The deck was slick with blood, but I kept going.
I’d cleaned the bone—carefully, thodically. Each scrap of sinew, each twitching mbrane, torn away with the edge of my knife and flung into the surf like rotten at. The sea didn’t mind. It took everything. Always had.
And then I looked at the skull. His skull.
It had changed.
Where empty sockets had once stared blankly, there was now motion—life. Wet threads of flesh squird in the hollows, weaving together like spiders birthing capillaries. The at in his eyes pulsed, shifted. Trying to rember how to see. I held it higher, turning it toward the fading light.
Inside, I saw it. The brain—almost complete. Pink, glistening, disgusting. It pulsed like a parasite. The blood still worked, slow but relentless, curling around the bone like fingers forming a fist. It was reconstructing his head—not just any head. His head. The one I rembered. The one that grinned when things burned. The one that laughed when we scread.
And I let it happen.
I watched it happen.
Not out of rcy. Not out of weakness. I wanted him be aware. Be Alive. But just a head. Nothing more. A caged beast with no claws. A lion’s head mounted as a prize.
His face—when it fully ford—was perfect. Too perfect. It was him, down to the crooked sneer, the scars that ti hadn’t erased, the eyes that never really blinked, only twitched. His lips moved. Then his eyelids. He looked at . Not through —at . And he blinked.
He was conscious.
He was back.
No body. No limbs. No power. Just a head—my prize.
That was all I needed.
The rest of him—the twitching at, the half-ford spine, the ribs that still tried to snap together—I fed all of it to the waters. I grabbed it piece by piece, even as it pulsed and cried and tried to crawl. I didn’t care. I threw it overboard, watched the water churn red as the monsters below tore it apart. Flesh to the sea. Bone to the void.
Let him feel every loss. Let him see every part of his body be eaten by the beasts of the waters. He deserved to rember what it felt like to have his body be eaten piece by piece. He’d done worse. He was worse.
And still, he lived. I let him.
The head, now fully functional, scread.
Not a sound like pain. Not fear. Not confusion.
Rage.
It was the sa pitch he’d used when he first rose from the pit, when he tore n apart with a smile and spoke in tongues older than sin. The scream rattled in my chest, vibrated up my spine. But I didn’t flinch.
He was back. And if it weren’t for throwing his body bits to feed the beasts in the sea—the komodo-bastard, the others—he’d be whole by now. I knew it. He knew it. But I had won this ti. Not with fire. Not with steel. With patience.
I held the head in both hands. The neck sealed shut. No blood. No ss. It didn’t matter. The heat of him still bled through my palms.
He spat words. Not in a language I knew. But I didn’t need to understand the syllables. I felt the intent. It was filth. Venom. Obscenities strung together with hatred. Words ant to curdle sanity. He cursed with nas of things that should not be nad.
I didn’t like that.
I clenched his jaw shut. His teeth were the size of my fingers, sharp enough to shear bone. This was still a giant’s skull, no matter how small the body was now. If he bit down, I’d lose every finger and he’d feed on the at like it was communion.
So I did what I had to.
I opened his mouth again—forcefully this ti—and jamd the wooden butt of my pistol between his jaws. He gnashed and snapped, but the tal core inside the grip held firm. I could feel his jaw trying to snap shut, muscles twitching like ropes pulled too tight.
Not enough. I needed more.
I took another pistol from my belt, and another from the dead man nearby. Jamd both into the mouth alongside the first. Now his mouth was pried wide, three gun butts wedged like rotten teeth in a cursed skull. It made just enough space. Just the gap I needed.
The skull shook in my hands. Rage vibrated from it like heat off a furnace. He couldn’t speak anymore, but his eyes burned with the promise of tornt. The promise that if he ever got out, if I slipped, even once—he’d take everything from .
I smiled.
"You’re not getting out." I said, almost gently.
He scread again. But now it was muffled. A strangled, impotent rage. Music to .
I walked with him, the head cradled in my arms like a blasphemous relic, toward the site of the ritual.
This was no longer revenge.
This was sothing else.
This wasn’t just for . This was for the dreams he took from the girls. For every scream he silenced. For every despair he made the girl go through. And for the ones he didn’t even let them see the sun.
And the demon knew it.
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