Danny's fingers clenched around his bracelet, sweat dripping down his temple. Samuel stood beside him, chest heaving, eyes darting across the rotting walls of the abandoned house. Their wrists pulsed with a faint, eerie glow—but the Hell Gate refused to open.
"Something's interfering with our power."
Danny gritted his teeth. They weren't alone.
A shrill, bone-piercing wail erupted from the shadows.
The creature twitched on the floor like a half-crushed insect. It looked human—but it wasn't. Its skin was pale and raw, like flesh freshly peeled from a corpse. Its limbs were too short, its fingers too long, nails blackened like burnt bone. Beady red eyes gleamed with something ancient and malicious.
Samuel bent down slightly, sneering at the wretched little thing. "This? Just an F-Class demon?" He reached out—just to test its reaction.
Big mistake.
The creature's jaw snapped open—wider, wider, wider—until its entire face was nothing but a gaping maw of jagged, blood-slick fangs. A scream erupted from deep within its throat—high-pitched, unnatural, filled with rage and hunger.
Samuel jerked back, but the creature was faster. It lunged.
Danny moved on instinct, swinging his leg. His boot caved in the demon-baby's chest, sending it crashing against the wall. Bones cracked like dried twigs. But instead of falling limp, it crawled up the wall, its shattered ribs snapping back into place, twisting unnaturally like a spider contorting its body.
Samuel stumbled back. "What the actual—"
Danny's bracelet flared. He muttered a spell under his breath—ancient words that burned his tongue. His bracelet morphed, stretching, warping—until it became a massive, obsidian-black blade etched with Hell's sigils.
He swung.
A crescent arc of hellfire shot through the air, roaring toward the demon. The moment it made contact—
The entire room went ice cold.
Not just cold—freezing. Their breath crystallized midair. The walls darkened, twisting as if something was bleeding into reality.
Samuel's scanner started glitching. The readings flickered wildly. The system, which had categorized this thing as F-Class, suddenly shifted.
B-Class.A-Class.S-Class.S-S-S CLASS DETECTED.
A sound rumbled through the house—a deep, inhuman growl that slithered into their bones, vibrating through their marrow.
"WHO IS TRYING TO KILL MY CHILD?"
It wasn't a voice. It was a force.
The air rippled, as if reality itself was suffocating.
Danny's heart slammed against his ribs. He turned, frantically scanning the shadows.
Nothing.
Then—
A grotesque, rotting hand—blackened, clawed, covered in festering sores—burst from the darkness and clamped around their throats.
Danny's feet left the ground. His body dangled midair, the pressure around his neck unbearable. Samuel thrashed beside him, eyes bulging, lips turning blue.
Then came the stench.
Rot. Sulfur. A thousand corpses decaying under the burning sun.
Slowly, something stepped out of the shadows.
The Demon King.
It was huge—towering, its skin flayed and writhing with crawling maggots. Its face was missing. No eyes, no nose, just a gaping, jagged hole that split down its skull, leaking thick, black sludge.
But the worst part?
The voices.
A chorus of whispers screeched from inside its head.
"Run.""Flesh.""Suffer.""Mother—MOTHER, I'M STILL HUNGRY!"
Danny's lungs burned. His vision blurred.
Samuel's body spasmed violently. His scanner kept flashing error codes.
Danny's grip slackened. Was this it?
Was this how they were going to die?
His mind was slipping, thoughts fading into static.
Then—
A whisper.A voice.A memory.
"You wanna know how we got into this mess?""It all started five months ago."
And just like that—his mind was yanked into the past.
Five Months Ago
Danny adjusted his glasses, scrolling through a list of trending YouTube topics. "Music? Oversaturated. Cooking? Too much work. Social commentary? We'd get arrested in a week."
Samuel, lounging on a bean bag, flipped through a film magazine. "We need something viral, man. Something that gets people hooked. Horror is big—ghost hunts, paranormal investigations. Look at all those fake ghost-hunting channels."
Danny raised an eyebrow. "You don't even believe in ghosts."
