Page 59 of Demon Monster's Little Human

Reaching.

Dain reacts first.

His wings flare wide, claws unsheathing, and then he lunges.

The sound that follows is not of flesh meeting flesh, but of something wrong. His claws cut through the thing, but it doesn’t react like a living creature. It does not bleed.

Instead, the darkness absorbs the impact, shifting like liquid, as if it is not bound to the laws of this world.

Dain snarls, pulling back. His hands flex, and suddenly the temperature shifts—heat ripples off him in waves.

Magic.

I don’t understand what I’m seeing, but I can feel it.

The cavern pulses in response, and then, before my mind can catch up, the entity attacks.

It lurches toward him in tendrils of blackness, serpentine and silent, moving like a mist yet solid as steel. Dain barely dodges the first strike before another tendril whips around, slamming into his side. He grunts, staggering back, and the sound that follows is wrong.

A deep, vibrating hum, almost like laughter, but not.

Not something that should exist.

Dain crouches, breathing hard, and I notice it, uncertainty.

He’s fought monsters, elves, creatures from nightmares but this thing doesn’t play by the same rules.

I press myself against the walls, my pulse hammering as I scan the cavern for anything that can help. My hands skim over the edges of the carved shelves, desperate, slipping on dust-covered relics, books, broken glass?—

And then I feel it.

Cold. The moment my fingers graze it, my entire arm stiffens.

I look down.

A book.

No cover. No title.

Only blackened pages, as if burned from the inside.

A tremor runs through me as the tome shudders, its pages rippling, though there is no wind.

Something whispers, low and sweet, ancient and waiting.

I can’t breathe. I should let go.

But I don’t.

The book flips open on its own.

A single page, stained with something dark, like ink, like blood.

The whisper turns into a voice.

Not from the cavern. Not from Dain.

From inside me.

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