Blood on the Threshold

The city’s edges bled into black as Shane trudged home from another shift, adrenaline burned out into a heavy, chemical exhaustion. He watched for shapes in the gutter, half-expecting long shadows to leap between parked cars, claws rasping, eyes wide with ancient hunger. No luck. Just rain, and the echo of his own too-loud heart, pacing him down cracked sidewalks.

He fumbled with his key, breath fogging in damp, sour air. His phone vibrated—unknown number. Shane's thumb hovered.

He pressed answer. Static, then Sonia’s voice, thin and shaking: “Shane… it’s Eric.”

Something sank inside him. Eric Martinez. Old friend, medic from his early days—used to sneak Shane booze on the city’s bloodiest nights, back when hope wasn’t an exhausted joke. Shane cleared his throat. “What happened?”

She paused, breathing rough. “He’s dead. They found him this morning in his apartment. I—Shane, they said it looked like…the warehouse. Jesus, I saw the pictures.”

The words almost slid past him. “What do you mean, looked?”

Another pause. Then she whispered, “It wasn’t a normal murder—there were symbols. Glyphs—like the ones you drew. Someone skinned his chest, carved spirals in the walls. He wasn’t alone. His dog… Oh god, Shane, it’s not safe.”

A silence thickened between them, wadded with things neither wanted to admit. The street’s sodium haze made halos on rain-slick brick; in his mind, Eric’s laughter flickered and went cold.

“I gotta go,” Shane managed. “Be careful.”

The first funeral was small, just a handful of battered medics in borrowed dress clothes, faces pinched with grief and something sourer. Shane stood near the back, hands jamming his pockets, bite marks pressed into his tongue to keep the scream inside. It rained. It always rained now. Beside the gray casket, Eric’s mother mouthed prayers, lips trembling. Someone sobbed. Someone else muttered, "God’s abandoned this city."

No one disagreed.

Afterwards, Shane stared through the wet windshield for what felt like hours. The bloody glyphs itched on his arm, phantom heat pulsing through fabric. He scrolled through news stories; another body had turned up in a burned-out church on the east side, face flensed away. The same crimson spirals etched in melted pews. And another—teenager found in the abandoned subway, skin stripped, chest cavity open. All in three torrid, endless days.

That night, he dreamed Eric was calling from the morgue drawer, voice muffled, pleading. The lid wouldn’t open. The symbols glowed inside his eyelids. Shane woke, sobbing, and ripped off his shirt. The glyphs were darker now—moving, almost—curling toward his heart.

The city buzzed with static dread. Cops prowled with twitching trigger fingers. News crews descended, sniffing for spectacle. On the ambulance radio, the CAD screams grew stranger and more frequent: “Male, probable DOA, symbols carved.” “Female, unresponsive, eyes missing.” “Child, alive but catatonic, blood glyphs on face.”

Shane started walking in wide loops after every shift, legs aching, always moving just shy of a run. He avoided Sonia’s calls, dodged the worried texts piling up on his phone. Even the usual haunts shrank away—bars too quiet, side-eye from familiar barkeeps. Marked, he thought. Cursed. Every corner threatened a new darkness.

He almost didn’t notice the woman waiting by the bus stop. Unusual, given her stillness—calm in the swirl of late-night chaos. Black woolen coat; pale face; hair clipped tight, severe as a scalpel. She watched him, did not smile, did not blink.

He tried to slip past, but her voice hooked him: “Mr. Everhart.”

He turned. “Do I know you?”

She, unfazed, extended a business card between two delicate fingers—black with red ink, a clean serif name: Mara Vale, Occult Consultation. On the back, a spiraled glyph. His glyph.

“I have information,” she said quietly. “About the murders. About you.”

Rain thickened, drumming Shane’s hood. “I’m not interested in witchcraft. Not interested in games.”

She smiled—a scalpel smile, quick and precise. “Neither am I. Someone’s opening something that should never open. You saw the glyphs before, yes? You feel them now?”

Shane huffed, backing away. “You got the wrong guy.”

She stepped closer, eyes glittering with a clarity that made him nauseous. “Eric Martinez was not the first. Won’t be the last if we don’t act. You are bleeding prophecy, Mr. Everhart. You need answers. I have them.”

He found himself unable to move, a mouse beneath the gaze of a descending hawk. Twice in his life—his wife’s final hour, the warehouse’s blood—he’d felt this helpless.

“Fine,” he rasped. “Talk.”

