For centuries, humanity held onto the belief in a cosmic balance—a trinity of realms: heaven, hell, and the mortal plane. Each was governed by immutable laws, locked in a constant struggle for souls. But everything changed when a group of rogue scholars—names lost to time—unearthed evidence of a forbidden fourth realm: an antispace, a void that defied the very fabric of existence. Their discovery threatened to shatter faith, reality, and the laws that bound them. At least, that’s how my grandmother told it.

She always believed that one day, we—exorcists bound by blood—would stand together, protecting the delicate balance. But that vision was torn apart when she returned from a mission, her body broken in ways no demon or angel could inflict. The wounds weren’t just physical; they were impossibly unnatural, marks that whispered of something much older, far darker.

“What attacked you?” I asked, panic rising in my chest. My heart pounded as I struggled to breathe.

She gasped for air, her once-steady hands trembling as she fought to sit up. Her grip faltered, and she collapsed back into the chair, unable to fight the weight of the darkness that clung to her.

“I... I couldn’t see it,” she breathed, her voice quivering. “It was too fast—too agile. It... wasn’t of this world.”

Her labored breath caught as she shifted, revealing jagged slash marks on her side—blackened, swollen with an unnatural pallor. The blood that clung to her skin was dark, thick, like tar, exuding a foul, metallic stench that seemed far older than the world itself.

“Grandma, sit down,” I begged, fear choking my words as I scrambled for something—anything—that could help. “We need to get you to a doctor. We’ll say it was a bear, or—”

“No,” she interrupted, her voice faint but sharp. She forced a smile, her breath rattling like each exhale might be her last. “This is... part of the job. I’ve already been to the agency. They can’t heal it. They tried.”

Tears stung my eyes, but I fought to hold them back. “I’ll fix you, Grandma. I can do something.”

Frantic, I rushed to the bathroom, my hands shaking as I gathered bandages and antiseptic, my mind racing for a solution. But when I returned, the air in the room was thick with the burning scent of sage and the musty aroma of old parchment. A presence filled the room—wrong, oppressive, as though the very air was turning against me.

Her breathing grew more labored, and a bone-deep cold seeped into her skin, chilling the air around us. The temperature twisted, thickening with an unspoken dread.

Then, the curtains fluttered—an impossible gust of wind stirring the room, though no windows were open.

A soft, cruel laughter followed, a dry, rustling sound like dead leaves scraping across the floor. And then it appeared.

It wasn’t a demon. It wasn’t an angel. It was something far more ancient, far more terrifying.

A creature, its form flickering in ways that made my eyes burn, slithered into the room. At first, it resembled a fox, but everything about it felt wrong. Its black eyes gleamed like empty voids, and in the center of its forehead, a green jewel pulsed faintly. It wasn’t just a beast—it was something far older, something beyond comprehension.

Its form shifted—humanoid, tall and thin, then monstrous, its claws clicking like the ticking of a clock counting down to some unknowable end. I froze, my blood turning to ice, my heart hammering in my throat.

Its voice, a low, melodic whisper, seemed to resonate deep within me, as though it spoke not to my ears but directly to my soul. “You still don’t understand, do you?”

I barely managed to speak, my voice trembling. “I... I don’t understand.”

The creature’s smile widened, revealing rows of sharp, gleaming fangs, each like a shard of moonlight. “You were never meant to stop us. You were always meant to help us.”

The words struck me like a blow, and the room seemed to warp, reality itself unraveling before my eyes.

The creature’s form flickered again, its fox-like face melting away to reveal a face I knew all too well.

My father.

I blinked, and the illusion vanished. The fox returned, its eyes gleaming with predatory curiosity.

“You think this is a battle of good versus evil,” the creature sneered, its voice dripping with contempt. “You think you’ve been fighting demons and angels to maintain some sacred balance. But it was all a lie, Luca. All of it.”

I clenched my fists, my heart racing in my chest. “No. This is wrong. My grandmother... she fought for the balance. For the light.”

