#thepact

( 5 )

(Tw: Graphic Autopsy scene. Includes medical gore, a deceased person, and descriptive clinical diagnosis.)

The morgue smelled like ethanol, cold stone, and secrets.

Johannes Cabal stood in silence at the head of the steel autopsy table, staring down at Katherine Bishop’s body. She looked smaller now—without breath, without fire. As if death had stolen her size as well as her soul.

He adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves with the kind of meticulousness that had nothing to do with vanity and everything to do with ritual. Precision mattered. Respect mattered. Especially when the body belonged to her.

Kass stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, blood still drying on his knuckles. His face was set like stone, but his eyes hadn’t stopped moving. They hadn’t stopped pleading.

Cabal didn’t look up.

“You don’t have to stay.” he said quietly.

“I’m not leaving.”

A small nod. “Very well.”

Cabal pressed the recording rune on the wall. The arcane glyph glowed pale blue. A soft chime echoed. The room adjusted—lights sharpening to surgical clarity.

“Autopsy log, October twenty-second. Subject: Katherine Bishop, age thirty-three. Time of death: approximately one hour prior, during observed cardiac event. Subject suffered acute myocardial failure—suspected end-stage cardiomyopathy.”

His gloves snapped into place.

“Subject had long-term exposure to demonic influence. Also present: high concentrations of ethanol, amphetamines, and pain suppressants in bloodstream. Preliminary conclusion: death was not a singular event, but a convergence of progressive cardiac deterioration, substance abuse, and occult parasitism.”

Another breath. Then the scalpel.

The first incision broke skin with a wet sound. Cabal moved efficiently—sternum to abdomen, parting the layers with practiced ease. But his jaw clenched slightly when the ribcage gave more easily than it should have.

“Bone fragility noted. Severe tissue wasting. Indicative of long-term internal strain. Muscle mass is diminished. Signs of stress far beyond normal degradation.”

He peeled back the pericardial sac, exposing the heart. He paused.

“Cardiomegaly. Late-stage.” He touched it gently, reverently. “Dilated ventricles. She was failing slowly. Probably for months.”

Cabal lifted the heart from its cavity. As he weighed it on the hanging scale, his eyes narrowed.

“Exceeds expected weight by nearly forty percent.”

He slit it open. What came out wasn’t just blood—it was sludge. Congealed, tar-dark, laced with threads of black grit.

“Sulfuric ash.”

He leaned close.

“Infernal transmutation—intentional. Blood altered by pact magic. Demonic ash fused into myocardial tissue. Not residue—this was metabolized.”

He moved to her arms next. A lightstone passed over the veins, illuminating faint, sigil-like burns—barely visible to the human eye.

“Subdermal rune scarring. Mephistophelean binding marks. Evidence of . . .energy draw?”

Then Cabal moved to her shoulders. Her back. Her thighs. Her breasts. He stopped.

Bitten flesh. Large. Ragged. Ugly.

One. Then another. Then another.

He counted out loud.

“…Thirty four… thirty five…”

Kass’s voice came, tight.

“Keep going.”

Cabal blinked. His gloves hovered mid air.

Then he did. “…Forty one… fifty… sixty two… sixty eight.”

He stepped back, breath shallow.

“All the same size. Spacing varies, but each one healed over. Half-scabbed, half-scarred. None were fatal. All were deliberate.”

He stared at them. The map they made. An outline. A tally.

“This wasn’t feeding. It was record-keeping.”

“A ledger.” Kass muttered. “He was counting her kills.”

The room went silent. The rune hummed softly, the only sound left.

Cabal stared down at the body again. His hands trembled once, then steadied.

“He marked her every time she took a soul.”

“Even the ones who deserved it.”

“Especially those.” Cabal said. “She let herself believe that made it righteous. . . And each bite was her just punishment for them all. . .It didn’t.”

The necromancer turned away, suddenly needing distance. He moved to the sink, running cold water over his gloves, lost in the rhythm of it.

When he looked back—Kass was gone.

The door stood ajar.

All that remained was Katherine’s body, the sulfur curling from beneath her fingernails, and the cold truth that nothing about her death had been accidental.

