Tamara wasted no time in taking action. She swiftly reached for the zipper of her backpack and yanked out a stapled packet of paper, thrusting it into Mary’s hands. Staring down at text printed on it in the dim night, Mary faintly recalled researching the proper chant used to conduct exorcisms, printing out the extended prayer and giving it to Tamara to hold in case they ever needed it. Of course, at the time she was simply being extra cautious, for her conscience’s sake. She didn’t think the day would ever come when she would actually need it.
With her heart pounding fiercely against her ribs, Mary reached for the necklace around her neck—Noah’s necklace—and took it off, holding the cross outwards from her extended hand to ward the demon off, as if it were a weapon. Beside her, Tamara quickly did the same, her stance defensive.
“Let him go,” she demanded fiercely, trying but failing to hide the fear in her voice. “Let him go or else we’ll—we’ll make you.”
Noah’s grin widened so that it nearly split his face. The demon controlling him cackled; it sounded wrong coming from Noah’s mouth, more dark and evil. Every hair on Mary’s body stood up. She felt as if she had stumbled into a nightmare—none of what was happening seemed real. She found it impossible to believe that the person speaking with Noah’s voice, wearing Noah’s face, wasn’t in fact her best friend, but a cruel imposter dead set on killing them all.
Noah’s head cocked to the side as he eyed Tamara calculatingly with eyes that appeared as if his pupils had swallowed up the warm brown of his irises, so that even the whites were a midnight black.
“Well aren’t you two a couple of fools.” His voice was a warped version of Noah’s, all twisted so that it sounded both foreign and familiar, with a sinister edge. “You had the chance to run, yet here you stand. It appears that you have a death wish.” Still with that gleaming shard of glass gripped so tightly in his hand it drew blood, he took one step towards them; Mary and Tamara took an immediate step back. “And so that wish shall be fulfilled.”
Tamara called out, “Now, Mary!”
She didn’t hesitate. Her eyes dipped down to the packet clutched in her hand, finding the inky words and echoing them with her tongue. Her voice was surprisingly clear as she read the exorcist’s prayer, nerves buzzing beneath the surface in the form of a slight quiver. Still, her words reverberated off into the night with the sort of certainty she’d seen take hold of the professionals who posted their work on YouTube. She imitated the way the exorcists stared down the possessed individual with a fierce glare, as if they carried the wrath of God in their eyes; she tightened her hold on the small cross –blessed by Father Whitlock—in order to hide the tremble in her fingers.
Tamara soon appeared at her side, and she too started reading aloud from the paper, their mingling voices adding more power to their words as they spoke in unison.
Yet something was wrong. Every time Mary glanced up from the packet she’d be met with the same nerve-tightening sight: Noah—or rather, the demon controlling Noah—standing at the edge of the window beneath the shade of the bedroom ceiling, his body still, eyes cold, expression amused.
“Nice try,” he said, speaking above the girls’ chants. “But that won’t work on me.”
Mary and Tamara exchanged glances. Mary was in disbelief; Tamara’s gaze was of accusation, and both were scared out of their minds. They started speaking louder, desperation packed into every syllable. The words scraped through Mary’s throat; she was nearly screaming now.
Mary didn’t understand why the prayer wasn’t working. Could she have gotten a fake one from online? But she had compared it to others, had compared it to the videos she had seen of real exorcisms during her research. The words the priest would say matched the ones she was belting out right now. The demon should be flinching, writhing and crying out in pain. It didn’t make any sense.
“Enough of this!” the demon ordered, and Mary thought it was the illusion that Noah was speaking with such anger and fierceness that made her shut up. It was unnatural for Noah to ever raise his voice like this, so when he did it was shocking, to say the least.
But this wasn’t Noah, Mary reminded herself. Not anymore.
“You.” His narrowed eyes were pinned onto Tam as if she was a butterfly and he was the end of a needle. He beckoned her forwards with his finger. “Come here.” The demon slid his black gaze to Mary. “You can run off and attempt to find help for all I care; your friends will be dead by then.”
“Take me!” Mary cried, and it scared her how much she meant her words. “Possess me! Just—don’t hurt my friends. Please.”
Tam gasped. “Mary!”
