***Edited by Kronost***

The night darkened as time passed. It was raining heavily outside the cafe. The water on the road was about to rise up to the door.

The lamps emitted a warm light in the darkness. Mixed with the wooden furniture, it made a cozy atmosphere inside the cafe.

Shen Yi turned most of the lights off, leaving only a soft gloom, then turned around and went back behind the bar.

“I don’t think there will be any customers today.”

Taking the kettle from the stove, he gently poured some coffee into a cup. A pleasant aroma exuded from it. Grabbing the cup he sat by the window, where the only lamp remained, and looked at the night outside.

The glass reflected his thin figure. Light black hair, and neat and tidy clothes. 

As the heat from the coffee subsided, he took a sip.

“The taste of the coffee I make is the best.”

The country where Shen Yi lives is called Noland and the city, Beland. A place where the weather is always bad. The theme of the city is retro British.

Even though he had adjusted to this life and now had the identity of a cafe owner, he still missed the old him in this new world. He still thought about his old friends and relatives from time to time. But he was quite satisfied with his new life. Occasionally the local people would ask him if he was from “Shang Xuan” or “Ying Guo” seeing his hair color.

Confused, he had said he was a scholar of Shang Xuan, probably clarifying the situation. After a few months of denial, he gradually started accepting reality.

Watching people relax after a day of hard work, and learning about their interesting lives always makes him happy from the bottom of his heart. Therefore, his pursuit was quite simple: Living a simple and peaceful life in an ordinary cafe.

“It would be nice to always live a simple and peaceful life. My aim in life is not high.”

 But life did what it does best, it backfired.

Just a month ago, around this time, the cafe had suddenly started to shake violently. He thought there was a major earthquake taking place, and rushed out with valuable things. The trembling disappeared within a few minutes but the cafe did not seem damaged in any way. Shen Yi stood outside in a daze, confused pedestrians passing by him.

As soon as the trembling was over, many voices had suddenly emerged in his mind. The voices were weird and low-pitched, but it lingered in his heart for a long time.

 “Infinite disasters, the source of destruction”

 “The aversion of the White Mist”

“The Lord of Ashes who annihilated the Stars”

  “Presenting to you the Broken Nightmare Soul”

  “Manifest your great existence and make the world quiver”

The weird voices lasted for a few minutes before it disappeared automatically.

Initially, he thought what he had experienced was a result of stress-induced auditory hallucinations, and

consoled himself. However, it did not take long for the trembling and voices to appear again.

Strangely, the beckoning phrases buzzing in his mind were different this time.

  “Take control of everything, overflow the world”

  “The aversion of the Ashes” 

  “The Mist of the White Shores”

  “Presenting to you the Head of the Ancient Dragon”

  “Manifest your great existence and  make the world awe”

‘It seemed …. It was a summoning ritual, and it was different from the previous one.’ He couldn’t quite figure it out, but he knew he was in trouble. Such “strange things’ happened for the next few days, a different summoning ritual each time.

In addition, the one beckoned in the spell also changed accordingly.

“Lord of the Ashes”, “Mist of the White Shore”, “Spirit of the Ancient”, ” Dream of the Void”, “Ruler of the Chaos”…

One after another, he gradually started understanding what was happening. He concluded that the strange voices he was hearing should be different mysterious groups performing rituals. Perhaps they hoped to summon something inaccessible. However, what made him speechless was that all of them had dialed the wrong ‘phone number’.

For some sort of accident that he couldn’t understand, the summoning rituals were all passed to him.

All in all, he had been concerned about the strange situations happening and was not able to sleep properly for the past few days.

Outside, the storm was still howling. “Sigh.” He took out his mobile phone and looked at the time.

Twelve thirty.

“It’s really late, time for me to go to bed.”

Although he didn’t really want to sleep, he had to get up, and ran a cafe alone, all by himself. He had to prepare a lot of things every morning. So he needed to go to bed early and wake up early.

He folded his hands together, closed his eyes, and wished heartily.

“I hope I can sleep well today.”

However, as fate would have it:  Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Shen Yi suddenly felt trembling under his feet. He lowered his head and looked at the floor. The floor was trembling. Not only the floor, but also the cup on the table was trembling, and the coffee in the cup was bouncing up and down.

“Here we go again?” He frowned slightly.

The cup, the table, the floor, everything was trembling, and the overhead lamps were also trembling fiercely; flickering and dimming.

 He held the coffee cup as he sat back in place, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore everything. Knowing that the trembling would end in a few minutes, he simply closed his eyes and tried to endure through it. The torrential rain outside was getting worse, and the overhead lamps were still shaking fiercely. For a full ten minutes, the light continued to flicker.

The familiar low chanting buzzed In his mind. Hundreds of people hushed their voices and whispered the chant wistfully.

