Grand Ascension-Chapter 120: Come In

Makun stood beside the door listening to what went on in the room, This ritual was one where those attending were being directed into what the speaker had called "light". As for what it entailed, Makun had no idea.

Instead he closed his eyes, feeling the atmosphere, the particles in the air, the energy around, he was searching for a way to determine who was in the room, how many people, how many practitioners, but he could not.

He was not Zorak who had guessed Bol and Cheryl’s tier and grade when they had knocked on Zuri’s door, neither was he Yime who knew he was outside of her container at the pier market just by his presence.

He knew it was a skill apprentices should not have. Apprentices had to see and interact with another practitioner to get at what level they were, similar to how he had done with the chubby Madame and the young man.

This meant, Makun was in the blind.

He had no idea about who was inside, how many people they had, the number of practitioners, initiates, apprentices and adepts present.

There can’t be an adept, else I would have been discovered by now. He analyzed.

"Come in!"

Makun jolted.

As soon as he had the thought of him being discovered, He heard someone call for him.

Is it me they are calling? Have I been discovered? When did the speech even halt.

He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not noticed the surprise in the voice of the speech holder, nor had he noticed the speech pausing.

And the fact that he had been caught and called out meant that the practitioner was an adept?

That can’t be, Makun was sure he could not be an adept.

Even though him entering the chalet felt like a rash decision, Makun was someone who thought before acting.

Sure, he was not Orel, but he still had a sharp mind.

At that time, at the entrance, he deemed this place void of practitioners because the presence of normal human guards had told him that the Joneses had no idea about mysticism and had hired normal humans not knowing that there were things more powerful than military.

But he had been proven wrong once he entered the chalet, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were aware of mysticism, so that left one option for the lack of mystics as guards.

They had no access to those, in terms of power and finance.

Then on, he knew the circle they interacted with was restricted to low-level practitioners, initiates to apprentices at most and that had been confirmed after seeing who came out of one of those doors downstairs.

Why was he so sure of his deductions, his senses, that was what made him certain of it. Ever since he had become a berserk, that is properly formed his subroute when crossing the threshold to apprentice, he became sensible to chaos, disorder, danger...

He had sensed danger before Yime, Orel, Jorg and Amelia when the Eyed Hand appeared, true it was related to his chains, but his berserk senses had acted as well, even before that when Mark had called him out he could feel things were weird.

It was to say that if the danger that lay inside was overwhelming for him at his current level, he would have felt it, and that would have pushed him to make another choice.

Was it dumb for him to trust senses he had just developed and was not sure of the reliability? Yes it was and he knew it.

However, the book had asked him to apply, and for that he had to delve into what a berserk asked of him, and his senses as a warrior, his intuition as a berserk was one of them, to advance, he had to follow them and apply them to real situations.

After reaching this conclusion, Makun slowly stood up and pushed the door open, stepping into it ready for whatever was coming.

...

The room was spacious, extremely so, the lighting came solely from candles, similar to the design of the building, there were no bulbs.

On the ground Makun could see a pristine chequerboard floor, similar to what he had seen online in freemason lodges, they were clean and spanned from side to side.

The room was full of people from different races, different ethnicities, Asians, Africans, Latinos, Europeans and so on, They were all dressed in a blue suit with a white apron attached at their waist.

Makun had no idea what that was, but the insignia on it was clear to him.

It was that of an inverted pentagram, in a circle, and the circle had horns that looked like that of a goat.

Up at the other end of the room, Makun saw practitioners, 6 of them, no, 7. There were 3 initiates and 4 apprentices.

The one who stood out the most was a man who looked to be in his thirties, cleanly shaven with sharp features and cold grey eyes that seemed to look through you rather than at you. His jaw was defined, his posture impeccable, he breathed authority in a way that made the air around him feel heavier.

He wore a long black robe that flowed to the floor, the fabric rich and heavy, embroidered with silver thread along the edges.

Around his neck hung a silver pendant bearing the inverted pentagram, and on his chest, stitched in crimson, was the same insignia, the goat-horned circle that seemed to pulse under the candlelight.

Makun knew, he was the one that had called him in, the one in charge of this ritual.

Behind that man, there was a huge door, similar to what he had seen below, a semicircular metallic door with a line in the middle, and in front of him, Makun saw figures kneeling, figures the man had asked to kneel earlier. There were 6 of them, each one cloaked in a completely red gown.

Beside each of those figures were daggers, sharp daggers which had the pentagram insignia imprinted on them.

But what caught Makun’s attention were the three tiny figures in front of those cloaked individuals. They lay there, motionless, bound at the wrists and ankles with rope that looked too tight for their small frames.

Two of them were children he did not recognise, a boy who looked no older than five, dark-skinned with short curly hair, and a girl around six, with tan skin and black braids that spilled across the cold floor. Their eyes were closed, their chests rising and falling slowly, drugged or exhausted, Makun could not tell.

But the third child, the third child he recognised.

Blonde hair, pale skin, small frame curled into itself as if trying to disappear.

Even from this distance, Makun could see the resemblance, the same features he had seen in the family portrait at House 22, the same face that had stared back at him from the photograph on Yohan’s bedside table.

Yohan.

He was alive.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome our guest who will take part in our grand sacrifice." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Clap! Clap! Clap! The people clapped.