The demon snorted; it was so Noah-like that Mary felt her heart clench. “Brave words. Very honorable. But, fortunately for you, you’re not supposed to die tonight. So you can run along.” He returned his hard eyes to Tamara. “You chose to stay, and now you will suffer the consequences. Come here now or I slit this boy’s throat.”
“Tam, don’t,” Mary begged just as Tamara took a step forwards. She cut her a frustrated sidelong glance.
“I won’t let Noah die because of me, Mary. Didn’t you just say you were willing to sacrifice your life not two seconds ago? Stop being such a hypocrite.” Although her body was visibly trembling with fear, she lifted her chin and bent through the shattered window, back into the house.
Mary’s heart sank as she watched. This was all her fault; if she hadn’t insisted on heeding to her urges and staying in this stupid house instead of leaving when they had the chance, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Noah would still be himself. Tam wouldn’t be risking her life for him.
Mary mentally kicked herself. Now was not the time to wallow in self-pity. She couldn’t allow herself to drown in guilt, not when her two friends were still breathing. She had to figure out a way to save them, and quickly—
A pained shriek sounded from the house; Mary immediately identified it as Noah’s, and her blood went cold. Never had she heard him scream like that, as if he were in unimaginable pain. Mary ducked through the window and saw that Tamara had doused the demon with holy water. He was crying out in pain, rubbing himself off as if he were burning. Taking advantage of the demon’s temporarily disabled state, Mary reached down and seized the wardrobe shelf she had used to burst open the window, hitting Noah as if it was a bat and his head was a baseball.
Nothing happened, to Mary’s dismay. He didn’t even flinch; she might as well have hit him with a feather.
“That tickled.” He grinned at Mary, a red welt on his left cheek. Blood trickled down from Noah’s bushy head of dark brown hair, tainting the whiteness of his teeth with smears of red, and all Mary could think was I’m sorry Noah, I’m so sorry, so, so sorry—
The wind was knocked out of Mary as she was picked off the floor by an unseen force and flown across the bedroom, her back slamming into a wall. She felt an intense pressure on her chest, pinning her to the wall, constricting her breathing, and the more she struggled the harder it became to take in gulps of air. She was a few feet off the ground, her arms and legs flailing futilely while Noah’s hand remained outstretched, as if he were reaching for her, his gaze cold and intense.
Tamara doused him with more Holy Water, and he flinched, hissing; Mary dropped to the ground in a crumpled heap, gasping for air. Lightheaded and faint, she noted that this time the demon recovered from the attack more quickly. When he opened his eyes both Mary and Tamara gasped. They were glowing bright red in the night, a warning, a testament to his anger. He snarled, his lips curling as he advanced on Tamara, knocking the bottle of holy water from her hands without even touching it. He purposefully blocked the window and seized for her—and missed as she turned on her heel and, with a scream, ran deeper into the house.
Grabbing her exorcism prayer, Mary struggled upwards, fighting the ache in her chest and pushing ahead after Tamara and Noah. Tam led them into a dining room that was void of any moonlight because the sliding doors that led to the backyard were boarded up with hurricane shutters. She stared at the wall of glass helplessly before whipping around at the sound of Noah’s—of the demon’s—cackle. He lifted his hands and sent a violent gust of wind barreling into her, knocking her off her feet so that she crashed into the glass doors and they broke; she fell backwards into the debris.
“I have an idea,” Noah sang, and he used his levitation skills to lift Tamara, bruised and bloodied, off the ground. He spared Mary a brief glance and pinned her against a wall again, this time onto the exterior of the house, the one that was in the backyard. Her head grazed the grimy, worn shingles as she struggled to free herself from the unseen force’s powerful hold.
Meanwhile Tam was also feeling the wrath of the demon’s levitation; she was choking, gripping at her neck as the horrible sounds filled the empty night. Her legs kicked about in futility, and even in the nightly darkness Mary was able to tell that her friend’s face had begun to adopt a deep reddish pallor.
“Stop!” Mary gasped out. “Let her go!”
“Oh, I will,” the demon called back, clearly enjoying himself as he gazed upon a struggling Tam. “Just not from down here.”
Mary hadn’t noticed the giant, untamed tree occupying a good majority of the townhouse’s backyard until the demon shot upwards, landing on one of its branches with Tam floating at his side like a lizard caught by a loop of string. The tree appeared ancient, the moonlight setting its complicated entanglement of bare branches and thick, veiny trunk aglow. It towered over Mary, over the townhouse itself—it was at least two stories high, if not more.
