The rooftop was quiet.

  Zevran Asher stood near the ledge of a forgotten tenement, its bricks chipped like bad teeth, its antenna crowned in rust. Below, the city pulsed with cold neon and distant screams - sirens echoing like ghost-choirs in an urban cathedral of filth. From this high up, the filth looked almost beautiful.

  Wind tugged at his coat, a threadbare thing barely holding itself together. Much like him. He lit a cigarette with numb fingers, flame flaring too bright in the dark, casting flickers across his pale, hollowed face. Black hair spilled over his eyes, streaked with white like static in a dead screen. He looked like a ghost who’d forgotten how to disappear.

  He took a drag. Exhaled.

  The skyline was a jagged heartbeat of towers and broken spires. Somewhere in that chaos, people were living - laughing, fighting, sinning, surviving. Zevran had tried all of it. None of it stuck.

  One step. Just one.

  He stared at the space beyond the ledge. Not at the ground - too far to make out the details - but at the drop itself. The nothingness. The promise.

  Maybe this time, I won’t wake up.

  A flicker of doubt slithered through him. He crushed it. He didn’t believe in redemption. Not anymore. Not for someone who let his whole world burn and then just kept breathing afterward. What kind of coward keeps going after that?

  “I should’ve died with them,” he whispered to no one.

  The wind moaned around him.

  He closed his eyes. Felt the edge under his toes. Felt the void calling - soft, almost kind. He leaned forward -

  "Death is easy. Living is the hard part."

  The voice was like velvet wrapped around razors - quiet but undeniable. It sliced through his thoughts without mercy.

  Zevran’s eyes snapped open. He staggered back from the ledge, blinking hard. “The hell…?”

  He looked around. Rooftop still empty. No speakers. No drunk lunatics. Just the wind. And the voice. Not his. Not imagined. It felt like it had come from inside him - but not of him.

  He waited. Nothing else came.

  “…losing it,” he muttered, shoving trembling hands into his coat. “Finally cracked.”

  But the fear didn’t come. Only silence. Only the city breathing below, indifferent.

  He flicked the cigarette away. It spiraled down, a tiny ember swallowed by the dark.

  And then he stepped forward.

  There was no fanfare. No prayer. Just the wind, and gravity, and silence.

  Inside him, something ancient stirred.

  So dramatic, Malphas thought, watching the boy fall. So predictably broken. Humans and their cliffside theatrics.

  But this one’s mine now.

  The wind screamed louder than his thoughts.

  Zevran’s body tilted forward, weight leaving his heels. The world tilted with him. He didn’t flinch, didn’t cry out. The rooftop vanished from under his feet.

  He fell.

  No fear. No panic. Just the sweet, endless drop. The buildings blurred as he passed them, rows of windows watching him descend like silent judges. The cold slapped his skin, tore through his coat, but it felt distant - muted, like everything else.

  This is it.

  Finally.

  And for a heartbeat - just one - he felt something like peace.

  Then came the scream.

  It wasn’t human.

  A ripping, bone-rattling shriek cracked through the air like a banshee grenade. Zevran barely registered it before a blur of darkness smashed through a billboard above him.

  Something’s coming.

  Time fractured. Instinct screamed too late.

  A clawed arm whipped from the dark, aiming straight for his chest.

  “What the - ?!”

  Zevran twisted mid-fall, eyes wide - too slow.

  The creature emerged in full from the shadows like a nightmare made flesh. Long, sinewy limbs wrapped in rotted robes. Eyes like pits of tar. Its mouth opened across the side of its face, jagged teeth lining the vertical slit.

  A demon. Mid-air. Hunting him.

  And it was fast.

  Zevran flailed, adrenaline surging - but gravity had him. No footing. No control.

  The demon’s claws glinted as it lunged.

  Too late.

  No weapons.

  No hope.

  Zevran opened his mouth, a scream rising -

  Then the world exploded.

  “Well, this escalated quickly.”

  Malphas’ voice slid into Zevran’s mind like oil under a door. Cold. Calm. Unamused.

  “You attract worse company than I thought.”

