Demon Contract

The elevator didn't hum. It growled.

The sound was low, guttural, running through the steel walls like the breath of something caged. Runes pulsed faintly across the panels — not glowing, but beating, each flare in rhythm with a heart that wasn't theirs. Every few seconds, a vibration shivered through the floor, like claws dragging against the underside of the Institute.

Nobody spoke at first. The descent pressed on too long for comfort, the air growing warmer with every floor.

Victor broke the silence, rocking on his heels, arms folded across his chest. "So. Anyone else feel like we're about to walk into a villain's lair? All we're missing is an evil laugh and some lava."

Alyssa gave him a sideways look. "Pretty sure you're the one doing the nervous stand-up routine. What's wrong, Drake? Elevator too small for your muscles?"

He smirked back. "I'm claustrophobic, not delicate."

Chloe, hovering near the corner, flickered faintly before solidifying again. "You two should compare phobias later. Victor hates walls. Alyssa hates silence. Maybe we can find a demon that hates both of you equally."

That earned the faintest smile, even from Dan.

Max hadn't joined in. He stood with one hand braced against the wall, eyes on Kane's back. The runes reflected faintly in his pupils, gold-blue fire itching under his skin in time with the pulses. Finally he broke the silence, voice low but steady.
"What's down here? Why bring us?"

Kane didn't turn. His reflection stared back at them in the steel doors, sharp and unreadable. "You've learned to swing. To burn. To break. But fists and fire aren't weapons."

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. "Pretty sure my fists disagree."

Kane ignored her. "You want to kill demons? Really kill them? You'll need more than strength. Did you expect to punch them until they begged for mercy?"

The question hung heavy, rhetorical and sharp as glass.

Dan's jaw tightened. "So what are we walking into?"

Kane tilted his head, just enough for them to catch the faintest curl of his mouth in the reflection. "The forge."

The elevator jolted, shuddering to a halt. A hiss of steam curled from the seams as the doors rumbled open.

The heat slammed into them first — wet, heavy, wrong. Not the dry burn of a furnace, but the damp exhale of a living lung pressing into their bones. The tang of iron filled their mouths.

Max stepped out first, fire simmering under his skin.

The chamber stretched vast before them — part cathedral, part bunker. Soulsteel pylons lined the walls, glowing with veins of molten light. Smoke clung low to the ground, and the air reeked of old blood baked into stone.

And at the centre of it, framed by the glow of the forge, stood Ferron.

***

Ferron did not look up immediately.

He stood with his back to them, one arm buried to the elbow in a trough of molten light. The forge roared around him, a living furnace fed not by coal or gas but by something deeper — soul-pressure that licked at the skin without burning it. Sparks rose in the air like fireflies, catching briefly in his black hair before winking out.

When he finally drew his arm free, the gauntlet he wore unfolded into a hammer with a hiss of metal and soulsteel. He set the half-cooled ingot he'd been working on onto the anvil, brought the hammer down once, and let the sound ring through the chamber. Only then did he turn.

The group froze without meaning to. Alyssa's smirk faltered, Victor's shoulders rolled back like he was unconsciously bracing. Even Max felt the pull of Ferron's presence, as though the heat of the forge itself bent toward him.

Ferron looked like the last man left alive at the end of the world, and he dressed like it too.

Tall, lean, his frame all sharp angles wrapped in a high-collared black coat that trailed like smoke. Crimson sigils laced the fabric, pulsing faintly with each breath. Silver rings glinted on his fingers, each etched with runes worn from use, not decoration. His boots were matte black, his nails lacquered the same, each one marked with a tiny scar of light.

One eye was storm-grey, restless as ash in the wind. The other was something else entirely: a slow-turning lens of molten gold, glowing faintly, like a war machine that had never fully powered down. It didn't blink. It didn't need to.

A tattoo swept down one temple in careful strokes of hand-brushed kanji:

火は嘘をつかない – Fire does not lie.

When he spoke, his voice was low, smooth, and deliberate. Not commanding like Grimm, not mocking like Kane. The kind of voice you leaned into without meaning to, steady as iron hammered into shape.

"You're late."

Max frowned. "We weren't given a time."

Ferron's lips curved faintly — not quite a smile, not unfriendly either. "If you're not early, you're prey."

Victor tilted his head. "And you are…?"

