Chapter 6: Earthly Call

The ring of light swallowed him whole.

Koda didn’t fall so much as get torn from where he stood. The world of black stone and red smoke vanished in an instant, replaced by a crushing, directionless pull that dragged him through something that wasn’t quite space.

Pressure slammed against every inch of his body at once. He couldn’t breathe or see. He could only feel himself being pulled somewhere, fast, with absolutely no say in the matter.

It ended as suddenly as it started.

Koda hit solid ground hard, claws scraping against cold stone, and for a moment all he could do was crouch there, disoriented, waiting for his senses to catch up.

The air here was different from the one in Hell. That was the first thing he noticed.

He lifted his head and understood exactly where he was.

He was in a basement with low ceiling, exposed stone walls, and a single bulb swinging from a wire overhead. He was crouched at the center of a wide circle painted directly onto the concrete floor, dark red lines forming shapes he didn’t recognize, dried blood cracking at the edges where it had been applied days or maybe hours ago.

’Human architecture. Human materials. A human building.’ he thought, frantically.

Seeing this now, crouched inside a monster’s body, hit him harder than he expected.

’I’m on Earth. I’m actually back on Earth!’ But he didn’t get long to enjoy this moment.

Six figures stood around the edge of the circle, robed in dark cloth, hoods pulled low. Candles guttered at intervals along the boundary, and at the front of the group stood a man with the hood pushed back, revealing a gaunt, sharp-eyed face lit orange from below.

The man raised both hands, chanting something in a language Koda didn’t recognize, though the intent behind it came through clear enough.

"By blood and bond, I bind thee," the lead cultist said, switching to a language Koda understood without effort; the same instinctive grasp that let him follow demon tongue back in Hell. "Speak your name, beast, and swear your service."

Koda stayed low and silent, studying the circle beneath him instead of answering.

The lines weren’t random. He could see that now in a way that the blood-red pattern connected candle to candle, and the way it closed in a perfect ring around the space he occupied. It was a boundary. A cage drawn in blood and geometry.

"It doesn’t speak," one of the other cultists muttered, voice tight with nerves. "Marcus, are you sure the summoning worked right? It’s just crouching there."

"It worked." The lead cultist, Marcus, didn’t take his eyes off Koda. "It is indeed a low-tier demonling, and should be simple enough to bind. Most don’t have the will to resist a proper contract."

Koda kept crouched and quiet as he thought things through.

’They expected a normal demonling with weaker will that reacts solely to their instructions, and not one with the intelligence and ability to plan.’

That mistake was the only advantage he had.

Marcus knelt at the edge of the circle and drew a curved blade from his robe, pressing the edge against his own palm. Blood welled up dark in the candlelight.

"This is how it works, beast." He said it slowly, the way a person explains something to a dog. "I offer you blood sacrifice. You offer me servitude for as long as the contract lasts. The contract binds your essence to my will until I release you, or until you die trying to carry it out. Simple terms."

He let three drops of blood fall onto the edge of the circle.

The lines flared faintly, the pattern tightening around Koda like a rope drawing closed. He felt a slight pressure settling over his chest, searching for something inside him to latch onto.

’That’s the contract. It needs me to accept it. Or it needs something else to force it through.’

He didn’t intend to give in either.

Instead, he studied it for any loopholes that he could exploit.

The blood lines were thick at the candle points, thinner between them, and one section near Marcus’s kneeling position had smudged slightly where his robe had dragged across the paint while he worked.

"Swear servitude to me," Marcus said again, sharper this time, some of his earlier confidence fraying at the edges. "The ritual demands a response. Silence won’t save you."

Koda uncurled slowly from his crouch, rising to his full height for the first time since arriving, and watched several of the cultists take an instinctive step back. Only now did he realise he was way taller than he first thought.

They’d expected a wild demonling much smaller than Koda. A low-tier demonling that snarled and thrashed against the binding without any real thought behind it.

What they got instead was a creature that watched them the way a person watches an opponent, calculating, patient, waiting for the exact right moment to move.

"You keep saying that word," Koda said, and the words came out rough, since this was the first time he’d spoken since waking up in the Hell. His throat was still more suited to hisses and devil tongue, than human speech. But they came out understandable, and that alone made two of the cultists flinch. "Contract. Like I don’t get a say."

"It talks like a human!" someone whispered, somewhere behind Marcus. Though it was quite loud in this quiet basement. "Marcus, it’s not supposed to talk like that..."

"Doesn’t matter." Marcus’s jaw tightened, blood still dripping from his cut palm onto the circle. "Talking or not, it’s still bound the moment the ritual completes. Hold the line!"

He pressed his palm flat against the smudged section of the circle, forcing more blood into the weak point Koda had already marked, trying to seal it before Koda could exploit it.

But he was too slow.

Koda moved the instant Marcus’s hand touched the floor.

He crossed the distance in a single stride, faster than any of the cultists expected from something they still half-believed was a mindless beast, and closed his clawed hand around Marcus’s wrist before the man could pull back.

"Wait...!" Marcus’s confidence shattered completely, replaced by pure panic. "Wait, the binding isn’t complete, don’t..."

Koda ignored his plea.

He understood the terms well enough now. Blood offered, will imposed, service demanded, and if the contract needed his acceptance to finish binding him, then breaking the ritual meant killing the one holding it together.

His free hand clenched into a fist, and the three bone talons slid free with a wet crack.

The cultists scattered, screaming, candles knocked over in the chaos as robed figures scrambled for the stairs. Koda didn’t chase after them. He kept his focus entirely on Marcus, on the man who’d knelt there so calmly explaining exactly how Koda was supposed to become his property.

"You shouldn’t have summoned me here," Koda said evenly, talons pressed against the side of Marcus’s throat.

Marcus’s mouth opened, some final plea half-formed on his lips.

Koda snapped his neck before he got the chance to finish it.

The body dropped.

The moment it hit the floor, the blood-drawn circle beneath Koda’s feet convulsed, the careful lines Marcus had spent so long perfecting rupturing outward in a wave of red light and cracking stone.

The candles guttered out all at once. The single overhead bulb burst in a shower of sparks, plunging the basement into near darkness.