Ash hung in the air, thick and grey, casting long shadows from the broken trees. The demon corpses had burned to brittle husks overnight, but the stink still lingered — a sour mix of rot, fire, and something acidic, like old sorrow left out too long.
Elian sat on a stone, watching the horizon. His arm throbbed beneath the bandage. The skin around the wound was pale, bruised. Wrong.
Sera crouched a few feet away, cleaning blood off her blade with the hem of a dead man's cloak. It was stained already — didn't matter.
"You look like hell," she muttered without looking up.
"I slept fine."
"Not what I said."
They broke camp in silence. Sera moved with practiced speed. Elian with quiet frustration.
His arm ached more now. The bruising had spread — tiny black threads crawling beneath the skin, like something was etching itself into him from the inside out.
He didn't tell her.
Yet.
Instead, he followed.
The road they took used to be a trail. Now it was barely that — swallowed by moss and mud and overgrowth. The trees had shifted in subtle ways, roots crawling like fingers. This forest didn't want travelers anymore.
"Where are we even going?" Elian asked after an hour.
"North," Sera said.
"That's not a direction, that's an evasion."
She glanced back at him.
"North is where the world hasn't completely bled out yet. South is war camps, cultists, and corpses. East is cursed. West is angel territory. So yeah — north."
"…You're awful at pep talks."
"I try not to waste energy on corpses that still think they're alive."
Elian frowned. "That another insult?"
She shrugged. "Or a compliment. Depends on your self-esteem."
He didn't reply.
But after a beat, she added under her breath, "Didn't mean it to be one, for the record."
They reached the outskirts of a village around midday — or what remained of one.
Wooden fences had been splintered to dust. The houses were black shells, hollow and quiet. No bodies — not anymore. Just drag marks and dried blood on the stone.
Elian stepped over a child's toy, half-buried in the dirt. A stuffed rabbit, torn at the neck. Still damp from last night's rain.
He didn't speak.
Neither did Sera.
They stopped in what used to be a tavern. The roof was gone. The bar was still intact, though mostly rotted through. Sera rifled through the drawers, found a rusted bottle opener and a half-full jar of pickled… something.
She offered it to Elian.
He raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"
"Edible," she said flatly.
"You sure?"
She unscrewed the lid, sniffed it, and shrugged.
"Still twitching a little, but yeah."
He handed it back. "Hard pass."
She pocketed it. "Suit yourself. I've had worse. Once ate a demon's spleen on a dare. Lost the bet. Kept the spleen."
Elian blinked. "What?"
She didn't repeat herself.
Later, while Sera picked through supplies in the ruins, Elian stepped away, down an alley choked with ivy.
He pulled back the bandage on his arm.
The veins had turned black.
Not just bruised. Black. And shifting.
They pulsed faintly under his skin like worms trying to crawl out. His hand trembled.
Then the whisper came.
Not words — not yet — but pressure. Like a hand pressing gently against the back of his skull, coaxing. Suggesting.
He grit his teeth and re-wrapped the bandage.
When he returned, Sera was sitting atop a shattered table, flipping a knife through her fingers.
"You wander off again," she said, "and I swear I'll leave you tied to a tree with 'Free Snack' carved into your forehead."
"I had to piss."
"Then piss louder. Next time I think you're dead, I'm not checking. I'm looting."
She tossed him the knife.
It stuck in the floor by his foot.
They left the village by sundown.
Behind them, the shadows shifted — long and sharp, moving against the wind. A shape watched from the treeline, hunched and silent.
Sera didn't look back.
Elian did.
Something in the woods moved like it knew his name.
The fire crackled low. Sparks drifted into the black canopy above like dying stars.
Sera leaned against a boulder, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded but never truly resting. Elian sat near the flames, wrapping a cloth tighter around his wrist where the black veins now coiled like vines.
He didn't say a word. He knew she'd seen it.
She just hadn't said anything yet.
Because she was waiting.