  “Infinite disasters, the source of disasters”

  “The aversion of the White Mist”

  “The Lord of Ashes Who Annihilated the Stars”

  “Presenting to you the Blood and Flesh of the Witch”

  “Manifest your great existence and make the world quiver”

Shen Yi suddenly remembered that this was the first summoning he had heard. But there was a slight change. Whilst he was thinking of this, he felt the vibration under his feet stop and the cafe, which was originally swaying like a boat, suddenly became still. He hesitatingly opened his eyes.

 “It stopped?”

It was foggy. Gray mist rose around him as the sound of rain outside the window gradually faded. The surroundings slowly got covered by a dense fog that made everything invisible.

He was a little surprised to find that the vibrations and voices had indeed stopped. But the current situation was obviously not normal. Everything was silent. His heart drummed against his chest. Everything around him seemed to be swallowed by some kind of existence. And it seemed there was a certain attraction that led him to the front.

  ……

White lightning pierced the dark sky, and heavy rain poured down. The sound of thunder intertwined with that of heavy rain. In the middle of nowhere, at a remote place in Beland, there stood an abandoned church. Many people wearing black came to the abandoned church. They wore raincoats because of the heavy rain, yet the torrential rain hit them mercilessly. Everyone was tilting their heads. They did not want to show their faces or even utter a word. They silently entered the church one by one.

Having been abandoned for so long and no one coming to clean it in the past, the church was full of old and rotten smells. After some sorting and preparations, they formed a circle in the middle of the church, a black circle. And they whispered an obscure ancient spell in unison. 

The elderly senior priest rose from the crowd. He approached the altar, and took out the statue of the Lord of Ashes from his arms. And placed it in the center of the altar. The lord resembling a long, winged snake. The crowd knelt to the ground, made a prostrated posture of worship.

The church has believed in the Lord of Ashes for thousands of years and had been exploring how to obtain wisdom and power from the ancient gods. They were once magnificent, but now they have reached the point of destruction. The Anti-Magic Bureau and the enemy were chasing them fiercely and mercilessly. They offered sacrifices to the Lord of Ashes once in a while longing for a little response from the great god. The high priest knelt to the ground, and gazed at the Statue of God, and said in a whisper.

  “Sacrifice for the great Lord of Ashes.”

Two men in black brought a stiff little girl. Her cloth was plain white, her hands tied tightly behind her with ropes, and her mouth was covered with cord. The little girl had a pair of wine-red pupils, different from ordinary people and long silver hair. Her pale cheeks had become expressionless in despair.

Her eyes were full of fear. She was obviously very scared. But she still went to the center of the altar on her own accord. The senior priest nodded and said blankly, “Devout believers, leave with me.”

The senior priest got up and left the church and congregants silently followed the senior priest, leaving the tied little girl alone in front of the altar.

  ~This is a living sacrifice.

According to the sect’s records, living sacrifices were different from ordinary sacrifices. A living sacrifice was left alone for the gods to enjoy.

The wind coming through the cracks made a whimpering sound, and the flames on the candles moved erratically in the wind, extinguishing one by one.

She knew that she was left all alone. Even the constant sound of rain had disappeared. The little girl looked out the window in despair. The heavy rain was still pouring outside, but there was no sound. Everything was quiet and eerie.

 ‘ I…I’m going to die…’

‘ It’s what I’m supposed to do… my mission…’

The eerie church was covered by a layer of fog. Instinctual fear rose from within the girl’s heart, and the pent-up fear quickly turned into heavier despair.

On the altar, a vast black shadow was becoming increasingly prominent; a flickering and uncertain existence in the dark. When the shadow became clearer, she could vaguely see a silhouette that almost filled the entire altar. 

  Ancient gods!

The frightened little girl collapsed, her body instinctively trying to escape, but she could not even stand up because of the ropes and the sheer fear she felt.

~By the way…looking straight at the gods will lead to madness…I should not look at him!

She swiftly lowered her head, huddled up, and closed her eyes. She did not dare to take another look. The temperature in the church gradually rose up, and the little girl could only curl up her body and wait for her fate to come.

  ~…I don’t want to die yet… Someone, please save me…

Her heart was about to crumble. The faith_the church had long instilled in her was not enough to overcome the great despair and fear.

The sound of the torrential rain came again as a gray mist filled the entire church. The cultists outside were long gone.

Shen Yi stepped out from the gray mist. As the mist unfolded, he found himself standing on a stone altar in the center of a vast church.

“Where is this place?”

The gray mist around him gradually scattered, and his expression changed a little when he realized this was not the cafe.

This place had the feeling from the old movies- overgrown weeds, indiscernible paintings outlined on the walls, arched doors, supporting stone pillars; it looked like an abandoned church.

He found a little silver-haired girl not far from his feet. She was dressed in plain clothes, her face pale and eyes closed tightly. She was curled up like a frightened little animal.

He could hear the girl’s heavy breathing amidst the constant sound of heavy rain. The girl’s petite body kept shivering, but she could not run away. She could only shrink inward, like an ostrich buried in the sand, with her butt facing him, who was standing not far away.

The scene in front of him had left him into contemplation. He had never seen such a scene before.

“What the hell is going on?”

MC : Shen Yi

The first sacrificial little girl