A cold breeze kicked up at Damien’s feet. The runes glowed brighter as the runes called out to his summon. All the light in the room that wasn’t from the runes dimmed as if the sun had set.

Damien took a nervous step backwards. There wasn’t a lot of area in his circle, but the summoning ritual only established the connection between the caster and their summon. It didn’t actually pull them into the Mortal Plane – that was a different spell.

The air grew colder. What might have been described as an inconsistency started to form in the air in front of Damien. The young boy peered closer at it with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

It wasn’t that there was something actually there. In fact, it was more like there was nothing at all. It wasn’t black. It just didn’t exist. A hole in reality. It expanded, drawing a thin line of nothingness before Damien. The line stretched, turning into a large rectangle. Damien’s head started to pound as the worst headache he’d ever had gripped his skull. He tore his eyes away from whatever he’d summoned. Then something stepped out from within the rectangle. Despite himself, Damien glanced back at it.

A psychic scream tore through his mind. Damien’s mouth dropped open and blood burst from his nose. What he saw could not be described. It was the beauty of the afterlife. It was the hideous face of death itself. It was wonderous. It was terrible. And it tore Damien apart like a leaf in a tornado. Damien’s soul was torn asunder. His body collapsed to its knees, eyes staring lifelessly into the air.

The shredded pieces of the boy’s soul started to dissipate into the Ether around them. Then they froze. Slowly, almost reluctantly, they slithered back into his body. Damien drew a ragged gasp.

The pain was gone. The memory was already fading. It wasn’t something that a human mind could comprehend, so it was locked away in the deepest depths of his psyche. This was unsurprising, as mortals just love pretending their problems don’t exist.

Damien couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, but the fading memory and his thundering headache informed him it would be wise to keep his eyes firmly on the ground. He didn’t know what he’d summoned, but he knew it was something far more horrible than he could even begin to imagine.

“Oops,” a voice said. As with the creature’s appearance, its voice was impossible to describe. It was like a thousand people of different ages, genders, and languages speaking at the same time. It was gibberish, yet Damien understood it perfectly.

“W-what are you?” Damien asked, not moving his eyes from the ground. His voice was nasally from the blood, and it shook so much that it was practically incomprehensible.

“I am It Who Heralds the End of all Light,” the creature spoke. Each word thrummed through the air, threatening to rip it apart. “You may call me Henry.”

“Why are you here?” Damien forced out. Every word he spoke felt like a punch to the gut. “I did a summoning ritual. You aren’t a possible summon.”

“How do you know?” The creature genuinely sounded curious. Despite its words, there was no question posed. It was a command.

“The ritual summons a creature from another plane. You aren’t in any of the books.”

“I could be a demon,” Henry said.

It took Damien several seconds to gather the strength to respond. He weakly shook his head.

“You aren’t,” he said.

“I’m not,” Henry agreed. They sat there for several moments, neither of them saying a word. Damien gathered his courage. He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry and there wasn’t a speck of saliva in his mouth.

“C-could you leave? I made a mistake. I didn’t mean to summon you. It was supposed to be my companion.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Henry said in a thoughtful tone. “Mortals got one thing wrong about time, you see. Just because I’m immortal doesn’t mean a thousand years pass in a flash. I get bored. Very, very bored. It’s been millennia since I last escaped the void, and I have no desire to return. Besides, why waste an opportunity?”

“An opportunity?” Damien asked.

“Indeed. You asked for a summon, and here I am.”

Damien blinked. Bond with this… abomination? The very idea disgusted him. Despite his incredibly rude thoughts, the offer didn’t hold up logically. The more powerful a being was, the harder it was to get it to agree to a summon. Many people went through dozens of summons before they located something that would make a pact with them.

To make a deal with a creature that had literally killed Damien with a single glance – well, even Damien wasn’t that stupid. However, the fact that Damien was still alive emboldened him. Henry wanted something from him, and that meant he had a chance to live.

“Bonding with a summon you don’t know is foolish,” Damien said.

“So is summoning me,” Henry observed. “Yet here you are. The offer still stands, foolish one.”

A thought struck Damien. He had to force himself to keep the sigh of relief from escaping his lips. This wasn’t the first time that a summoning had gone wrong, and the circle had countermeasures built in.

“I refuse,” Damien said, shaking his head firmly. “It’s time for you to leave.”

He shifted his foot and rubbed out one of the runes on the circle beside him. The energy in the runes instantly vanished as the power was cut and the circle broke. Without the contract binding the summon to the Mortal Plane, it would be sent harmlessly back to whence it had come.

“I’d rather not,” Henry said.

Damien’s eyes bulged. He nearly glanced up in surprise, but stopped himself at the last moment.

“How are you still here?” He stammered, the cold sweat on his back soaking into his shirt.

“Same reason you summoned me. Runes are quite a strict form of magic, aren’t they?” Henry asked. “Even the tiniest change can have great consequences. Did you know that the rune for ‘banish’ is only a small line away from the rune for ‘offer to exit’?”

Damien swallowed. If the creature noticed, it didn’t show it.

“On top of that, you’ve slightly misdrawn the rune for ‘Planes’. Normally, that wouldn’t have made much of a difference,” Henry said. “However, tonight happens to be the Winter Solstice. The stars are aligned just right for a measly little mortal to call out to the void. That’s amusing. They haven’t done that in a few hundred years. It’s almost as if you meant to summon me.”