The demon was already moving.

It didn't walk or lunge. One heartbeat it was still, the next it folded in on itself and closed the distance in less than a breath. The air split with a shriek that was part muscle, part something far worse.

Max threw up his arms, too slow.

The impact hit like a car crash wrapped in razors. His back slammed into the hallway wall. Concrete fractured. Something in his ribs gave with a hot, muffled crunch. Air burst from his lungs in a sound that didn't belong to anything human.

The floor rolled beneath him. The world tipped sideways.

Then the fire came.

Not called. Not controlled. It detonated from his chest as if it had been waiting, impatient, for this moment.

Golden light punched outward, racing beneath his skin in jagged veins. Linoleum blistered under him. The air trembled. Overhead, the emergency lights burst, raining shards and molten sparks.

The demon staggered, hissing, limbs twitching from the blast. Not wounded—yet. But surprised.

Max forced air into his lungs and pushed up from the wall. His right hand clenched at his side, heat pulsing in his palm. The other braced against the wreckage. Every movement made his ribs flare with pain, but he kept moving.

The hallway was chaos. Nurses slumped in the corners. Medical carts overturned. Red light strobed through the gloom, colouring the scene in pulses of blood.

The demon's head cocked, birdlike. Half-melted surgical mask fused to its jaw. Black fluid steamed from its shoulder. It took a slow step forward.

"You want her?" Max rasped. "You'll have to go through me."

The fire surged again, stronger but restless.

Max advanced instead of waiting. His first swing cracked across the demon's face, Soulfire exploding from his knuckles. The creature staggered, then whipped its claws toward his ribs. He twisted, the tips scoring across his gown instead of his flesh.

They circled each other, feet slipping on scorched tile. Max drove a fist into its gut, sending a ripple of gold up its torso. The demon retaliated with an upward slash that grazed his forearm and sent blood down to his wrist. Pain flared, but so did the fire.

He pressed the attack—jab, hook, another burst of flame. The thing was fast, ducking under his blows, swiping for his throat. He caught one wrist, felt bones like twisted wire under its skin, and shoved it back into a wall hard enough to crater the plaster.

It bounced forward instantly, head-butting him in the temple. Stars burst behind his eyes. He stumbled but answered with a backhanded blast that lit the corridor in gold.

The demon hissed, teeth flashing, more amused than afraid.

Max felt the strain creeping in. Not like before—not yet at the breaking point—but each burst of fire still stole something. Strength, focus, breath.

And the fire leaned in, like a predator scenting weakness, its heat curling up his spine as if it had just caught the smell of blood.

It wasn't content to protect. It wanted to annihilate. He could feel it urging him to push harder, to burn hotter, to end the fight by turning the hospital into ash.

A fuse, he thought grimly. Waiting to blow.

Movement at the edge of his vision: Victor, limping, blood at his temple. Dan beside him, dragging a nurse to safety, his hands slick with someone else's blood.

The demon's head snapped toward them. Max reacted without thinking—swinging wide with a burst of Soulfire that missed its target but hit the far wall with a concussive crack.

The shockwave hit Dan square in the chest. His feet left the floor. He landed hard on his back, air blasted from his lungs.

Max didn't see him fall. He was already pivoting back toward the demon, the fire blooming around him—hungry, blinding.

***

The world came back to Dan in pulses.

First the noise—alarms howling like sirens in a flood, their wail bouncing down the corridors until it felt like they were inside his skull. Then the heat, thick and pressing against his skin. Then the pain, deep and ugly in his chest, as if the air itself had punched through him.

He blinked up at the hallway lights. One hung loose, swinging in slow arcs, another was broken entirely, strobing like a bad club light. Each flash lit the blood soaking his shirt. No cut. Just a deep, spreading ache where the shockwave had slammed into him earlier, a truck made of thunder.

He groaned and forced himself upright, using the wall for leverage.

And saw Max.

It wasn't Max's stance. Not Max's movement.