[Comic The Pact : PAGE 4/5]

<-Before

First

( 3 )

The river didn’t roar—it whispered. Thin and silver as a blade, it wound between the pines, scattering mist where the ashes of their mother still clung to the rocks.

Kat stood at the edge, a silhouette in mourning black. The hem of her coat dragged through the wet leaves. She didn’t speak when Kassadin approached, but she knew he was there. She always knew.

“You lit the first candle” he said. “Didn’t you.”

She didn’t answer.

“You made the pact. With him. With Mephistopheles.”

“It’s already done.” she said softly.

He stood beside her. Wind stirred the water. A hush settled over the trees like a held breath.

“Tell me it isn’t what I think.” Kass said. “Tell me you’re not trading a hundred lives for his.”

Her eyes closed. “James doesn’t need a hundred lives. He needs mine. But the demon asked for more.”

“Of course he did.” Kass laughed, short, bitter. “Because he knows you’ll give it. You’d give anything, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve already started.”

Kass turned to her, voice sharpening with fury. “You’re damning yourself.”

She looked down at the water, where a few flecks of ash still floated—what little was left of the woman who had taught them how to braid lavender into their hair and bury the dead without flinching.

“I’ve been damned since the day they brought his dog tags home in a velvet pouch.”

That hit like a stone to the ribs. Kass didn’t flinch, but his voice shook.

“He breaks three of your ribs, and you give your soul?” His fists curled at his sides. “When does it stop, Kat? When do you stop giving for that man?”

Her breath caught.

“You think I don’t remember? The cracked sternum. The way you told me it was an accident. And still you begged for him when he was gone.”

“He was broken.” she whispered.

“So were you!” Kass snapped. “And you’re breaking still. You think Mephistopheles is doing this for love? You think there won’t be interest on that deal?”

“I don’t care.”

Her voice was flat, deadened.

“You will. When the blood is on your hands. Not metaphor. Not grief. Real. A hundred souls, Kat. Do you even know what that looks like?”

“I know what it buys.”

“No.” Kass stepped forward, fury blazing beneath his grief. “You think you do. You think it buys Jame. The one before the drinking, before the war. But that man’s dead, Kat. Not just buried. Gone. All you’re bringing back is the shell that hurt you.”

“Then I’ll love the shell.”

“Then you’ll end up like mom.”

Silence.

The wind shifted. Something distant howled whether wolf or something darker, neither of them could say.

Kass softened, just a little. “This isn’t justice. It’s penance. But you don’t have to carry it.”

“No” Kat said, stepping to the riverbank, gaze locked on the flowing water. “I do. I was the one who stood there while he drowned in his own mind. While he shattered himself piece by piece. I couldn’t save him then. But I can now.”

“By killing strangers?”

“By giving them to something hungrier than me.”

He stared at her. For a heartbeat, she was still the girl he’d watched collect fireflies in a jar, whispering wishes into the glass. Then she blinked, and all that remained was shadow.

“If Mom were here—”

“She’d understand.” Kat whispered. “She gave her whole self to a man who couldn’t love her right either. It’s our legacy.”

“No” Kass said, his voice low, like the earth shifting. “It ends with you.”

But she was already walking away, toward the treeline where the fog curled and the first soul- fresh, innocent, unknowing was waiting.

And Kass stood alone beside their mother’s ashes, unsure which of the dead he should mourn first.

(14)

The ground was scorched black glass when she woke; if she’d ever really been asleep.

Kat’s head pounded with the weight of something too big, too wrong, pressing at the edges of her thoughts like it was trying to crawl in. The stars above weren’t stars. They pulsed. Watched. And the air shimmered as if reality had forgotten how to stay still.

A voice slid down her spine like silk soaked in venom.

“Mmm. There it is.” Mephistopheles purred behind her, boots crunching lightly over the obsidian crust of the dreamscape they stood on. “I was wondering how long it would take before you heard it.”

She turned, heart hammering, but the devil was already close, too close;smiling like a secret she hadn’t earned the right to know.

“What in the fuck is this?” she asked, her voice rough with fear and fury both.

