She blinks. Once. Twice. A useless reflex. Habit, not hope. No light follows. Her demon-sight—an infernal gift she never trusted—finally stirs. It claws its way forward, slipping past her human limits. Shapes begin to bleed through the black, outlined in pale greys and faint warmth. The cavern emerges like a crouched beast: jagged walls torn from the earth, slick with moisture. The ground lies uneven beneath her feet, scattered with loose stones like discarded bones.
Her lips twist. Disgust. At herself, mostly. She’d promised—sworn—not to end up like this again. Blind. Lost. Stuck in her own damn head. And yet here she is, crawling through shadow while her blood whispers soft lies in the dark.
See? The demon-blood croons, smooth and amused, a voice soaked in smoke and silk. You only see clearly when you stop pretending you’re human.
Her fingers curl into fists, nails digging into her palms.
The throb behind her eyes sharpens, pulsing brighter, and her vision flickers—stone and shadow stuttering like candlelight in wind. She pulls in a breath, the taste of iron and earth thick on her tongue, and forces herself to focus.
She pushes herself up. A low, ragged groan slips out before she can stop it. Weak. Gods, she hates the sound of it—soft, helpless, too damn human.
Her hand finds the back of her head on instinct. Fingers brush a tender knot. Pain flares sharp and hot, pulsing with every heartbeat.
Does it hurt? Oh, poor baby... are you going to cry?
The voice slithers through her skull—smooth, taunting, soaked in amusement. Sultry, like always. Alluring in that venomous way that makes her want to tear it out with her bare hands.
Ember grits her teeth. Shoves the voice down—hard. She’s done playing nice with it. Done pretending it isn’t some twisted piece of herself she’d rather burn out than hear.
Her demon blood, quiet for so long, begins to stir. Like smoke rising in her veins. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Almost. It had gone still after Grant... after he took her in. Claimed her. Even thinking it feels strange now—like touching something fragile she’s afraid to break.
Grant.
His presence had snuffed it out. Flattened the hunger into a hum she could ignore. No more whispers, no more temptations pulling her toward blood, chaos, and beautiful destruction. He has that kind of presence—calm in the storm. Steady, where she’s all jagged edges and frayed nerves.
Is that his gift? she wonders.
Or just another chain?
A leash in silk, so soft she barely feels it tighten.
Her fingers curl into fists. The pain throbs again—but this time, she leans into it. Better to feel that than listen to the voice purring in her head.
Better to bleed than to beg.
Ember lifts her head—slow, heavy. Her neck protests with a dull throb.
Above, the ceiling yawns open, a jagged wound carved into the earth. Shards of broken stone and clotted debris choke the breach, damming the sky like a blocked river. It hangs there, unstable. Waiting to collapse. Waiting to bury her all over again.
She drops her gaze. The cavern stretches around her like a sleeping beast—massive, still, and suffocating. The dark swallows everything past a few paces, thick as pitch, but her demon-born sight cuts through just enough.
Veins of damp stone shimmer faintly along the walls, slick with moisture that catches phantom light. Illusions of silver drifting in endless night.
Far ahead, deeper still, something worse waits. A void darker than the rest. A mouth, open wide.
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She steps forward. Careful. Her boot crunches loose gravel—sharp and sudden in the silence. Too loud. The sound ricochets through the cavern, bouncing off the stone like it’s laughing at her. Mocking the idea she could move unseen here.
A shiver snakes down her spine. Cold, she tells herself. Just the cold. But it isn’t. And she knows it.
The voice glides in—soft as silk, sweet as rot. It purrs in her skull, coy and playful, curling around her like a lover’s whisper. One that cuts deep.
She grits her teeth. Pushes it away. She has to.
Her steps resume—slow, measured. The ground beneath her feels unreliable, like one misstep might tear it open. It might. Her cursed sight helps, but the terrain resists her: jagged edges, slick patches, hidden drops.
The air changes near the opening. Cooler. Thinner. A draft curls out to meet her, carrying a stench that hits hard—acrid, oily, sharp. Like something burned and bitter, clinging to the back of her throat.
She stops. Every sense sharpens. Instinct rises—raw, wordless, wild.
And then—she hears it.
Faint, but steady. Chip. Chip. Chip.
Metal on stone. Over and over. Like a heartbeat in the dark.
The voice sighs—lazy, sweet, dripping with poisoned honey.
But Ember freezes. Her breath catches—tight and shallow. Her heart stutters, loud enough to feel.
Because for the first time in a long while, she wishes—gods help her—that the voice was lying.
The passage narrows, swallowing Ember as she slips deeper inside. The walls press in, scraped raw by steel and sweat. Every inch is scarred with crude tool marks, gouged deep into the stone. Fresh. Recent. The rhythmic chipping grows louder—sharper now—like the ticking of a hidden clock counting down.
She moves like a shadow. Feet whisper against the dusty floor, light as a breath, careful as a thief who knows she doesn’t belong. Still, her chest tightens. A coil winding behind her ribs. Curiosity, maybe. Or dread wearing curiosity’s skin.
Come on. Admit it.
The voice slinks in—smooth, low, each word dripping soft poison into her thoughts.
You’re curious. What’s making that sound?
Her lips twitch before she can stop them. “Or what…” she murmurs, voice dry as ash.
The words slip free, then fall heavy in the space between. Stupid. She clamps both hands over her mouth, as if she could take them back. But the burn doesn’t come. No surge of hunger. No itch under her skin.
Odd.
Wrong.
But she keeps walking. Because stopping feels worse.
The tunnel spits her out into a tight cavern. The darkness fractures—split by flickering torchlight. Greasy flames hiss and twist, casting wild shadows. In their dance, Ember sees them.
Small. Hunched. Their skin stretched like cracked leather over fragile bones.
Infernal Goblins?
Even the voice stumbles, a thin thread of confusion.
That’s... not right.
No. Ember feels it too—a sharp, slicing wrongness. Infernal Goblins don’t belong here. Not this close to the surface. They live far below, where the stone bleeds heat and the air reeks of brimstone.
She frowns and rolls up her sleeve. The fabric rasps against her arm. Still human. Pale, soft skin. No scales. No infernal sheen. Her disguise holds. The boundaries haven’t broken—yet.
If she still looks human, she hasn’t gone deep enough to shed that skin.
Not yet.
Her gaze cuts back to the goblins, sharp and focused. They haven’t noticed her—yet. Picks rise and fall, chipping steadily at the wall. Widening the breach.
Not blasting. Not tearing it apart with fire.
Mining.
She freezes in the shadows. Muscles coiled. Breath held. The goblins chatter—low, rapid, guttural.
Goblins. Mining.
Not… blowing things up?
The voice tilts its head in her mind, amused.
She doesn’t want to answer. Doesn’t want to pull that thread. But the voice is right, damn it. Infernal Goblins don’t mine. They exist for one thing only—explosions. They turn barriers to rubble and call it progress.
The voice smirks, curling through her mind like smoke.
She rolls her eyes.
Then one of them shifts. Bigger than the rest. Bulkier. Its patchwork leather armor bulges at the seams. A crude helmet slouches on its head, with a broken lantern bolted to the top. The light sputters like it resents being alive.
It turns.
Red eyes—small, wet, gleaming—catch the torchlight. Then catch her.
It freezes and gasps.
Time stutters. Picks freeze mid-swing. The sound dies. The air goes still.
The big one’s eyes stretch wide—cartoonish, grotesque—and a yelp bursts from its throat, sharp enough to crack the silence.
Uh oh...
The voice purrs, lazy now.