He was all forward drive now, nothing held back, the fire tearing off him in frantic bursts as though the sun was trying to claw its way out through his skin. His fists snapped forward, each blow cracking with light. The demon slipped around them with inhuman speed, ducking and twisting in the narrow space.

They collided—shoulder to jaw—and Max shoved it away with a burst of Soulfire that scorched the ceiling tiles to black. Dust and fragments rained down. The floor seemed to sway under Dan's boots.

Dan turned instinctively, scanning. Victor was slumped against the wall, clutching his ribs, blood streaking his temple in a jagged line.

And further back, more chaos: a nurse pinned under a toppled medical cart, a patient screaming from a side room, the shuffle and moan of people who had no business being in a warzone.

Dan gritted his teeth and pushed off the wall. His muscles screamed protest. He wasn't a fighter. But he was still a medic.

He moved.

Knees shaking, breath short, he reached the nurse. She was young—twenty, maybe—and her lower lip was split. Tears streaked through the dust on her face.

"Stay still," he said, trying for steady but hearing the crack in his own voice. "You're alright. Just breathe for me."

He braced the cart, feeling metal dig into his palms, and lifted. His shoulder screamed as he forced it up just far enough for her to crawl free. She hesitated, then scrambled clear.

Dan let the weight drop and turned back—just in time to see Max again.

The fire had grown. Not just in his hands now. It climbed his arms, licked across his back. A halo of gold, jagged and unstable like a sun flare, burned behind his head. Each step scorched the tiles, leaving trails of heat in his wake.

Dan's pulse spiked. This wasn't Max using the fire. This was the fire using him.

"Max!" he shouted over the alarms. "There are people here! You can't burn everything!"

"Then tell them to get out of my way!" Max's voice was rough and jagged, as if the words were dragged through embers before leaving his mouth.

Max drove a volley of fire-clad punches at the demon. One missed, slamming into the wall beside a patient's door. Smoke curled from the impact point, the scorched plaster breathing out heat.

Dan's stomach turned.

The demon hissed, but there was no fear in the sound. If anything, it looked entertained. Like it could smell the cracks forming in Max's control.

Dan pulled the nurse toward a vending machine and shoved her behind it for cover. His own heartbeat was pounding in his ears.

But then he looked back.

Max stood framed in his own flames, his silhouette alive with movement. For just a second, Dan didn't recognise him.

It wasn't grief on that face. Not even rage. The jaw was clenched, eyes glowing, flames curling up his skin as though they belonged to him—like they had always belonged to him.

Something older looked back at Dan.

"Max…" he said quietly, almost to himself. "What is this fire doing to you?"

Max didn't answer, or maybe couldn't. His head shifted slightly, and in the flicker of the flames, his expression was unreadable.

And for the first time since April died, Dan felt it. Not just fear for his friend.

Fear of him.

***

The blast landed like a god's punch.

Max's fist slammed into the demon's sternum, and the Soulfire tore free in a blinding surge of gold. The impact carried through the thing's body, lifting it off its feet, hurling it backwards as if it weighed nothing at all. It hit the hospital wall with the force of a truck, bursting through plaster and wiring in an explosion of dust and debris. Somewhere beyond the jagged hole, something metallic—maybe a bedframe—screeched across the floor before the sound was swallowed by silence.

Max dropped to one knee. His lungs felt hollow, scraped clean by the effort. The fire guttered along his hands in thin, broken licks, and the skin of his palms smoked faintly. He blinked hard against the sweat rolling into his eyes, but the blur didn't fade.

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Behind him, Dan's voice rasped through the haze. "Is it… over?"

Max didn't answer. Partly because he couldn't catch his breath. Mostly because he didn't believe it. He stayed where he was, every muscle tensed, eyes locked on the breach in the wall. If the thing was dead, the silence would settle differently. But it didn't.

Then he heard it.

A sharp, wet crack. Bone giving way.

Another. Then another. Not random breaks. A pattern. Reassembly.

A low, wet gurgle bubbled into the air, thick enough to taste, like tar folding over itself.

Max pushed himself upright, ribs protesting.

