After the crimson light in front of him dissipated, Derrick Berg saw his room once again. He saw the pure crystal ball in his hands.
Crack!
The crystal ball shattered from the inside. Some of it turned into pieces of illusory beams of light that flew into the void around him, while the other crystalline fragments fell noisily to the ground.
Derrick looked on, dumbfounded. He could see the traces of blood on his face reflected in the bronze mirror. He noticed a crimson light spiraling on the back of his right palm, forming a circle with lines extending out from the edge.
The strange symbol bore into the back of his palm and vanished.
Derrick fell into a daze in the time it took several flashes of lightning to illuminate the sky before snapping to his senses.
He looked at the fragments of the crystal ball on the ground, then looked at the back of his right hand as his gaze turned deeper.