“This drop should kill her,” Mary heard Noah’s voice announce from somewhere in the shadows above her. She squinted to better see Tamara high up in the tree, staring down at the drop with wide eyes. Her struggles became more urgent, like a fly caught in a spider web.
“Noah!” Mary cried desperately. “Noah, stop; don’t do this!”
He laughed. “Noah can’t hear you, sweetheart. Noah’s gone.”
Mary shook her head wildly. She wasn’t about to let Tam fall. Fighting the crushing pressure digging her into the wall, she strained her fingers and reached for the exorcism prayer she had stuffed into her trench coat pocket. In spite of the lack of air circulating in her lungs, she opened her mouth and began to read from the paper again, this time drawing on her love for her friends as fuel for her words, packing in as much force and desperation and conviction as she could muster. Her voice was strained as she read, and she gasped and coughed between words, her chest aching from both the unseen weight and lack of air.
Yet there was something different this time around— something about the way she spoke the prayer aloud, knowing how much was at stake—that increased the effect of the words slipping past her lips. The pressure on her chest vanished and she slid to the ground. Mary ignored her pained injuries and righted herself, continuing the prayer with bated breath. Up above, she could faintly see Noah’s silhouette on a sturdy branch, clutching at his hair and crying out as if he were being attacked.
“You… bitch! Stop that!” Noah roared, yet his voice was deeper and more gravelly, rasping out from the pit of his throat in a manner that sent chills all over Mary’s body. This was the demon’s true voice shining through.
Her heart leapt. It was working. The exorcism was working. He jerked from left to right like someone being attacked on all sides, doubling over and gagging. Mary’s prayer increased in intensity, her voice fiercer as she neared the tree.
“Mary, stop!” Tam cried out from up above. “I’m going to fall!”
But Mary couldn’t stop—if she did then then the exorcism would be broken, and she’d have to start all over. She didn’t have the time or the confidence to begin again, and besides, Tamara was going to fall either way. She met Tam’s petrified eyes for a moment, hoping to convey her apology. Then she looked to the branches as if to say, grab onto one of those, before turning her eyes downward to her printed out prayer and reciting the final part.
And then it happened. A violent gust of wind tore at Mary’s trench coat, sending the packet flying out of her hands. An echoing howl sounded from above, yet it seemed to encompass the entire backyard with the sort of resonating quality native to the disembodied voices of the dead. In the moonlight Mary saw Tamara dangling from a flimsy branch for dear life. Noah’s head had snapped back abruptly, his mouth wide open as if vomiting out a dense black fog. The wailing, howling sound did not cease until the cloud of opaque smoke disappeared into the night.
It was deadly silent; unnaturally so. No crickets chirping or owls hooting. The only sound came from the faint splinter and crackle of the tree branch Tam was clinging onto, along with Mary’s bated breaths. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from Noah; his eyes were half-closed, his body limp yet upright, but Mary could tell by the way he teetered on the edge of the branch that he was moments away from falling.
“Is the demon gone?” Tam called out.
“Yes,” Mary replied. “But Noah’s unconscious. Can you hold on a few moments a longer? He’s slipping off the branch; I’m going to try to catch him.”
“I’m okay,” she answered, voice strained and breathy. “Go. And I swear to God, Mary, you better catch him.”
Mary stood several feet below Noah, waiting to do so. You better catch him. Mary readied herself. Even if she broke his fall and he broke all her bones, she would catch him.
Then it happened. His slack body slid down from the thick branch and fell not forwards, but backwards.
Mary hadn’t been expecting that.
Timing, it was all a matter of timing. Three seconds for Mary to get from one side of the tree to the other; five seconds for Noah to make contact with the ground—minus two seconds because he never touched the ground. And Mary never touched him.
Instead what broke his fall was the piercing arow-like points of a row of metal rods that made up an aluminum fence. Mary saw it happen, saw him falling in slow motion, knocking into a web of branches on his way down, down, tumbling straight towards the aluminum fence that separated the backyard from the others.
She could do nothing but watch in horror as the fence’s points broke skin.
