Beneath the collapsed building, I gasped for air, every breath clawing through my chest like I'd been drowning in a vacuum and only now broken through the surface. My throat burned raw, my ribs ached, and for a moment I couldn't tell if I was still alive or just dragging in the aftertaste of death. My eyes flew wide, vision swimming, veins bulging with pressure as I forced another breath in.
A massive slab of wall had me pinned, its crushing weight pressing deep into my ribs, grinding bone against bone. Every inhalation was a knife. I pressed trembling hands against the cold stone, arms shaking violently. My muscles screamed, tendons stretched thin like frayed cords about to snap, until at last the slab shifted with a low, grinding groan. It rolled aside and slammed into the rubble with a thunderous crash that sent dust spiraling around me in suffocating clouds.
I dragged myself free, shirtless and barefoot. My body was streaked with blood, painted red across skin that had already been torn raw. My back had knitted itself back together, but the pain still lingered, gnawing, sinking into me like fire eating from the inside out. Every movement sent another jolt through me like my body was being ripped apart piece by piece, and stitched back together only to tear again.
I staggered upright. All that remained of the building was ruin: a mountain of twisted steel, shattered glass, and pulverized cement. Its skeleton rose crookedly against the gray sky, nothing more than a carcass of the place that once stood.
I stumbled forward, feet dragging through rubble, each step over splintered debris a punishment. Razor shards of glass buried themselves into my soles, hot needles that drew blood with every step. Dark streaks of red pooled and dripped, trailing behind me like a map of my survival.
I've lost so much blood already, yet I'm still alive. This demon won't let me die in peace, not until he finally takes over my body.
Why do people keep trying? I thought bitterly. Why do people still bother so much to have more than they can handle when they already know how the story ends?
The crumbled building fell away behind me, and eventually I found myself on a narrow dirt road. Dust clung to my sweat-slicked skin, staining every cut and bruise. Far ahead stretched a neighborhood that time itself had abandoned: farms hollow and skeletal, fences broken and sagging, houses so worn they looked like faded memories etched into the land.
Where is this place? Am I even still in Aderfel?
It didn't feel like it anymore. The place reminded me of scenes from old Japanese films I'd once seen, the kind where houses stood simple and proud, but here they were broken, stripped of their dignity. Maybe it was the wind, or just the years.
What happened here?!
Behind a cattle shed, my body gave in and I collapsed. The rough wooden wall bit into my back as I leaned against it. Inside the shed, cows shifted lazily, their low moos filling the silence. They chewed without care, unaware or perhaps uninterested in the storm tearing me apart only a breath away.
This body wasn't mine alone, and I knew it. Vanik'shur the cursed demon, the name no one dares to speak. His shadow was the reason I never believed I needed life. His name carried only fear, only horror, only hate. And all of it bled onto me. No one bothered to separate us anymore. To them, there was no me, only him. The cursed demon
I don't know if a stronger one exists, maybe. But history claims he was the first demon to exist, the origin of all corruption. A being twisted not by humans, but by his own kind, betrayed until his emotions blackened into something unrecognizable. Now vengeance is the only thing that drives him, stubborn, unending. And if you ask me, he's as stubborn about vengeance as he is about dragging me into life each time I die.
Words slipped out of me unbidden, soft and cracked. They were the kind you whisper when you're not sure anyone's listening.
My voice shook when I whispered; maybe to myself, maybe to him, maybe just to the air.
"Are you listening to me?"
Yeah, of course there was no response.
"Do you only live to destroy? Haven't you ever heard of a syllable that goes 'forgive and forget'?"
But I wasn't done, as I tried again, my voice rough and breaking. "Do you only live to destroy? Haven't you ever heard of something called 'forgive and forget'?"
The question hung in the air like a curse, unanswered. Only the cows replied with the slow chewing and a lazy shift of weight against the floorboards. Their sounds blended with the hiss of the night wind that crept cold through the cracks in the wooden wall.
"You hate humans, don't you?" My voice cracked. "No, you hate everyone and everything that exists. I think even your own existence disgusts you." My throat tightened. "I saw what you destroyed, the lives you ended. Did it make you happy? Did it calm you down? Or did it only leave you emptier than before?"
But Vanik'shur never answered, he never gave me that luxury. His silence wasn't emptiness; it was sharp, cutting, piercing enough to make me wonder if I was unconscious, trapped in some hallucination of a conversation.
"I hate my existence too," I whispered, voice breaking, "but I hate my actions more. And still… I can't wish to die, not when it would break her." My eyes blurred with grandma's face. "Even if she's far away, just knowing I exist gives her peace. I want to be someone she's proud of, even if just once. But you and I… we see life differently, don't we?"
But the response never changed, the silence thickened, wrapping around me.
And then like glass cutting through skin a memory returned.
—
I was five years old, small enough that the world looked like it didn't realize I belonged in it. The White Unit smelled like a fresh bandage: sterile, unslept, air so bright it felt white. They called it a facility. They called it safe. I called it the room where sound sank and did not come back.
A man took my hand, not gently and not cruelly, just completely. His palm was rough and dry; the undersides of his fingers had little ridges like old rope. He walked me through corridors that turned too many times, a maze that pretended to be a hallway. The floor was so clean it reflected shapes instead of faces; lights buzzed softly overhead, a beehive that never made honey. The glass walls on either side revealed other corridors, other rooms variations on a theme of white.
