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"The spell should last until sun up, then you'll lose your arm. When the sun touches the horizon graverot will take your lungs. It would be a painful way to die; are you sure you want to go through with it?"

He said yes. A broken necromancer whose forbidden magic instills fear into mortals, a ratfolk that lurked beneath the sewers of the lynching field, an outcast from the warren for bringing human eyes towards the secretive subterranean rodents. He said yes.

"Then I agree to your contract necromancer." The shadows grew darker. The padding of paws, the clicking of nails, the shuffling of boots being dragged along the ground, were muffled in his deafening ears. The burden on his back was something he'll die to bear, perhaps the only thing that understood the weight of such a load.

A human child, his belly was sealed up by sanitized cloth and bone needles. Humans always thought that because the necromancer calls upon the realm of the dead and can temporarily bring the deceased to life, that they're filthy creatures, the ratfolk the filthiest of all. Yet he knew the importance of cleaning wounds, and necromancy can kill bacteria like it can kill a cow. The rat also knew anatomy from dissecting corpses the crime lords drop in the sewers outside the lynch field.

But the necromancer's training in tending the living and undead did little to change the curse. The boy's eyes were bleeding white in moonlight seeping through the drains, locked on the ground, gazing through cobblestone into the loneliest chamber of hell.

The ratfolk sits the child under the pale light, his mouth agape and drooling terror. Blood pulses from the rat's broken arm, held together by ebon tendrils. He'll paint his body with sigils, signing his legs to the earth to bind, his arms bear the contract. The rat will sign the use of his eyes to the boy, he won’t need them soon. He bound his mouth with a towel so no one hears his screams, and he prays they don't slip in range of his incisors and paint as a spell on that too should he need to be contained. All this painting was done with the copious amounts of blood that comes from his decimated arm.

The tail is free to paint with the scarlet ink, a fresh pool is donated from a crack in his shoulder. The pain wants to dominate his mind, but he's out of curses he can cast on himself to kill the nerves connecting his arm to his torso; he relies on will power when he starts the circle. His good hand paints the finer markings while his tail makes the rings. The rat's ears listen for intruders trying to subvert the filthy domain to claim the rodent's charge.

The binding words marked on his legs branch through the ground and root into his veins. The contract on his arms are read through the bound muzzle.

"A soul fragmented and stolen

the promise a cursed god's name

bound put together by the shadow of my remains

The prize of eternity will be given through our trade to this child

the bane

and the demon once it's sane

Therefore, I open the Dread Master's Door

take my life and make them whole."

===

The boy awakens, a white foam in his mouth and the blurry rays of first light in his eyes. He's sitting on the mossy stone of the sewer, off a crumbled drain filled with filth. At his legs he hears the shambling clatter of bones hitting rock, a slightly fuzzy body laying on his lap. The rat's arm was gone, eaten by umbral spirits; *the lungs are promised next* he hears a voice whisper at his back. The rat's breathing was shallow, his eyes open, his gaze is filled with relief, like a repentant criminal.

"What's happening rat!?" He panics. "What have you done? Why am I in the sewer?"

"I drove my mate away by my single minded focus on the gates that lock the world we know and the many worlds beyond the door. The one door that opens the way to all worlds was the Dread Master's Door; death's door. She went on without me, they grew without me and she died without me. They would've died too were it not for your mercy. I watched, too late to neither of them, but you were there in time rescue the pups."

The child remembered finding a bunch of rats attached to their dead mother; her belly split open. He recalls bringing them to his hide away. Then there was a man, some pain, talking, and now he's here, sitting with a ratfolk, his eyes now pallid black pearls, with a smile on his muzzle.

Stand. A voice commands him and he'll follow. The movement horrified him. We need to leave. Now.

He'll run, deeper down the sewer with the dim light becoming as clear as an open sunny day.

"What's happening!?" The terrified child asks the darkness.

You're staying alive!