Page 5 of Demon Monster's Little Human

I shove myself away instead, chest heaving, body coiled too tight. My pulse pounds in my ears, my own fury choking me.

She watches me like she’s seen me before.

Like she knows me.

I do not like it.

I will not let her live.

I stalk toward her again but the temple has other plans.

The ceiling trembles. The pillars buckle. Whatever magic she wielded has broken something deeper, and the temple collapses around us.

I don’t have time to think, to act, before the floor vanishes beneath our feet.

The last thing I hear is her gasp, the last thing I feel is her body colliding with mine.

We are falling.

3

LIORA

The world crashes down. Stone splits, dust surges, and the ceiling gives way like brittle bone, swallowing us in the temple’s final, dying breath. I fall—we fall—plunging into darkness, my scream swallowed before it can escape.

Impact slams through me. Rocks dig into my side, scraping skin, knocking my breath out of me. The ground isn’t even—it shifts beneath me, debris tumbling, my limbs tangled in the chaos.

Silence slithers in next. Too sudden. Too heavy.

I cough, the taste of grit thick on my tongue. Everything aches. My chest, my arms, my skull—bruised but not broken. Still breathing. Still alive.

A sound rumbles through the dark.

Not stone shifting. Not the ruin settling.

Something else.

I freeze.

A growl slithers between the jagged edges of my consciousness, something low and raw, vibrating against the walls of our prison.

He is here.

I press a hand to the uneven ground, forcing myself up onto my elbows. The chamber is narrow, trapped beneath tons of collapsed ruin, but there’s a glow—a dull, molten red illuminating the dust-clogged dark.

Him.

The gargoyle.

I barely see him at first, crouched in the rubble, hunched over, one knee bent, massive frame shrouded in crumbling dust. His wings, those wings—shift against the ruined floor, battered but whole, their obsidian edges flickering like dying embers. His tail drags against the ground, curling once before going still.

The glow comes from beneath his skin.

Veins of deep-crimson pulse beneath the blackened stone of his flesh, streaks of molten gold flickering at the edges, brightening with each breath. His chest rises, ragged and slow. He should be dead. We both should be.

But he is not human.

Neither is the sound that tears from his throat.

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