After making sure that his sister was feeling better, Tino rested knowing that things were becoming interesting.
Only, he was only able to rest for a few short minutes before he had a nightmare.
Everything around him was gone and replaced by an infernal hell full of lava and molten rock.
"W-where is this," Tino's gaze swept the surroundings in confusion.
"Argh! What is this feeling in my chest?!"
There was something wrong with this dream.
It felt too real.
Tino's focus was solely on something in the distance: a moving body.
He immediately began sprinting without so much as a thought as his body instinctually leapt at the frightened creature.
Said creature was humanoid and had the intelligence to show fear in their eyes, but there was something off about them.
Despite the size of the demon that Tino was currently charging at, it seemed to carry an innate fear for his smaller form.
Tino did not have the wherewithal to rationalize the actions he was taking.
He felt hunger, so it was only natural for him to consume that which was before him.
His razor-sharp teeth tore through the body of the larger demon and the blood and gore that passed through his lips seemed to taste like strawberry jam.
He did not spare any part of the demon and before he knew it, the body was gone like that.
Suddenly, the nightmare ended and Tino heard a voice shouting at him as he awoke.
"Tino! Brother! Wake up!"
Suddenly, Tino shot up after being awoken from the seemingly real nightmare.
"Are you feeling okay," Angie asked while pressing her hand to his head.
"What happened," was all Tino could mutter.
After sizing him up for a moment, Angie pointed to the wooden bed frame and then to her hands.
Tino looked at where she was pointing and was surprised to see long marks carved into the wood.
He then looked at his hands and saw their mangled nails all bloody and broken off.
"I did this?"
"Who else, dummy? Are you alright?"
As if the nightmare had never happened, Tino's almost forgot of the event, but his body made him sure to remember what occurred.
Only, how was he supposed to explain what happened to Angie?
"I was taken somewhere and it felt so real. There was a creepy looking person and I...," he decided to just come clean, but the words felt tough to get out.
"Weren't you just dreaming. Or was it a nightmare," Angie tried to understand the situation, but the severity of the markings and broken nails made her more worried than judgmental.
"... I ate them," Tino finally finished.
"Okay hold on. Just take a moment and breathe slowly," Angie did her best to comfort him, "Now start from the beginning."
Tino did his best to recount the experience and Angie held his hand the whole time.
While they did this, Estoria yelled from the kitchen, "Angie, is something wrong with your brother?! Breakfast is getting cold and I have to leave soon!"
Seeing as Tino had relaxed a bit after explaining what had happened, Angie responded, "He's sleeping like a log! I'll be down in a second!"
Then she turned to Tino and said softly, "Clean up your hands first and come down when Mom leaves. We can't let her know something happened lest she put together we tried the summoning ritual."
"Alright," Tino was still visibly shaken by the event, but gathered his bearings and cleaned up his mangled hands.
Meanwhile, Angie went downstairs and ate under the watchful gaze of Estoria.
Thankfully, nothing happened and Estoria kissed her forehead before leaving through the front door wearing her usual attire.
"You can come down now," she yelled to her brother.
Tino appeared with bandages over his fingers and silently sat down to eat.
Angie picked up on the strange behavior and spoke after a period of silence, "You know, I've been thinking about the creature you described and although there's no mention of physical description of the summons in any of the books, I'd bet you may have seen a demon."
Tino processed the theory, "I didn't just see one. I was one."
"That's exactly it! I've read that sometimes when dealing with a summon stronger than the summoner they can become possessed by the summon. Something must have happened where you connected to the Demonic Realm and somehow reverse possessed a demon there."
"But that... How would I have...," Tino wanted to reject the idea, but nothing he came up with contradicted the prospect.
"Just come with me. It's obvious you haven't been studying as hard as I have."
"You're just too into this stuff!"
"Says the one who used his blood for a ritual!"
"You!"
After their little skirmish, the twins entered the hidden room and began looking for everything relating to demons and possession.
It took a while to say the least, but eventually they came together to read a book with limited pictures of the summons available.
When they flipped to the page on demons, they saw a humanoid scrawled in red with sharp teeth.
Immediately, Tino's face paled.
It looked exactly as it did during his possession.
"This is what you saw? It looks so scary."
"It was the one that was scared. It was scared of me. Of what I would do to it," Tino held his stomach, "Of what I did do to it."
Angie took pause as she heard him repeat what he did with the same reluctance.
It was one thing for him to have simply killed it, but devouring another alive was something that he had no prior experience doing.
He could chock it down to just doing as his demonic instincts were designed to, but deep down he knew something was wrong.
He enjoyed it.
It was a slight change, but he felt stronger after consuming the demon.
Having the strength to overpower another enticed him.
"Let's try the summoning again. This time I'll focus on that feeling I had to find something more during the ritual."
"Something more? What are you talking about," Angie was starting to be concerned for her brother, "You're creeping me out."
"I just want to see if I can do something more than just possess a demon," Tino tried to sound normal, but his words betrayed him, "I want to become a demon."
"Do what now?!"
If Angie was ever concerned for his mental state, now was the time.
"Trust me, Angie. I've made a connection to the demons and now, I can feel a change inside me. Like I can grow stronger if I just take a leap of faith."
Angie sighed, "I get that you want to become stronger— I want the same too— but I thought that we would do so by becoming witches," she desperately tried to talk him out of doing anything reckless.
"You know me, Angie. This witch thing is something you're clearly good at, but not me. I have to find my own thing, and this just so happens to resonate with me."
Angie could not bring herself to argue when Tino sounded so confident in his path.
"Okay, but how are we going to do it this time? Last time we did it, it only gave you the connection to the demons. Do you have a plan this time?"
"Let's just start the ritual like before. I'll let you know if I feel something similar to before."
Just like before, Tino cut himself to supply the blood for the summoning circle.
'I wonder if using my blood is what forged the connection?'
Since he was not about to ask Angie to cut herself, he put the thought in the back of his mind.
He had to focus.
Unlike last time, he was more familiar with the feeling and could tell if something was happening with the summoning.
With the summoning circle complete, the twins looked at each other before collectively taking a breath to calm their nerves.
A new question entered Angie's mind when she thought of the terrifying description of the demons: what if the summoned was stronger than they could handle?
Still, she wanted to support her brother in finding a way to bolster his strength while straying from the typical ways of witchcraft.
Who knows? Maybe Tino would find a way to harness the demonic strength like in his nightmare-like possession.
There was only one way to find out as the twins began chanting the lines in tandem.