He was summoned for a task by the angel. It was deep in the hollow of the night; though the moon shone with a cold, bright clarity outside, the air inside the sanctuary was unnaturally dense—thick enough to taste like iron and old stone, pressing against his lungs with every breath. He reached for his cellphone, clicking on the flashlight with a steady hand, his fingers finding the button without fumbling even as the silence around him seemed to hum with malicious intent.

  As the light cut through the dark, he realized he was in a church—pews worn smooth by decades of worship, stained glass windows dark and lifeless in the absence of sun. He didn't hesitate. He marched down the center aisle, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone as he moved toward the altar, each step a deliberate declaration that he would not be turned back.

  The beam caught a reflection on the floor—a mirror of deep, liquid obsidian that seemed to drink the light whole. He stopped, but his grip on the phone remained like iron, his knuckles white against the plastic casing. It was no mirror. It was a pool of blood, a massive, rising tide that had claimed the front of the sanctuary, spreading outward in thick, viscous ribbons. It looked bottomless, a dark lake of iron and salt that surged against the base of the pews with a heavy, rhythmic slap—like a heart beating in time with something not of this world.

  He moved the beam upward, tracking the gore as it cascaded down the marble altar in thick, heavy curtains, slick and glistening in the flashlight’s glow. And there, above the altar, he saw the crucifix bleeding—dark red rivulets streaming from its hands, its feet, its side, feeding the tide below. He continued to move the light up to the figure's head, and there he saw it. A twisted, spider-like entity was perched there, its limbs disjointed and shivering, each joint bending at impossible angles. Its head rotated a full three hundred and sixty degrees, the movement smooth and sickening, before locking eyes with him—eyes like black pits that held no warmth, no mercy. It hung there on the ceiling now, having crawled from the cross, a parasite covering the sacred wood in its own thick, black filth.

  He didn't flinch. He didn't pull away. Instead, a cold, jagged rage ignited in his chest, spreading like ice through his veins. "You're a piece of shit," he whispered, his voice level and dangerous, cutting through the heavy air like a blade. "I'm going to kill you."

  -The Script and the Swarm

  The Black Book manifested in his hand out of the shadows, its leather cover warm as living flesh, its pages flipping with the sound of a closing trap—sharp, decisive, final. A small spark of fire ignited on the parchment, writing with frantic speed, leaving trails of glowing gold that seemed to pulse with their own heartbeat.

  The entity moved like a lightning bolt, a blur of shadow that defied all laws of motion. As the book wrote, his lips began to move in perfect, involuntary sync with the ancient celestial script—words he didn’t understand pouring from his mouth in a language older than stars. He tracked the creature with a hunter’s focus, his eyes never leaving its shifting form even as it jumped from the cracked walls to the high rafters, its movements creating phantom images that tried to disorient him.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Then, the creature began to mimic his words. Because it was moving so fast, he heard his own voice echoing from every corner of the sanctuary like a haunting chorus—his tone twisted, warped into something cruel and mocking. His mind began to fog, and his vision blurred at the edges, colors bleeding into one another like watercolors in rain. He shook his head hard to clear the dizziness, and in that split second of weakness, the entity dropped from the rafters, landing just an inch away in front of him with the heavy, bone-jarring thud of a fallen tree striking the earth.

  He stared the nightmare in the face—its maw gaping wide to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth, its breath hot and foul against his skin.

  "Oh, shit," he breathed, and for just a second, panic flared in his chest, sharp and bright as a wildfire.

  As the entity lunged—a mass of reaching limbs that seemed to stretch and multiply mid-air—the sheer force of its jump sent him stumbling backward onto his back into the shallow edge of the blood. It seeped into his clothes, warm and sticky, but he didn't scream. He pushed himself up slightly, his voice booming through the church as he shouted a command:

  "Michael, protect me!"

  Instantly, the air ignited with heat and light. Michael’s seal manifested around him—a crystalline barrier of bright, bluish-white light that hummed with power, its surface etched with symbols that spun and shifted. The entity slammed into the shield with a shriek that tore at his eardrums, and the three rings of light within the barrier split—some rotating clockwise, others counter clockwise—sending waves of energy rippling outward. The entity growled in rage, its form flickering and twisting as it circled him like a predator testing the strength of its prey, lashing out with claws that sparked against the shield’s surface. Then, with a sudden, violent jerk, the creature leaped toward the altar, its limbs digging into the marble as if it meant to tear the very heart from the church.

  He remained frozen as a heavy, divine pressure weighed down on his head—so intense he felt his bones might buckle, as if the weight of heaven itself rested on his shoulders.

  He looked up. Michael was descending from the shattered ceiling, his form wreathed in white light that made the moon outside seem dim by comparison. The Archangel wore a long, hooded robe of white and gold that flowed around him like water, its fabric swallowing his face in holy shadow so deep no feature could be seen. Beside his right hand, a spear of pure white-hot light floated, vibrating with a low hum that seemed to resonate in the very atoms of the world around them—power enough to unmake worlds, to erase things from existence entirely. His wings spread wide, made of millions of oscillating blades of light that rotated in perfect circles, mirroring the pattern of the seal below.

  While he watched Michael, a deafening blast erupted from the altar—so loud it felt like his skull would split. He jolted as the stone shattered into a thousand glittering fragments, followed by a high-pitched vibration that rang in his ears like a bell tolling for the end of days. He covered them with his hands, and in the blink of an eye, the entire church exploded with the force of a violent chemical reaction—walls outward, roof upward, pews and glass and stone turning to dust in the searing light. When the blast faded, only charred fragments and smoldering earth remained, as if the building had never existed at all.

  He tried to hold his eyes open, to witness Michael’s final stroke, to see justice done. But the sheer force of the divinity was too much—his vision bled to white, his body trembling with the effort to stay conscious. He didn't collapse out of fear; his body simply reached its limit, every muscle giving out as he drifted into the white void of unconsciousness.