The demon was still breathing.
Barely.
Its chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven motions, every inhale accompanied by a wet gurgle as blackened blood bubbled up through shattered ribs.
Its once-proud fra was broken, limbs bent at wrong angles, demonic essence leaking uncontrollably like smoke from cracked stone.
Damien didn’t rush.
He stood over it, watching, waiting. Experience had taught him that demons were at their most dangerous when they appeared defeated. He crouched slightly, eyes narrowing, and pressed his foot down. It wasn’t hard, just enough to feel resistance against the demon’s sternum.
The demon groaned.
Good.
"You can still speak," Damien said calmly. "If you couldn’t, I’d already be done."
The demon’s cracked lips twitched upward into sothing resembling a smile. "You... humans... always so thorough."
Damien withdrew his foot and knelt beside it, resting his forearm on his knee. His knuckles were still stained black, the demonic blood having dried into ugly, flaking streaks along his skin.
"Answer honestly," Damien said. "And this ends quickly."
The demon wheezed out a laugh. "You think I have a choice?"
Damien didn’t respond.
Silence stretched for a few seconds before the demon spoke again, voice hoarse but steady.
"You asked... why I can speak like you."
"Yes."
The demon’s eyes flickered with sothing like pride. "Because I am not like the others. My bloodline is purer."
Damien’s brow furrowed slightly. "Purer."
"Yes," the demon continued, coughing once before forcing the words out. "Closer to the origin. Less diluted. My kind was not ant to crawl or howl mindlessly like beasts."
Damien’s heart thudded once, harder than before.
"And speech?" he pressed.
The demon chuckled weakly. "That ca later for . Humans are... fascinating creatures. Fragile. Brief. But adaptable." Its gaze sharpened. "When you devour enough of them, you begin to absorb more than flesh."
mories stirred uncomfortably in Damien’s mind.
"You ate humans," he said flatly.
"Yes," the demon replied without sha. "And through them, I learned language. Thought. Structure. I learned how you speak... how you plan."
Damien’s fingers curled slowly.
"And you’re the only one like this?" he asked.
The demon laughed, a rasping, broken sound. "Hardly."
Damien’s eyes lifted sharply. "Explain."
"There are many of us," the demon said. "Higher than . Stronger. Smarter. Those who command legions rather than fight alone."
Damien felt a chill crawl up his spine.
So this wasn’t an anomaly.
Even worse, this wasn’t the top.
"You’re Grade Four," Damien said slowly. "Yet your essence density rivals a Grade Three. Why?"
The demon’s grin returned, faint but unmistakably smug. "Because grades are for cattle."
Damien’s gaze hardened.
"My class," the demon continued, "does not consider the lesser demons as equals. They are foot soldiers. Livestock. Tools to be spent."
Damien’s eyes widened just a fraction. "You feed on other demons."
"Yes," it said simply. "Their cores. Their essence. They are plentiful... and weak."
That explained too much.
The unnatural density. The refined power. The way its strength had steadily climbed despite its nominal grade.
Damien inhaled slowly.
Demon cannibals? These demons fed on other demons and even called them weak?
As they spoke, the demon’s chest movents subtly grew stronger. Its essence flow, chaotic at first, began to stabilize, slowly knitting fractures and reinforcing damaged tissues.
It thought Damien hadn’t noticed but it was very wrong.
Damien had been watching the entire ti.
Timing mattered and so did positioning.
He shifted slightly, moving to the demon’s side, just out of the angle of its remaining functional arm. His voice remained even as he asked the final question.
"Why were you here?"
The demon’s recovery stuttered for half a second.
Then it answered.
"We were sent."
Damien’s muscles tensed.
"Sent... to this forest," the demon continued. "Months ago. A directive from above."
"To do what?" Damien asked.
"To destroy a certain human."
The world seed to narrow.
Damien’s heartbeat thundered in his ears.
"A specific one?" he asked quietly.
The demon nodded weakly. "Yes. We were given specifics claiming it was buried deep within the forest with no ans of escape. Told to erase it."
Damien’s thoughts raced.
Months ago.
This forest.
’I was the only human here.’ he thought.
"How many of you?" Damien asked.
"A few," the demon replied. "Enough."
"And you failed," Damien said.
"Yes," the demon admitted bitterly. "The human was gone. Vanished. We scoured the forest again and again. It was nowhere to be found."
Its eyes burned with resentnt. "Returning without completing the mission ant death. So we stayed. Hunted. Waited for the humans return."
Damien’s chest felt tight.
They hadn’t co randomly.
They had co for him.
And this one wasn’t alone.
For the first ti since the fight began, Damien’s composure cracked—just slightly. His gaze drifted, thoughts spiraling as implications stacked upon implications.
’If they were sent after ... then Garrick...’
The demon sensed it his distracted thought.
In that fleeting mont of distraction, it moved.
With a sudden surge of demonic essence, it twisted its torso and lashed out, claw sweeping toward Damien’s throat.
The motion was desperate and clumsy. Weakened as it was, it was too slow.
Damien reacted instantly.
His boot slamd into the demon’s side with brutal force, sending the broken body flying several ters across the forest floor.