Victor limped into view, one arm locked over his side. "Tell me that was a death rattle," he said, his voice low but carrying the kind of brittle humour that only came when the alternative was screaming.

Max didn't look away from the breach. "You know it wasn't."

The hole darkened. Something moved inside.

The figure rose in a series of spasms—first a twitch in one shoulder, then another in its head, the movements jerky, marionette-like. Then it began to peel.

The surgical mask stretched tight over its face had fused to the skin beneath, the outline of veins bulging underneath, pulsing like trapped worms. Then the fabric split—not from the outside, but from within—tearing like it had sprouted teeth.

The sound it made wasn't a scream. It was worse. A shudder that seemed to vibrate inside the bones of everyone in the hallway.

Dan shifted closer to Max without meaning to. "That… that's not human anymore," he said under his breath, his eyes wide, his voice stripped of anything resembling certainty.

The demon's arms snapped backward with a sound like wet wood breaking, the bones reversing in their sockets before lengthening. The skin split along the seams, stretching until it tore.

Something swelled beneath its scrub top—two distinct bulges—before the fabric gave way entirely. Clawed limbs, skeletal and twitching like the legs of a dying spider, erupted from its back, curling and unfurling in jagged motions.

Its jaw unzipped, spiralling open into a vertical maw lined with endless, glistening teeth. The flesh around it melted in sheets, revealing new shapes beneath that were worse than what they replaced.

Max took a step back without realising it. Even the Soulfire inside him seemed to hesitate, the heat shifting in his chest like it was no longer sure.

The thing kept growing. Stretched taller until it dwarfed them. Its ribs burst outward like spears, splitting its chest. Eyes multiplied across its warped face—two, then six, then eight—each iris a different, unnatural colour. None of them were human.

The smell hit then, crawling into the back of their throats. It wasn't rot. It was something hungrier. The scent of things already devoured.

Victor stared at it, breath caught in his throat. His voice came out quiet, almost reverent. "…I believe you now."

Dan's tone was sharper, driven by fear. "We need to kill it. Now. Before it gets to Liz. Or anyone else."

Max kept his eyes locked on the creature. His pulse was steady, but that steadiness wasn't calm—it was resolve, wrapped around the fire burning in his chest. He could feel the Soulfire begging to be unleashed again, but each time he gave in to it, something inside him unravelled a little more.

The demon cocked its head in an almost human gesture, as if weighing them. But there was no rage in its movements. No malice. Just the cold certainty of ownership, as though the fight was already decided and Max was simply going through the motions until he belonged to it.

He flexed his hands, letting the fire crawl up his arms once more. This time, he didn't try to contain it.

And somewhere beneath the roar of battle, Max felt the wrong question rise—what if the fire didn't stop when the demon fell?

Dan saw it and stepped closer, lowering his voice so only Max and Victor could hear. "If you push too far, you might not come back from it."

Max's jaw tightened. "If I don't push, we all die."

Victor grunted, leaning against the wall. "Then make it count. We're not getting another round."

But even as Max moved forward, the questions coiled in his mind, dragging at the edges of his focus. Why is it here? What does it want?

The only demon he'd known before was Aamon. And Aamon had needed a Contract to come through. This thing hadn't asked for anything.

His fingers trembled. Golden light crawled higher, licking at the sleeves of his gown.

He whispered to himself, the words half a confession. "I'm not sure I can win this."

Dan's voice came from behind, quiet but firm. "Then fight like you already have."

Max's next breath was long, drawn deep into his lungs. If burning out here was the cost, then so be it.

And he stepped forward.

***

Victor moved first.

No hesitation. No request for orders. Just the reflex of a man who had seen enough fights to know that thinking too long could get someone killed.

The demon had barely cleared the hallway corner when he stepped in front of Max and Dan, his stance low, eyes locked on the twitching, blood-masked thing as if daring it to make the first move.

"Get behind me," he muttered without looking back, his voice flat, unyielding. He didn't wait to see if they obeyed.

His hand shot out to the nearest hospital bed. Metal groaned as he ripped a side railing free, twisting it into a makeshift weapon with a single jerk of his arm.

