The Salem Ritual
Introduction
There are moments when history bleeds. When the world, already cracking under its own weight, is split open by one fatal decision.
The Salem Ritual was such a moment.
Thirty years ago, the world was unmade.
The mages had vanished from mortal memory; ghosts of a forgotten war, erased by the Inquisitions. They were meant to be extinct. Broken. Powerless. But when the Immortals began their silent war, twisting nations, igniting a third world war not with fangs but with whispered commands, the mages stirred once again.
They had sworn never to interfere. But the world was burning, and they could no longer look away. In Salem, they gathered. Not to reclaim their former glory, but to end it.
And they knew the cost.
This would be their last spell.
But fate does not bend easily. The ritual was never completed. Betrayal cracked the circle. Magic, raw and furious, surged uncontrolled. The veil tore wider than ever before.
The world ended that night.
And something else began.
A Law Broken
“We built this law to protect ourselves. Now we break it to protect the world.”
For centuries, they watched from the shadows. The Inquisitions had nearly destroyed them. Fire, fear, and steel had driven them into obscurity, and from that silence, a single law was forged: Never again meddle in the affairs of men.
It was not wisdom that birthed the law; it was survival. And for a time, that was enough.
But the world did not remain quiet.
As the third great war ignited, the veil between nations tore like wet paper. Missiles fell. Cities vanished. Entire peoples were erased. Though the cause seemed rooted in human hatred, the mages saw deeper. They saw the fingerprints of something older. The Immortals were the unseen architects of this destruction.
The world burned, and mankind never knew why. But the mages did. And for the first time since the flames of the Inquisition, they spoke.
They spoke of duty. Of penance. Of the ancient pact they once held with the world. And as the ashes fell and the sky burned with nuclear fire, they agreed: the Immortals had to be stopped, and magic was the weapon.
The Gathering
Long before the witch trials twisted its name into a curse, Salem was sacred ground for the mages. It was a place where the Veil between worlds thinned like breath on cold glass. Here the spirit realm brushed against the waking world, and echoes answered when none had spoken. It was here that laylines met and the first mages gathered. It was be here the last of the mages would return.
The Steps of the Ritual
Drawn in a perfect convergence of the ley lines that met beneath Salem. Each arc of the circle bore the essence of a Pillar:
For Matter: powdered stone, molten iron, and the ash of a starved forest.
For Spirit: grave-dust, holy oil, and the breath of the dying.
For Continuum: sand from an ancient hourglass, a broken compass, and water caught during a complete planet alignment.
For Chaos: blood ink, shattered mirrors, and whispers murmured in sleep.
Within each quadrant, the most attuned mages took their place; souls who had become one with their Pillar.
-On the Preparation of the Salem Rite
(As compiled from fragmented recollections, scorched tomes, and the dreams of survivors.)
The covens- fragmented, bitter and mistrustful- answered the call.
The Silent Order came, with grim resolve, its elders hollow-eyed from centuries of secrecy. The Verdant Chorus, cloaked in vines and grief, emerged from the wilds. The Ashen Circle descended from their crumbled towers of vanity and ambition. Even the Harbingers, those who whispered too long of doom, walked among them; half-shadow, half-memory.
They came carrying knowledge lost to time, fragments of spells older than language, relics buried beneath fallen cities. They came with a plan: one last spell to unmake the Immortal threat. A ritual to tear open the Veil, draw the vampire spirits from their rotting vessels, and seal them forever beyond the reach of the living. But such a spell demanded more than unity.
It demanded a sacrifice.
To weave the Four Pillars of magic- Matter, Spirit, Continuum, and Chaos- meant violating their deepest taboos. Chaos magic, long banned since Alexandria's ruin, would serve as the ritual's core. And so, they sought those once exiled from magekind: wildcasters, breakers, children of a forgotten art. Some came willingly. Others had to be dragged from the edges of nightmares.
It took years. Years of secrets, negotiations and betrayals narrowly avoided. The world above burned while they toiled beneath it, unseen. Every moment delayed risked extinction.
But at last, they were ready.
The seals were drawn.
The chants were known.
And Salem waited for the last spell the mages would ever cast.
The Betrayal
There is no record of who struck first.
No name carved into blame. No final confession. Only echoes burnt into stone, twisted into the bones of Salem, retold in dreams that end in screams.
The ritual began. The Veil trembled like skin beneath a blade. Magic surged in a perfect harmony not heard since the Age of Wonders. For a moment, it worked.
Then someone stepped out.
Or someone lashed out.
A ward shattered.
A voice faltered.
A hand that should have been steady was suddenly red with blood.
Then something shifted.
In the flickering shadows, the Immortals moved; a quiet, ancient storm. They had been waiting, watching, knowing what was to come. They had no wish to be swallowed by the spirit realm. They had no desire to see their immortality undone. And so, they struck.
Some say it was a mage; perhaps a traitor, swayed by promises long whispered in the dark. Others believe the Immortals had infiltrated the gathering long before the ritual began.
But it doesn’t matter now.
What mattered was the circle. And it was shattered.
The Wyld surged; not as a punishment, but as a scream of cosmic violation. Salem was teared down. Trees blackened in an instant. Stars flickered. Bones split from the ground, reaching toward a sky that was no longer real.
The spirit world tore through the Veil unbidden.
And it was not empty.
The Cataclysm
The mages were the first to suffer.
Some were incinerated in an instant, their bodies reduced to nothing but ash. Others were torn apart, their flesh dissolving into arcane symbols, their voices silenced by a scream that never ended. A few were pulled into the Veil; trapped not in death, but in a place between worlds, forever bound to the chasm they had opened.
The walls that had kept the world intact were obliterated. The boundaries between realms shattered. Horrors from the other side bled through. Forgotten gods, twisted by time and isolation, slipped through the breach. Darker things- nameless, impossible beings- crawled from beyond.
The world unraveled in the blink of an eye.
And in the midst of this devastation, the Immortals- though weakened- remained. Their reign was far from over. The mages had failed.
As storms darker than any before ravaged the skies, cities burned. Humanity, already broken by the war, collapsed into ruin. Survivors, few and broken, wandered through the ashes of their once-great civilization, helpless to halt the annihilation of everything they had known.
In the ruins, they fight not just for survival, but against the very forces their ancestors had once recognized and feared: the Immortals, the beasts of the Veil, and the magic that now twists the world into something unrecognizable.
On their cracked lips one question lingers:
Is salvation still possible?
When the sky forgets its name and the stars fall like embers, a soul of shattered light shall rise; one not bound by breath or blood.
They will ride the storm, tame the wyld fire, and thread the Veil shut with silent hands.
Not a savior. Not a god.
But the echo of a world refusing to die.
-the final prophecy of the last Diviner
He could taste ash. Not smoke, not fire... ash. As if the world itself had burned to the bone.
Magic howled inside him, no longer a river but a storm. It cracked, it warped, it bled; still beautiful in its agony. He felt it slipping.
The sky split.
The ground wept.
And he, the last to fall, whispered to no one:
"We broke it."
Then silence. And then...
-thoughts of a dying mage
I love a good post-apocalyptic story, and this was captivating from start to finish.
I am very happy to see you like it! I really have high hopes for this world and the story behind it. Your support means a lot <3
Come visit my world of Kena'an for tales of fantasy and magic!
Or, if you want something darker, Crux Umbra awaits.