Ferron stepped forward, the forge-glow catching on the rings across his hands. The hammer folded back into the gauntlet on his arm with a whisper of soulsteel, seamless and final.

"I am Ferron," he said. "The Institute's Soulforger. Your new best friend — or the last man you'll ever see, depending on how much attention you pay."

He let that hang, then added with the barest shrug, "I recommend paying attention."

Alyssa crossed her arms. "You're the one who makes the magic swords?"

Ferron actually laughed at that — short, genuine. "Swords, spears, staves, gauntlets, chains. I don't care what shape it takes, as long as it works. But no, Alyssa. Not magic. Soul. There's a difference."

Chloe leaned forward slightly. "Soulforger means… what exactly?"

Ferron's gaze flicked to her, and for the first time his demeanor softened. "It means I take the raw resonance in you and shape it into something that can scar a demon. Guns and fists won't kill what you're fighting. You can break bones, shred flesh, drop a building on them — it won't matter. If their soul remains, they will come back."

He tapped his chest lightly with one ringed finger. "That's where I come in. You've got resonance now. Power that can bleed into steel. My forge takes that power, binds it, and gives you weapons that are alive — extensions of your will. Tools that grow with you."

Dan studied him carefully. "And if it fails?"

Ferron's golden lens whirred once, soft but unsettling. "Then it wasn't meant to. The forge does not lie. Fire does not lie."

He glanced at the forge, the glow painting his face in halves. "Fire stripped me of illusions once. I thought I was forging a weapon. Instead, I was forging myself. That's what it does. It doesn't give. It reveals. And when it reveals weakness, it devours."

He swept a hand toward the racks lining the walls — broken blades, splintered staves, weapons warped and twisted by resonance that had rejected them. "Those are the failures. Tombstones of the unworthy."

He turned back to the group, expression calm again. "But that's not you. Not if you're standing here. The forge doesn't call the weak."

For the first time since stepping into the chamber, the tension in the group shifted. Not gone — but steadied. Ferron's presence was heavy, yes, but it wasn't the suffocating weight of Grimm or the mocking edge of Kane. His coolness was confidence, not contempt. He looked at them not as children fumbling in the dark, but as iron waiting to be tempered.

Ferron stepped closer, his mismatched eyes lingering on Max. "You especially. Your weapon already exists. You just haven't had the guts to call it by name."

Max stiffened, but Ferron didn't press. He let the words land, then turned back to the forge. Sparks flared upward, throwing shadows that looked like faces — one wept, one grinned, one screamed.

"Now," Ferron said simply, rolling his shoulders. "Who's first?"

***

The forge exhaled, a deep breath that made the walls tremble. Heat bled through the floor, not burning but pressing against skin like a hand laid flat across a heartbeat. The chamber seemed to lean closer, waiting.

Ferron moved to the anvil and dragged one gloved hand across a line of etched glyphs. A platform of blackstone rose from the molten pit at the center, runes glowing like veins beneath its surface.

"You don't choose the weapon," he said, his tone calm, measured. "It chooses you. Fire strips away lies. If you listen, it will show you the truth of what you carry."

He pointed to Chloe. "You first, phase-girl."

Chloe stiffened. "Why me?"

"Because you're closest to breaking," Ferron said simply. "The forge likes the edges."

Her throat bobbed, but she stepped forward. The others gave small gestures of encouragement — Alyssa's crooked grin, Dan's steady nod, even Victor's smirk that wasn't really a joke. Max only met her eyes once, and that was enough.

Ferron pressed something into Chloe's hands: a sphere of clear crystal, smoke coiling faintly inside it. "Soul-seed. Breathe into it. Don't force it. Don't fight it. Just let it see you."

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Chloe closed her eyes. Her outline flickered once, as if she were already slipping, and then steadied. Silver light bled from her skin into the crystal. The sphere pulsed, cracked, and then melted like glass under flame. Threads of spectral metal snaked down into the forge.

The fire roared. From the molten heart rose a blade — but not wholly real. Its curved edge shimmered, blurred, as if part of it existed a half-second behind the rest. When Chloe touched it, the weapon hummed in her grip, out of sync with the air itself.

Ferron tilted his head. "A mirror-blade. Half here, half gone. Like you."