For a moment Mary was frozen in shock. She felt something loosen inside her, something tear open and unravel, like a guitar string plucked too forcefully, breaking and springing and coiling. She felt as if she had gotten impaled by an aluminum fence--her heart ached, shattered into a million pieces; she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think—
But she could scream. And scream she did. The sound that came out of her mouth was foreign and frightening; it was the sound of grief in its rawest form, and Mary thought that if a heart could bleed noise, this was what it would sound like, its echoes stretching out into the distance, measuring the extent of its loss.
Then she was at Noah’s side, her trembling fingers finding his face; she his lifted dangling head and cradled it in her arms. Her heart squeezed painfully when his eyelids cracked open and his gaze, momentarily lost to the sky above, sought out hers. They were full of pain and shock.
“Mary,” he mumbled, and she bit her lip so hard she drew blood, because there was nothing but relief coloring that single pronunciation, relief that she was okay. “Y-you… saved… me…” he struggled out.
“No.” Mary shook her head violently, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. “No, I didn’t save you, Noah, look at you. You’re…” Her bleary eyes roved over the blood spreading over the festive design of Noah’s sweater, sliding down the fence, dripping to the ground, and she couldn’t bring herself to say the word dying. “I’m the reason you’re like this right now. Don’t thank me.”
“You’re the… reason I’m not possessed… anymore,” he whispered.
“Noah!” Tam’s voice, coming from around the corner of the tree. Mary had forgotten all about her until then. “What happened? Is he oka—oh my God,” Tam gasped the moment she laid eyes on Noah and Mary, bringing a hand to her mouth. With wide eyes, she ran over to Noah and stood at his other side.
“Tam,” he murmured. “Thank God…”
“W-what happened?” Tam demanded. “Wait, it—it doesn’t matter. I’m calling an ambulance.”
Mary hadn’t even thought of calling an ambulance. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion; she felt like she was watching the life drain out of Noah’s eyes from a distance, and struggled to keep up with what was happening. How could she, when she didn’t believe any of it, when she wanted to wake up from this nightmare?
While Tamara spoke frantically to the 911 dispatcher, Noah closed his eyes. “Tell my family I love them.”
“No, stop that,” Tam ordered angrily; tears began to streak down her face. “You’re going to be okay, Noah, the ambulance is on its way—“
“Tam, stop,” he said, voice so soft Mary was surprised Tam caught it. His eyelids fluttered open, finding her gaze. “I’m… dying. It’s okay. I… wouldn’t want to die beside anyone else." He smiled softly. "I… love you guys…”
“Shh, stop talking,” Mary whispered, brushing his hair away from his sweaty forehead; he was cool to the touch, and as pale as the moon. “Save your energy.”
“Mary.” His deep brown eyes suddenly widened like saucers, as if realizing something important. “Mary, I—I have to tell you something—” He broke off as a violent cough tore through his throat, blood spluttering from his mouth.
Tam took a step back and pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.
“Mary…” he murmured, his eyelids drooping closed. She ducked her head so that their faces were only centimeters apart; Mary strained her ears to catch his words.
“What is it?” she asked him, reaching for his hand; he responded by tightening his hold on her. Tears, hot and itchy, traced the contours of her cheeks and pattered onto his chest.
“Mary, I…” His voice was fading, fading like the life in him.
“Stay with me,” Mary sobbed out, a wretched hitch that shook her shoulders. “Do you hear me, Noah? Stay with me.”
But he didn’t hear her—he couldn’t, not anymore. His fingers had gone slack in Mary’s; his hitching breaths had ceased to fill her ears. Mary slowly lifted her head and found Noah’s eyes, closed almost peacefully, as if he were asleep. For one wild, irrational moment Mary thought he was simply asleep, that all she had to do was whisper in his ear and he'd open his eyes and and gaze up at her with that familiar look of warmth and admiration and love, but then she noticed the blood painting the corners of his mouth, the lack of movement in his chest; she heard the unbridled sobs erupting from Tam’s throat, the drowned out wail of sirens in the distance, and Mary forced herself to face the truth: Noah was dead.
“I blacked out,” Mary finished, “with the sound of my name on his tongue echoing around in my ears. Mary, Mary, Mary…” She closed her eyes and shuddered, dimly surprised to notice that her cheeks burned with wet tears. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her free hand, awaiting some sort of reaction from her listeners.