"Of course not," Samuel grinned. "But people watch horror for the thrill, not the truth. It's all about atmosphere."
Danny sighed, pushing his laptop away. "Fine, but where are we supposed to get ghost-hunting material? We can't just summon spirits out of thin air."
As if on cue, Samuel's gaze landed on a dusty old book sitting on a forgotten shelf in the indie bookstore they were in. The cover was thick, cracked leather, and strange burnt symbols lined the edges. No title. Just an eerie presence.
"Or maybe we can," he muttered, pulling it down.
Samuel flipped it open. "'Guide to Hell Entities.' This is perfect! It's got everything—demon names, summoning rituals, containment methods. We can use this as the foundation for our videos."
Danny hesitated. "You realize we'd be faking everything, right?"
"So does everyone else! But we'll do it better—props, research, real storytelling. We don't just pretend to see ghosts, we make people believe they're real."
Danny ran a hand through his hair. He had always been the logical one, the skeptic. Raised in a wealthy family, his parents wanted him to be an engineer. His technical mind made him the perfect editor, cinematographer, and all-around production genius. But none of that had ever excited him the way media did—thanks to Samuel.
Samuel, on the other hand, was all heart and chaos. A dreamer, a storyteller. He grew up in a humble home, raised by a hardworking single mom. While Danny kept things structured, Samuel thrived in spontaneity. And despite their differences, they had always balanced each other out.
Their families had given them two years to prove themselves in media. If they failed, Danny had to return to engineering, and Samuel had to give up filmmaking for something more "stable." They had already burned a year with mediocre content. This had to work.
Danny exhaled, closing his laptop. "Alright. But if we're doing this, we do it right. No half-baked nonsense. We script everything, we set the mood, and we sell the illusion."
Samuel smirked, holding up the book. "Welcome to the world of ghost hunting, my friend."
As they walked to the counter, the shopkeeper barely glanced up—until he saw the book. His fingers hesitated over the register, eyes narrowing.
That's… strange. I don't remember stocking that.
He took a closer look at the cover—its surface was worn yet oddly pristine. The symbols burned into the leather sent an unsettling chill down his spine. Where did this even come from?
For a moment, he considered asking them where they found it, but something held him back. Instead, he sighed and tossed out a random price. "Eh… twenty bucks."
Danny raised an eyebrow. "No barcode?"
The shopkeeper forced a chuckle. "Call it a… collector's item."
Samuel shrugged and swiped his card.
The register glitched. The lights flickered. Just for a second.
Danny frowned. "Weird."
Samuel just laughed it off. "Great marketing if nothing else."
The shopkeeper watched them leave, unease creeping up his spine. He didn't know why.
And behind them, unnoticed, the book's cover pulsed faintly.
Two Weeks Later
The video was out. A little creepy storytelling, some well-placed sound effects, and a fake "summoning ritual" straight out of the Guide to Hell Entities.
They knew horror was a viral subject, but they hadn't expected it to blow up on this scale.
They ruled the internet.
Within hours of posting, the comments poured in.
— "This feels too real…"— "The way the candle flickered at the end… did anyone else see that shadow?"
Samuel grinned as he scrolled through the numbers. 300,000 views in one night? Insane.
By the end of the week? One million views. Their subscriber count skyrocketed. Paranormal enthusiasts, skeptics, and conspiracy theorists all flocked to their channel, dissecting every frame.
Some begged them to investigate haunted locations.Some were looking for advice.
The kicker? Even Danny—Mr. Science and Logic—couldn't explain some of the weird anomalies in the footage.
"Editing glitch?" he muttered, replaying a frame where a dark shadow seemed to move.
Samuel smirked. "Or maybe we actually summoned something? Let's reply to all the questions first."
Samuel answered every question, searching through the book for replies. He was completely immersed.
The audience believed—And belief was power.
Samuel looked at Danny. "We're just getting started."
Danny shook his head, then smirked. They high-fived.
"Hell yeah. We're making more ghost-hunting videos!"
But they didn't know—
The journey awaiting them wasn't an ordinary one.
To be continued…