She gestured to a battered café, its yellow light a wound in the rain. Inside, only two elderly men arguing chess, and a barista half-asleep behind the espresso machine. Mara ordered black coffee. Shane’s hands shook.

She took a battered folder from her bag—a swelling collage of torn photos, police reports, charcoal sketches. She opened it precisely. The first photo: Eric, chest splayed, glyphs crawling over flensed ribs. Shane’s breath stuttered.

“The circle has started bleeding,” she said. “The murders are increasing in frequency and… artistry. There’s a progression. Each ritual is more elaborate, more cruel.”

She tapped grainy photos—spirals on brick, runes etched in skin, each murder culminating at the site of an ancient gate. “Someone is feeding an old story. Ritual sacrifice to open the Hellgate. The glyphs are invitations—wards corrupted into summons.”

Shane ran a shaking hand through his hair. “You’re not police. Why me?”

She closed the folder. “Because you’re marked. Because the prophecy speaks of a bloodline—the Last Bastion. You, Mr. Everhart. The key to closing what others hope to open.”

He laughed, bitter, voice scraping. “I don’t want it.”

“No one does. But it doesn’t matter.” She leaned forward, conspiratorial, voice hushed: “There’s a text. Pre-Christian. Spoke of a city built on fault lines—between earth and deeper fire. In every iteration of the Gate, there’s always one the demons can’t root out: the Bastion. Last defense. Final meal. If you fail, the city burns and Hell walks.”

She produced a stained, ancient page from her bag:

"When the blood mark appears and the First Seal breaks, the Last Bastion stands at the threshold—a world’s last hope, or first sacrifice.”

Shane stared at his hands. The glyphs itched, an ache crawling beneath the skin.

He poured the rest of his coffee down his throat. “Let’s say I believe you. What then? I can’t fight what I can’t see.”

Mara’s smile thinned. “I can show you. But it comes at a price. Knowledge has teeth. You ready for scars?”

He almost laughed—almost cried. “Already got a few.”

The ritual was cramped between rotten alley walls behind the café. Mara drew the first glyph in salt, her fingers moving with surgeon’s skill. Shane’s body betrayed him, legs rigid, blood thrumming electric below the rain. On her command, he pressed his thumb to the wax-wrapped scrap Callahan had given him—fresh blood oozed out, hot and viscous.

The world buckled. Shadows lengthened. Steam coiled from gutter cracks, taking on forms—faces half-remembered from childhood nightmares, crawling with tongues and eyes. Mara whispered words not meant for lungs. Shane felt the glyphs on his arm writhe. Somewhere, Eric’s scream knitted through the city’s bones, a note Shane alone could hear.

He dropped to his knees. Mara’s hand brushed his shoulder, grounding. The alley stank of iron and rot. Time stuttered, then snapped.

He saw—

—a distant chamber, deep below ruined stone, where a gate pulsed, alive and wet. Figures circled it, mouths sewn shut, eyes burning with joy. Demons in priest robes, waiting.

—his own face, cracking, being hollowed out by tongues of flame.

—Mara, split into two: one side caring, one grinning wide as the gate.

—the world ending in red and black, a city torn into ribbons, just before dawn.

The vision faded with a smell like scorched hair. Shane gagged. He fumbled for Mara’s hand. She caught him, pulse steady.

She whispered, “That’s what’s coming. Unless we kill the summoner. Unless we seal the threshold.”

He wiped his mouth, sick and shaking. “Who is it?”

Mara looked away. “A name keeps surfacing. Azazel. An old lord. He manipulates from behind the cults, always seeking the weak links in guardian lines.”

Something clicked. The missing children, the waves of deaths. Everything forming a pattern. Shane squeezed her hand harder than he meant.

“Then we find him.”

She smiled again—this time, a touch of hope beneath the exhaustion. “You’ll need everything I can teach you. Blood magic. Reading the bones. Ritual combat. It will hurt.”

He croaked, “I think the hurt means I’m still in it.”

That night, as they parted at the mouth of the alley, Shane saw the city anew. Every shadow twitched with bloody intent; each window flickered with faces not quite human. But through the dread, something cold and sharp had taken hold—purpose, however ragged.

He was marked, hunted, gutted of old life. But he was not alone now. Mara’s number weighed heavy in his pocket, a tiny talisman. The glyphs on his arm pulsed, no longer a wound but a burning sigil. Somewhere, Eric’s soul waited for justice. Somewhere darker, a gate throbbed, hungry—and, for now, closed.

As Shane walked the blood-slick streets, hunted and haunted, he swore he would not let the threshold splinter without a fight.