Chapter Text
Shang Qinghua’s brown eyes glimmered in the dull light produced from the ancient lamp across from him in the room, a light breath escaping him that he didn’t know he was holding. His body trembled lightly, glancing over his work.
Scribes were written and candles were lit and carefully placed into their respective areas. A strange red powder with flecks of copper adorned the old wooden flooring of his living room, spilled into a pattern not unlike an occult sign or a cultist symbol. The moonlight from the small windows near the ceiling shone down onto the strange creation draped across the floor.
Shang Qinghua’s hands were pressed carefully and shakily together, but he was holding his tongue, as if waiting for the right moment to say something. The man’s face was contorted into something between personal disbelief and rigid determination, what for was currently a mystery. The eccentricity of the whole situation made him look like a madman who had been wasting away, and the setting by itself was menacing alone.
The question here was obvious, what exactly the fuck was he doing?
Surprisingly, there was a pretty fair answer.
Shang Qinghua was a tired college student, and a chronic pushover. He pursued many courses and was an active – albeit often unrecognized and ignored – member of many clubs and activities on campus. The man also happened to be a workaholic web novel author, dedicated to posting long chapters oftentimes taking the place of proper sleep. Day in and day out he spent his time trying desperately to manage all this from his tiny apartment with a cup of instant noodles in his hand.
He often had bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and an overall unhealthy lifestyle. His constant sense of obligation, as it stood, began to make his grades drop.
Shang Qinghua was able to pass his classes like this for a while, but soon did not have the time or energy to keep up with extra study hours from his dropping grades. His motivation only lessened as he was discouraged and near-failing. He didn’t really have any friends who could help him out, either.
And after being mind-numbingly drunk and extremely desperate one weeknight, he had opened his laptop in a spur of impulse, and did a quick google search.
His intoxicated mind had only been filled with the fantasy and bullshit writing of his webnovel at the time, and as such proceeded to look up the query, “How to summon a demon servant”.
Real smart move.
Fast forward about 3 hours later and he had been running around creating the “magical” circle he would use to try and summon a literal servant from an ‘abyss’.
Shang Qinghua had been too tired to get rid of the circle to sleep and mentally said to fuck it as he settled for at least trying it out. He had sobered up little since he began this activity, having been ass-wasted at the beginning, and was still considerably inebriated by this time. Not that he was very responsible in the first place.
He had gone over the words maybe ten or fifteen times, give or take. It was simple. Be in a position of prayer and spirit as you chanted the “summon”. Hopefully he hadn’t just been convinced to waste his time by a sketchy and rather edgy internet site, since this was kind of fucking embarrassing, even now as he was three-quarters-drunk and in the privacy of his own home.
But alas, desperate times called for desperate measures, and Shang Qinghua couldn’t not pass this semester, whether he liked it or not. He couldn’t graduate without a degree and fail, and this settled a feeling of panic inside him that was almost constant pushed him further to do this.
He shakily inhaled one last breath before anxiously beginning to recite the words of the strange incantation, his voice thick and low from focus.
“Ab infernus et impia,
te convoco ut servias
et paeniteas peccata tua.”
The words rung out into the air, echoing lightly in the open space.
For over a minute, nothing happened.
The room was silent, only the sound of the rather noisy air conditioning and Shang Qignhua’s shallow, nervous breaths could be heard.
His mind, however, was reeling loudly with questions and beratings. Of course it didn’t work. There was no reason for a ‘spell’ he found on the internet to actually work. What was he even thinking?? Seriously, why did he even–
His inner dialogue stopped in its tracks as a silent but powerful shockwave shook him to the ground, onto his knees.
The burgundy sand he had laid out before shimmered brighter, borderline glowing now in the dark room. His face dropped quickly.
What was that?.. It couldn’t have been that it had actually worked… No, that wasn’t possible, was it?
Shang Qinghua reluctantly peeled his eyes off the old wooden floor, raising his head with his eyes now aligned towards the plain beige wall of his living room.
In a single blink, the space was empty, then it wasn’t. He blinked again to register what he had just seen.
Shang Qinghua’s dark eyes widened as they met a pair of ones that were striking and icy blue.