Page 44 of Demon Monster's Little Human

The world shudders.

The shadows around us shift, warping, curling inward like smoke in reverse.

The gargoyle freezes. The wind dies.

The darkness reaches for me.

It isn’t solid. It isn’t real. But it is there.

A presence. A hunger. A force older than anything I have ever felt, more ancient than even the ruins that sealed Dain away.

My mind screams to move, to run, to do something, anything?—

But I can’t.

It wants me.

It doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t have a voice. It simply consumes.

The gargoyle stumbles back, snarling, wings snapping open, but he is nothing to it.

It doesn’t see him. It only sees me. This darkness that has been following Dain and me has finally taken form.

Pain erupts behind my eyes, tearing through my skull, ripping into me like unseen claws.

Memories that aren’t mine crash through me in a violent rush.

A woman stands before a great, seething void, her hands raised, light spilling from her palms, sealing something in a monstrous away.

The thing shrieks.

A voice, my own? Someone else's? It screams, “No, no, NO!”

The world is shaking.

The darkness reaches for me. And then, everything breaks.

A roar cuts through the storm, a force so powerful it shatters the unnatural silence.

Wings carve through the sky in a brutal, blinding force.

Dain. He doesn’t hesitate.

Doesn’t land.

Doesn’t waste a second.

He collides with the darkness like a living weapon, his claws raking through the formless void. Where the other gargoyle before couldn’t land a single blow, Dain cuts through it.

The thing shrieks, recoiling.

How is he hurting it?

The presence writhes, retreating into the shadows, retreating into the place it came from.

Dain doesn’t stop to look at what he’s done.

He lands, grabbing me without a word, his hands bruising in their intensity, and then we’re in the air, the wind whipping past us in a violent rush.

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