Page 6 of Demon Monster's Little Human

A deep, guttural snarl, raw with pain.

I push myself up fully, ignoring the screaming protest of my sides. A mistake.

His head snaps up.

Eyes burn into me—not gold, not ember, but something deeper, darker, a molten pit of fury buried beneath centuries of silence.

I do not move. Neither does he.

A thin ribbon of air stretches between us, charged and unforgiving, both of us half-buried, half-alive, half-waiting.

He shifts, slow, predatory. His wings stretch outward, joints popping as though snapping back into place.

I inch backward. My heel catches against debris, stopping me short.

He notices.

A flicker of something dangerous gleams behind his half-lidded gaze. The corner of his mouth curls, sharp canines glinting.

He enjoys this.

“You run again,” he rasps, voice scraping against the cavernous dark. “It will be the last time.”

I swallow. The truth of it sits heavy in my core, tangled with the ache in my heart. I should be afraid. I am.

But something in me stirs—recognition.

Not from stories whispered by frightened slaves, not from ancient warnings carved into temple walls.

Something deeper. Older.

A memory that isn’t mine.

A voice that should not be familiar.

What is this?

He moves first, shifting his weight, but it’s not to lunge. His left side falters, muscles tightening in a way that betrays pain. My gaze flicks down.

The glow beneath his skin pulses unevenly, fractures of ember beneath a deep gash, raw and sluggish where his stone-like flesh has cracked. Dark blood drips, thicker than human, pooling at the jagged edges of broken stone.

He grits his teeth, still crouched, one hand braced against the ground as though holding himself together through sheer will.

He is wounded.

Without thinking, I move.

His snarl cuts through between us, snapping against my nerves, warning, threatening, commanding stillness?—

I do not stop.

I kneel before him, pressing a hand to his wound.

Heat sears through me.

A shock of power ripples up my arm, his magic colliding with mine, meeting at the boundary of my palm where his wound drinks in my touch. The glow beneath his skin flickers—not in pain. In something else.

I don’t even know how I’m using magic. It’s unfamiliar, but at the same time, familiar as if the instruction manual is carve in my very being.

---