The first thing that hit me was the pain.
This was definitely not the wish I had made.
I remember the sunrise in O City. I remember talking to the Devil, spilling my heart out, and making a wish… one that I had dreamed about for 18 years. I remember Hattie agreeing… and then… nothing.
I had asked to find the one place in this universe that I belonged. I was too strong to be a human or even a halfling. I was too strong to be a pure-breed demon. But that was because I wasn't a purebred.
I was what happened when demons fell in love.
My mother was a lust demon, my father… a simple human who fell in love with her at first sight. My grandmother was a pride demon, and my grandfather was a wrath demon. Normally, demons stick to their own kind. Lust with lust, pride with pride, demon with demon.
It helps to know what the offspring would come out as.
But me? I had powers from each and every one of my bloodlines.
When I was two, I experienced bullying for the first time. When I was five, my grandmother dropped me off at the Devil's doorsteps for two months of the year. And now, at 20, I was tired.
Thus, my wish.
What was not part of my wish was the pain…
This was pain.
This was hell.
Something sharp burned under my ribs as my stomach cramped so hard that I tasted bile. My limbs were twisted wrong. My hip screamed as I tried to shift just a bit.
And cold—Holy Devil, the cold had teeth. It was in my bones, in my blood. Everything was too loud. Too close. Every sound echoed like it was coming from the inside out.
I opened my eyes, and the world spun.
Dark trees. Stone. Moss. I blink. Blink again. My vision flickered in and out, like static, as I tried to concentrate on something… anything.
Anything other than the blood in my mouth.
I hated the taste of my own blood. The copper, metallic taste reminded me that if I tasted it, something had gone horribly wrong.
I tried to push myself up and nearly black out as the pain bore down on me even harder.
My arms didn't work right. My legs were worse. My hip… something's broken. Definitely broken. And my body—
No. No, no, no.
My body wasn't this small.
Panic crawled up my throat like a living thing. I twisted, just enough to glimpse my hands—thin, bruised, almost skeletal-a child's hands with dirt under the nails and rope burns on both wrists.
This wasn't me.
There was no way in Hell that this was me.
I don't know this body, but I felt everything. I felt the exhaustion in her bones, the tear in her scalp where something—someone—hit her hard enough to split skin. The bruises. The cold. I felt her pain as overwhelmingly as if it were my own.
This was not my body… but it was my mind that was trapped inside it.
"I didn't… wish for this," I whispered. My voice came out raw, torn from too many screams I don't remember making. "This isn't it…"
I try to roll, and something crunches. Not snow, not debris on the road, and defiantly not leaves.
It was me.
Tears prick at my eyes, hot and stupid. I haven't cried in years. Not even when the boy I had a crush on called me a freak of nature and hit me with a rock. I didn't cry when Dimitri looked at me when I was five and promised me pain. I didn't even cry when Tank chased me through the primeval jungle of the Devil's Playground.
But this?
This was more than I could take.
I remember—blurry and distant—the way the cart wheels bounced over rocks. The shove. The fall. This body—my new body—had been thrown away like garbage, left where I was to die.
Clearly, they didn't know who the fuck they were dealing with. I was no one's prey, and I wasn't disposable.
I gritted my teeth and dragged myself toward the closest tree. Every inch that I managed to gain was a battle until finally, my fingers curled around the root of a tree.
My vision went dark at the edges as I tried to force air into my abused lungs.
This body isn't going to make it through the night.
Not unless I did something.
I collapsed against the trunk, chest heaving. The bark bit into my spine, peeling more skin than it supported. Every breath scraped fresh agony against its jagged edges, but I forced myself to ignore the pain. I needed to make sure that I survived the night, and to do that meant pain.
Besides, like Chang Xuefeng always said, 'Pain means you are still alive.'
I was alive and given a second chance to find my place. Bring on the pain, bring on the danger, and the treats. I was going to survive this night, and I was going to carve my own place in this new version of Hell.
My breath fogged in the night air, and I forced my eyes open to stare up at the night sky. The stars, shining down on me like beacons of hope, made me freeze. They were different…wrong.
Wrong constellations, wrong directions, just… wrong.
This was definitely not home, but I would make it one.
The wind shifted, and that's when I felt them— the eyes in the dark.
Watching me. Waiting for me to give up and make an easy meal.
Staring off into the darkness, it was easy to tell that the creatures were low to the ground. Patient. A predator.
But not a raptor.
Not a demon coming in for the kill.
Taking in a deep breath, I called for my poison, my toxic power that no one stood a chance against.
And then… nothing. Not a single drop of black mist, not a familiar flame deep in my chest, not even a hit of metal on my skin.
Nothing.
My powers, handed down by my family, were gone.
Or buried.
I had never been in this position before, but I had never been this injured before. That was what I told myself even as I let out a low growl that any hellhound would approve of. "If you're going to eat me," I grunted, shifting my broken body into an attack position, "I promise you I'll stick in your throat."
The eyes blinked before they vanished into the night.
Every predator wanted an easy meal. Refuse to be that, and you would be fine.
I shifted again, using what little strength I have to pull myself into the hollow beneath the roots. The ground was damp and unforgiving. My fingers shook as I tugged the filthy remains of my sleeve over my shoulders.
It was at that moment that I saw the puddle in front of me.
Moonlight shone off the still surface, illuminating the reflection on top. I forced myself to look down, to study the reflection.
The girl staring back at me looked half-dead. Her long black hair was the exact opposite of my bright blonde hair. Instead of it being silky soft, it was coarse, like hay, and matted with blood. My pale skin, once again completely different from my olive brown complexion, stretched too thin over sharp cheekbones. And the eyes—
Blue.
Pale… unnatural blue.
Those were my eyes staring back at me; there was no question about that.
Zhao Xiuying.
The name screamed in my head, foreign but familiar. I don't know where it came from, and I didn't know if it was mine now or if it had always been. I only knew one thing:
Hazel-Anne Davis is gone.
Or maybe I've just been rewritten.
I rested my forehead against the bark, ignoring the pain, and breathed through the nausea. One thing at a time. Plan, think, surprise, survive. The family motto, and one that brought a smile to my face as I remembered Papa looking down at me as he drilled it into my head.
Plan.
Think.
Surprise.
Survive.
Well, I had all the surprises I wanted to have for the day. Now it was time to plan.
I had survived the Devil's Playground. I hunted raptors with my father at nine. I've buried people I loved and burned down camps full of monsters.
This place? It was just another beast to kill or to conquer.
I closed my eyes. My body trembled, starving and ruined. But I was alive. And tomorrow… tomorrow I'll find out who did this. I'll find food. I'll find shelter. I'll find fire.
And then I'll find who beat my body and then left me on the road.
And I'll make them pay.
Because this wasn't the wish I had made.
But it was the one that someone was going to regret.