  Heat surged through Zevran’s chest like fire igniting from the inside out. His spine arched involuntarily. His limbs snapped to strange angles, as if pulled by invisible wires. Black fire erupted from his skin, racing down his arms.

  “What the hell - what’s happening?!”

  His voice was drowned in the roar.

  Power - not his - rushed through him. A foreign force seized control.

  Not control.

  Possession.

  Malphas sighed inside the boy’s skull.

  “Typical. I let you fall for two minutes and already some hellspawn wants to carve you like a roast.”

  Zevran’s right arm jerked up, engulfed in flame that flickered between black and gold. A weapon took shape in his hand - not metal, but forged from something deeper. Anger. Despair. Will.

  A blade of hellfire.

  The demon screeched again, sensing the shift - but it was too close.

  Zevran's body twisted unnaturally mid-air. The blade lashed out in a savage arc, cleaving straight through the demon's torso. There was no resistance - just a flash of light, a sound like shattering glass, and a spray of burning ichor.

  The demon’s corpse split in half, both pieces plummeting past him in opposite directions, disintegrating in mid-air.

  Zevran’s eyes widened. His breath caught.

  “I didn’t do that.”

  “No,” Malphas replied dryly. “You just survived it.”

  The possession faded slightly. Enough for Zevran to feel the fall again.

  Below, the alley loomed - hard, fast, and far too real.

  “Shit - ”

  But his limbs moved on their own again, twisting to absorb impact. A scaffold broke his fall with a crash of rusted metal. He crashed through it, tumbled, then hit asphalt with a grunt.

  And he was alive.

  Smoke curled around him. The air smelled like blood and burning bone. He lay on his back, staring at the sky, chest heaving.

  The whisper returned, this time louder.

  “Not today, kid.”

  Wind screamed past his ears.

  Zevran’s heart pounded, not with fear - but with confusion. His body still tingled from that unnatural surge. His limbs felt like strangers. The city lights blurred above him, sky flipping end over end.

  What just happened?

  Then the cold came back - real and sharp - and so did the falling.

  Just as he opened his mouth to breathe, it came.

  A rip in the air - like fabric being torn from another dimension - shattered the silence above. A snarl thundered in his ears. It didn’t sound human. Didn’t sound like anything born of Earth.

  He craned his neck upward.

  There it was.

  The demon erupted from the side of a nearby building, its body fusing out of black smoke and rotted bone. It was massive - twice his size, all sinew and spindled limbs. Its arms bent the wrong way. Its skin peeled in layers like old wallpaper. Veins glowed red beneath it, pulsing like a heartbeat. Its mouth unhinged vertically, filled with too many teeth and a slick, black tongue.

  Eyes locked on him. It grinned.

  “What the hell is - ”

  Zevran barely finished the thought before the thing lunged, mid-air, claws first.

  He panicked - arms flailing - but gravity owned him. He couldn’t run, couldn’t dodge. He was just meat in a downward spiral.

  The demon's talons came within inches of his face.

  Zevran screamed, twisting, trying to push away air.

  No sword. No shield. No time.

  This was supposed to be a clean ending. Not this. Not ripped apart by a damn horror movie reject.

  The thing swiped - missed by inches - but looped around with supernatural agility, wings unfurling in tattered strips. It flapped once, twice, maneuvering with effortless control while Zevran dropped like a stone.

  “STOP!” he shouted, more at the world than the monster.

  His stomach turned. His mind splintered.

  And in that chaos - pure, raw helplessness - he felt it.

  A pulse.

  A beat of something alien inside his chest. Like a second heartbeat. Not his.

  Then -

  Laughter.

  “Really?” Malphas’ voice slithered through his skull like smoke through cracks. “I leave you unsupervised for ten seconds, and you manage to get targeted by a leechspawn mid-plunge. You're a disaster.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I’m gonna die!” Zevran shrieked.

  “Well, yeah. That’s sort of the point of jumping off a roof, genius.”

  Another claw came down.

  Zevran flinched, bracing for pain - but it never came.

  Instead, something inside him snapped.

  Not bone. Something deeper.

  His arms jerked. His muscles tensed - not by will, but by something else. He felt hijacked.

  Black fire surged from his fingertips.

  “No, no, no - what the hell is this?!”

