The rain had stopped. The air hung thick and heavy, a slow‑moving fog that tasted like smoke and iron.

Steam rose from William's body where the black, thorned spikes held him pinned to the ground—not only from his blood, but from something deeper, as if the earth beneath him smoldered with pain.

Letecia crashed to her knees beside him, fingers clawing at one of the spikes. The moment her skin touched it, she knew—it wasn't just wood. It lived.

The spike pulsed faintly, like a vein carrying the heartbeat of something ancient and cruel.

Then came the laughter.

It had no source, no direction. It was everywhere: in the ragged hiss of breath, in the tremor of the branches, in the pounding behind their eyes.

"At last,"

a voice whispered, smooth as silk and twice as cold.

"The perfect moment. Pain strips away the lies. In pain, you are both the same."

Out of the fog stepped a figure, tall and stooped, as though darkness itself had decided to shape itself into a man. His mouth stretched too wide to be human, his teeth like slivers of old ivory.

And his eyes—two shards of amber without pupils—shone with a brilliance both sickly and divine.

He moved slowly, each step ringing through the bones of the earth. The ground blackened beneath his feet.

He leaned toward Letecia, his breath ice-cold against her skin.

"You thought you could save the beast, witch? But it's not the man you crave—it's the monster. You admire the part of him that mirrors me. Don't you think it's beautiful?"

Her jaw tightened, fury shaking her voice.

"I see nothin' but ugliness," she rasped, her Cajun drawl cutting through the silence.

"You're rot in a pretty coat, sugar."

He smiled wider.

"No. You see yourself."

He waved a hand. The air shivered. Droplets of rain froze in place, caught mid‑fall. The whole world seemed to hold its breath.

William groaned. Blood leaked from beneath the spikes. His chest rose in fierce, ragged bursts.

The demon crouched beside him, dragging a long finger down the torn flesh of his chest. Steam hissed up from the wound. The scent was like metal left to rust in saltwater.

"Fascinating," the demon murmured. "The beast inside still fights. I can hear it scraping, clawing its cage. The man keeps it bound—but only barely.

Would you like me to help, little one? I specialize in setting things free."

The spikes in William's body trembled. And then he screamed—but not from pain.

It was the other voice screaming through him now—the voice that belonged to claws and teeth and red hunger.

Let me out. I'll tear him to pieces. I'll rip his throat and drink him down. Just breathe, and let me out.

The demon tilted his head, a blissful smile spreading across his face.

"Do you hear that, witch? He can't tell anymore who's speaking—him, or the thing inside."

He lifted his hand again. From the shadows slithered thin, thread‑like tendrils, dark as smoke and alive like veins. They coiled around Letecia's legs, sliding upwards across her skin.

In those swirling strands she saw visions—dead cities betrayed by fire, men she'd tried to heal coughing blood, her own hands slick with the lives she'd meant to save.

"Everything you touch withers," the demon's whisper slid past her ear like the blade of a knife.

"You pray for salvation, but death kneels beside you every time. And now this boy—he waits for his heart to break. That's the ending you always write, isn't it?"

Letecia gritted her teeth. The tendrils tightened, wrapping her wrists and burning cold through her veins. They pulled at her nerves, showing her every ache a word could make flesh.

The demon turned back to William. His voice dropped, slow and heavy as a church bell.

"And you, cub—here's your choice. Tear the spikes free, and your heart will burst. Stay still, and the witch dies next. Shall we see?"

He flicked a finger. The ground split.

A new spike, black and smoking, burst from the mud and drove straight through Letecia's shoulder.

Her scream tore through the frozen air. She fell forward, her hand pressing into the cold, slick mire, breath shuddering.

"Choice, boy," the demon breathed. "Death or the beast. Everything else is illusion."

William raised his head. His eyes were no longer human—just slits of molten gold. Blood ran from his lips in dark threads. The thrum of his heart shook the ground beneath him.

Let me speak, the beast whispered within. We will burn him out from the inside. Don't you dare stop.

Steam coiled from his wounds. The flesh beneath his skin began to glow a dull, angry red, the color of metal before the forge.

Each pulse of his heart sent cracks spidering through the spikes. They vibrated. Splintered. Began to melt.

The demon stepped back. For the first time, a flicker of unease crossed that ruined smile.

"Interesting," he murmured, voice low and reverent. "Very interesting."

And William looked up at him then—half‑beast, blood‑slick, shaking—and in his eyes burned a promise of violence that even hell would hesitate to touch.

A few steps away, Letecia lay sprawled in the mud. A smoky root, thin and twisting like a serpent's spine, had pierced her shoulder. With every heartbeat it burrowed deeper, glowing from within—a dead, blue fire eating at her skin.

She tried to draw breath but managed only a rasp, a harsh, broken wheeze that rattled in her throat.

The demon stood between them, smiling faintly. He didn't move. He just watched—the way a man might watch a candle gutter, admiring the beauty of its final flicker.