"Victor—" Max's voice cracked through the air, a warning he didn't have time to finish.

Victor swung.

The metal bar connected with the side of the demon's head, the impact ringing through the hallway like the clang of an iron bell. The blow whipped its neck sideways with a sickening crunch. Something black and viscous sprayed across the floor tiles.

The demon didn't fall.

It straightened. Slowly. Its head lolled once before snapping back into place with a sound like dry wood breaking.

Then it kicked.

The motion was almost casual, but the force was anything but. One long, skeletal leg shot out, striking Victor square in the chest. The impact lifted him from his feet and hurled him into the far wall. Plaster cracked and dented from the hit before he slumped to the floor, gasping.

He spat blood onto the tiles, glared up at the demon through one swollen eye, and rasped, "Still not ugly enough to kill me."

"Victor!" Dan's voice tore out before Max even turned.

Dan saw him first—Victor's body folded against the wall, one arm limp, blood trickling from a cut on his scalp.

He had stopped moving.

The demon loomed over him, claws flexing in slow, deliberate twitches. Smoke leaked from its joints.

Max was still locked in place, fire spiralling around his arms. His focus hadn't shifted from the monster.

But Victor couldn't defend himself.

Dan didn't think. He just moved.

Boots skidding on a slick of blood, lungs burning, he crossed the gap in three strides. He hooked his arms under Victor's shoulders and began to drag him back, teeth gritted against the weight.

The demon didn't block him. Didn't even glance his way.

Not until it turned. And by then, it was already too late.

Dan heard the sound before the pain—wet fabric tearing underwater.

Then came the heat.

And then the blood.

Claws raked across his lower back and side, slicing through fabric, skin, and muscle in one fluid stroke.

The shock forced a grunt from his lungs. His legs buckled, dumping him hard onto the tile. Pain lit up every nerve, sharp and screaming.

He curled on his side, pressing his hands to the wound. Blood welled hot between his fingers.

"Dan!" Max's voice was raw now, alarm breaking through the haze.

The fire reacted before he did.

It erupted.

From his chest, from his spine, from every point of contact between body and air. Golden fire surged outward in all directions, snapping through the hallway like a solar storm unbound. The halo above his brow flared wider, its gold now edged in electric blue that pulsed and shimmered like something alive.

The air warped with the heat, pressing against skin and lungs until every breath tasted faintly of scorched metal and burnt wiring.

The demon hesitated. Took a step back.

It felt the shift.

Max's scream followed—wordless, carved from fury, grief, and the kind of fear that only came when you realised you might lose everything in the next heartbeat.

He swung.

The punch landed dead centre in the demon's midsection, detonating in a blast that cracked the hallway down its spine. The shockwave buckled the floor and sent ceiling tiles cascading like a broken snowfall.

The lights burst one by one—pop, pop, pop—until the corridor was lit only by the fire spiralling from Max's body.

It climbed higher now, crawling up his arms like ivy made of light, winding into his shoulders, his jaw, his eyes. Every inhale dragged more heat into him. Every heartbeat pumped it harder.

The demon scrambled to its feet with a hiss.

Max didn't slow.

Another punch cratered the wall behind the creature, the shock running up Max's arm before he pivoted low, driving his next strike into the floor and shattering tiles in an upward blast of light and stone.

The creature's next scream wasn't pure rage anymore. There was something sharper in it. Panic.

Dan, still on the ground, blinked against the haze clouding his vision. His hand was slick with his own blood, the metallic smell mixing with the heat rolling from Max.

Max burned like a god. But the look in his eyes wasn't human.

Dan forced his throat to work. "Max."

No answer.

The fire surged higher still, the halo spinning faster, blue flares snapping at the edges like the ends of a storm.

Dan reached out, his arm trembling. "Max."

This time, Max flinched. He turned and saw Dan.

And for a second—just a heartbeat—the fire stilled.

Dan coughed, tried to push himself up, failed. His voice rasped like gravel. "You can't lose yourself."