  “Survival. Don’t thank me yet.”

  Zevran’s eyes burned. Vision doubled. The demon circled him again, faster now - predatory.

  He felt his body seize up again, mid-air. A spike of heat ran through his spine like lightning. His fingers curled into claws. His mouth moved but didn’t speak.

  He wasn’t in control.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Terror hit him harder than the fall.

  He caught a glimpse of the demon lunging for a final strike, its claws extended, mouth wide with hunger.

  And all Zevran could think was: I’m not ready. I didn’t want this.

  The void stared back.

  Something inside him broke.

  Not physically - no snap of bone, no tear of muscle. But something fundamental. Something invisible. Like a seal ripped open.

  Zevran screamed, but no sound came out.

  Black fire exploded across his skin.

  It wasn’t heat - it was pressure. Like being crushed and burned from the inside out, molten energy coursing through every vein. His eyes rolled back. His arms jerked unnaturally, like puppet strings had been yanked hard. His mouth stretched open in a silent howl.

  Then the world slowed.

  Not metaphorically - literally. Time fractured around him. Raindrops hung suspended midair. The demon’s snarl stretched into a warped growl, its claws barely inching forward.

  And Zevran - suspended in the void between death and whatever this was - saw everything.

  A sigil blazed into existence on his left forearm, swirling lines of crimson and gold etched into his flesh like a brand from both heaven and hell. It pulsed, syncing with that alien heartbeat in his chest.

  Then a voice - louder now. Clear.

  “Time to clean up your mess.”

  Malphas surged forward like a tidal wave of black flame.

  He didn’t enter Zevran’s body. He had already been there. Dormant. Coiled like a loaded spring.

  Now, unleashed.

  The boy’s limbs moved with terrifying precision. His right hand whipped outward - and in it, fire congealed into form. Not steel, not shadow, but something in between. A blade of raw hellfire.

  The demon saw the change and hesitated.

  Too late.

  Zevran’s body spun mid-air. The blade screamed as it sliced through space - and the demon’s arm.

  A wet, cracking snap followed by a spray of black ichor.

  The creature shrieked, wings flailing, trying to retreat. Blood like tar burned away in midair.

  Zevran - no, Malphas - pursued.

  He lunged again, blade cleaving a brutal arc through the demon’s torso. The edge caught, split flesh and bone. The body twisted unnaturally, the demon trying to stitch itself together as it fell.

  Another strike.

  Then another.

  Each movement was deliberate, brutal - surgical in its violence. The hellfire carved glowing runes into the demon’s skin with every cut, and the sigil on Zevran’s arm pulsed brighter, resonating with each blow.

  “You should’ve stayed in your gutter, filth.” Malphas’ voice echoed - not aloud, but in Zevran’s skull like thunder behind his eyes.

  The final strike came downward, cleaving through the creature’s skull with a sound like shattering glass.

  The body disintegrated before it hit the ground.

  Time snapped back.

  Zevran gasped.

  The fire receded from his limbs, flickering out like a dying storm. His body began to fall again - gravity reclaiming him now that the fight was over.

  He wasn’t even sure if he was conscious.

  His head lolled.

  What... just happened?

  Inside him, Malphas exhaled like someone finishing a hard day’s work.

  “Well... at least you’re not dead.”

  Zevran didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His body was still twitching. The raw sensation of power still buzzed in his nerves like electric aftershock. He had moved - but hadn’t moved. Fought - but not by his will.

  He hit a rooftop scaffolding halfway down. Crashed through it. Splinters and rusted metal screeched around him. Then: the alley. Asphalt rushed up to meet him.

  He landed hard, rolled. Pain flared - briefly - then numbed out by something else. He lay in the wreckage, blinking up at the night sky, chest rising and falling like he hadn’t breathed in years.

  Smoke curled from his fingertips. A faint light glowed under his sleeve.

  The demon was gone.

  He was alive.

  And he wasn’t alone anymore.

  The crash should have killed him.

  Zevran’s body smashed into a rusted scaffold jutting off a low-rise rooftop, cracking through warped steel and splintered planks like a wrecking ball. He tumbled - once, twice - before hitting the alley below in a heap of bone, blood, and bruises.