William stared down at his hands. Blood trickled in slow stripes across his palms, touched the mud, and vanished as steam. His chest heaved. Inside his head the beast pounded and snarled, mindless and molten, begging to be unleashed.

Tear them out, the creature hissed. Rip them loose before she dies. We live, we feed, we rise. Let the flesh break, let the bones scream—it don't matter. Just give me the reins.

William mouthed the word, soundless: No.

If he tore too suddenly, he knew, his heart would shatter.

Every vein, every nerve was a link in the chain binding him to the beast—binding him, too, to what little was left of his soul. One wrong tug, and all of it would snap.

Letecia gasped again, a wet, trapped breath. Her eyes were glassy, the color draining out by the moment.

The demon crouched beside him, head tilted with a kind of terrible tenderness.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he murmured. "Pain makes you honest. Right now, you're more human than you've ever been. One move… and it's either salvation or death. Half and half. Which way will the coin fall?"

William looked up.

His fingers trembled.

He saw her try to breathe and fail, saw that single tear crawl down her cheek—a tear red as blood, squeezed out from somewhere deeper than pain.

The beast clawed harder at the edges of him, growling:

If you die, she dies anyway. Hesitate, and you've lost. Tear. I'll lead us through. We're not made to die, boy—we were born to devour.

The air drummed in his ears.

Ba-dum… ba-dum… ba-dum.

Pressure grew in him—wild, primal, like metal straining to burst from its mold.

Steam rolled from his skin. The ground trembled.

"See?" The demon's voice came as a laugh, soft and gleeful. "He's slipping. No man left there, witch. Just the beast choosing what all beasts choose: power."

The demon's shadow stretched long across the ground, reaching for William. Every heartbeat sounded like howling in his skull.

If I rip them free, I might die. If I don't… she will.

His gaze fixed on Letecia. Color was fading from her face, yet still she watched him—believed in him—even through the haze of agony. Something in that look pulled the last shred of his own humanity taut, trembling.

We can do it slow, the beast whispered now, its tone almost coaxing. You feel it, don't ya? Every spark inside you hummin', burnin'? Don't use your hands. Pull with the will. Tear them from the blood outward.

He shut his eyes.

Inhaled, slow and deep.

The world fell away until there was nothing left—no rain, no ground, no screams. Only the rhythm: heart, pain, breath… her.

His fingers twitched.

The spikes in his chest began to sing. Not sound—vibration, like bones humming through fire. The rhythm quickened. The steam thickened. The air filled with the sharp tang of iron.

Letecia managed to whisper his name, barely more than breath:

"W… William…"

He opened his eyes. Fire lived there now, and terror, and something vast enough to consume them both.

One heartbeat more, and he would either rip the thorns from his body—or become something that no longer needed a heart at all.

The demon stepped back, lips curling wide, eyes bright with hunger.

"There it is. The truth."

And for that instant, there was no rain, no cold, no sound—

only the choice.

All that remained of William hung in that breath between monster and man.

Silence stretched—tight as a pulled sinew.

Each breath William drew came out a ragged rasp. Each heartbeat struck like a hammer inside his chest. The world trembled on the knife's edge between stillness and collapse.

The spikes pulsed with a dull red glow. Letecia's breath came shallow, choking, her skin cold to the touch. The demon stood between them, savoring the moment—a serpent basking in the warmth of its own venom.

"Come now, little beast,"

the demon whispered, leaning close, his voice slick as oil. His lips nearly brushed William's ear.

"Make your choice. Or I'll make it for you."

He lifted one hand—fingers long and thin, glinting like blades—as if ready to bloom into new spikes.

But before he spoke again, the ground itself convulsed.

At first, a dull, buried thud.

Then another—louder, closer.

The air thickened, brimming with that deep, metallic pressure that comes before a storm. Leaves on the twisted trees quivered; chunks of earth tore upward as the marsh began to heave and shudder.

The demon turned, amber eyes narrowing.

Something moved in the fog.

A shape—towering, blindingly tall, its outlines made of shifting light and endless dark. As though the night had decided to forge itself a body to make war with its reflection.

Its steps made no sound, only the slow crunch of branches collapsing under an invisible weight.

"What are you…"

The demon's voice faltered into a breath.

He never finished.

The figure lunged, and the air erupted—an explosion of wind, dirt, and shrieking stone.

The spikes impaling William quivered, their pulse stuttering—then, suddenly, they snapped, sliced clean by something unseen.

The demon's scream was a monstrous note, low and resonant, vibrating through roots and bone alike. Rage and agony twisted together in the sound.

Out of the rolling dark came hands—two vast shapes, neither human nor divine. They burned, their edges torn light, forged from ash and flame. The hands seized the demon by the chest.

For an instant, he looked almost human in their grip—terrified, small. Then the hands pulled wide.

The demon split open.

From the wound in him poured a black radiance, cold as void. His skin cracked, the bark‑like flesh unraveling into dust. The darkness inside him burned backward—soil to smoke, smoke to nothing.

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