“Sequenti die aurora apparente, altis vocibus Baphometh invocaverunt; et nos Deum nostrum in cordibus nostris deprecantes, impetum facientes in eos, de muris civitatis omnes expulimus.^”

[As the next day dawned, they called loudly upon Baphometh; and we prayed silently in our hearts to God, then we attacked and forced all of them outside the city walls.]

...

The donkey’s skin peeled away in long, bloody strips, revealing the flesh beneath.

157 down, three more to go.

His laboured breathing was the only sound breaking the stillness in the room as the stench of sweat and blood filled the air.

The donkey’s eyes watched him with a haunting gaze, accusing him of unspeakable sins.

'"You are a monk," the voice whispered, a faint echo in the chamber. "Don't sin. The god will never forgive you."

Herman's hand trembled as he reached for the next goat, his fingers slick with blood. Whispers slithered through his mind, urging him to abandon his task, to flee into the darkness and leave the Codex unfinished. Doubt gnawed at his resolve, threatening to unravel his sanity.

"You cannot falter now, Herman," Shidonai* hissed, his voice a chilling whisper in the darkness. "The Bible must be completed. You have promised me."

With a swift motion, he plunged his clawed hand into the chest of a nearby donkey, who had been frozen in place by sheer terror. The scream was cut short as Shidonai ripped out its still-beating heart, holding it aloft for Herman to see.

“This is the price of defiance,” Shidonai declared, his voice booming through the chamber. “This is what awaits those who would oppose me.”

As blood dripped from his hand, the room seemed to darken further, shadows coalescing into spectral forms that whispered promises of despair.

Herman knew that better than anyone else. A promise to the Shidonai was meant to last an eternity, or perhaps until lifeform ceased to exist. What could he possibly feel or do? To clean his hands off the sins, the blood seeping into his bones, the greed, the gluttony, the wrath—the seven deadly sins had made it a point to live within him forever.

He longed to scrub his hands clean of the darkness that clung to him, to purge the shadows that danced in his wake. If only he could find salvation in self-condemnation, he would willingly offer himself up to the flames of repentance. Those accusing eyes of his comrades, the whispers of betrayal within his monastery, cast a shadow of doubt upon his resolve.

He knew, if he could, he would rather berate himself. But his own men, his own monastery, believed that he could commit a sin, a heresy. If they could, why not do so?

With unyielding determination, Herman persevered in the task of skinning the goats, their anguish-filled cries merging into a dissonant chorus of suffering. The pages of the Codex Gigas, the Devil's Bible, began to pile up around him, a macabre manuscript of madness and despair.

Sitting on his four, the Shidonai contorted his neck with a sickening crack as he skittered the distance between him and Herman, his movements shadowy and erratic. As he ascended Herman's spine, a trail of icy dread crept along with him. His skin crawled with revulsion, the involuntary tremor in his hand not going unnoticed by the Shidonai.

"A monk and blasphemy? Could the allegations actually hold truth?" The Shidonai hissed.

From the corner of his eyes, Herman scanned the man breathing down his neck. The golden padlock gear, once a symbol of sanctity, now dripped with a sinister, crimson hue, the crystals morphing into sharp, jagged shards that seemed to thirst for his essence. No horns adorned this creature, for its beauty was a facade, a cruel joke played by the darkness. The Shidonai's allure was a mask, hiding the abomination beneath—a visage of perfection crafted to deceive and ensnare.

"Believing in something that the church condemns is heresy. And to embrace a truth not written in the sacred texts is, without doubt, blasphemy," Herman whispered, his voice barely a breath as his fingers continued their futile work.

Wrapping a claw around Herman’s neck, the Shidonai slowly dipped a nail against the skin. A silent scream tore through the monk's soul, yet no sound escaped his lips; the devil's cacophony drowned out all else. The blood dribbled along the length of the finger, and he quickly savoured the taste of iron, its tongue flickering out to catch the drops.

"Do I earn a verse in that holy book of yours?" It sneered, its proximity suffocating. "I dare say I've played quite the pivotal role in this tale."

Wiping his forehead devoid of sweat, Herman nodded his head in approval. There was indeed no denying in it at all. Three hundred and ten pages, a tome of shadowed lore, on the brink of completion, a final chapter to pour.

“A verse? People won’t understand the reality behind it, my Lord. Are you sure a verse would do?” He muttered.

A second nail made its way beneath his skin, and Herman hissed in pain. He could feel Shidonai think, the cogs moving in his brain as he lapped the blood off his finger again.

“What do you suggest then, Monk?”

"A painting," Herman proposed with a fervour born of desperation. "The world remains blind to your guise. They must see you in all your dread glory."

Warm breaths caressed the nape of his neck, moist and bitter.

"Will it instil terror? Very well, let me adopt a guise that will haunt their waking dreams and plague their nights."

In the suffocating darkness of the room, Shidonai's silhouette was barely discernible as he scuttled into the dark corner. The absence of magic was palpable; no ethereal glow or pyrotechnic metamorphosis graced his transformation. Yet the air was thick with the cacophony of clinks and cracks, the harrowing symphony of fracturing bones. A mere minute elapsed before he emerged once more.

Herman's breath hitched, his pulse thundering in his ears as an invisible rope seemed to tighten around his neck.