  Or at least, it should have been blood. Should have been bones shattering like chalk.

  Instead, there was fire. Residual black flames still licking off his clothes, smoldering through the concrete around him. Smoke curled from his skin, but there were no burns. No broken ribs. Not even a scratch.

  He groaned, rolled onto his side, and spat a chunk of something unidentifiable. His ears rang. The world spun.

  “Am I… dead?” he muttered, blinking through the haze.

  The alley was narrow, walled by graffiti-tagged brick and blinking neon signs for pawn shops and liquor dens. A foul stench hung in the air - blood, sulfur, and scorched ozone.

  And behind him - just a few feet from where he’d landed - the demon’s remains.

  What little was left of it.

  A crater of charred concrete marked the spot where its corpse had burned away, leaving only ashes smeared like shadow oil. Ichor still sizzled along the pavement, evaporating in thin, whining streams.

  Zevran stared at the empty space, his breath shallow.

  “That… was real.”

  No answer. Not yet.

  His hands trembled. He pushed himself up, stumbling like a drunk, knees buckling before he caught a pipe jutting from the wall. His pulse thundered in his ears. The edges of his vision swam. Every nerve in his body buzzed like they’d been rewired.

  And then the voice came again.

  “Not today, kid.”

  It was in his head - clearer this time. Not just a whisper. A full sentence. Sarcastic, bone-dry, and vaguely amused.

  Zevran’s stomach dropped.

  He spun in place, eyes scanning the alley like he could see the speaker. “Who - who said that?”

  Silence.

  Then:

  “Didn’t go through all this trouble just to watch you die like a punk.”

  Zevran’s back hit the brick wall. His breath caught.

  “I’m hearing voices. Great. Lost my mind after all.”

  “You lost that long before tonight,” the voice replied coolly. “But no, this isn’t madness. You just picked up an upgrade.”

  Zevran’s jaw tightened. “You’re in my head.”

  “Technically, I’ve been here a while. You just never noticed. Guess you were too busy wallowing in self-loathing.”

  Zevran blinked, jaw clenched. “What are you?”

  A pause. Then, with deliberate weight:

  “The thing keeping you alive.”

  Zevran stumbled forward, hands gripping his scalp. “No. No no no. This isn’t happening. I was supposed to die. I was - done.”

  “Clearly not,” the voice said. “Or that little worm would’ve made a meal out of your corpse. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  He dropped to his knees. “Get out of my head.”

  “Can’t. Won’t. You die, I die. So we’re in this together now.”

  Zevran’s breath hitched. His hand trembled as he looked at his arm - just under his torn sleeve, the faint glow of the sigil still pulsed. Gold and red. Holy and unholy. A contradiction branded into his flesh.

  His fingers hovered over it.

  “Don’t touch that unless you want another round of spontaneous combustion,” the voice warned.

  He pulled his hand back like it’d been burned.

  Silence settled for a moment.

  Then, softly - almost like pity:

  “You’ve been chasing death for years. And tonight, death tried to chase back.”

  Zevran curled into himself.

  “But I’m not letting you go just yet.”

  Zevran stumbled backward from the wall, chest heaving like he’d run a marathon. His hands - still trembling - glowed faintly with that same ghost-light, the black fire now cooled into smoldering sigils that pulsed beneath his skin.

  “What the hell did you do to me?” he whispered, eyes wide.

  “Correction: what did we do,” came the voice - dry, like a smirk stretched into syllables. “You opened the door. I just walked through.”

  Zevran turned his hands over, staring at them like they belonged to someone else. He flexed his fingers - fluid, unfamiliar. Muscles moved with uncanny precision, like they were too sharp, too responsive. He didn’t feel like he was piloting them. He felt like a passenger.

  He punched the wall.

  Brick cracked. Concrete dust rained down. The impact should’ve shattered his knuckles. But when he looked - nothing. Not a bruise. Not a scrape.

  “You’re in control,” he said under his breath, horror curling like smoke in his gut.

  “No, no, no.” The voice was mock-offended. “We’re sharing. Think of it like a timeshare. You’re still the main driver… most of the time. I’m just the airbag. The murdery kind.”