Chloe tested it with a slow swing. The edge left an afterimage that shimmered before fading. Her lips parted in a small, surprised smile. "It feels… right."

"Then it is," Ferron said.

But for a moment before it settled, the blade had flickered violently — half vanishing from her grip, phasing as though it might dissolve back into the forge and leave her empty-handed. Chloe's breath had caught, panic twisting her chest, until the weapon pulsed steady against her palm.

She stepped back, weapon still in her hands, and Victor was already moving forward.

"Alright, my turn."

The crystal boiled instantly, spitting heat into the chamber. Flames surged as if they'd recognized him, and from the forge erupted a cleaver — massive, jagged on one side, smooth on the other. Its hilt pulsed faintly, tightening around his grip like a heartbeat.

Ferron nodded once. "Behemoth steel. It grows heavier with your rage. Perfect for breaking walls."

Victor grinned, hefting it with ease. "Finally, something that understands me."

The laughter that followed broke the tension. Even Alyssa smirked as she stepped forward, rolling her shoulders.

Her crystal flared the moment she touched it, pulsing like a heartbeat out of rhythm. It cracked apart in a single violent pulse, shards burning away before they struck the ground. The forge answered with a roar, coughing up gauntlets — brutal, rune-etched, blood-red light searing across their knuckles. They locked over her arms with a hiss, heavy as shackles.

The weight dragged at her shoulders, more prison than weapon, her arms sinking an inch before she forced them up again. For a heartbeat she thought the forge had chained her on purpose — that it saw her as a threat, not a warrior. Then the vibration rolled through her bones, answering her pulse, and the gauntlets shifted from burden to belonging. They felt less new than discovered — as if they'd been waiting for her hands all along.

Alyssa flexed, and the metal answered with a low vibration, like a drumbeat. Her grin widened, but it carried a darker edge. "These don't feel new. They feel like they've always been mine."

Dan stepped forward next, more measured than the others. He took the crystal gently, holding it as if it were fragile. The seed pulsed soft gold, warm against his skin. For a moment it began to twist toward red, jagged edges forming in the air above the forge — a weapon born of fear and desperation.

Dan closed his eyes. "No."

The forge resisted him, fire straining toward red again, jagged, hungry for the kill. Heat licked his skin, and the gold sphere wavered as though it might collapse entirely. Sweat ran down his temple before his breath steadied, his voice firmer the second time: "No."

Only then did the glow settle, reshaping into calm light.

The forge stilled. The weapon reshaped, collapsing, then blooming outward — calm, deliberate. From the fire rose a staff — elegant, winged shapes curling around a sphere of light at its head. It pulsed softly, alive, protective.

Ferron's golden lens whirred faintly. "Seraph steel. Forged to heal, not harm. Rare. Beautiful." He paused, studying Dan. "You just refused the kill. Few can."

Dan nodded once. "Someone has to keep us whole."

Finally, only Max remained.

Ferron didn't speak this time. He only handed Max the crystal and waited.

The moment Max breathed into it, the forge howled. Flames surged, cracking the stone underfoot. Blue-gold fire poured upward, chains of molten light coiling from the pit like serpents.

When the fire died, a single chain remained. Black steel, links glowing faintly with Hellfire, fused to Max's wrist and trailing to the ground. It shifted on its own, alive, heavy as guilt.

Max stared at it, chest tight. "I didn't ask for this."

Ferron's expression softened — not pity, but recognition. "The forge doesn't ask what you want. It shows what you are. Binding. Burning. A warden."

The word sank like iron into his gut. Wardens guarded prisons, and prisons kept people locked away. He thought of Liz, behind glass and wires, and the chain on his wrist felt less like a weapon than a curse.

The chain pulsed once, golden light crawling through the links. The sound it made was not metal on stone, but a slow rattle like breath dragged through iron lungs.

Ferron stepped back, his face half-shadow, half-flame. "Now you know. None of you leave here unchanged."

***

The forge doors recoiled, melting backward like iron surrendering under heat. A staircase wound down into stone veined with dull red light.

Ferron walked first, coat trailing like smoke. 'You've got weapons now,' he said. 'But to understand the cost, you need to see what feeds them.'

The stairs curved too tightly, walls narrowing until each footstep echoed like a heartbeat. The air thickened, swallowing sound."

Victor muttered, voice low. "Feels like we're walking into a throat."

