unruly curly hair was the color of dark, rich chocolate, and his eyes matched from between heavy eyelids. "Samson?" The name made its owner jolt awake, eyes wide and meeting the hazel ones present. The pale face said eyes were housed in blinked, a pair of blond eyebrows sloping in worry. "Are you sure you want to keep going with the interview? You've zoned out at least three times now…" the journalist inquired of the man across from her, tucking a wispy lock of dirty blonde behind her ear. He merely shrugged her off with a half-hearted grin. "I haven't been sleeping well, lately." he admitted. She nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I know how it is." she winced sympathetically at the other student's predicament. "Anyways, back to the task at hand…"

Samson stiffened when the journalist dug into her bag and brought out a manilla envelope stamped with [TOP SECRET] in the most cliche way possible. The envelope was slid across the diner booth table and shaking hands gingerly caressed the sealed corner, short and bitten nails slightly scratching at the flap. "Don't tell anyone about this, okay Sam? Both of us could get in serious trouble if people find out that you're trying to summon a demon, no matter your intentions. It's even worse for you, with your weird, vengeful obsession." Samson pursed his lips and simply gave the journalist a determined nod, locking eyes with her. "I'll have to look into the demon's name for the summoning." she continued, and the student across from her sent her a sobered look. "Thanks for doing this, Jules. I know it's risky of you to be doing this."

"Don't get used to it." Jules scoffed, taking another sip from her previously abandoned milkshake. Sam chuckled, deep and rumbling like distant thunder. The college student sidled out out of his seat, dusting salt off of his black basketball shorts from the fries he'd dined on earlier and tucked the envelope under his arm. He placed a few dollar bills on the table and silently waved goodbye to Jules as he walked out with a warm grin on his face. He paused at the edge of the sidewalk and stared up at the cloudy blue sky. He took a deep breath, knowing that his little brother used to love days like this.

He turned sharply, face darkening, and stalked briskly down the street in the direction of the shadier section of town. He nonchalantly flipped up the hood on his sweater and stuffed his free hand into his pocket as he tramped down the street, the buildings getting steadily shabbier and more broken. His pacing slowed near an old, long-abandoned car garage, dusty and marred with decades of accumulated graffiti, rust, and elemental wear. There was a busted stop sign with the paint flecked off and painted over in deep maroon. The symbol was a bleeding heart stabbed through the middle with a black, warped dagger. If he was honest with himself, he didn't trust this cult as far he could throw its heaviest member, especially since this was the cult that had helped kill his baby brother, but this was the best shot he'd get at avenging poor little Paris.

A pair of bright, almost inhuman eyes stared at him in the darkness behind his back. "Hello?" he called into the dim lighting of the garage, the faint and faded lines of a circle painted in red contrasting sharply with the oil, scorched concrete. "I have a proposition." he offered, holding the envelope in front of him, turning and darting his eyes in search of someone. "A proposition, you say?" a voice of indeterminable gender asked. The door slammed shut behind him as a haunting chuckle resonated in the room. "How interesting." "You should never have come here." the voice whispered before something covered his mouth and nose, making everything go hazy, his eyes rolling back into his skull.

—

Everything around him was an orange haze. His bleary, drugged vision cleared enough to identify the five candles set in a circle, smoky cinnamon incense making him sneeze and screw up his face; the particles of smoke suspended in the air were left glowing orange in the firelight. A looming shadow squatted next to the bound college student, the opened manilla folder in one of the hands. "You plan to summon a demon, do you not?" the figure asked, standing straight and beginning to pace next to Sam's face. "You came to the right people." he could hear the smirk in the cloaked person's voice, the sharp rasp of pages turning interrupting the languid crackling of the candles. "Unfortunately, there is a…"

There was a glint of bloodstained metal for a brief moment.

"... price for our services."

A door behind him opened, and more cloaked cultists marched dutifully into the room as the leader of the group sheafed through the file. They eventually closed the folder and pulled out a knife, polishing it on their cloak sleeve with tender precision. An ominous chanting began between the ring of followers, the red painted lines seeming to absorb the minimal light coming from the candles. The cult member with the file smirked tauntingly as they stepped forward with the glistening knife, causing Sam to try scooting away from them, only to notice that he'd been tied up. "The demon you want us to summon is rather specific…" the cult leader bemoaned, caressing the sharp edge of the knife. "I'm afraid that your price to have us summon this demon for you will be higher than usual."

He scooted himself farther into the circle, away from the menacing blade that his eyes didn't stray from once since his eyes first met it. The lovingly polished silver swung down, about to strike him in the neck, when a bright light burst in the room, blinding everyone. Squinting through the light, Sam was barely able to make out a form piecing itself together, parts materializing out of thin air. A loud clacking filled the room as the being landed in the center of the circle, dangerously close to landing on the delicate neck of the human below him. Sam was frozen in shock, staring at the… thing that had just appeared out of thin air.

A long skull with thin eyes, high, prominent cheekbones, and a squared jaw stared down at him, brow line bent into a concerned expression. It then looked up at the cultists, clearly confused. "IS THIS HUMAN ALRIGHT?" it boomed, its eldrich voice making the walls of the room vibrate from the sheer volume of it. A clump of ceiling plaster bounced off of Sam's forehead. He began to feel lightheaded and dizzy from the revelation that there was a demon standing over him, in the perfect position to kill him and take his soul, and the demon was asking about his state of being. "HUMAN? YOU ARE TRULY WORRYING ME!"

The cultmaster cleared their throat, catching the attention of the bone creature. A pristine white skull turned to the cloaked being, warily eyeing the blade in their hand. "We humbly offer this sacrifice in favor of your services." they offered, bowing slightly in a show of respect. The skeleton frowned in distaste, parking it's segmented hands on its pelvis. "I DO NOT THINK YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE." the demon glowered, the candles puttering out one by one until ithe room was pitch black. There was some scuffling before something knocked into Sam's head, knocking him out.