  Zevran backed into the alley’s far wall, heart racing. “This is some demon possession bullshit.”

  “Technically accurate,” Malphas replied cheerfully. “But I prefer the term cohabitation. Has a nicer ring.”

  Zevran closed his eyes, willing this away - like if he stopped thinking, stopped breathing, he could pull the plug and wake up in the void he was aiming for.

  But the fire was still there. Just under the surface. Like breathing coals.

  He pulled up his left sleeve.

  The mark stared back at him.

  It wasn’t a tattoo. It wasn’t ink. It moved. A twisting vortex of red and gold light, burned into the skin of his forearm like some divine warbrand. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat - alive, aware, and ancient.

  Zevran reached for it, fingertips brushing the edge.

  It burned. Not hot - wrong. Like his soul recoiled from the contact.

  He yanked his hand back with a hiss.

  “Told you,” Malphas drawled. “You’re not ready to handle that kind of power. Touching it raw’s like licking a lightning socket with your heart.”

  Zevran grit his teeth. “Get out of me.”

  “Yeah, you’ve mentioned that,” the demon said, utterly unfazed. “But here’s the thing: You opened the door, Zevran Asher. In your last moment, when you leapt, you didn’t just want to die. You wanted to be free. From pain. From memory. From everything.”

  The voice dropped an octave - still sardonic, but tinged with something heavier.

  “Freedom’s expensive. I’m the one who answered the cost.”

  Zevran dropped to one knee, hand clamped over the glowing sigil. His breath came hard, ragged.

  “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  A silence fell, thick as ash.

  Somewhere in the city, a siren wailed - distant, warbling, and weirdly distorted, like the world itself was off-key. The alley pulsed with residual heat. The sigil under Zevran’s palm thrummed like a second heartbeat.

  “I’m not a hero,” he said.

  “Good,” Malphas replied. “Heroes die early. Survivors get things done.”

  Zevran stared at his hands again. Still shaking. Still glowing.

  And deep inside, something stirred.

  Not just the demon.

  Something else. A flicker of… possibility.

  Hope? Maybe.

  He swallowed hard.

  Then stood.

  Zevran screamed, loud and raw, like maybe he could tear the voice out of his lungs. It echoed down the alley, a jagged sound that had more pain than volume.

  “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” he shouted, slamming his fist into the brick wall again.

  This time, he hit hard enough to crater it.

  Dust exploded outward. Chunks of masonry flew. His hand cracked bone - but it knit itself back together before he could even blink. Skin peeled and healed in the same second. Veins lit like lightning beneath the surface.

  Still screaming, he turned and punched the opposite wall.

  Again. And again. And again.

  Concrete shattered around his fists. His breath turned ragged. Blood mixed with sweat - and evaporated in tendrils of dark steam. His vision blurred with tears, fury, grief. He didn’t stop until the bones in both hands had broken, healed, and broken again.

  “Feel better?” Malphas asked mildly.

  Zevran spun, yelling, “SHUT UP!”

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” the demon continued. “Most people don’t walk away from a fall like that, let alone a demon ambush.”

  “I didn’t ask you to save me!” Zevran’s voice cracked. “I didn’t want to be saved!”

  Silence.

  Then: “Tough shit.”

  Zevran’s knees gave out. He sank to the cold pavement, back pressed to the wall, hands dangling uselessly in his lap. He stared at them like they belonged to someone else. He could still feel the demon’s blood - its heat, its weight - like it had soaked into his skin.

  “You die, I die,” Malphas said, tone shifting - less flippant, more final. “So unless you plan on throwing yourself into another meat grinder, maybe stop screaming and start listening.”

  Zevran gritted his teeth.

  The sigil on his forearm throbbed again - harder this time, like a warning.

  Something had changed. Not just in him. Around him.

  He heard it.

  The city was stirring.

  It started subtle. A low mechanical hum under the street. Then a metallic rattle as a distant billboard fizzed and died. The neon lights across the skyline hiccupped - once, twice - before flaring red.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. But not police. These were sharper. Harsher. Like someone had bent the sound wrong.

  A chorus of inhuman howls answered the call.