"You are not wrong," Ferron said without turning.

They reached the bottom. A door loomed before them, ten feet tall, framed in bone fused with glass. Glyphs crawled across it, their shapes changing if you looked too long. The whole surface pulsed faintly, like something alive was pressing its face against the other side.

Ferron laid his ringed hand against the seal, the runes etched into silver and steel flaring as if answering. The runes burned crimson, and the vault groaned open with a sound like a scream too deep to be heard by human ears.

The heat hit them first. Not fire — soul-pressure, hot enough to stagger. Chloe flinched, clutching her chest. Dan sucked in a sharp breath, already trembling from the weight of it. Alyssa swore under her breath.

Inside hung chains. Hundreds of them. They stretched from ceiling to floor, each link etched with shifting runes, glowing red as though bleeding light.

At their centre, suspended in cruciform, was a demon.

It was larger than a man, but not grotesque. Too perfect. Too symmetrical. Its beauty was cracked and ruined by scars. Black skin gleamed like obsidian, split open in places where molten veins burned beneath. Horns curled backward, antler-like. Its eyes had been sewn shut with cords of sinew. And still, they felt it watching. Not with sight — with mind.

Chloe gasped and clutched her temples. "It's inside me. It's walking through my memories—"

Dan's voice broke, raw. "It's rifling through mine too—"

Victor growled, shaking it off. Alyssa went pale, fists tightening inside her gauntlets. Max's fire flared faintly beneath his skin, answering the intrusion like a reflex.

The chains trembled. For a moment, every link glowed white-hot, and visions slammed into them all at once.

Alyssa saw her own fists dripping red, bodies piled beneath her feet, laughter tearing from her throat.
Dan saw Chloe dying in his arms, his light failing her.
Victor saw himself fully monstrous, his human form gone forever.

Chloe saw herself erased — no body, no name, just absence.
And Max saw Liz, burned and broken, whispering, You failed again. Her lips moved soundlessly after, shaping words the Mirror forced into his skull. Ash poured from her mouth instead of breath, and when he reached for her, her skin cracked like charred paper under his hands.

He staggered, bile rising. If the Mirror was lying, it had chosen its lie well. If it was telling the truth… then he was already damned. His stomach lurched. The taste of ash flooded his mouth, bitter and metallic, as if the Mirror had set fire to his tongue from the inside. Every heartbeat carried the nausea higher, burning into his throat.

They staggered, breath torn from their lungs.

"Stop looking!" Ferron barked, voice sharp. "It's called the Mirror for a reason. Stare long enough, and it shows you the version of yourself you'd kill to forget."

The demon didn't move. It didn't need to. Its mind pressed against theirs like a knife against glass, patient, precise.

Alyssa turned on Ferron, voice shaking with rage. "You're… you're feeding off this thing?"

"Not feeding," Ferron snapped. "We bleed it. Piece by piece. Every Berserker Stone you'll ever carry comes from here. We carve its essence into shards. Controlled doses. Enough to win fights you'd otherwise lose."

"That's torture," Victor spat.

"It's survival," Ferron bit back, his voice suddenly sharp. "Do you think demons hand over their strength nicely? You think you'll survive this war by praying hard enough and hoping the next generation's tougher?"

Max stared at the Mirror, his voice low. "How long has it been here?"

Ferron's molten-gold eye flickered. "Twenty-six years."

Chloe's breath caught. Dan whispered, "That's a lifetime…"

Ferron turned away from the chained demon, his coat brushing the floor like ash. "This is the cost. Weapons forged from suffering. Strength borrowed from pain. Remember that the next time you crack a ruby."

The chains rattled, metal shrieking as though mocking him. The Mirror's head tilted faintly, and in the silence that followed, a word slid into all their skulls at once.

A whisper. A prophecy.

Jaeger.

Chloe flinched as though the word had been carved into her skull. Alyssa's fists slammed once against her gauntlets, the sound echoing too loud in the vault. Dan's light faltered, guttering like a candle in the wind. Max stood frozen, fire crawling across his skin uncontrolled, his name turned into a curse.

Ferron's voice cut the moment apart: "Out. Now."

They stumbled back into the corridor, gasping like divers breaking surface after too long underwater. The vault sealed behind them with a sound like bone snapping shut.

None of them spoke.

