Content Warning

Today’s Chapter contains intense themes, including demons, rituals, and sacrificial scenes.

Reader discretion is advised.

Please treat this as a work of dark fantasy. Everything portrayed is purely fictional and created from the imagination of the author, who has not touched grass in approximately a decade.

Thank you for reading.

---

"What I am about to explain," Raven said slowly, letting the words hang in the air like a blade suspended by a thread, "is not just another discovery. It is the most horrifying truth we have uncovered so far."

The captains leaned forward, their bodies tense, their eyes fixed on her masked face. No one knew why they had never been able to speak about this before, why the words seemed to stick in their throats, why their minds recoiled from the implications, why the truth had remained buried for so long.

Perhaps it was too terrible to voice.

Perhaps some part of them had always known and had chosen to look away. Or perhaps the truth itself was simply unbearable, a weight that no human mind was designed to carry.

"After the demon confirms that the sin is ripe and ready to extract," Raven continued, her voice low and steady,

"they send the contractor to the next division.

This division is called Demon Inspection."

The screen flickered, showing a diagram of the demonic hierarchy, a flowchart of horror that stretched from the initial contract to the final sacrifice, each step more grotesque than the last.

"Demon Inspection examines the sin of each particular contract soul," Raven said,

"verifying that it has been properly cultivated, that it has reached the required saturation, that the human has fully succumbed to their darkness.

Once the sin is approved, they send the soul to the ritual sacrifice altar, an altar located in the demonic kingdom, hidden somewhere on Earth, in a place that no satellite can see and no agent can reach."

She switched to the next image, and the captains gasped.

It was a recreation, a digital reconstruction created from descriptions extracted from captured demons, combined with AI enhancement and the painstaking work of Shadow Crow artists who had spent years trying to visualize what their agents had described.

The image showed a grand hall, vast and terrible, its walls made of bloodstone, a deep red block that had absorbed so much blood over so many centuries that the stone itself had decayed, turning a deeper, darker red, the color of old wounds that had never been allowed to heal.

The walls seemed to pulse in the recreation, as if they were still alive, still thirsty, still waiting for more.

In the middle of the hall was a circle, a star shape, its outline traced in blood that gleamed wetly even in the digital rendering.

The circle was enormous, large enough to hold dozens of bodies, and at its center was a symbol that made Fiona’s blood run cold.

A dragon.

But not the dragons of Chinese Fantasy, not the noble creatures that Earth scripture had described.

This dragon was black, black as void, black as the space between stars, black as the moment before death. Its wings were spread wide, its mouth was open in a silent scream, and its eyes were empty pits that seemed to follow the viewer no matter where they stood.

It was the symbol of the God of Shadow, the Founder of Unknown Power, the deity that demons worshipped in place of the gods that had abandoned them.

"The symbol is horrifying," Raven said, "because it represents everything that humanity has forgotten. The star is ancient, older than civilization, older than language, older than the concept of good and evil. But the dragon at its center, the black dragon, the God of Shadow, is the key. The demons do not worship power. They do not worship chaos. They worship the one being that even the gods fear."

She paused, letting the image burn into their memories.

"Once the demon has approved that the sin is ripe and ready to use," Raven said, "they proceed with the next step. This step is called Soul Sacrifice."

The word itself was so unbearable that even Sara flinched.

Her hand, resting on the table, curled into a fist, and for just a moment, the mask of cold composure that she wore like armor slipped, revealing something beneath, something raw and wounded and terrified.

She had heard this report before.

She had read every word, studied every image, spent sleepless nights trying to comprehend the scale of the horror.

And still, hearing it again, she flinched.

The captains noticed.

They exchanged glances, brief, fearful, uncertain. If Sara was afraid, if Sara was unsettled, then what hope did any of them have?

Raven showed a diagram on the screen, a flowchart connecting the Sin Talisman to the children, with arrows and labels and annotations that had been written and rewritten dozens of times as the Shadow Crow unit struggled to understand what they had discovered.

"As I was saying," Raven continued, her voice cutting through the heavy silence, "the reason they kidnap children is because children have pure souls."