But Mason and Salazar answered her with silence.
Unsure of what to make of this lack of verbal response, Mary inhaled a shaky breath and slowly lifted her eyes from the table so that they were on Salazar, directly across from her. The World Religions teacher was gazing at her with calculating eyes, his expression pensive, hands brought up to his mouth with his fingers linked. She turned to look at Mason, who was still holding her clammy hand. His green eyes were the color of algae in the dim lighting, nearly unreadable save for the sense of intensity emanating off his countenance—and a sliver of what Mary thought was sympathy, perhaps even understanding. Mary supposed this was better than how she had thought he would look at her, with disbelief and disapproval and disgust.
Mary was about to open her mouth to proclaim that it would be really nice if someone said something right then when Mason’s hand loosened from hers, and he lifted it to her face, his long fingers brushing away the tears on her cheeks. His somber eyes searched her face as if taking her all in; it made her feel very self-conscious. Mary stiffened momentarily in response to his warm touch on her skin, more out of surprise than anything else, before relaxing into the gentle, soothing manner in which he executed the action. It was almost as if he was stroking her cheek, and she closed her eyes and huffed out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
That simple act of reassurance almost made Mary want to cry again.
Salazar cleared his throat, drawing Mary and Mason’s attention to him. Mason leaned away from her, the absence of his body heat like a slap in the face. When Salazar spoke, his voice was quiet, grim.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, bowing his head. “I know what it’s like to see someone you love die right before your eyes.”
Mary’s throat was tight; she didn’t trust herself to speak, so she nodded her thanks.
Salazar leaned forwards and crossed his arms over the table. Mary braced herself; he was all business now. “It appears the demon used the house’s spiritual inhabitants to frighten you all… but why? What was the point in having the murderer with the axe appear before you and your friends?”
“To lure them,” Mason spoke up. “To lure them into the master bedroom.” When Mary and Salazar simply stared at Mason, he groaned and leaned into the table. “Look, that demon didn’t show its face until they went inside that room. And maybe, I dunno—maybe the spirits were influencing Mary somehow, making her really want to go into that room. Because that’s where the demon was waiting for them.”
“Makes sense,” Salazar allowed. “But why there? Why the master bedroom? Mary, do you think perhaps the demon was trapped in some sort of special object—or perhaps inside a pentagram—and you or one of your friends let it out of its cage?”
Mary shook her head. “No; I don’t think so. The demon, it—it appeared out of nowhere. One moment I was standing next to the wardrobe, and the next Tam and Noah were doing chants to try and send it back to Hell.”
“That wardrobe,” Salazar began slowly. “You didn’t open it before the demon appeared? Perhaps it was being kept in there. It is possible to trap a demon inside an object with the proper seals.”
Mary paused for a moment, recalling the wardrobe that night. “I opened it after the demon appeared, not before. To get the shelf out. Or—wait.” Mary frowned, crinkling her brows. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something. Something important. “I think the doors were already open when I got the shelf out. But I didn’t open them. Or—or did I…?”
A headache had begun to pound against Mary’s forehead with surprising sharpness. She rubbed her temples and closed her eyes, recalling what Dr. Dashner had said about PTSD patients sometimes experiencing memory loss, and what the demon had told her the night of the crash, that it knew more about her than she did. The pain in her hand, shooting up her arm…
“Mary,” Salazar said rather forcefully. She lifted her head, realizing she had spaced out, and that Salazar had been calling her name over and over.
“What?” she mumbled.
“The wardrobe,” he said, and Mary wanted to scream at him to let it go, that she told him all she knew about the stupid thing. “You seem unsure about your interaction with that piece of furniture that night.” He leaned forwards again, both speaking and eyeing her intensely. “When you first walked up to the wardrobe, the moment you entered the room, was it closed or open?”
Mary squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to picture the exact moment she had laid eyes on the wardrobe—she felt like she was reaching for something she couldn’t quite catch. Her headache had increased in intensity, making it hard to remember anything.
“I…” Mary struggled. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“Mary,” Salazar repeated in frustration. “Was it closed or open?”
“I don’t know!” she cried, tears welling up in her eyes again. “I don’t know, okay? I have the worst headache right now, and it’s really hard for me to think about tiny details like that when it feels like someone’s trying to squeeze my brains out. I can’t remember. I’m sorry.”