Max stood there, chest heaving, hands shaking. The golden fire writhed around him like a living serpent deciding whether to strike.

His lips parted, no sound coming out. The fury cracked, and in the gap, guilt surged through.

He dropped to one knee beside Dan.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice almost lost under the sound of burning.

Dan grimaced. "It's not your fault."

Max pressed both hands to the wound, letting Soulfire flow into the torn flesh, trying to seal without destroying.

But even the fire trembled now.

Like it wasn't entirely sure whose side it was on anymore.

***

It was losing.

The Soulfire had split its carapace wide, burning along the fractures like molten gold poured into black stone. Max's last strike had driven clean through the vessel's shoulder, tearing open the binding marks etched deep in its flesh. Smoke bled from the wounds—thick, greasy, reeking of something far older than rot. The scent made the back of his throat itch.

The demon staggered, its movements uneven now, retreating over broken tiles and bodies.

Its voice came thin, ragged, but still laced with a thread of dark amusement. "You… weren't meant to bear that name."

Max froze mid-step, chest heaving. "What name?"

For an instant, something uninvited stirred in his mind — a half-formed image, too quick to grasp, leaving only the taste of heat and iron on his tongue.

It turned its half-melted face toward him. The sockets where its eyes had been were nothing but pits, yet he felt its gaze like a weight pressing into his skin.

"But it clings to you," it said, almost with satisfaction.

Gold fire coiled up Max's arms, pooling in his fists until his knuckles glowed white-hot. His breath came jagged now, each inhale scraping his lungs. Blood ran from a split at his jaw, warm against the cooling sweat on his skin.

"What name?" he said again, lower this time, the words more a growl than a question.

The demon's smile was skeletal, its teeth stripped of flesh. Blood bubbled at its seams, boiling in slow, deliberate pulses.

It didn't answer him.

Instead, it turned, dragging itself further down the corridor. Smoke poured from its wounds, trailing behind like the ghost of a cloak. Its voice drifted back, a whisper that threaded through the fire's crackle:

"The Lord who once wore that flame… will not forgive this theft."

Max took a step forward before he knew he'd moved. The fire moved with him, quickening, feeding.

One last surge welled up from somewhere deep in his core—furnace-hot, soul-deep, a burst that felt as though it would tear him apart from the inside if he didn't release it. He let it pour into his fist.

He struck.

The hallway erupted in light.

The Soulfire roared past him, splitting the demon mid-lurch. Gold light and impossible heat tore through its body. The scream started but never finished—its jaw locked open as the flames unravelled it from the inside out. Limbs twitched once, twice, then began to fold in on themselves like paper curling in a flame.

When the light faded, nothing remained but a charred husk, trembling once before collapsing inward. Ash scattered across the scorched tiles. Even that didn't last. A gust from somewhere unseen caught the blackened flakes, carrying them away until there was nothing.

Max's stomach knotted, though he couldn't say why — as if the fight had left something behind that the ash couldn't hide.

The lights flickered. Twice. Then steadied.

In the distance, a siren began to wail, its pitch rising and falling through the stillness.

Max staggered forward.

Dan lay sprawled on the floor, blood pooling beneath him, unconscious but breathing shallowly. Victor was upright but limping, one arm locked tight around his ribs. He muttered curses between clenched teeth, his eyes never leaving Max.

The corridor was a ruin—walls blackened, tiles split, the acrid scent of scorched plaster thick in the air. Bodies lay in awkward heaps, though some of the hospital staff had begun to stir, groaning softly.

Max stood in the centre of it all, the halo above his head dimming to a faint shimmer. He didn't feel victorious. He didn't even feel relief.

He was just breathing.

His gaze dropped to his hands. The Soulfire still clung to him, curling around his fingers in lazy, molten spirals. It didn't speak. But he could feel it—its hum, its presence—patient and watchful.

And in that quiet, Max knew this wasn't an ending.

It was a promise.

A warning.

And somewhere beneath the hum of the fire, he thought he felt it listening — not to the fight that had just ended, but to the one still coming.

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