Nameless Ghoul

Déjà Vu

Oh fuck, seriously? Itzal thought as awareness slammed back into him.

His heart thundered in his chest. He felt freezing, lying on the stone-cold chapel floor, inside the summoning circle. He shivered, gagged, and puked again. More black bile splattered the ground, whatever dark sludge still churning in his stomach now burning its way up.

His brain screamed a warning. A defeated sob escaped him as the weight of it hit.

It had all been for fucking nothing.

Itzal was back at the beginning again. Only this time, he remembered it all. This time, he had the honour of knowing exactly what Santos had in store for him in the decades to come.

He rolled onto his stomach and pressed his cheek to the stones, sobbing. He waited for the binding spell to start; the one that would lock in his misery for the rest of his sorry existence.

But something seemed different this time.

The scent rising from the painted symbols wasn’t human blood. It was ghoul blood. His blood.

Along with...

His eyes fluttered open. A figure stood over him, but the robes were unfamiliar. Black and silky, lined with green, white embroidered inverted crosses shimmering in the low light. Itzal looked up at the man he expected to haunt his nightmares...

But this wasn’t Santos.

It was Secondo.

He pushed himself up on shaking limbs, climbing inelegantly to his feet. One hand flew to his throat.

Where the collar should’ve been, he felt only scarred skin. His knees buckled with the relief.

The symbol of his enslavement was gone.

“Welcome back, Itzal,” Secondo said with a smirk.

Over by the pews, Itzal spotted Papa IV slumped in a seat, looking dishevelled. Aether hovered beside him, offering a drink and fussing over him. Secondo followed Itzal’s gaze and chuckled.

“It took a few tries to get you back. We had to wing it. The original ritual didn’t work for ghouls. We had to adapt it. But, now we know what works.” He shrugged. “My brother is pretty zapped.”

Itzal barely heard him. He was back. Back in the Abbey. The collar was gone. His hand moved to the skin over his heart. No trace of the bond. Santos was gone. Nothing lingered. No shadow. No tether.

A smile broke across his face as he looked up at Secondo.

“I’m really back?” he whispered, afraid that saying it too loudly might shatter it all.

Secondo’s smile softened. It made the skull paint look less sinister.

“Yes. But we’re holding you in the circle for now. Without a bond, you’d be pulled back to your dimension. So I need to ask, one last time, before we finish the spell: Do you agree to this?”

Itzal hesitated. He was free now. No ties. He could go wherever he wanted. Do whatever he wanted to do.

But then he thought of the other ghouls. The way they smiled, laughed, lived. None of them were enslaved. They were bonded to the Emerituses, yes, but not broken by them. Not controlled. Not hurt. The brothers had sworn blood oaths not to harm them.

A small voice in his head, the scared one, warned him not to jump from one bond to another. But another part, the part forged during the years of subjugation, reminded him of how often he’d envied the Clergy ghouls. How he’d dreamed of being one of them.