She paused, letting the words settle into the captains’ minds.

"Pure soul," Fiona repeated, unable to stop herself. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Raven turned her crow mask toward Fiona, and the red glow of its eyes seemed to intensify. "Please do not interrupt me," she said, her voice serious, almost cold.

"It is hard enough for me to show how horrifying this system is. I do not need to explain it twice."

Fiona’s mouth closed.

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but beneath the flush was something else, fear, perhaps, or the dawning realization that she was about to hear something that would change her forever.

The other captains, who had been about to ask their own questions, went silent.

They had never heard Raven speak like this.

They had never heard her voice tremble at the edges, never seen her hesitate before continuing.

If the Shadow Crow captain was struggling to maintain her composure, then the truth must be worse than any of them had imagined.

Raven switched the screen, and a new image appeared.

It was a diagram of a pure soul, represented as a white sphere, glowing with soft light, clean and untainted. Around it, darker shapes pressed against its edges, unable to penetrate, unable to corrupt.

"Children have pure souls," Raven said, her voice softer now, almost gentle. "They have not yet committed sins. They have not yet been corrupted by the world. Their souls are empty vessels, clean, untainted, waiting to be filled. And because of this purity, they absorb sin more easily than adults."

She paused, letting the concept take root.

"Children have the ability to learn anything," Raven continued. "They are like sponges, they soak up languages, skills, behaviors, beliefs. They absorb knowledge and experience and shape themselves around what they are taught.

This is why children who are trained from an early age often surpass adults who have been practicing for decades. Their minds are more flexible. Their souls are more adaptable. They do not just learn, they absorb."

Erika shifted in her seat, her sharp eyes narrowing. "What are you saying?"

Raven’s mask turned toward her. "I am saying," she said,

"that the same logic applies to the realm of the soul. Children do not just learn skills and languages. They absorb everything, including sin. Their pure souls act like sponges, drawing in the corruption that the demons feed them, soaking it up until there is nothing left of the child they used to be."

Erika paused. Her mouth opened, then closed.

Her eyes widened as understanding began to dawn.

She had been a child once, training with weapons before she could read, learning to fight before she could write her own name.

The skills she had absorbed in those early years had made her the expert she was today, faster, stronger, more instinctive than anyone who had started training as an adult. If the same principle applied to sin, to corruption, to the harvesting of souls...

She said nothing.

Raven turned back to the screen.

"The demons knew this," she said.

"They have always known this. They understood, centuries ago, that children were the perfect vessels for sin. Not because they were weak, not because they were defenseless, but because they were efficient. A child can absorb in months what would take an adult years to accumulate. A child’s pure soul can be corrupted faster, more completely, more thoroughly."

She switched to another image, a child’s soul, represented as a white sphere, slowly turning gray as dark tendrils spread across its surface.

The process was gradual at first, then faster, until the sphere was black, completely black, nothing left of the original light.

Then Raven switched the picture.

The screen filled with AI-generated images, digital recreations crafted from the testimonies of half-demons and high demons who had been captured, interrogated, and in some cases, tortured for information.

No one knew where this place was. No satellite had ever captured it. No agent had ever survived to describe it firsthand.

The images on the screen were the closest thing to truth that the Agency had ever possessed, and they were horrifying.

"Children from three to five years old," Raven said, her voice flat and emotionless, "are the ideal age for this soul absorption. They are young enough that their souls are still pure, still untainted by the sins of the world, but old enough that they can survive the process long enough to be useful." She paused, letting the weight of her words settle.

"The demons place these children in prisons, dark cells, underground, where no light reaches and no sound escapes. They are not given food nor given water. The demons starve them to the edge of death, so that when the time comes, their bodies are weak enough and their souls are desperate enough to absorb the sin properly."

The captains sat in stunned silence.

Elga’s massive hands had curled into fists, his knuckles white, his scarred face twisted with an emotion that looked like fury barely contained.

Erika’s sharp eyes had gone wide, the usual fire extinguished, replaced by something that looked like the first stirrings of despair.

Lily had covered her mouth with both hands, her pale fingers trembling against her lips.

Fiona could not move.

