Adventure of Niklas Valburga

The square convulses under Niklas Valburga’s feet. The captive vessel arches beside the tavern, and the reliquary in the mud pulses like a second heart. From the seam in the air, the Pale Presence leans fully into the world.

The tavern window flickers, then blackens. Frost crawls over the cobbles. Inside the square, the possessed captive begins to pray in a voice that does not belong to him.

The Pale Presence folds into Niklas Valburga’s black eyes, into the runes on his skin, into the cold of his breath. The boundary in the air splits from a crack to a wound, and the first shapes of the other side press against it.

Niklas surges through the opening with Grell in his grip, the square dropping away beneath them like a snapped stage. The void takes the man first, then the cold edge of its hunger bites into Niklas’s forearms.

Niklas tears Grell’s throat open in the infernal dark. The sound is swallowed at once, but the life leaves the inquisitor in a hot, stumbling rush that stains Niklas’s hands and the rim of the breach.

Grell goes slack and is dragged downward, vanishing into the wound as if the other side has claimed him. Back in the village square, the reliquary flares once, hard enough to make the cobbles jump.

The Woman at the Door recoils to her feet, staring at the dark gap where Grell was. The scraping from inside the tavern stops all at once, as if something there has gone still to listen.