"You can sleep here tonight," the priest explained, showing Chad and Dixon a pair of small cots in the spare room of his home. "According to what Kairos said, there are defensive wards everywhere in town, on doors, fence posts, and even carved into the floors and ceiling beams. We thought they were only decorative, and when they got old, we had craftsmen replicate the original designs because we thought the symbols too beautiful to be lost. Little did we know they were there to protect us."

"You're not the only one who was unaware about things," Chad reminded, his eyes downcast as his hands clenched into fists.

"Tomorrow, I recommend you get in your car and get as far from here as possible," the priest told them while taking extra blankets from a dresser and placing one on each cot.

"Demons don't have a range," Dixon pointed out. "What would be the use in leaving? It would follow us. There's no getting away from this thing."

"He's right," Chad agreed. "We're going to have to fight."

"How?" the priest asked. "Exorcisms are used to drive a demon out of a host body, but I don't know how you handle a demon physically in our world."

"That holy order Kairos mentioned did," Chad reasoned.

"None of them are still around," Dixon countered.

"They don't have to be," Chad said. "They left the wards on the town, so obviously they planned for the possibility of evil being fought here again. Otherwise, they would've removed all of the engravings. Perhaps, they may have left something else behind too, books, scrolls, or instructions on how to imprison or kill the demon if it escapes."

"I think it's possible," the priest agreed. "We'll start in the town archives first thing tomorrow."

Chad stretched out on the cot, but he couldn't sleep. The thought of what he and Dixon had set loose upon the world, and might be waiting to kill them outside, kept his mind formulating terrifying possibilities. After hours of staring at the ceiling, exhaustion finally overcame him, and Chad fell asleep. His rest was short lived as shouting woke him.

Grabbing Dixon by the arm and hauling his friend up from his own cot, Chad hurried to the door. When the door opened outside, it was as bright as day because one of the buildings of the small town was completely engulfed in orange flames.

Citizens were gathered in a line between the town well and the burning building, handing buckets of water down the line to throw on the fire. Leading the efforts was the priest. Chad and Dixon ran to him as he was almost the only one in town they knew.

"What happened?" Chad asked.

"No one knows," the priest replied. "But, we can guess what was responsible. This was the town archives."

"The demon knew the records might be there and burned it down to keep us from them," Chad theorized aloud.

"It's a pretty good guess," the priest confirmed, throwing another bucket of water on the fire.

Twenty minutes passed before the locals managed to get the fire under control. The archives were a total loss. Every book had been burnt and reduced to cinders and ash, none had been spared.

"It's hopeless now," Dixon said. "If any knowledge was left about how to stop the demon, it's been destroyed."

"Not quite," Kairos disagreed. He'd been on the fire line with everyone else and set down an empty bucket he was carrying. "The records you need were never in the town archives. I have them. Come with me."

Chad, Dixon, and the priest followed Kairos to his home, a small cottage near the edge of town.

"Pardon me," Chad said to the priest. "In all the confusion of recent events, I don't recall hearing your name."

"You know, I don't remember saying it," the priest admitted. "It's Father Dane."

"Nice to know you," Chad said. "I'm Chad, and my friend is Dixon."

The inside of Kairos' home was as Chad would've expected it to be, the same rustic, carved from wood style and covered in magic symbols as the rest of the town. What wasn't expected was when Kairos tilted a book partway off the shelf, triggering a hidden switch and caused the floor to lower around the edges of the circular living room. The planks dropped in such a way as to become the steps of a circular stairway leading down into the unknown.

"After you," Kairos invited with a wave toward the previously hidden steps.

Dixon seemed repulsed by the entire house, looking with distain at everything. He deliberately stepped around the rug in the middle of the room as if it were contaminated and he might catch a disease if he set foot upon it.

The space under Kairos' house was large enough to hold most of town. Pillars lined the walls of the rooms and corridors. Suits of silver armor were displayed on specially designed stands. A standard of a gleaming sword had been affixed to the breastplate of each armored suit. The downward pointing blade had a sun emblem near the hilt, two of the rays extending out longer than the rest to compose the crosspiece. Identical symbols were displayed on the royal blue banners hanging from the pillars of the underground room.

Swords and shields were mounted on wall display racks, and standing between them were tall shelves packed with leather bound books.

"Welcome to one of the outposts of the Order of the Blinding Dawn," Kairos told the group.

"The ancient order responsible for imprisoning the demon," Father Dane breathed in awe. "How did you know about this, and why is it under your house?"

"I'm the last in their generational line," Kairos stated.

"You're a descendant of the holy order?" Chad questioned. "With all this evidence, why didn't people listen to you when you spoke about the history of the town?"

"You expect books and artifacts handed down through the generations to convince people?" Kairos asked. He pointed to Father Dane. "He has an ancient text handed down through generations, and how many listen to him? People believe what they choose to believe and no amount of evidence is going to change the minds of those who are already decided. The people of this town chose to believe what I had to say was crazy, so everything in here became irrelevant. It's why I closed it up and started spending time and money in the tavern. There's no point in speaking if no one will listen."

"I think they'll listen now," Father Dane assured him. "Where do we start looking?"

"Here," Kairos said. He pulled a large volume off the shelf and opened the text across a round table. The pages crackled and creaked with age but stayed contained within the book. Drawn in intricate detail on the page was a representation of the ward stone and the glyphs formerly glowing upon it.

"That's it," Chad confirmed.

"The Maledictus Carcerem," Kairos informed them. "In Latin, the name means 'Prison of the Cursed', or something like that. My Latin is a little rusty."

"The warding stone was destroyed," Dixon pointed out. "We can't put the demon back in if the stone is in a million pieces. There isn't anything we can do."

"I disagree," Chad countered. "If the demon were truly invulnerable, it wouldn't have burned the archives in an effort to keep us from looking for a weakness. The Order of the Blinding Dawn found a way to beat it, and somewhere in these books is the answer we need."

"I hope the demon will kindly step aside and wait for us to finish," Dixon grumbled.

"I've been studying this since I was a kid," Kairos explained while ignoring Dixon's comment. "I have the information you need somewhere in here."

Kairos took another book off the shelf and carefully turned the old pages to the proper spot before handing it over to Chad and Dixon. Father Dane looked over their shoulders to see a depiction of a shadowy, winged figure standing on a hill with dead bodies littering the ground in all directions around it.

"Your enemy," Kairos said. "Its name is Mortifer."

"Any reason why it sounds similar to Lucifer?" Chad inquired.

"The name Lucifer means light bringer or bearer," Kairos replied. "Mortifer means death bringer or death bearer."

"I think the key word in there is death," Chad commented. "It paints a pretty clear picture. The thing is a monster and is going to start killing people the first chance it gets. Sounds pretty much like a standard demon."

"You have no idea what this will be like," Kairos warned. "Have you heard about the Black Death?"

"It was a plague," Father Dane answered. "It swept through Europe, and in a matter of months somewhere between a third and half of the entire population died."

"I'll give you a guess as to what was really behind that plague," Kairos said.

"The death bringer," Chad concluded.

"And now, it's loose again," Kairos told them. "With higher population density across Europe, and faster methods of worldwide travel, we could see a plague that will devastate the entire planet. If we don't stop Mortifer, half or possibly more of all humanity could die."