She could not breathe.

She could only stare at the screen, at the AI-generated images of children who looked like ghosts, their eyes hollow, their cheeks sunken, their small bodies barely visible in the darkness of the cells.

Raven switched the picture.

The new image showed children being led toward the sacrifice altar, their bodies thin, their faces blank, their hands bound behind their backs.

Demons walked beside them, towering figures with twisted features and glowing eyes, their hands resting on the children’s shoulders not like shepherds guiding sheep, but like butchers guiding cattle to the slaughter.

The children were terrified, even in the AI reconstruction, even in the grainy approximation of horror, their fear was unmistakable. Their mouths were open, their eyes were wide, their small bodies trembled with every step.

"Once the children are ready to absorb the sin," Raven said, "they are taken to the sacrifice altar. This is the place where the sin talismans, the black papers, heavy with the corruption of murdered adults, are fed to them."

She switched the picture again.

This image showed a demon holding a child like an offering, one hand wrapped around the child’s throat, the other holding a black talisman paper to the child’s lips.

The demon’s face was not visible, it was shrouded in shadow, hidden by the hood of a dark robe, but its posture was unmistakable. It was not forcing the child to eat.

It was waiting.

Patient.

Certain.

The child’s hands were raised, pressed against the demon’s chest, trying to push it away, but the demon did not move. It simply stood there, holding the talisman, waiting for the child to open its mouth.

"The demon who offers the talisman is called Xemon," Raven said.

"He is an upper blood demon, one of the highest ranking in the demonic hierarchy, and he personally oversees the feeding of every child.

He forces them to eat the sin talismans, the same talismans that have been soaked in the sins of murdered adults, the same black papers that carry the weight of lust and greed and wrath and every other darkness that humans can produce."

Gasps spread among the captains.

Even Elga, who had seen horrors that would drive lesser soldiers mad, felt a surge of rage so intense that his hands shook against the table.

Erika’s face had gone pale, her lips pressed together so tightly they had lost all color.

Lily made a small sound, a whimper, barely audible, quickly stifled.

Fiona felt her stomach turn, felt the bile rise in her throat, felt something inside her crack and splinter and threaten to give way.

"Once the children eat the sin talisman," Raven continued, her voice unwavering despite the tears that had begun to form in her eyes, visible even behind her crow mask,

"all the heinous crimes contained within the paper, all the sins, all the darkness, all the corruption that had been harvested from adult souls, begin to devour the child’s pure soul from the inside. The agony is unimaginable. The children scream until their throats break. Until their vocal cords tear. Until they cannot scream anymore, and still the agony continues."

She paused.

"Then Xemon crushes the child’s skull."

The room went cold.

"Xemon does not use magic," Raven said.

"He does not use a weapon. He uses his hands, his bare hands, to crush the skull of every child who is fed to the demonic machine. He does it slowly, deliberately, savoring the moment. And when the skull is crushed, the ritual is complete.

The sin is fully extracted. The child’s soul is consumed. And the power that remains is collected and stored, waiting to be used."

The fear spreading among the captains was so chilling that it seemed to lower the temperature of the room.

They had always known that demons were evil, that was not news, not revelation, not discovery. But this was something else.

This was not the chaos of battle or the cruelty of individual demons.

This was a system.

A factory.

A machine that had been running for many centuries, grinding up human souls and children’s lives to fuel an army that no one had known existed.

It was happening in the world, in their world, on their planet, beneath the peaceful surface of everyday life, and no one had known. Even the Agency, with all its resources and all its agents and all its years of investigation, had only discovered the truth after 177 years of shadows following shadows.

And the demons had been active for two thousand years.

Two thousand years of contracts. Two thousand years of sin. Two thousand years of children. God only knew how many they had sacrificed.

God only knew how many souls had been fed into this System.

God only knew how powerful the demon king had become.

---

Raven switched the image.

The AI-generated picture showed a pool of blood, vast and deep, its surface still, its color so dark that it seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it.

Floating on the surface were the corpses of children, their bodies pale, their limbs spread at unnatural angles, their faces frozen in expressions of terror that had been preserved long after death.

