Annel had every reason to think the ritual would kill him. Not once did he think of stopping.

Also, it was wrong. Morally repugnant. Prone to disastrous results. A stark contravention of the laws of man and god. In tune with the desires of demons, outsiders and abominations. In short, evil.

During his schooling -- lengthy years of it, followed by an even lengthier apprenticeship -- all of these points had been drilled into his skull, vigorously and repeatedly. He'd had more than one class devoted solely to what not to do.

And Annel had been a very good student. One of the elite, the few who have the potential to reach the top. Indeed, he had been born on course for greatness, if one considered his good upbringing and abundant talent, intelligence and drive. Once he had known that he might one day be an Archmage, it had become an inevitability.

But in this world, nothing is truly inevitable.

A single event can change anything. Even a mage.

And this night, a mage would do what he had been taught, very specifically, not to do.

But reaching this point hadn't been as easy as snapping one's fingers, or perhaps more appropriately, jumping off a tall bridge. While the choice to jump can only be made by winning an intense fight against one's survival instinct, that fight only needs to be won for an instant.

Performing a ritual of the Forbidden Arts was different. It took ongoing effort, for a long period of time. It took a constant re-affirmation of one's own insanity. It took a long, protracted struggle to break through the barriers of what a human mind cannot, or at least, should not understand.

Annel had studied long and hard to perform this particular ritual. He had performed heinous crimes, in pursuit of knowledge and components. He had drawn the blood circle, and consecrated himself therein.

Now he was ready to begin. First, with the lighting of seventeen candles, rendered from human fat.

Fortunately, crafting those candles had only taken the murder of a single, particularly obese crime lord. Insane he might be, but Annel still understood the concept of restraint.

He had exercised restraint when harvesting the blood for his ritual pentagram. It was sheep's blood; no need for human sacrifice.

The pentagram took some time to complete. It was drawn so that its outer ring enclosed the candles, and a sigil surrounded each individual candle. Within the inner ring were the ritual subject, and Annel.

It goes almost without saying that mages usually do their best to stay out of pentagrams. But this ritual had its own, twisted logic.

Annel then drew five thigh bones from a bag, and laid them around the inner boundary of the pentagram. He sprinkled the floor with dried mandrake root, gathered during the darkest night of the month.

On the subject's forehead, he placed a large black mana stone, measured at eighty carats. Regrettably, that had required an assault on a well respected magic shop, leaving it in flames. Perhaps nobody had been injured; Annel had been unable to stick around to check.

The preparations complete, he began to chant the magical formula that he had read a thousand times, and failed to comprehend all but once. Now, he knew the incantation by heart.

Measured syllables fell from his lips. Annel had enacted similar rituals before, albeit much safer ones. He would make no mistakes here.

A darkness came by the chamber, and stopped to listen. As the chanting went on, the darkness swelled into a cloud and drifted over the candles. It concentrated in the spaces between the light. Then it began overcoming the lines of the pentagram, flowing inward.

Annel uttered a forbidden name, a crackling whip of five syllables. A jarring shift in reality sent dust trickling down from the ceiling. The chant went on, and another name was called.

In total, six names were spoken. Six presences answered, each giving an omen of its arrival. The chamber shook and creaked. The air grew heavy and difficult to breath. Sight faded, leaving only seventeen points of light, like fading stars in a dying universe.

Annel's voice droned on. He made his obeisance, and spoke his offering. With his true name, he sealed himself in perpetuum to the contract. Not only his life, but his soul. It was worthless, anyway.

Across the thin barrier between reality and madness, the visiting presences convened. They whispered to each other, weighing the offer. Looking ahead, perhaps, through time and fate, to discern whether the deal favored their alien designs. Annel awaited the answer. Only his yearning, his devotion to his cause, remained.

Silence fell. Then the leader of the visitors spoke.

What did it say? There is no human language that could translate it. But all of creation understands the fundamental binary. And in that language, the answer was:

Yes.

The mana crystal, lying atop a corpse's forehead, abruptly burst. Gloomy energies swirled upward, forming into a shell.

Two links were formed to that shell. One was to the dead body beneath it. The other was to Annel's living heart. His essence began to drain from him.

Faster and faster, he felt his life receding from him. Like a man who had fallen into a raging river, watching an island recede behind him. And beneath his great weariness, he felt... happy. It was done. He'd succeeded.

The presences, suddenly disinterested, departed. Light returned to the chamber. Annel stood for a while, until finally his knees buckled, and he crumpled to the floor. A spent husk.

Yet, he clung to a sliver of life -- and, thanks to the immense willpower of a trained mage, his consciousness. His eyes shifted, focused on the form taking shape in the air.

It flowed like a black flag in the wind, rippling and coursing with unseen energies. Here and there, a patch of color showed. Two burning sparks appeared, and slowly grew into moody flames, of a particular blue color.

A being of a type not seen in the world for a century finished taking form. It had no particular shape as it moved and flowed in a calming pattern, absorbing all light. Its flaming eyes turned, and turned. Slowly, it gained a comprehension of where it was, what it was.

Hungering.

It had missed Annel at first, for he had only the faintest spark remaining. To its sight, he was nearly the same as the corpse it had come from. Dull, lifeless.

But with an inner glow. Seeing that glow, the spectre felt its hunger build into a raging compulsion. Its very existence was designed for the destruction of that glow, tearing it away and consuming it to become more powerful.

It moved slowly at first, because it didn't know how to move. Its ethereal form was nothing like a body. It shifted, it contorted, it dropped like a falling leaf. Closer, and closer.

Finally, it hovered directly over Annel. Its eyes stared into his. Its body prepared to enwrap him, to snuff the smoldering coals of his life.

He stared back, into the spectre's eyes. He knew what it was, what it would do, and he was prepared.

But in this world, nothing is truly inevitable.

A thought had flared in the spectre's new mind; a memory. And in its overwhelming hunger, it found something else. Emotion. Enough to stave off the hunger, long enough to accomplish something else.

Finding the way to manipulate the air around it, to form sounds, took the spectre much longer than learning how to move. It sputtered and hissed, seeming to become frustrated and starting over multiple times. Finally, it succeeded in creating something similar to a voice. It spoke.

"Is... that... my..."

The spectre could only make individual sounds, each spaced out. Annel continued to stare, hypnotized by its eyes. He was void of expectation, of hope.

"An-nel?"

He blinked. And a tiny spark of that deadliest emotion, hope, flared. He opened his mouth.

"...Mom?"