Page 119 of Demon Monster's Little Human

I crash into the stone ruins, my wings snapping open just in time to slow our descent. The impact sends a violent shockwave through the ground, dust and debris exploding into the air.

Liora is still in my arms, her body weak but alive. Her pulse is there, flickering, fragile.

I won.

But the moment relief begins to sink in, she opens her eyes.

And everything changes.

The glow in them is wrong.

Not Liora. Not Amara.

Something else.

Her lips part, but when she speaks, the voice that leaves them is not hers.

"It’s not over, Dain."

50

LIORA

The world is wrong.

I feel it in every fiber of my being, in my blood, in the way the earth trembles beneath me as if the land itself is suffocating under something monstrous.

The presence, no, the thing that has haunted us, whispered in my mind, slithered through Dain’s rage and my fear—has taken form. And it is horrifying.

It rises from the ruins, from the shadows, from me.

The artifact has fed on everything, on Dain’s hatred, on my soul, on the cursed history entwining us both. It knows us. It remembers us. It has shaped itself into something that should never have existed, and now it stands before us, pulsing with unnatural life, made of writhing darkness, of hunger.

Its form shifts, flickers, constantly becoming, as if the world itself refuses to accept what it is. A god that was never meant to be.

It speaks with my voice.

"I am inevitable."

I freeze. My own voice warped, echoing from something wrong, slicing me like a blade. It is speaking with me, through me, as if I have always belonged to it.

Dain’s grip tightens around me, claws digging into my waist, as if he’s afraid I’ll slip through his fingers again. His breath is ragged against my temple, his body braced like a shield between me and the entity before us.

"Get out of her," he snarls, fangs bared.

But the creature only laughs.

I feel it move inside me.

A sickening pull twists deep in my core, an invisible chain yanking me forward. My body is not my own. It is calling me.

The artifact wants me.

"You were always mine, Amara."

The name punches me in the gut, and suddenly, memories are unraveling like a flood. Past lives. Past deaths. I see myself over and over, falling, burning, screaming, every version of me being ripped apart, reforged, thrown back into existence just to suffer again.

This thing has been feeding on me for lifetimes. It has always been waiting.

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