Salazar was silent for a few moments after her outburst; Mary could feel him staring at her from across the table, but she ignored him, continuously rubbing at her temples with her head down in shame.
“That demon clearly wanted to possess Noah,” he finally spoke up, moving on from the topic of the wardrobe. “What Mason said about the spirits of the house working with the demon makes even more sense once you recall that you had yours yanked from around your neck. A demon can’t interact with a holy object, so it had to have been a spirit who did it—and a smart one, too. One that was perceptive enough to pick up on the closeness between you and Noah, which led it to correctly assume that Noah would immediately offer up his cross to you. What I don’t understand is why not simply yank off Noah’s protective cross from the beginning?”
Everyone was silent. Nobody had an answer for that one.
Salazar continued. “The demon that possessed Noah. It made itself fairly clear that you were to remain living, Mary. And the only reason I could assume why it would want that has to do with you being the one to open the gate for its brethren to pass through. And if that assumption is true, then it means you were chosen for the job before that night. That, or we’re missing something.”
“I told you everything I remember,” Mary answered; her voice was deep and nasally from crying, to her dismay. But at least the headache miraculously disappeared. “I swear.”
“I know. Which means we’re going to have to go to the house to get more answers.”
Mary’s eyes widened just as the dinging sound of a text coming through emanated from Mason’s phone.
“It’s Celeste,” he muttered, face glowing sickly from the light of his cellphone.
“You get signal down here?” Salazar inquired.
“Three bars,” he replied. “Switch to Verizon. Has way better coverage. I could probably take this phone with me to Hell and I’d still be able to contact everyone up here.” Noting Mary’s unappreciative glare, Mason recoiled. “Whoops. Sorry, I forgot. No Hell jokes.”
“Insensitive much,” Mary joked, poking his arm; she frowned briefly in concern when it jerked almost compulsively. “You should be a spokesperson for Verizon.”
Mason gave her a lopsided smile. “I said I was sorry; no need to get all touchy. And if I were a spokesperson for Verizon, all the other telephone companies would be screwed.” He winked at her just as another text came through, and he returned his gaze to his phone.
Mary turned back to Salazar, who had been watching her and Mason with amusement. “Since I don’t have Verizon”—Mary shot Mason a pointed look here, although he was too engrossed in his phone to see it—“I’ll have to go upstairs to see if my parents called. They’re probably starting to get worried, and with them that quickly escalates to a full-blown city-wide police search for me.”
“I think we’re done for today, anyway,” Salazar answered. “We’ve been here for more than an hour; Noah must be worried. I’ll walk you two out.” He led Mary and Mason upstairs, Mason trailing behind due to his being distracted with texting Celeste.
“I was serious about what I said back there,” Salazar murmured lowly to Mary as they walked towards the trailer door. “We need to have a look at this abandoned house. See if we can fill in the blanks about that wardrobe.”
Mary kept her gaze straight and nodded, her nerves tightening at the prospect.
Salazar opened the creaky trailer door and Mary and Mason stepped outside. She cringed momentarily in response to the daylight, her vision accustomed to the dimmed atmosphere of the trailer. Once the stars left her eyes she was able to catch sight of Avery, standing patiently amidst the grass and litter, gaze honed on Mary as she approached.
“Hi Avery,” Mary greeted the little girl, who continued to stare her down with a frown. Mary scanned the area with concern. “Where’s Noah?”
Avery shook her head, her tiny face completely void of any emotion. A chill swept up and down Mary’s spine.
“Noah!” she called out, twirling around to better take in her surroundings. There was no sign of him anywhere. Mary knew he wouldn’t leave this area unless... unless something bad happened to him. “Noah! Where are you?”
“What is it?” Mason demanded, finally tearing his eyes away from his phone. “Did something happen? Is Avery—"
“Avery’s fine,” Mary interjected, panic crawling up her throat. “But—Noah. He’s… he’s gone.”
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A/N- THOUGHTS ON THIS CHAPTER??!! Also dedicated to Jensi_ for making a book review for TEG in collaboration with @ChasingPages; if you wanna check it out it's the vid for this chapter! I'm so honored and thankful for the recognition <3
Anyway, please vote and comment! Your feedback means a lot to me :)