The industrial district of Hellen was a husk of its former self — a stitched-together graveyard of rusted corrugated metal, hollowed-out warehouses, and machinery long since surrendered to the elements. During the day, the place simmered with the ghosts of what once was: rail workers, mill hands, pipe fitters, welders. At night, the ghosts felt less metaphorical.

  Declan turned off his headlights as he coasted down the pitted access road that ran parallel to the old grain processing facility. The buildings around him stood like broken teeth under the low-hanging clouds, their windows either shattered or blinded by grime. The air grew heavier with every block — not just humid, but thick, like moving through the slow pulse of something dreaming deep beneath the asphalt.

  His gut twisted.

  At first, he thought it was a trick of the fog rising from the storm drains — that faint orange glow flickering like candlelight between the buildings. But as he turned the final corner near the collapsed rail spur and killed the engine, he knew better.

  Light was spilling out from the old Langston Ironworks.

  He crouched low as he exited the car, letting the shadows swallow him whole. The building's rear service door — one he'd previously crawled through two months back for a fluff piece on urban decay — now stood ajar. Beyond it, firelight danced in frantic patterns, shadows writhing against the high walls like frantic arms grasping at the ceiling.

  Voices echoed — not shouting, not speech, but low, rhythmic chanting.

  Declan felt his breath catch in his throat. It was happening. Now.

  He moved quickly but quietly, keeping to the darkness along the southern wall. Tall grass and chunks of debris crunched softly beneath his boots. As he reached the edge of the massive loading dock, he dared a glance through the rusted metal slats of a missing bay door.

  The scene inside turned his blood cold.

  A ring of people — maybe fifteen, maybe twenty — stood in a loose circle, cloaked in rough, ash-gray robes stitched with that now-familiar othala rune twisted around a horned crown. Their heads were bowed, hands lifted toward a makeshift altar built from scavenged rebar and concrete slabs. At its center lay a tangle of what looked like animal carcasses — goats, perhaps, or dogs — their bodies sliced open, entrails spilling in a spiraling pattern that glistened under the firelight.

  Symbols were painted on the cracked concrete floor in vivid orange, the same hue Declan had seen again and again at crime scenes — only now, freshly drawn and still gleaming wet.

  But that wasn’t what stopped him cold.

  Hovering above the altar — hovering, shifting — was a mass of shadow, writhing like an oil slick suspended midair. It pulsed, drawing in the candlelight, drinking it, growing denser with every whispered syllable that crawled from the throats of the chanting figures.

  Declan’s fingers trembled as he reached into his coat, pulling free his phone. No bars. Not even a flicker of reception. He dared not use the camera flash — not now, not while so many eyes could turn toward him. He crouched, tapped the camera to manual, and began to film.

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  A man stepped forward from the circle — tall, broad-shouldered, hood pulled back to reveal a face Declan recognized from campaign flyers and front-page photo ops. Councilman Braevers. A “devout family man,” always first to grandstand about protecting Hellen’s traditions.

  Braevers knelt before the altar, hands stained dark to the elbows. He spoke now — not in the rhythmic chant, but in something guttural and jarring, each word flaying the silence like broken glass dragged across skin.

  The shadow above the altar shuddered.

  Something inside it moved.

  Declan flinched. It Declan’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the edge of the loading dock, staring in disbelief at the ritual unfolding before him.

  The chanting swelled, a guttural, inhuman cadence that reverberated in his bones. The symbols painted on the cracked warehouse floor — sickly orange and glistening wet — pulsed like open wounds. The carcasses on the altar steamed in the firelight, their innards arranged with uncanny precision into a spiraling pattern that centered around a pitch-black void. That shifting thing above it — no longer just a mass of shadow, but forming — was drinking the room dry of light and air.

  Declan’s mouth tasted like blood and metal. He had covered murders. He had seen the aftermath of horror. But this — this was becoming.

  And still, he didn’t back away.

  He didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. But something deep inside — maybe it was fear, maybe it was instinct — told him that if he didn’t stop this, something far worse than a story lost or a career ended was going to claw its way into their world.

  He moved before he could talk himself out of it.

  In one swift motion, he stepped up onto the lip of the loading dock and shouted, “Hellen PD! Step away from the altar!”

  His voice rang out across the warehouse, startlingly loud in the flickering firelight. Half the circle turned at once, some gasping, others snarling — and one, the man leading the chant — Councilman Braevers, froze mid-verse, his bloody hands hovering in the air.

  The shadow above the altar quivered.

  Declan raised his phone high, snapping a photo with the flash on. The burst of white light lit the entire chamber in a split second of stark clarity — revealing shocked faces, the crude robes, the butchered offerings, the runes, the shadow that was no longer just shadow.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  “Get him!” someone shrieked.

  But Declan was already moving.

  He sprinted down the metal stairwell and across the floor, knocking over one of the crude iron braziers. Burning coals exploded across the cement, catching the edge of a robe. One figure screamed as flames leapt to life, tearing through the cloth.

  “Disperse the circle!” Willow’s voice echoed in his memory. “Break the concentration. Break the pattern.”

  Declan dropped low, grabbing one of the painted cinder blocks that ringed the altar and hurling it into the spiral of entrails. The pattern smeared, broke — one line tearing into another. The black mass above let out a sound — not a scream, not a roar, but a pressure that rattled his teeth and made the air taste like ozone and blood.

  Several cultists fell to their knees, clutching their ears.

  Braevers bellowed something guttural, pushing through the scattering circle toward Declan, but the spell was broken — fractured.

  The shadow thrashed violently, its form warping and recoiling like a living burn. Tendrils lashed out, striking one of the nearby pillars with enough force to send cracks spidering up its length.

  Then — it shrieked.

  Light imploded.

  The candles snuffed out in an instant. The brazier flames flickered once, then vanished. The room dropped into pitch blackness.

  Declan scrambled backward blindly, tripping over an overturned stool. Boots thundered toward him — panicked, angry. He turned, lunged for a service ladder leading up to the catwalks above.

  Hands brushed his back — then missed.

  He climbed like a man possessed.

  The blackness below roiled with movement. People screamed, not in rage now but terror, their ritual undone, the creature half-born and unfed.

  A sudden crack echoed through the warehouse — the support pillar splintering under the creature’s flailing limbs — and the entire southern wall groaned ominously.

  Declan didn’t stop. He ran along the catwalk toward a shattered window and launched himself through it, arms covering his head as glass exploded around him.

  He hit the gravel outside hard and rolled, gasping for breath as he scrambled to his feet.

  The warehouse behind him let out a deep, moaning shudder, and then silence.

  No chant.

  No light.

  Just wind, and the distant sound of sirens echoing from deeper in town.

  Declan staggered to his car, blood running from a gash on his temple, eyes wild, clothes soaked with sweat and ash and something else he didn’t want to name.

  He slammed the door shut behind him and jammed the key into the ignition.

  This time, the engine roared to life instantly.

  And Declan — bleeding, shaking, heart hammering — laughed.

  Not out of humor.

  Out of sheer disbelief.

  He’d interrupted the Kings Horn. Whatever they were trying to bring into the world tonight — it had failed.

  But not forever.

  He didn’t stop shaking until he reached the edge of town. Only then did he let himself whisper aloud, “What the hell did I just do?”wasn’t just reacting. It was watching.