Despite his human-like proportions, there was nothing humane about him. His hands and feet bore only four twisted fingers and toes each, each tipped with razor-sharp claws that gleamed ominously in the dim light.

Towering horns, drenched in spilled blood, erupted from his skull, spiralling skyward.

Yet it was his mouth that instilled the deepest terror. A sinister grin stretched across his face, unveiling a serrated row of fangs, each one a needle ready to inflict agony. From the corners of his mouth slithered twin tongues, their vermilion tips writhing with the promise of unspeakable atrocities.

“Do I scare you enough, Monk?”

But he chose to remain silent.

Herman's silence was not a choice; it was a compulsion wrought from terror. With trembling hands, he turned the pages of his freshly inked manuscript to a page where the glory of the heavens graced the skinned giant. Seeking the void of the opposite leaf, he grasped the quill—a relic of bone—and submerged it into the sanguine well of ink. The page drank deeply of the blood as he began to etch the visage of the once exalted seraph.

The monk felt a shiver go down his spine as he drew the outline of the exalted seraph with his quivering fingers, feeling as though a phantom hand was stroking his soul. In that moment, his once brilliant mind, a haven of boundless knowledge, seemed to darken into a shadowy maze of torment, where every thought was a haunting spectre, every whisper a chilling prophecy of his own downfall.

Long had the quill slipped from his grasp, his gaze now hollow, eyes stained with the crimson of madness. What monstrosity had Herman wrought upon the page?

Poised in a ghastly stance, his limbs were raised in scornful jest to the heavens above, the picture he conjured was a grotesque masterpiece. Wrapped in nothing but a white loincloth, marked with the red comma-shaped dashes. They were ermine tails, emblems of his reign over the nether realms of despair and anarchy.

His eyes, small yet filled with a chilling cruelty, bore crimson pupils that seemed to pierce through the very soul of those unfortunate enough to meet his gaze. His ears, large and pointed, were tinged with the same shade of red as his horns, a cruel reminder of his infernal heritage.

“You could be a painter of this era, eh, Monk?”

Shidonai had crept back, right in front of him, again adorned in the old golden gear.

“Is it complete now?”

“Yes, my lord,” Herman nodded.

With a mangled contour of his body, Shidonai’s neck elongated unnaturally, his head descending over the parchment like a predator surveying its prey. The gleam in his eyes was not just appalling—it was otherworldly, a pair of baleful orbs that radiated malice.

“You were right, monk. The people need to know me everywhere, be it among the living, in the bowels of hell, or in the realms of heaven.” His words slithered through the air, leaving a trail of dread.

The heaven? The monk’s skin crawled with fear. What did he mean by the heaven?

“You can ask me, don’t force yourself too much, eh?” Shidonai’s laughter was a cacophony of madness. “I merely wish to return to my abode, from whence I was exiled. My father would be ecstatic to relinquish the throne to me.”

Shidonai's grin was a devious show. "I think I am the ideal heir to the kingdom. Do you not believe so? Imagine if everyone prayed to me in my name, their heads bent in dread and their hearts hammering with fear!"

In that moment, Herman knew that this being sought not just dominion over mortals but also aspired to annex the celestial order, to reign supreme over both heaven and hell with an iron fist soaked in blood.

“Now, monk,” Shidonai hissed, his voice a symphony of nightmares, “you will be the herald of my ascension. You will spread the gospel of fear, and they will worship me as their new deity.”

The realisation struck Herman with the force of a chaos, his soul soaked with guilt and horror. He had been deceived. His hand was guided not by some godly muses but by the infernal whispers of Shidonai. Each word he wrote was a curse, each stanza a link in a chain that would bind mankind to an eternity of agony.

The scriptures he had penned, once thought to be a work of divine inspiration, now revealed themselves to be the most unholy of texts. The Devil’s Bible, a tome of darkness that would aid in an age of suffering.

What had he done?

Shidonai’s eyes burned with satisfaction as he reached out a clawed hand to claim the book. But Herman’s stare turned to steel. “Over my dead body,” he thundered, his voice echoing with an unearthly resolve.

With a swift motion, he grabbed the tumbler of blood ink and threw it into the flames, the inferno consuming the ink in a burst of searing light.

"No!"

With desperate ferocity, Herman ripped at the book, two sheets at a time. His fingers clawing through pages as if tearing through flesh. He gnashed his teeth, biting down on the parchment, each sheet screeching like tormented souls as he shredded them between his jaws.

Oh, he was sinning! Eating the skin of another animal being a monk. He was doing the crime of hell.

Shidonai struggled against the invisible bonds that held him, his infernal energy crackling in the air. “You fool!” he bellowed. “You think your petty sacrifice will save you? You have only sealed your fate!”

But nothing could stop Herman anymore.

As Herman continued to consume the cursed pages, his body began to convulse violently. The forbidden knowledge contained within the book was not meant for consumption, and it ravaged him from the inside out. His veins bulged, blackened by the vile ink, and his eyes turned a deep shade of crimson as if stained by the blood he had ingested.

The monk’s body twisted and expanded, grotesque appendages sprouting from his flesh as he let out a guttural scream that shook the very foundations of the chamber.

Tears pooled at his eyes, but he kept eating those sheets, one after another. He would rather be walled up than hand over the book to the prince of darkness.

And death had to come, so why not let the last moments of his life be the cure for his sins?