Nigel pulled his hoodie up until the world narrowed to the slit of the path ahead. The amusement park yawned around him — rusted attractions, torn banners snapping in a wind that smelled of mildew and salt. He moved between shadow and broken light, checking each stall and arcade with the kind of thoroughness that had saved him before. No Zack. No sign of the Zack anywhere in the amusement park they'd agreed on. The silence felt wrong, like the park was holding its breath.
He paused at the mouth of the midway and scanned for any movement. The Ferris wheel loomed above everything, its skeleton of spokes and seats a white ghost against the sky. Near one of its support beams stood a figure. For a second Nigel's heart jumped with hope; he started toward it fast enough that his breath came short.
When he reached the Ferris wheel, the figure resolved into a life-sized cardboard cutout—painted clothes, a permanent, ridiculous smile. Nigel sank his palm against it and let out a long, useless laugh. "Of course," he muttered, more to himself than to the empty park. He was about to turn away when a voice called his name, low and urgent.
"Nigel!"
He whirled. Zack was running for him, hoodie flapping, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Relief cracked through Nigel in a rush so strong it made his knees weak.
"Zack—I thought you weren't here. I thought something happened," Nigel choked out.
"Yeah, my bad." Zack skidded to a stop, breathing hard. "I had to take the long way. Too many eyes on the usual routes. I'm glad you made it out. Wait—what happened to your arm?" He stared at Nigel's left sleeve, which tightened around something beneath, the fabric strained in a way that put Nigel on edge.
Nigel hesitated. The story was a knot—water, caves, a face like his mother's, a tablet, a thing that moved him like it owned the air. "It's a long story. I barely understand it myself."
"Tell me," Zack said. "We have time. We need a plan anyway."
So Nigel told him. He told it all: the jump into the river with the Silencers on his heels, the freezing dark, the cave that opened like a mouth, the vision of his mother, the tablet warm under his fingers, and then the thing that had looked at him and called itself Kuran—no, Kuros—no, Kuran—before swallowing his will and staining his arm with something with this demonic form.
Zack listened the whole time. He didn't interrupt except once, when Nigel tried to explain the vision of the demon consuming him and sinking under his skin. He was quieter than Nigel had ever seen him.
"Nigel," Zack said finally. "What did the demon call itself?"
"K—Kuros?" Nigel said. He had heard the name like a broken echo.
"No. Kuran." Zack's voice was flat, the word a match thrown in dry brush.
"Yeah. That's it." Nigel should have felt steadier having the name. Instead the air in his lungs felt thin.
Zack reached out and gripped the exposed demonic arm. His fingers were calm, certain. Then he began to speak—an old, layered prayer that hung with consonants Nigel did not recognize. It was neither wholly language nor only sound; it felt like keys unlocking a door.
At first nothing happened. Then the world peeled away.
They weren't standing in the amusement park anymore. The Ferris wheel and cardboard cutouts warped; the sound of wind tightened into a chord. Light bent and deepened until everything around them was under a red-tinted haze. Shapes like ruined towers rose in the distance, and the ground seemed to pulse with a heartbeat that was not theirs.
"Zack, where the hell are we?" Nigel demanded. Panic laced his voice.
"We're in Kuran's domain," Zack said quietly. "His…home."
A cold laugh filled the space, not from anywhere, but from everywhere. Something stepped out of the haze — enormous, coiled, a face like a cavern. Eyes like polished stones bored into them. It spoke with a voice that made Nigel's teeth ache.
"My human vessel? How quaint." The demon's words rolled over Nigel, oddly amused. "And this one—an archpriest's touch. Delicious."
Zack stiffened. "You know who I am."
"I do," the demon said. "Zalette. The hero of the Eastern Providence Church. That's the priest who wrapped me in iron and sealed me away. So the family persists." Its tone was a mixture of surprise and old contempt.
"My name is Zack—Zalette," Zack said, his voice steady though his hands trembled.
Nigel wanted to ask what an archpriest was, how Zack could have kept this a secret, why any of this history mattered. The questions crowded his mouth but the demon's gaze pinned him.
"You carry me," it said to Nigel. "I have been bound and biding for three thousand years. You are the new vessel. Ninety days." It smiled in a way that was not meant to be seen by human eyes. "Ninety days and the corruption will blossom. I will grow from your marrow and sweep the world into ash. You will not know it until you wake as I do."
Zack went pale. "There are ways—" he began, and then cut himself off. He looked at Nigel with a raw, urgent gravity Nigel had never seen.
"I will not let that happen," Zack said, and he meant it down to the bone. "Whatever it takes."
The demon laughed. "I love human hope. It is so fragile and bright. You can try, little archpriest. I will savor this hunt. Your name will be the last you speak before you become mine."
Kuran's figure thinned like smoke and, with a sound like distant thunder, dissolved. The red haze folded back into the rusted Ferris wheel, into the ordinary night.
Nigel sagged to the ground, the adrenaline finally leaking out of him. The park smelled the same as it had an hour before, but everything felt altered, atoms rearranged. Zack crouched beside him, restless, fingers finding Nigel's shoulder. His grip was more plea than comfort.
"I'm sorry I kept this from you," Zack said suddenly. "I—" He stopped and rubbed his face. "I come from a line of archpriests. We watch for Kuran's return. We train. I should have told you, but I never thought—" He swallowed. "I never thought you'd be chosen."
"Chosen," Nigel said, and the word tasted wrong. "By a demon. Nice."
They sat in heavy silence until Zack spoke again, practical already. "We have ninety days. We'll find a way. We need tools, texts, anything the order kept. We need to stay hidden—Silencers will be hunting me for the apartment blaze and you for the heist." He nodded toward the dark beyond the midway. "There's an arms depot near one of their outposts. We can hit it at dawn for supplies and—maybe—something to help pull the curse out."
Nigel tried to imagine the next three months: constant watching, the slow erosion inside his own skin, a demon learning the contours of his life. The image of his mother's hands pressed into his memory flickered like a last ember.
"You really think we can stop it?" he asked. His voice was small.
Zack gave him that crooked grin Nigel had always loved — the one that came out when the trouble was big enough to be almost funny. "We're brothers, Nige. We ride or die. I'm not letting you be a footnote in Kuran's history."
"You're lucky you know how to be an idiot with timing," Nigel managed, and for a moment the world felt bearable because they were both laughing and both lying a little to themselves.
They spent the night under the hollowed shell of a bumper-car pavilion, whispering over plans and lists, names Zack said he would check, places they could raid, people who might still owe favors. The park creaked and settled around them, indifferent to the weight of the world on two young shoulders.
As Nigel lay awake, the memory of his mother's voice — "Your story is far from over" — returned, steady and strange in his ears. He didn't know what that future held. He only knew the demon in his arm had ninety days to claim him. And he had Zack, and resolve, and a plan that began at dawn with a raid on a Silencer depot.