“This” he gestured to the nothing around them, “is a door. One you opened yourself. You flickered. Stepped between.” His grin widened. “Didn’t even know you could, did you?”

She hadn’t. Not until now. Not until the fire and the blood and the moment she thought she was going to die and then hadn’t. One blink and the world had torn open like wet paper, swallowing her into this impossible in between.

“You were always mine, Katherine.” he said, walking a lazy circle around her. “But this. . . this makes you useful.”

The void hummed under her feet alive, and not kindly. It echoed with voices she couldn’t fully hear. Something brushed past her, not wind, not flesh. Something that knew her.

“I don’t want this.”

“Wanting is for mortals.” Mephistopheles leaned in, his breath warm at her ear. “You’re something else now.”

He lifted his hand gesturing for her to move forward to run a finger across what head previously just look like a shadow casted from the light above., The shadows thickened, twisted, opened into a rift that screamed with silence. Beyond it was . . . more. An endless between. A darkness that watched back, and what looked like a horizon with the molten glow of the fading light of sunset in the distance.

“Step in.”

She stared at it. At him. “And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll never learn. But if you do. . . ” He tilted his head. “You’ll see. What’s hiding underneath the world. What’s hiding in you.”

Her pulse stuttered.

“How do I get out?”

His smile was all teeth.

“Figure it out, Kitten.”

And then he was gone.

Gone.

The rift pulsed, hungry.

( 9 )

When she woke in the dark, choking on the taste of copper and ash, Katherine’s panic already began to surge.

Her mouth was full of something thick. She gagged and spat—chunks of clotted blood and gray sludge hit the floor with a sickening slap. Her stomach turned.

“No—no, no, fuck—”

She scrambled backward on her hands, half-blind in the darkness, until her back slammed into a wall. Her palm landed in something warm and wet.

She looked down.

Too much blood.

Everywhere. Her hands. The floor. Soaked into the seams of her boots. It clung to her like oil—thick, dark, half-dried. Too much.

Her throat constricted. Her stomach flipped.

She vomited violently, retching until her ribs burned. The stench of bile and iron hit her nose at the same time and she cried out, gagging again. Her body shook. Cold sweat slicked her neck.

“Why—why is there so much?”

Voice Two (soft, sing-song):

Because you made it beautiful.

She turned.

There, just beyond the flickering industrial light overhead, was the body—no, the remains—of a man. His chest was flayed open, ribs cracked outward like an autopsy, like a warning. His face locked in shock. His blood—his entire blood—on the floor, the walls, her.

Kat screamed.

“No, no, I didn’t—I didn’t do this—”

Voice Two:

You didn’t. We did.

She tried to stand, but her ankle gave out. The pain lanced up her leg like fire.

Looking down, she saw the torn skin. Bone exposed. Tendon glistening. She must have landed wrong—maybe fell during the kill. Or after.

And then—it began to heal.

Not slowly. Not gently.

Muscle crawled across bone. Tendons snapped back into place like puppet strings. Skin stitched together in jagged lines, raw and wet. The pain was unbearable—blinding, screaming inside her bones.

She writhed on the floor, teeth clenched so tight her jaw popped.

“Make it stop—”

Voice Two (calm now):

You wanted to live. This is what living costs.

Blood. Everywhere. On her lips. Her arms. Under her nails.

She staggered to her feet, sobbing, half-collapsing against the wall as the healing finished its cruel work.

The body stared at her.

She couldn’t look away.

“I didn’t want this.” she whispered.

Voice Two:

You didn’t want to be alone. Kass gave us a second chance. I’m the one making sure we survive it.

She turned toward the nearest mirror—dirty, cracked, bolted to the cinderblock wall. Her reflection looked back. Wild-eyed. Blood-soaked. Hair stuck to her face with sweat.

And behind her own eyes—something else. A smile. A flicker of red. A presence leaning just under her skin.

“You’re not real.” she gasped. “You’re not me.”

Voice Two (right in her ear):

Not yet.

Then footsteps above—Kass. Searching.

Kat tore the soul sigil from the floor with shaking hands, wiped what blood she could from her face with her sleeve, and stumbled toward the shadows.

She couldn’t let him see her like this.

Not like this.