Page 16 of Demon Monster's Little Human

I do not like how true it feels.

I lean my head to the side, thinking. Why do I feel this way toward a human girl?

7

LIORA

The tunnels move.

Not in the way stone should—settling with age, shifting under pressure. No, this is different. The walls breathe, twisting when I’m not looking, narrowing just when I think I have room to stretch. My skin crawls.

I can feel them. Watching. Waiting. Hunting.

The silence is worse than the noise. The way it stretches, pulls, teeters on the edge of something breaking.

Dain keeps his pace brutal, dragging me through the darkness with single-minded intensity. I barely keep up, my legs screaming, my vision blurred from exhaustion. He doesn’t slow. Doesn’t even glance back.

He expects me to keep moving. Or maybe he just doesn’t care if I drop.

I grit my teeth and hold on.

“Why are the tunnels—” My voice sticks in my throat, dry and raw. “Why does it feel like they’re alive?”

Dain exhales, the sound sharp, irritated. “Because they are.”

I stiffen.

He continues as if that answer should be enough.

“The dark elves breed monsters, but they also breed curses.” His voice is lower now, deliberate. “These tunnels were carved as a prison. You don’t think they planned for things trying to escape?”

I glance at the walls. Living. Shifting.

My stomach turns.

“Magic binds this place,” he continues. “But it’s old. Weak. It recognizes something in you—in me. It wants to pull us back in.”

It recognizes us? My pulse stumbles.

I don’t get to think about it for long because the clicking returns.

I feel it before I hear it.

That thick, sick presence curling over my skin, sinking into my gut.

Dain feels it, too. His body stiffens, shoulders rolling like a predator ready to strike. His wings twitch, claws flexing. He doesn’t stop walking, but his steps shift, more careful, more deliberate.

The shadow moves. Not the tunnel’s shadow.

Something else.

The creature steps from the dark, too tall, too twisted. Its body is wrong. The segmented limbs shudder as it leans forward, tasting the air, feeling us.

Dain exhales through his nose, as if this is just another inconvenience.

“Run.”

It takes me a second to process the command. And then the creature lunges.

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