The ghoul ran, bare feet pounding over the scorched soil of the Fields of Scorn. He moved like a shadow, silent, the thrill of the hunt thrumming through his veins. His prey was unaware, just the way he liked it. But there was always that moment, right before the end, when they knew. He lived for that flicker of fear in their eyes.
Tonight’s prey was his eldest brother, Zagan. A practice run. A game. But still, he was close now. The intoxicating scent of adrenaline hanging in the warm evening air.
He held his breath as he crept forward, every sense sharpened. Every sound amplified. Just a little more and he could pounce.
Then the world fractured.
The ground fell away. Raw pain ripped through his body as something dragged him into the void. He didn’t scream. He didn’t have time.
His body shattered, torn apart and divided into its base elements. Flung into chaos. Darkness smothered him in waves of black light. Tumbling. Spiralling. Unraveling in every direction.
Then nothing.
No sound. No self. Only cold darkness.
___
He woke up choking.
Glowing eyes snapped open to dim light. A bitter chill sank into his bones. The foreign bite of it adding to his growing unease. He couldn’t remember ever being cold like this before.
His cheek pressed against stone. Damp, rough, wrong against his skin. Every nerve screamed. Each breath scraped his throat raw. He shivered violently, twitching with the effort of staying conscious.
Pain flared anew, and he rolled over and retched. Thick black bile hit the ground between his splayed hands. He gagged, coughed, silently sobbed from the pain of it.
When it passed, he lay there panting. His skin felt flayed. Hypersensitive, as if his body had remembered how to hold itself together, but only just. He blinked to bring the world back into focus.
This wasn’t his home.
The air was stale, laced with blood and herbs and something else. Something, human? A circle of blood glistened beneath him, intricately painted with familiar sigils. Candles flickered nearby, their orange flames dancing. The scent of ritual clung to every surface.
He sat up slowly, head swimming, and a sudden feeling of emptiness hit him like a hammer, deep in the centre of his chest.
The tether to home was gone. The bond to his family broken.
He clutched at where the link to his kin should be, but there was nothing. Only absence. Only a persistent lonely ache.
His fingers brushed against something cold at his throat. A metal band. They skimmed its surface, etched with sigils he didn’t recognize. A collar.
His stomach lurched again, but there was nothing left to bring up.
A sound caught his focus, cutting through the stillness. It was low and amused, and the ghoul froze.
He wasn’t alone.
He looked up.
A human male stood at the edge of the summoning circle, red velvet robes pooling like blood around his feet. He watched the ghoul with the eyes of a predator. Black. Soulless. Unneevingly cold. Two human females flanked him, the crackle of magic warping the air around them. One blonde-haired, one red.
The ghoul knew, then. Knew what had happened. His stomach dropped.
He had been summoned.
Not by the human Clergy. Not through ritual or rite, the way it should have been. There had been no trials, no selection, no contract for him.
He wasn’t even of age.
Summoning a ghoul to Earth was sacred. Reserved for the elite, the most proven. When mature, at twenty-five seasons, only then might ghouls be considered.
He was twenty. Still in training. Still under his family’s protection.
This wasn’t right.
There’d been no ceremony. No blood oath. No pact.
And yet, he was here.
Bound. Trapped inside a summoning circle.
The collar pulsed faintly with power, humming against his skin. It was real. The circle was real. And this man? This man wasn’t Clergy. He didn’t wear their paint. His power reeked of something older. Something foul.
The ghoul clawed at the metal band, panic rising. His breaths ragged. The old stories surged up; slave ghouls. Torn from home. Bent to another’s will. Subjugated. Violated.
That wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. The treaties had seen to that. The Ghoul Council had sworn it.
So how could this be?
The man stepped closer, eyes glinting, focused on the ghoul with the hunger and the deadly intention of a shark scenting blood. The circle’s edge shimmered with dark magic.
“Welcome to Earth, ghoul,” the human said with a smirk.
YOU ARE READING
Nameless Ghoul
ParanormalA ghoul is summoned illegally and enslaved by a rogue sect of the Clergy. For the past twenty years, an evil Satanic sorcerer has held Itzal captive. He took control of his will, subjecting him to unimaginable horrors, and forced him to commit acts...
