Page 58 of Demon Monster's Little Human

Liora is still speaking, still asking questions, but I do not hear her.

I do not hear anything.

Something led us here, probably wanted us to find this place.

I hate feeling like a piece on someone else's board.

This was not coincidence. This was not fate.

Someone has been waiting. And they have led us here for a reason.

24

LIORA

The cavern bears down on us, thick with something unseen, something ancient. The very air coils tight, watching, as if the stone walls themselves breathe.

Dain is on edge. He’s hiding something from me.

The way he ripped the notebook from my hands, the wildness in his eyes, it was more than anger. It was fear.

That terrifies me more than anything else.

"Dain," I press, voice sharper than I intend. "What is this place?"

His grip tightens on the notebook, claws indenting the brittle pages. He does not answer.

"What are you afraid of?" I push again, stepping closer, challenging him.

His wings shift, tension coiling in his frame like a beast about to strike. He looks at me then, his eyes flickering molten gold, but beneath that fire, there is something else.

"I told you to stop asking questions," he growls, his voice darker than I have ever heard it.

My heart pounds. "You recognized that figurine, didn't you?" I press on. "This place means something to you."

His expression hardens. A wall slams into place.

"Leave it," he says.

No. I can’t.

There’s something important he’s hiding from me.

I can feel it in the way he moves, restless, coiled, dangerous. His steps are sharp, his claws flexing, wings half-flared, as if expecting an attack that hasn’t yet come. The moment I uncovered that figurine, that notebook, something inside him fractured.

He won’t say why.

He refuses to speak at all.

I grip my arms against the cold, but it’s not the cold that unsettles me—it’s the silence. The kind of silence that comes before something terrible.

Dain abruptly turns his head toward the cave entrance, his entire body locking up in rigid stillness. His eyes are fixed on something I can’t see. A low growl rumbles from deep in his chest, reverberating through the cavern like a distant storm.

“Dain?” I whisper, because suddenly, the darkness beyond the cave feels alive.

The shadows at the threshold shift, stretching unnaturally, spilling forward like something rising from the depths of a blackened sea.

A void. Moving.

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