Rosa stomped through the slop.
Her boots sank.
But she kept moving.
She was in the airship.
Pacing metal.
The air—cold as her skin, numb as her heart.
The sky didn't exist, nor did the hands that pulled her back. She would not let it deceive her; the more potent it pushed, the closer she got.
Lucien's hand felt smaller.
Half its size.
A child's hand. Soft. Too soft.
Her pulse staggered.
Her mind knew the truth.
But Voidium didn't care.
It wanted her to believe.
To slip.
To let the past swallow her whole.
Voidium couldn't fake it, but it tried to warp her senses. The particles themselves reprogrammed each touch, making it truly feel like a boy held her hand, and she was the same young bookworm that many years ago.
But it won't work. It wouldn't convince her. She clutched the boy's hand, the worn bones that ran it, the aged skin she clung to—a reminder of his proper form.
She pulled him along, stuffing down that giddy teen with more on her mind than responsibility. She just needed to find him. Stop her biggest mistake. Prevent her brother from losing control again.
Then, as though passing through a curtain, the Voidium thickened, pulling her into its embrace. The air turned viscous, and the walls of the ship warped into jagged reflections of glass. As the Voidium fog dissipated, the vessel and its surroundings were replaced by a warped, shimmering scene. Rosa noticed her breath had an unnatural stillness, and the light reflected like liquid glass, bending and distorting the realm.
"What now," Lucien said, his voice hitting a deeper note now.
Beside her like a tower, his old wrinkled frown was just the way she liked it. His many secrets peeled behind his eyes, ready for her to tear out and inspect—a constant mystery and puzzle to slot together.
But she could gawk later as the bulkhead began to flicker, the twisted wreckage replaced by pristine carved walls. Shadows moved in impossible ways, and voices whispered incoherently around them. Daemons. She knew.
Rosa felt her body sinking as though submerged in a thick liquid. Her tail swayed against her will, and her vision warped—shaped from her past, bleeding into the present—the howl of the Void search for something to attack her with. But the issue was her greatest mistake lay in front of her. A reminder of all her sins. The scar she put on her family for the sake of survival.
She turned to gaze at it all, her eyes watching, her tail squirming as her brother licked his lips with blood. Then, she noticed the Daughter of a King, who filled the room with a wave of steam. The woman's heart melted steel and peeled bone, and her body, a power core ready to erupt.
Two Valkar. A succubus and a vampire. Burning in erotic desire. A feeling she could relate to.
"Was your awakening like that, too?" asked Lucien.
She eyed the Spy, and even he had trouble knowing where to look, his face grimacing at what she was likely also thinking. Awakenings can be messy, But this… she needed to stop it before they melted this ship to glass.
"Lorelai?" she said. But even she knew that was hopeless, as the woman oozed waves, Rosa melting as she stepped closer. "Marshal?" She tried.
Again, her voice shot in the fog as Marshal grazed up Lorelai's neck like an all-you-can-eat steak. She couldn't help but feel like a demon in a headlight. All strength was sapped from her, her cracking youthful voice, so earnest, so anxious. What if she was wrong? She had nothing to go off—nobody to confirm if she was even correct.
Rosalind stomached a growl, her core cracking, Voltite surging. The Voidium squirmed, the scene warping between a tent and an airship. So what if she was wrong? So what if she didn't know? Fuck it. She was the only one who knew a dam thing. So, who else than her? Her body boiled between a meek girl and a Demon General. She was no pushover. She fought for this, and she will keep going until she drops. That was a promise.
She let Lucien's hand go, the chill lacing her fingers the moment they parted. A moment of weakness. A mistake she was taking back.
"Rosa!" Lucien cried, his form disappearing into the fog as she moved. "Rosa?"
Rosalind Sylvain stormed into the mist, her eyes pooling fountains. The heat wrapped her, it embraced her, it welcomed her. She continued feeling her skin burn, her muscles peel, and her bones cook. Let it consume her, melt all her thoughts, and leave the one thing that mattered.
Like a knife, she let the pain in and pulled the strap at her waist. The syringe frosted her fingers, the white Solelite liquid the last she had against the Voidium—the one thing that could stop Daemonisation.
So, she armed her boot and felt no guilt whatsoever. Then she slammed her leg into Marshal, the buckle of her toes breaking against his diamond skeleton. The air blasted out from his back. She wanted to cry out, acknowledge the shrapnel inside her boot, but she only had one chance. One moment against a half inquisitor like him. She cut her whimpering short and rushed in as Marshal separated from Lorelai.
Her limbs moved like a mechanical arm: demonology, studies, and analytics vs hardened experience and raw power. She knew the odds, and she couldn't play fair.
Before he could counter, Voltite snapped through her nerves.
Supercharged.
Faster.
Faster.
Pain lashed up her spine, her brain a blistering engine of calculations.
She could see it.
Every move. Every twitch in Marshal's stance.
His breath. His pulse. The minuscule shift in his weight—
The opening she needed.
This was it.
All or nothing.
Let her break.
Let the pain fuel her.
Her body was failing, but her mind—
That had never been clearer.
Then, doing what could have killed most demons, she overlocked Voltite.
Her nerves lit up like live wires, her muscles seizing as her bleeding brain fired commands faster than her body could handle. She could feel her tears boil against her cheeks, her vision fracturing into shards.
She screamed as the pulse fried her neural network, pushing it beyond mortal cognition. Her body moved on its own, tears boiling against her cheeks, her lips trembling in overload. It was a flood—a sledgehammer breaking through everything she'd locked away.
But amid the madness, she forced her eyes open. And like time had slowed, her mind surging to max capacity, the room flowed into steps, each action like a move on a chess board, her cells one step ahead, or at least guessing based on her powerhouse calculations.
She watched her brother's eyes shift, a blazing blue burning at her. Ready to tear her in two. He had gotten better at using Voltite, his synapses mere milliseconds behind her. But she was working in nanoseconds, her neurons firing at one billionth of one second, her fingers and body executing in a machine cycle.
It happened in frames, a split trillionth of a second stretched out for a few. She couldn't slow time but could process it—analysing every atom in motion.
And that is all she needed.
Her gaze scanned Marshal's chest, memorizing the exact placement of veins and arteries beneath the steaming skin.
"Demon circulation prioritizes Gravium pathways near the core. The blood here is superheated faster moving. If I can inject into the primary channel..." Her voice trailed off as she pinpointed her target.
The intercostal artery—a vessel running between Marshal's ribs, just above his heart. It was perfect—close enough for rapid distribution but not so close as to flood his heart directly and shock his whole circulatory system. She wanted him alive.
Marshal's body lit up in a green spark, his eyes accelerating as his mind caught up, his snarl bleeding with Lorelai's blood and maybe Rosa's if she didn't hurry.
"I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I made you this.
I'm sorry I turned you into this."
Marshal didn't hear her.
But maybe that's why she said it.
Because admitting it in silence was easier than facing the truth.
"Ro—" Lucien started to say, his fingers peeking out the mist as he ran forward, his movement a slow-mo slide show as each blink captured a new angle.
She ignored the pang in her chest. There was no time for sentiment. There's no time for that. Her eyes flicked to the syringe, her mind already processing the necessary calculations: angle, depth, resistance. And there is one last thing.
Execute.