He was Drewman. He sat me at a table in a room that wanted to be a classroom and a clinic and a confession booth. My legs dangled, they didn't touch the floor. The hospital clothes hung on me like I was a scarecrow stuffed with smaller memories.
Drewman sat opposite; grey beard trimmed with discipline, a scar tracking from the bridge of his nose across his cheek like a misplaced line of poetry. His body was the kind that had practiced strength for long enough to think of it as posture, not effort. His eyes were greyish too, the kind of calm that is either mercy or calculation.
He placed his hand onto the table. Then a flicker of flame bloomed above his palm, small but alive, like a match burning upside down.
"Can you do this?" he asked, voice almost too kind.
I stared at my thin and delicate hand, then placed it on the table like he did and tried. But nothing came. I gave it a try once more, focus narrowed, my breath tightened but after a moment of effort, I shook my head.
Drewman reached forward, gently taking my hand into his. "Try again," he said. "You have more inside you than you know."
I tried again, focus burning behind my eyes, but nothing came. Because how was I supposed to know how to do it when he gave me nothing but a word?
I turned my gaze to the wide glass wall beside me. On the other side of the hallway, children my age shuffled past, their eyes drifting toward me with quiet, hollow expressions. Some could barely carry their own weight, their steps dragging as if the floor itself pulled them down. Others bore rashes and burns that scarred their fragile skin. Each child was different; marked, altered, because they were all being injected with my blood. Every one of them was an experiment. Every one a step toward forging the forbidden weapon the government dreamed of.
Drewman smiled faintly.
"You will someday. But to reach that day, you need to stay here. The White Unit will teach you how to control the demon inside you. When you master it, you can see your parents again. You want that, don't you?"
I nodded, desperate. I wished he'd at least said their names.
"Then grow stronger," he said. "Strong enough to protect them from creatures. And to do that you'll obey."
His smile pressed false warmth into me, but it wasn't enough. Then, without warning, he seized my arm and twisted it.
SNAP.
I looked at him, then looked at my wrist, which wasn't a wrist anymore but a question: bone out of place, angle wrong, skin already swelling. My face stayed empty because I had been told that strength starts at the mouth: you close it, you do not cry. Pain marched up my arm but I sat with it the way you sit with the weather.
He watched my face as if it were a gauge. He watched the room to see if Vanik'shur might leak out like steam. But the demon read the moment and turned the page.
Morning came like a trick, my wrist was whole again. No bandages, no medicine. It had simply healed, erasing all evidence of the break. That was what he wanted to understand. But he had a long way to go.
I snapped back to the present, slumped beneath the cattle shed, lungs heaving.
—
"…Maybe they're not all bad," I murmured. "Maybe they're just desperate to understand what makes me different. Maybe they want answers about you."
But even as I spoke, I knew I was lying to myself. It was never about understanding, it was always about techniques. They didn't say it out loud, not in public, but in Aderfel that was the only truth: strength meant everything. The strongest were the respected, the admired, the loved. And strength was nothing more than power.
The cows shifted, their low voices blending with silence like unwilling witnesses.
"I hate that I kill people just because you get angry. It's no wonder everyone hates me. Who would ever trust a monster who doesn't even die?"
The words broke inside me. My voice cracked, raw and trembling.
"I'm a murderer, a monster, a weak unworthy thing no one will ever acknowledge. So what makes me think I could ever save anyone?"
Tears carved down my cheeks, hot and relentless. I didn't bother to wipe them away. I let them fall, as though spilling them might ease the ache inside me.
"What was the point of the White Unit? What was the point of all of that suffering? Wasn't I supposed to be strong? Wasn't I supposed to become a protector? Wasn't I supposed to learn control?" My voice broke, rose, then fell. "Is this… is this what they meant?"
The ache in my chest deepened, pressing and suffocating, until I could hardly breathe. I'd just returned to the city, just tried to piece myself together again but the emotions inside me no longer felt like mine.
"How am I supposed to prove to anyone that I'm not a threat? That I won't destroy everything? That I'm not just a ticking bomb waiting to go off?" My voice tore ragged. "Damn it, how?"
The words died on my lips, but with every sob something listened close by as it drew closer from the darkness. Its steps were slow, deliberate, echoing like a countdown.
My whole body froze, even the air in my lungs felt too cold. My hand ran to cover my nose and mouth.
I can't breathe.
Its presence thickened around me, suffocating, stinking of rot until the air itself became unbearable. Fear crawled up my chest, sharp and merciless.
A figure stepped into view; humanoid, but not human. Short horns pointed from its skull, fangs jutted like daggers. Its skin glimmered like frozen fire, crimson and grey shifting under the dim light. Ragged hair spilled across half its face.
It walked past me, slow, almost lazy. Its bare torso glistened with an unholy sheen.
A few steps away, it stopped then turned and tilted its head to the left against its shoulder and looked at me. Its half-lidded eyes burned endlessly.
What is that? It's stronger than Nellie's presence.
My heartbeat thundered in my chest. My breath caught in my chest. My body refused to move and my eyes stayed fixed on it.