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The visions he’d seen the day through the Shadow while breaking Zeev’s curse resurfaced. Fire, blood, screaming faces, ear-splitting wailings. A figure lounging on a tree.

A burning butterfly tumbling from the sky.

He’d not given it much thought that time because before he could, he’d found out about Xen’s origin and then freaked out. But those flashes of vision…could it be a premonition?

A cold sweat broke out against Evan’s nape, eyes distant as he mumbled something to himself, contemplating whether he was overthinking things.

“Evan?”

Only when Xen’s voice broke through the loud thoughts in his head did Evan return to himself. Giving his head a light shake, he pushed the images to the back of his head. The Shadow Hand on his shoulder tightened in agitation, and Evan patted it. “I’m fine. I’m okay. Why… Why did you say they’re summoning the Hellfire again?”

Xen regarded him with a furrow between his brows. He seemed to want to probe but didn’t and answered Evan instead. “Hellfire is known to be destructive and merciless against everything, even our own kind that worships it. But few know that Hellfire can also birth beings from those very destructive flames. Beings that carry its violence and ferocity in their hearts.”

“Beings like you?”

Xen’s lips twitched.

Before Evan could linger on those perfect lips any longer than they already did, he looked away and coughed. “So, let me guess. The Nightshade freaks are going to…throw those fifteen men into the Hellfire. Consuming the life force of those young, healthy men, something nasty is going to take birth from the fire. The same way an Eternal is born.”

“More or less.”

“But don’t the sacrifices need to be in great numbers?”

The witch’s grimoire had mentioned something about a third of the demon realm jumping into Hellfire for an Eternal’s birth. That had to be tens of thousands of demons, if not multiples of it.

Xen fell silent at that question. The heat enveloping Evan turned up a notch, making a fine layer of sweat break out on the surface of his skin.

A muscle faintly fluttered in Xen’s jaws, his dark eyes vacant. There was so much heat radiating from him now that if one were to touch his bare skin, it would be akin to touching a hot pan that’d been sitting on the stove for an hour.

Sometimes Evan forgot that Xen was—literally—born of fire.

At his master’s silence, Zeev piped in. “In truth, sir, this ritual is a conclusion to the one that began a long time ago.”

Evan slowed in his steps to put some distance between him and Xen when the heat radiating from him became too much to bear. But acting as if nothing was wrong, he casually started walking alongside Zeev again.

“A conclusion to what?”

“The Great Sacrifice, a ritual sufficient for a creature like that to fully awaken in the mortal world, has already taken place many, many years ago. Well,mostlytaken place. It was left incomplete that time due to some…hindrances,” Zeev lowered his head as he continued. “This Bloodbath is just a catalyst to rekindle the old flame, to reawaken the spirits of the Great Sacrifice that died without fulfilling their cause. Once the Hellfire is summoned, those spirits, along with the fifteen humans, will enter the flames together, completing the Great Sacrifice.”

And that would give birth to something new. Something malevolent for sure. Nothing born of manslaughter could ever be divine. Although no divine hand was ever completely clean of blood either.

There was a balance in nature, and whenever the scale tipped to one side, neither demons nor gods, only humans suffered.

By the time Evan absorbed the information, they came to a dead end in the cave, the rancid smell growing stronger, making Evan’s head throb. Zeev stepped forward with the flame burning brighter in his palm, shedding light on the huge stone wall before them.

When the scene at the foot of the wall came into view, Evan’s breath hitched.

Several headless corpses were piled high in a corner of the cave, a pool of blood dried like a frozen river around them. Theirheads were arranged orderly, upright in the opposite corner, eyes shut and faces carved with a disturbingly calm expression. Blood from the stumps of the necks bled into the faces under them, painting a horrifying picture.

But it wasn’t the gory scene of the bloody faces that made Evan’s heart drop. No, it was the fact that those faces were familiar. A mirror reflection.

It was Evan’s own face.

Boom!

A blast of flame erupted from Xen’s hand, shaped like a giant jaw of fire, and momentarily blinded Evan from the gruesome scene. The jaws of fire engulfed the corpses and the heads, turning them to ash within a blink of an eye.

It was the first time Xen had attacked something with such murderous intent, scarlet eyes blazing down at the charred remains of the bodies with unbridled contempt. It startled Evan before he stepped back, blinking furiously as he tried to make sense of what he’d just beheld.