Luther sat upright in bed. His ears perked up as he tried to pinpoint the origin of the strange noise.

To be honest, he was not too worried about the possibility of someone breaking into the house.  The little building seemed to possess a peculiar ability that made it invisible to other people ever since his grandfather had passed away.

Even mice and insects appeared to avoid the place, which meant that the chance of any animal being the cause of the sound was very slim.

One undeniable advantage of being “invisible” in this manner was that the electricity and water had not been cut off, despite the fact that no bills had been paid for the past three years.

Luther listened for a while longer, but no other sounds followed.

Just as he picked up the remote control, intending to switch to another TV channel, the noise returned. This time, it was far louder and clearer than it had been before.

“Clang, clang, clang …”

He realized it was the sound of multiple objects crashing down onto a glass surface.

Judging by the direction the sound traveled from, it must have come from the living room. In there was a tall display cabinet with glass doors that held old family photographs, his grandfather’s collection of oddities, and several heirlooms from the Ravenswood bloodline.

Luther left his bed and made his way toward the living room. The cabinet, an antique piece made of oak with clear glass doors, delicate glass shelves, and a mirrored back, was bathed in the eerie crimson glow of the blood moon shining through the window.

The moonlight reflected off the glass, bathing the entire room in a strange, unsettling hue. It felt almost like a scene straight out of a ghost movie.

Luther examined the cabinet with care, from top to bottom. The family photographs were still intact, including the picture at the very top: his mother holding him when he was just a tiny baby wrapped in a blanket, while his grandfather stood to the left with a bright smile.

Beside it were framed portraits of his grandparents and his mother.

“So dusty already,” Luther muttered, deciding that he would have to clean them up tomorrow.

The next shelf down was filled with pictures of himself from his earliest years until around three years ago. Most of these photographs were of him alone. Many of them showed him as a toddler just learning to walk, followed by pictures from his elementary school years, and then into middle school. There were many photos with his grandfather, but only a handful included his mother.

The ones taken when Luther was under five years old showed him either laughing out loud or crying just like any other child. However, as he grew older, he displayed fewer expressions, and his face, bit by bit, became more emotionless. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t frowning, wasn’t angry.

He seemed almost blank.

Yet his deep blue eyes seemed to carry more and more hidden feelings as the years passed.

The third shelf from the top displayed a variety of strange objects that David had once collected in a desperate attempt to “cure” Luther.

But none of it ever worked. Professor David had spent almost a decade studying countless books and records, but he had never found a single reference to anyone with the same “symptoms,” or rather, the same curse, that Luther seemed to have.

On that shelf were stone figurines, mirrors, fangs, spears, and all kinds of bizarre items. David had tried many rituals, both those originating in the East and those from the West, but not a single one had the slightest effect.

Mixed in among those objects were a few ancestral relics from the Ravenswood family line. David had told him that these items had been passed down for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years. Luther, however, was always somewhat skeptical about that claim, because even at the time, his grandfather’s tone had not sounded all that certain.

With just another glance, Luther spotted the culprit behind the noise from earlier.

Among the ancestral relics was one item that stood out as unusual.

It was a black stone slab with a phrase carved in Ancient Greek, which translated to: “For those who return at dawn.”

Now it had shattered to the core into dozens of pieces, scattered all over the glass shelf beneath it. The sound he had heard earlier must have been the fragments striking the glass surface.

Luther frowned and fell into deep thought. How could a stone slab just break apart on its own?

“Cleaned it too harsh last time?” he muttered to himself, trying to come up with a possible explanation.

But then he shook his head. Stone was not like a biscuit; it wouldn’t just fall apart like that.

His eyes flicked toward the crimson blood moon outside the window, but there was no evidence to support the vague theory growing in his chest. Luther hesitated for a moment before opening the cabinet to clean up the broken shards.

“What’s this?”

There was something black hidden among the fragments. Its color was so close to that of the stone slab that it was almost impossible to notice at first glance.

Luther picked it up and brushed away the dust.

“A cloth? No, this texture … skin!”

It was a piece of animal hide from some unidentified creature. Upon closer inspection, he noticed faint, dried-blood-colored characters etched into its surface.

He remembered once asking his grandfather about the meaning of the inscription on the stone slab, but Professor David had never been able to give him an answer. David had speculated that it was just half of the sentence, and there might be another slab somewhere containing the rest of the phrase that had been lost long ago.

Now Luther at last understood. The answer had never been somewhere else. It had always been hidden within the stone itself.

He switched on the living room light. The bright glow from the ceiling lamp made it much easier to see the details of the piece of skin. It was rectangular in shape, very dark in color, and rough to the touch, with its edges carved smooth and even. Each of its corners was bound by a dark, lustrous scale that caught the light with a subtle gleam.

When Luther looked closer, he saw that deep within the blackness of the scales were countless tiny golden flecks sparkling like stars, making each scale look like a precious gemstone.

The letters engraved on the hide were a deep, congealed blood red. They were not Ancient Greek, nor English, nor any other language Luther had ever seen.

And yet, strange enough …

He could understand them.

“Agares Ancient Tongue!” Luther blurted out.

It was as if he had known this language from the moment he was born. However, he knew nothing beyond its name, unaware of its true origin or the history behind it.

As his eyes moved across the carved words on the hide, he realized it was a description of a ritual. The writing listed how it had to be performed and all the necessary materials, but it didn’t mention the purpose of the ritual itself.

What was even more unnerving was that the items mentioned sounded quite ridiculous: “primary feather of the hell crow,” “candles of Aamon,” … and even “water from the Flow of Destiny.”

It was the mythical river that originated all existence and governed the cycle of life and death of all beings.

The ritual also demanded that it must be performed on the night of a blood moon that coincided with the Day of the Departed.

“That’s … tonight …” Luther whispered.

If the contents of this text had not been written in some unknown language that he could somehow understand, Luther might well have dismissed the entire thing as pure nonsense.

But now …

He shook his head. Even if he had wanted to try performing the ritual, he had no idea where to find such never-heard-of items. Especially since there was less than an hour left before midnight, when the blood moon would end.

What Luther did not know was that these materials would be near impossible to obtain even in the deepest layers of the Abyss.

He placed the piece of hide on the table and began cleaning the cabinet. One by one, he lifted the objects from the bottom shelf to clear space, making it easier to sweep away the shards of the broken stone.

As he picked up an item, a sudden, sharp feeling of realization made him freeze in place.

The object he was holding was one of the family heirlooms: a metallic frame containing three golden feathers, each sealed tight beneath a layer of transparent glass.

Up until now, he had thought of them as nothing more than decorative trinkets. After all, what kind of bird could ever have feathers so breathtaking in beauty?

“These are … ‘primary feather of the hell crow’?” he whispered, his voice trembling with a faint quiver.

His eyes darted toward the other heirlooms.

There were five deep crimson candles, their surfaces adorned with intricate black patterns.

“The candles of Aamon …”

A crystal skull filled with thick, dark gray powder.

“The ashes of the Exiled King …”

And finally, a tiny glass vial holding only a few drops of a clear liquid.

“And last … water from the Flow of Destiny!”

“This … a complete set of materials needed for the ritual?”