Ferron finally broke the silence, voice flat, stripped of all flourish. "You wanted to see what keeps this Institute alive? Now you know. This isn't glory. This is debt. Every weapon in your hands is borrowed against it."

Dan swallowed hard. "Why do you stay?"

Ferron didn't look at him. "Because someone has to pay the price."

He started walking, and for a long time none of them followed.

But behind the sealed vault, chained in fire and silence, the Mirror smiled.

***

The warehouse stank of rust and sweat. Once, it had been a place of drills, fire blankets, and laughter that carried late into the night. Now it was a chamber of echoes, its rafters groaning with the weight of chains.

Three men had hung here. Only two still breathed.

One of them — the old dispatcher — sagged in silence, head lolling, chest barely rising. His eyes were open but glassy, the fight already gone. His wrists were torn raw where the iron cuffs had eaten through skin.

The other was Ethan.

He hung heavier now, the muscle that once made him unshakable straining against steel. Sweat carved tracks through soot and blood down his face. His breath rasped in shallow pulls, each one scraping his throat raw.

Kimaris paced slowly in front of him, immaculate as ever. His black suit had no crease out of place, no drop of blood staining its threads. Shadows curled and bent at his heels, whispering across the floor like a tide too patient to recede.

He held something in his hand — not a blade, not a tool, just a thin strip of torn flesh, still warm. He dropped it onto the concrete with a faint slap.

Ethan forced himself to meet his gaze. "You think this will break me?"

His voice came steady, but his hands betrayed him. The chains rattled faintly as his grip trembled, blood slicking the cuffs. He prayed Kimaris hadn't noticed.

Kimaris smiled, small and polite. "No. I know it will. The question is when."

He reached up and brushed a finger across Ethan's temple, the touch so light it might have been mistaken for tenderness. Shadows slid with it, creeping across Ethan's face, pressing into his eyes. The world blurred.

April.

Her hair loose, white-blonde and gleaming in the glow of streetlamps. Coffee cup in her hand. Smile easy, unguarded.

And then — fire. Smoke swallowing her, her voice lost in the roar. Ethan frozen in the doorway, heat blistering his skin, heart hammering not from courage but from hesitation.

"Stop," Ethan growled, thrashing against the chains. "Get out of my head."

Kimaris' smile sharpened. "But it's so warm in here."

The dispatcher coughed, a dry rattle. "Please… stop…"

Kimaris turned his head, as if noticing him for the first time. A shadow darted upward, coiling into the man's mouth. The dispatcher convulsed once, then slumped, silent forever.

"Two left," Kimaris murmured, turning back to Ethan. "And really, you've always been the only one that mattered."

Ethan spat blood. His voice cracked, but the defiance still flickered. "Max will end you."

Kimaris chuckled, low and rich, like a teacher amused by a failing student's stubbornness. "Max will come, yes. But he won't end me. He'll walk into my hands because of you."

He drew a small curved blade — silver, simple, gleaming under the swaying bulb. Not for killing. For shaping.

Ethan's pulse hammered. His fingers curled reflexively against the chains.

Kimaris caught one hand in his own, holding it almost gently. "A gift," he whispered. "So he knows exactly what's waiting for him."

The blade kissed flesh.

Pain shot up Ethan's arm as Kimaris pressed down, severing his index finger with a single, precise stroke. Blood welled, hot and immediate, spilling down his arm. Ethan choked on a roar, teeth clenched until his jaw screamed.

His vision blurred at the edges. Breath came shallow, ragged, each pull like glass in his lungs. He wanted to spit defiance again, to curse Kimaris to his face, but the words caught somewhere behind his teeth, buried under the pain.

Kimaris held the finger delicately between thumb and forefinger, as though it were a relic. His eyes glinted, and his shadow writhed across the walls in delight.

He leaned close enough that Ethan felt the chill of his words against his ear.

"This," Kimaris whispered, lifting the severed finger, "is my message. Soon, Max will hold it in his hand. And he will know exactly what it cost him to keep you alive."

Ethan gasped, chest heaving, pain breaking through the last of his iron. His vision swam.

Kimaris smiled wider, calm and cruel. "And when he comes for you…" His voice dropped to a purr. "…I'll be waiting."

The light flickered overhead. Shadows crawled higher.

And Ethan, for the first time in years, felt himself begin to break.