"Thank you," Damien said coldly, rising to his feet. "You’ve been very informative."
The demon barely had ti to register the words before sothing cold and suffocating enveloped it.
Luton.
The stellar sli surged forward, wrapping around the demon’s limbs and torso in an instant, pinning it midair. The demon scread as its essence was smothered, absorbed, dragged inward like water into a void.
"No—wait—!"
Too late.
Luton devoured it completely, body dissolving into shimring waves as it absorbed the demon’s power. The clearing fell silent once more.
Damien stood still, staring at the spot where the demon had been.
His mind was already elsewhere. ’If they were sent for ...’
’Then this forest is no longer safe for him.’
He turned sharply.
"Garrick," Damien said, voice firm and unyielding. "You need to leave."
Garrick stared at Damien for a mont longer than necessary.
"You need to leave," Damien had said—flat, final, leaving no room for argunt.
At first, Garrick had been taken aback. After everything they had just gone through, after the demon’s words and the violence that followed, the sudden urgency felt jarring. But as the echo of the demon’s confession settled in his mind, Garrick understood sothing instinctively.
This place had changed.
Or perhaps it had always been this dangerous, and he had simply been lucky until now.
"Alright," Garrick said at last, exhaling slowly. "We were almost done anyway."
There was no resentnt in his voice. No pride wounded. If anything, there was relief. He had what he ca for. More than what he had dared to hope for.
He stepped away from the shattered clearing, choosing a relatively intact patch of ground, and knelt. With practiced movents, he reached into his coat and produced a small, dark object—his void key.
Ninety essence cores.
The number still felt unreal.
Garrick released them carefully, one by one, letting them hover briefly in the air as he took stock. The glow of condensed essence illuminated the ruined forest floor—cores of varying hues and intensities, most radiating the steady pulse of Grade Five and Grade Four mana.
And then there were the others.
Three cores burned brighter than the rest.
Grade Three.
His breath caught for just a mont as he looked at them. Those cores alone were worth more than entire caravans. Worth more than small villages. Worth more than his life—if soone realized what he carried.
"My wife... my kids..." He clenched his jaw and forced himself to focus.
Garrick began sorting.
The first void key he prepared was plain and unassuming, its storage space carefully calibrated. Into it went the exact number of cores required to repay the loan shark. Not a single one more.
He wasn’t naïve, overpaying only attracted attention. This key would buy their freedom. Nothing else.
The second void key was different.
This one was special.
It didn’t look like a key at all.
It was a tooth.
Polished, yellowed, unmistakably organic, drilled through at the root so it could be used to replace his missing tooth.
Inside it, Garrick carefully placed the three Grade Three essence cores.
His hands trembled despite himself.
This key would never leave his body.
The last void key received the remaining cores—spares, profits, the future. The ones he would sell slowly, carefully, once his family was safe. Enough to start again. Enough to live without fear. He then placed this third key inside the second tooth-like key.
When he was done, Garrick sealed the keys and stood, shoulders sagging as the tension finally began to drain from him.
He turned to Damien.
"So," he said, forcing a small smile, "when do you think you’ll be back from the island?"
Damien didn’t answer imdiately.
He was staring into the forest, eyes unfocused, thoughts clearly elsewhere. When he finally looked back at Garrick, there was sothing colder in his gaze than before.
"I don’t know," Damien said honestly. "I’ll be here for a while."
Garrick studied him, then nodded slowly. "Settling that score?"
"Yes."
No elaboration. None needed.
Garrick reached into his coat one last ti and pulled out a tightly rolled parchnt etched with faint runes—the teleportation scroll. Before activating it, he hesitated.
"If you ever co back to the Seaport," he said, "there’s a place you should visit. A dockside tavern. ’The Split Keel.’ I’m there more often than not."
Damien inclined his head. "I’ll rember."
They clasped hands.
The grip was firm. Equal.
"Thank you," Garrick said quietly. "For everything."
Damien didn’t respond, but he didn’t pull away either.
With a final breath, Garrick tore the scroll in half.
Light flared.
A teleportation array blood beneath his feet, lines of sigil and rune snapping into place with a sharp hum. Garrick t Damien’s eyes one last ti—and then he was gone, swallowed by a flash of spatial distortion.
Silence reclaid the forest.
Damien exhaled slowly.
He turned, surveying the aftermath of the battle. Trees lay shattered and uprooted, the ground gouged and cracked, the air still faintly tainted with demonic residue. An entire section of the forest had been reduced to ruins.
He smirked.
The demon’s words echoed in his mind. They were sent to destroy a human.
They checked the forest over a dozen tis.
There were others.
Damien’s smirk widened into sothing sharper. Colder.
"So," he murmured, more to himself than anything else, "you ca here for ."
Luton shifted beside him, its gelatinous body rippling with barely contained power.
Damien turned and began walking deeper into the Forest of Twin Disasters, footsteps steady, purpose clear.
"If you’re still here," he continued quietly, "then I’ll make sure none of you leave."
His eyes glead.
Luton would need more essence.
Fenrir too.
And Damien?
He had so hunting to do.
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