"You guys ready for another round?" Archie asked. "'Cuz this is a good one."
"Archiekins, we've been waiting for you to think of something scary to tell us. You know you're not good at this kind of thing," Veronica teased with a laugh.
"Go on, man. Show us what you've got," Jughead said.
Hell couldn't be hotter than this. The blistering breath of the creature standing behind him blew across his back. The weight of the task before him pressed heavily on his soul.
"I told you there would come a time when I would give you a task, and this is it. You asked for power and here it lies, in the heart of a wolf," the creature behind him stated before gesturing to a butcher knife on the ground by the animal's head. "Consume the heart."
Almost as if the man was in a trance, he knelt down to pick up the knife and began to cut into the wolf. The animal was seemingly content to lay there, it didn't even make a sound as its body was pulled apart.
The man broke through the wolf's rib cage and removed the unnecessary organs until he reached his goal. He held the heart in his hands, considering the still-beating organ.
As if a manic hunger overtook him, he began to devour it until there was nothing left. He had licked all the blood off of his fingers and when he realized there was nothing left, he turned toward the creature that gave him this task.
"I feel no different, my Lord."
"I never said you would," the creature said, leaving the man to contemplate what he had just done.
"Woah, man." Jughead sat back against the log he had been resting on. "That's some heavy stuff there. How'd you come up with that?"
"I don't know," Archie said with a shrug. "It's just been on my mind lately."
While the guys continued talking, Betty's hands began to slightly tremble. She couldn't fathom how Archie knew about something that she hasn't told anyone, not even Jughead. She was the one who killed a wolf and ate its heart, she was the one who asked the creature for power. Sitting on her hands so they would stop shaking, she turned her gaze to the roaring fire between them. The height of the flames must have been adequate because no one saw her eyes and how they shifted a deep blood red.
ns 15.158.61.17da2
