THE SUMMONING

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This is a romance fantasy…

Specifically made for a competition🤭

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The kingdom of Elaris had not witnessed a natural moon in one hundred years. The sky remained permanently bruised, a perpetual expanse of dried blood known as the Blood Veil. To the farmers, it was a harbinger of famine; to the priesthood, a divine judgment; to the children, merely a grim curiosity.

For Eleanor Whitaker, the Royal Archivist, the sky was a professional frustration. At twenty-three, Eleanor’s life was defined by ink-stained fingers and a mind that favored empirical evidence over superstition. While the court panicked, Eleanor recorded data: crop yields, mortality rates, and the frequency of the King’s sighs during council meetings. Lately, her entries were repetitive: “Still no moon. Still no answers.”

Seeking evidence that the court historians had missed, Eleanor found herself in the castle’s Restricted Section at midnight. The heavy oak door, sealed for half a century, yielded to a key she had scavenged from a drawer marked: “Do Not Use Unless The World Is Ending.” The Blood Veil, she reasoned, qualified.

Dust motes danced in the pale, crimson light filtering through the high windows. The shelves groaned under the weight of grimoires bound in leather, cloth, and substances she dared not contemplate. In the darkest corner, behind a loose stone, she discovered it: a volume bound in obsidian, lacking a title, its spine crawling with silver runes that seemed to shift like agitated insects.

The air around the book was unnaturally frigid. As her fingers brushed the cover, the temperature in the room plummeted, turning her breath into a frantic mist. The first page bore an inscription: Pacts of the Fae. For Use in Times of Desperation Only.

Rationality urged her to replace it. Desperation, however, pushed her forward. She read the binding incantation aloud. The candles extinguished in unison.

A shadow detached itself from the gloom a figure six feet tall, draped in armor forged from night and starlight. His features were sharp, his hair the color of midnight, and his storm-gray eyes possessed the weight of centuries. He looked upon Eleanor not as a person, but as a minor inconvenience.

"You called," he stated, his voice a low vibration that resonated in her chest.

"W-who are you? And what are you doing here? ," Eleanor stammered, scrambling backward.

"You spoke the binding words," he countered, stepping over the fallen book. "That constitutes a contract."

"I ask, who are you?"

"King Alaric Thorn, of the Fae Court of Night," he replied. "And you, human, have just agreed to shatter a century-old curse."

"I did no such thing!"

Alaric retrieved the volume, flipping through the pages with impatient grace. "The Blood Veil was woven by the Winter Witch one hundred years ago. It will not dissipate until two souls one human, one fae fall in love freely and completely before the next full moon. That moon rises in thirty days."

"That is impossible," Eleanor insisted. "I don’t love you. I barely know you."

"Sentiment is irrelevant," Alaric said, gesturing toward the blood-stained window. "The kingdom is dying. If we fail, Elaris will become a tomb of ice."

"Why me?" she whispered, her skepticism fraying.

"Because you possess hope," Alaric replied, his gaze momentarily softening. "And hope is the one thing the Winter Witch could never extinguish."

With that, he dissolved into a swirl of shadow, leaving Eleanor alone with a cursed book and the crushing weight of a kingdom's future.

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