The pool stretched to the horizon, endless and terrible, and at its center, standing in the blood up to his waist, was a demon.

He was six feet tall, muscular, his body carved like a statue of an ancient warrior. His hair was red, bright as flame, and two horns curved from his temples, rising toward the sky like the branches of a dead tree.

His eyes were closed, his face peaceful, and he stood in the pool of blood as if he were bathing in warm water, as if the corpses of children were nothing but floating petals, as if the horror around him did not exist.

"This is the demon king," Raven said. "Allen."

The name fell into the silence like a stone dropped into deep water.

"After the children are sacrificed, their corpses are thrown into this pool, the Blood Pool, as it is called in demonic texts.

The demon king bathes in it.

He soaks in the blood of children, absorbing the sin that has been extracted from their souls, letting the corruption seep into his body and make him stronger."

She paused, letting the image burn into the captains’ minds.

"Allen cuts his own finger and pours his blood into the pool," Raven continued.

"His blood acts as a catalyst, awakening the cultivation properties of the blood pool, transforming it from simple gore into a tool of ascension. The sin, the high sin, the pure sin, the sin that has been filtered through the souls of children, is absorbed into his body, feeding his power, bringing him closer to true demonhood."

Erika’s voice was barely a whisper. "What does he need to awaken?"

Raven’s mask turned toward her. "He does not know."

The answer was so unexpected that it broke the tension for just a moment.

The captains stared at Raven, confused, uncertain.

"The pool contains many types of sin," Raven explained.

"Lust.

Greed.

Wrath.

Sloth.

Envy.

Pride.

Gluttony.

The demon king does not know which sin will trigger his awakening, which darkness will transform him from a demon king into a true demon, a being of pure evil, unbound by the limitations of his current form.

So he absorbs everything.

Every sin.

Every drop of corruption.

Every child’s soul that has been fed into the machine. He takes it all, hoping that one day, enough will be enough."

She switched to another image, this one showing the children’s bodies being collected, loaded onto carts, transported to places unknown.

"Once the sin has been absorbed from the children’s bodies, the corpses are not wasted," Raven said.

"They are butchered. Their meat is processed and distributed across the world, sold to black markets, used to fund the demonic economy.

Nothing is wasted. Not the sin. Not the souls. Not even the flesh. Every part of every child is used, consumed, turned into profit."

The words were so heavy that they seemed to press down on the captains, crushing them, suffocating them.

It sounded like something out of a fantasy, a nightmare, a fever dream, a horror story that no one would believe.

But it was not fantasy. It was reality. It was happening. It had been happening for centuries, and no one had known.

"After the meat is distributed," Raven continued, "the blood pool, which now contains lesser sin, sin that was not extracted by the demon king, is drained and processed. The blood is used to create demonic pills and demonic drugs, which are sold to Country commanders, Soliders and gangs and corrupt governments, fueling wars and conflicts across the globe. Some of the blood is also used in cosmetics, in products that are sold in stores, in items that ordinary people use every day without knowing where they came from."

Lily made a sound, a small, strangled noise, like someone who had been struck in the stomach and could not find the breath to cry out.

"The children’s bones are ground into powder and sold as supplements," Raven said. "Their hair is used in rituals. Their teeth are sold as charms. Their eyes."

"Stop," Sara said.

Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade.

Raven paused. Her mask turned toward the chief, and for a moment, no one spoke.

Sara’s face was pale.

Her hands were flat on the table, her fingers spread, her knuckles white.

She looked like someone who had been holding herself together for a very long time and was not sure how much longer she could last.

"That is enough," Sara said. "They understand."

Raven bowed her head.

The room was silent.

The screens flickered, still showing the images, the pool of blood, the floating corpses, the demon king standing in the center, his face peaceful, his eyes closed.

"This is the full system," Raven said finally, letting the words settle into the captains’ minds like stones dropped into deep water.

"Everything we have discovered. Everything we have confirmed. Everything that has been hidden from humanity for two thousand years."

She stepped back from the display, her hands falling to her sides.

"Captains," she said, "this is what we are fighting against."

To be continued.