The frightening ritual continues...

Everyone except the old gray-haired elf leaves the room, going through a secret passage in the wall.

Lenoater places a small black crystal near the head of each captive. Then he stands in the center of the room (in a small depression in the floor). He opens the book and begins to read in a monotonous, hoarse voice the words of some ancient language. This is completely different from modern Elvish. Only a few words are remotely similar. This is probably some kind of ancient dialect of elven speech, used in complex magical rituals.

These words make your head feel heavy. It's like the blood in your veins is starting to boil.

You try to twitch.

Unsuccessfully.

The magical paralysis spell has not yet expired.

And the shackles on your hands and on your feet have not disappeared.

The sound of the voice of the old gray-haired elf mage seems to penetrate into the depths of your consciousness.

Despite your complete lack of understanding of the meaning of the words, you feel that the impact on your body and on your mind is increasing every minute.

And this impact is clearly detrimental.

After a couple of minutes, you feel some liquid flowing from your nose and from your eyes.

This…

This is your blood.

Exactly the same processes occur with the other five silent prisoners.

Streams of blood become more and more abundant; some of them flow to the black crystals. Another part of the streams of blood flows onto the stone floor and rushes to the center of the room. There is a small recess in the floor in which Lenoater stands. These processes soon result in his feet soon standing in a pool of blood.

The gray-haired elf continues to continuously read the magic book.

You feel dizzy. You feel pain all over your body. It's as if someone is burning your flesh with a red-hot iron from inside your body. Only these sensations of hellish pain are not concentrated in a specific area of ​​the body - these sensations are characteristic of every small part of your body.

After a minute the pain becomes simply unbearable.

If you could scream, your frantic scream of pain would probably be heard even outside the castle.

But you can't even scream.

Magical paralysis. Your tormentors have foreseen everything.

From hellish pain you lose the sense of time

How long does this **** last? Half an hour? Hour? Day?

The words of an ominous magical ritual continue to ring in your head.

Finally, you see a stream of powerful magical energy erupt from the book.

Black rays of magical energy pierce the bodies of all six prisoners.

Including your body.

At this second, you realize that the pain you experienced earlier was just a kind of “prelude”.

The subsequent sensations cannot be adequately described in words. We can only say that because of these sensations, your consciousness crosses the line that separates a normal person from madness.

Black rays, like monstrous tropical snakes, entangle the bodies of the six captives.

The flow of blood from the bodies increases several times.

Then the black rays come into contact with the black crystals.

The bodies of the prisoners begin to tremble in convulsions. Even the stone slabs are shaking. The stone floor is shaking.

The black rays connect with each other into a kind of sphere, in the center of which is Lenoater Hyureeno.

A powerful flash of magical energy.

Six black crystals fly at an incredibly high speed towards the old gray-haired elf.

The sharp edges of the crystals pierce the Lenoater's heart.

The book falls from his hands onto the stone floor.

Blood began to flow from the terrible wound, but... very quickly this process stopped.

The blood quickly coagulates and turns into some kind of dried black liquid.

The old elf's body is surrounded by black rays. This body rose up and hovered in the air.

At the same time, the blood vessels on the prisoners' bodies begin to burst from incredibly high pressure.

Ten seconds later, the bodies of each of the six prisoners are just pieces of bloody meat. Instead of eyes, on their faces there is only a disgusting mess of mucus and blood.

Meanwhile, the old elf's body undergoes a frightening metamorphosis.

His skin shrinks to a state similar to a mummified corpse. The eyes become completely black, the whites of the eyes simply disappear. Gray hair falls out. In some places, bones begin to grow and pierce the thinning skin. However, no bleeding occurs. The six black crystals that pierced the elf’s heart are fused into a kind of homogeneous spherical mass of a black hue. This black sphere also hovered in the air, as if under the influence of a levitation spell.

Soon something unnatural and disgusting happens.

The body of the elf, who should clearly be dead after a terrible fatal wound to the heart, begins to twitch in convulsions.

Bones bend in the most unnatural directions.

Then the eyes and mouth of this... "creature" open.

That creature, who was previously an elf named Lenoater Hyureeno, reaches out to the black sphere (its size is about ten centimeters in diameter) and takes it.

The loud voice of the creature, in which there is a sound of gloomy triumph, says: “My plan has come true... The Ritual of Endless Night has been successfully completed! Now I am freed from the unfair fate of a mortal being. My centuries of experience, my great knowledge and my family's heritage will no longer be lost to the effects of time! Now I just need to organize reliable protection for my phylactery...”

So, Lenoater Hyureeno achieved his goal.

And what happened to the half-elf, who was called Jerome Hyureeno?

Nothing good.

His lifeless body is now just a useless piece of bloody meat.

His soul is destroyed during the Ritual of Endless Night.

Jerome Hyureeno's life came to a tragic end. Ironically, his desire to find his family led to his painful ****.