  Zevran looked up.

  A flickering security drone buzzed overhead, wings jerking erratically as if the air itself fought its circuits. Sparks spat from its underside before it slammed into a wall and exploded in a brief, sizzling fireball.

  “What the hell is happening now?”

  “They felt it,” Malphas muttered, voice lower, tense now. “You’re lit up like a signal flare to things that feed on pain and power. And this city’s got no shortage of either.”

  Zevran’s eyes flicked to the alley mouth. Shadows moved. Fast. Unnatural.

  “Demons?”

  “Not just demons. Worse.”

  He didn’t want to ask. “Worse how?”

  “The ones that like to play with their food.”

  Zevran forced himself upright. His hands were steady now. Still glowing faintly. Still wrong.

  But not useless.

  He stepped away from the wall, into the half-light of the alley’s end. The air smelled like ozone and rot. Across the street, in the shattered window of a ruined storefront, something scuttled away on too many legs.

  They’re hunting.

  The thought wasn’t Malphas’. It was his. Zevran’s.

  For the first time, he realized he wasn’t just being dragged along for the ride.

  He felt it now - something inside him, awake and watching.

  The city wasn’t just reawakening.

  It was reacting.

  To him.

  Zevran pulled his hood up and stepped out of the alley like a shadow bleeding into darker ones. The night clung to him, but the sigil on his forearm refused to be hidden. Even beneath fabric, it pulsed - slow and rhythmic - like a second heartbeat made of molten gold and rusted fire.

  His boots echoed across the cracked sidewalk. Streetlights flickered as he passed, dimming in protest. The city didn’t want him. Or maybe it did - and that was the scarier thought.

  A scream rang out two blocks away, sharp and short, cut off like a throat silenced mid-prayer.

  He didn’t flinch.

  Didn’t turn.

  Just walked.

  His body still felt alien - too strong, too fluid, like every step was a test drive of something not quite his. His bones didn’t creak anymore. His spine stood straighter. Every breath came easy, but carried the taste of ash and blood.

  Malphas said nothing. For once.

  Zevran welcomed the quiet.

  Skyscrapers loomed on all sides, their glass facades reflecting twisted reflections - too many eyes, mouths that didn’t belong. s blinked with coded symbols he didn’t recognize but somehow understood. The city was changing. Or maybe he was.

  Either way, nothing would be the same again.

  A gust of wind cut through the silence, tugging at his coat.

  You should run. That was the old instinct. The one that had kept him alive in back alleys and sewer tunnels for years. But this time, his feet didn’t listen.

  He wasn’t running anymore.

  Not from the city. Not from the monsters.

  Not from himself.

  A low growl curled up from a manhole near the curb. Something slick and bone-white dragged its claws beneath the grate, snuffling for blood or soul - or both.

  Zevran paused. His eyes flicked down.

  “I’m not your prey,” he said quietly.

  The thing hissed. Skittered away into the sewers.

  The sigil on his arm flared once, a warning or a challenge - he wasn’t sure.

  But he kept walking.

  One step. Then another.

  Each one pulled him further from who he’d been: the broken boy on the rooftop, aching to vanish.

  He could still feel that version of himself clinging to the edge of memory. But it was fading - drowned in black fire and demon ichor. In Malphas’ voice. In that impossible moment mid-fall when death had reached for him and found something else instead.

  A new voice stirred. Not in his head.

  His own.

  Maybe… just maybe… I don’t want to die anymore.

  The thought didn’t come with fireworks. No epiphany. Just a thread of warmth in the cold - barely there, but real.

  That was enough.

  At the corner, he stopped beneath a broken streetlight. Looked back toward the alley - toward the blood, the wreckage, the demon’s corpse now long gone.

  Gone, but not forgotten.

  That was the night everything changed.

  Not the night he died.

  The night he didn’t.

  He pulled his coat tighter. Looked ahead. Somewhere in the distance, past the broken city and the shadows and the monsters waiting in alleyways, something else was waiting too.

  Answers. A reckoning. Maybe even redemption.

  He’d been on the edge of nothing.

  Now he was stepping into it.

  And for the first time in a long time… he wasn’t afraid.