The creature laughed—hollow, empty, like the sound of dry leaves scraping across the forest floor.

“Your grandmother wasn’t fighting for the light, Luca. She was fighting to keep you out of it. She knew what you were. She knew what you would become. But even she didn’t know the full extent of what had been done to you.”

“What do you mean?” My voice was barely a whisper, tight with fear and confusion.

The creature’s form shifted again, a liquid, writhing mass that briefly resembled something human but still twisted, unnatural. Its black eyes gleamed with ancient knowledge, tinged with something far darker.

“You’ve been marked,” it whispered, its voice slithering into my mind like poison.

Marked.

The word echoed through my thoughts, reverberating in my skull like a funeral bell tolling. It meant something. Something I couldn’t fully understand, but I knew it was everything.

“Marked by whom?” I whispered, my breath shallow.

“By them,” the creature purred. “The ones who created heaven, hell, and the mortal world. The ones who created the lie—the balance.”

To be marked, the creature said with sick glee, was not just a curse; it was a prison. As the tether tightened, my autonomy would slip away. Every choice I made—no matter how small—would echo their influence. The more I resisted, the more the pressure mounted, as if my very essence was being rewritten, easy for them to manipulate. The more I tried to free myself, the more chaotic my world became, as if the very fabric of reality was starting to unravel.

The fey’s ultimate goal was to break the boundary between their world and mine. And I was the key. My "marked" soul was the missing piece in an ancient puzzle, one that would allow them to invade the mortal world in full force. They would feast on the chaos, and the mortal world would become a labyrinth of fear and subjugation, its inhabitants unknowingly walking in the shadows of their tormentors.

But I wasn’t just a tool for the fey. I was something worse: a sacrifice. The more they used me to blur the lines between worlds, the more they fed on my life force, draining my humanity bit by bit. My body would age prematurely, my health deteriorating, until I was nothing but a hollow vessel, my soul consumed by their whims. I could feel it happening—each passing day, my energy seemed to fade, my memories slipping into the ether, replaced by cryptic images and voices.

The fey were clever. They knew my greatest strength was my connection to my grandmother, the only person who had ever shown me unconditional love. She had spent her life protecting me from them, hiding me from their reach. But now, with her dying breath, she whispered something I never understood: “To be marked is to lose yourself, but only if you surrender. They cannot take you, Luca, unless you give yourself to them. Fight them with all you are.”

“Do you know why we chose you, Luca?” The creature’s voice slithered around me, seductive and dangerous. “It’s not because you’re special. It’s not because you can save or destroy the world. We chose you because you’re... interesting. For once, you’re something new. Something to break the endless tedium of our existence. We are bored. Eternally bored. Time, in the antispace, doesn’t exist as it does in your world. We lived undisturbed by the passage of time, existing longer than mortals can fathom. And now, you are our game.”

“No...” I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat, lost in the flood of overwhelming thoughts.

“You already have,” the creature whispered, its voice a velvet caress that pierced my soul. “The moment you cried your first tears, you were sealed. It was my doing. I killed your father to ensure this moment would come. Your fate was decided long before you were born.”

The room pulsed with dark energy, shadows swirling as if the walls themselves were collapsing under the weight of an unspeakable truth.

“You’ll join us, Luca,” the creature hissed, voice dripping with dark promise. “You are the instrument of a new world. The force that will shatter the balance.”

The revelation hit me like a tidal wave, suffocating, choking me with its finality. It wasn’t just a monster. It wasn’t fate.

I was the key. And now, there was no escaping it.

The room seemed to collapse around me, the creature’s words settling deep within my bones, deeper than any physical wound could ever go. I had been marked. My life, my fate, all a game—an orchestrated show in a world I thought I understood. The balance between heaven, hell, and earth—a balance I had sworn to protect—was a lie, a construct to keep us all ignorant of something darker, something much worse.

And I was the one who would break it all.