Waiting for him to say it first.
That's when the third presence appeared.
No footsteps. No crunch of branches. Just a shift in the air — cold, sudden, disrespectful of the natural silence.
Elian stood halfway before he even knew why.
A figure stepped into the firelight.
Tall. Thin. Beautiful in that shattered-glass way — cheekbones too sharp, presence too wide. One wing hung from his back, tattered and scorched. The other was gone. Just a jagged scar and a phantom ache in its place.
His halo hovered like broken glass above his head, shattered into a slow spiral — orbiting two twisted horns that curled like ram's horns made of ivory and ruin.
Sera had her katana drawn instantly.
"Another demon?" she spat.
"No," the figure said, voice low and effortless. "Worse."
He looked at Elian.
Then, calmly:
"You're bleeding wrong."
Sera was in front of Elian before he could speak — sword pointed at the stranger's throat.
"Name," she snapped.
The man tilted his head, amused.
"I've had a few."
She stepped forward. "Try your last one."
"Lucifer," he said.
Her blade stopped.
"…You're kidding."
He didn't smile.
"I don't kid. I used to punish them."
The moment hung still.
Lucifer finally turned toward the fire, stepped closer, and sat without permission.
"You can put the sword down," he told Sera. "If I wanted either of you dead, you'd already be talking to your gods. Or the things that eat them."
Sera lowered her weapon a fraction.
Elian looked between them, his voice dry. "So. You're that Lucifer."
The fallen one gave a one-shouldered shrug. "No horns, red tail, pitchfork. Just old propaganda. I was never the villain. Just… the first one to ask 'why.'"
He looked at Elian again.
"You asked it too, didn't you? That's why you bleed like that."
Before Elian could answer, the woods groaned.
Sera's eyes snapped toward the darkness.
"Something's coming."
Lucifer rose slowly, eyes narrowing.
The trees bent.
Then the night ripped open.
A beast lumbered through the clearing — massive, humanoid, all mouths and tendons. Its limbs were too long, its eyes stitched shut. A demon not born, but built. Wrong.
Sera was already in motion — blade flashing — but her strikes did nothing. The thing didn't bleed. It whispered through its skin.
It threw her against a tree hard enough to splinter bark.
Lucifer lunged in, his movements sharp and unnatural — like his bones moved wrong inside his body.
He clashed with the beast, the impact shaking the air. For a moment, they were silhouettes in a storm — black against black.
But even Lucifer began to slow.
Sera coughed, blood on her lip.
Elian ran to her.
She tried to shove him away. "Go. Run."
"No."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're not useful yet."
He smirked faintly. "Then die mad about it."
Before she could argue again, Lucifer landed next to them, panting, blood down one side of his face.
"Hold her," he muttered to Elian.
"What?"
Lucifer didn't wait — he yanked Sera behind the tree.
"You're not built for this one," he said, voice thin now. "You're made for precision. This thing is a meat storm."
He turned to Elian, and his gaze was dark and burning.
"Keep her alive."
Then he leapt — right into the beast's path.
The next minute was teeth and fire.
Lucifer fought like someone who used to be holy but had learned very quickly how not to be. He let the demon hit him — baited it — danced with it like death was an old friend.
Then, when it overextended — he sank his fist into its maw and muttered something in a language no longer spoken.
The thing screamed, spasmed, and burst open from the inside — black ichor spraying the clearing like bile.
Lucifer stumbled out of the wreckage, holding one of its ribs like a cane.
"Well," he muttered. "That sucked."
Sera staggered to her feet. Her breathing was ragged.
"You okay?" Elian asked.
She glared at him.
"I'm covered in demon guts, my ribs are cracked, and now there's an ex-archangel bleeding next to our fire like it's normal. How do you think I feel?"
Elian tried not to smile.
"That good, huh?"
Lucifer collapsed next to the fire and groaned. "Can't wait for this infection to kill me. Again."
Neither of them could tell if he was joking.