They heard a step. Then another.
The silhouette erged from the shadow of a toppled, ancient nhir. She was small—no taller than a malnourished twelve-year-old. Her thin fra was covered in scars, half-hidden beneath a tattered fur cloak. Her tangled black hair hung over her body like it had simply given up trying to do anything else.
Her face... was almost human. Too almost. Like a cruel imitation of what a girl from another world might have been. Beautiful, perhaps—but in the way fire is beautiful, right before it burns.
And her eyes... two pits of burning obsidian. Locked on Dylan.
"My blood," she whispered, in a voice far too gentle.
Maggie imdiately stepped between her and Dylan, axe raised.
"Don’t co any closer."
The demon tilted her head slightly. Like a feline intrigued by a squirming insect. She didn’t smile. Not yet.
"You think you can protect him?" she asked, her voice vibrating straight through their bones. "You don’t even know what he is."
Dylan took a step back, pale as death. His breath was shallow. His eyes flicked from her... to himself.
Élisa shot a quick glance at Maggie, then at Dylan. She saw it in their eyes—they had all just understood the sa thing.
This wasn’t just so creature attacking them.
She knew sothing they didn’t.
The demon took one step forward.
"I’ve co to claim you," she said simply.
And just like that, all three weapons were raised again.
"Dylan is a lieutenant under my command. We’ve got nothing to do with your world—so you must be mistaking him for soone else."
The demon stopped — barely fazed. Her gaze drifted from Maggie to Élisa, then anchored itself back onto Dylan, as if the others were re props orbiting the main scene.
"Your titles... or whatever you cling to, they an nothing here."
She blinked slowly, then took another step — just one.
"I never mistake blood."
Dylan tensed, jaw locked tight.
He wanted to say sothing. Scream it wasn’t true. Laugh, maybe, just to shatter the absurdity. But no sound ca. Just that vibration in his bones — a low, pulsing hum at the base of his skull. Sothing inside him — deep, rooted — responded to her voice.
Élisa hissed through her teeth.
"Maggie... I don’t think she ca here to fight. Not yet, anyway. She’s sizing us up. Trying to get under our skin."
"And that pisses off," Maggie replied bluntly, eyes never leaving the creature.
"Because if she wants us to hesitate, it ans she’s confident she can rip us apart if we misstep."
The demon spread her arms slightly — inviting.
No weapon. No overt hostility.
Just... presence. Warped and wrong.
"He belongs to . His scent called . I left my mark on him."
Dylan choked. "What... mark?"
His hands trembled now.
A strange warmth surged beneath his skin — not fever, not magic.
Sothing older. Like an infection of mories he’d never lived.
Dylan had never been an old man.
Never had a family.
Never burned at a stake in the middle of so forgotten village.
None of that... was him.
"What are these mories..." Dylan croaked, voice raw and broken, each word like it scraped his throat bloody.
"They’re not mine—"
"They’re mine," the demon answered, calm and cold.
"I wove fragnts of my soul into the essence of the hobgoblin chieftain you consud. Through him... I branded you."
She smiled. Slowly. Sinister.
A grin more like a wound than a human expression.
Dylan collapsed to his knees.
His heart pounded against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
Sothing inside him spun — twisting, knotting.
His spirit — his core — recoiled, fought back, shifted.
An awful itch blood across his skin, like his body wanted to shed itself.
Maggie clenched her axe tighter.
The leather of her sleeve creaked under the strain.
Her jaw was tight enough to crack.
"You show up like this, in front of us — you didn’t stop to think we might kill you?"
The demon spread her arms wide — a gift, a dare.
Her smile grew wider still, consuming her face with a predatory stillness.
"Then go on. Try."
A cold wind rolled across the plain.
Even the stones seed to draw back.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It thrumd, tense like a cord on the verge of snapping. The air was saturated with a strange energy — not quite magical, but older, more primal. Sothing even the stones seed to fear.
Elisa stepped sideways, looking for a better line of sight. Her hand slid to the hilt of her daggers, eyes locked on the demoness.
Dylan, anwhile, was wrestling with sothing invisible. His back arched, fingers clawing into the ground. Spasms shook his arms. His eyes rolled beneath his lids, his mouth muttering words in no known tongue.
Maggie shouted:
"Hey asshole, stay with us!"
But he didn’t answer.
He was changing.
Beneath his skin, black veins pulsed briefly, vanishing as quickly as they ca, like they were hiding. His aura flickered — sotis human, sotis... sothing else. Sothing vaster, older than his own mory.
The demoness watched him like one might observe a rare flower bloom in a field of ash. Fascinated. Amused. Proud.
"He’s nearly ready," she said softly.
"He just needs to stop resisting. To give in to completely."
Maggie spat on the ground.
"You talk like a demon would."
"Because I am one."
She said it without irony.
And that — that chilled Elisa to the bone.
In an instant, she no longer saw this creature as just an enemy, but as a monster that believed it loved.
A twisted love, deford, unrecognizable by any human asure. The love of sothing ancient.
"What do you want to do with him?" Elisa asked, voice lowered.
The demoness turned her head toward her, almost surprised to be addressed with sothing other than fear.
"What is owed. To complete him. He was born incomplete... I will simply pour my soul into an empty shell, once his has fully faded."
Behind them, Dylan lifted his head.
His eyes — black, without pupils — glowed from within, like twin embers in a skull too young.
"I... I don’t rember... But I feel... sothing..."
His voice was no longer just his own.
It vibrated. A twisted chorus accompanied him.
A choir of ancient, distorted whispers, as if foreign mories were taking shape through him.
"They... speak. In . Beneath . Before ."
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