Demon Contract

Dan's light tore the mist apart in a single flare.

The wraith in front of her — her wraith — didn't scream. It came apart like wet paper in fire. A hiss. A drift of steam. Then nothing but the faint curl of heat fading into the ribs overhead.

Chloe stood still long enough to hear her own breath in her ears. That thing had worn her face, fought with her hands, grinned at her like it already knew the worst she'd done. It had been an anchor in her chest since Tomas's fingers gripped her jaw.

Now it was gone.

And the weight went with it.

The fear that had dogged her since that night — the constant background pressure, like invisible fingers at her throat — snapped. The absence was so sudden she almost staggered.

Nothing here can touch me anymore.

The thought didn't come with a rush of adrenaline or some heroic swell. It was quieter than that. Certain. Heavy in the way truth is heavy.

She breathed once, slow, and let the last tension slide off her shoulders.

Then she dropped out of herself.

The cold came instantly. That marrow-deep emptiness she'd known since the first time she phased. Air rushed through her, along her bones, between the seams of what made her whole. The nerves in her skin sang, even as her body blurred at the edges.

The battlefield slowed.

She stepped forward. A tendril lashed at her side, claw wide enough to take her head clean off. She didn't blink. It passed through her shoulder like smoke through an open door, leaving a trace of metallic cold in the air. Another snapped up from the deck — a hook of bone big enough to lift her bodily — and slid through her midsection without a sound.

Her boots touched the marrow-slick deck in silence. The mist rolled up to her knees and broke around them, unable to cling.

To her left, Alyssa caught sight of her between strikes. "Chloe—watch your six!"

"I don't need to," Chloe said, voice steady enough that Alyssa's brow furrowed before she turned back to her own fight.

It wasn't bravado. It was fact.

Her eyes swept the field. Dan's light burned gold in the centre. Ying's void arcs stitched black scars through the tide. Liz's red halo cracked the mist into jagged sheets. But Chloe didn't linger on them.

This wasn't about speed.

It was inevitability.

She kept walking, and every step was a confirmation. Tendrils came from every angle — above, below, sides — and none of them could hold her. The harder they struck, the easier they passed through.

For the first time since Tomas, she wasn't thinking about how to get out alive. She was thinking about angles, about where the cuts would land, about what would still be moving when she was done.

She felt the grin pull at the corner of her mouth before she meant it.
God, he doesn't even know yet.

Another tendril snapped past her throat and she didn't bother to flinch. She was already looking ahead — to the crest of the tide, where Belphegor stood, coat immaculate, hands folded like he was conducting this orchestra of meat.

He met her eyes, just for a second.

And she thought, with a clarity so sharp it almost hurt:

You're the one that should be afraid now.

***

The bridge was a vein of bone and flesh stretched into mist, and she cut through it like water remembering the shape of a blade.

Every step was measured, a slow weave between the living and the dying. Clones collapsed at the edges of her vision — some from her allies' blows, others from wounds she'd opened seconds earlier — but she never looked down to see if they stayed dead.

Alyssa came into view first, fists a blur, every strike driving cracks into the tide's surface. For a moment their paths intersected. Alyssa caught her eye mid-swing, read something there, and shifted without speaking, opening a clear gap in the tide. Chloe passed through it like a shadow changing shape.

Ying flickered into existence a heartbeat later, void arcs snapping off her wrists. She didn't smile or nod; she simply moved aside with the precision of someone who understood exactly why Chloe was walking this way, why she hadn't slowed.

Victor was next — a wall of claws and muscle carving space in brutal, wide arcs. His breathing was heavy, but he didn't falter. She stepped into his periphery and his stance shifted, opening a path between two dismembered clones. No words. No need.

The tide resisted in its own mindless way. Tendrils slashed for her arms, her waist, her throat. They met nothing but the cold absence of her ghost-form, snapping shut behind her like jaws biting through smoke. The severed ends dripped marrow onto the deck, each drop hitting with a wet patter she barely heard.

Her gaze stayed fixed on him.

Belphegor.

Framed at the crest of the tide, above the crush of bodies, balanced on the swell like a king riding a living throne. His coat caught the light in thin creases, his hair moving in the slow rhythm of the tide's breath. He didn't appear to see her yet. That suited her fine.

The memory came without warning.

Not the fight. Before that. "King Tomas" leaning in too close in a place where the walls were too narrow and the air was too hot. His smile stretched too far, showing teeth that didn't belong in a human mouth. His hands cupped her jaw with the false tenderness of an owner inspecting property. The smell of him — flesh-sweet and metallic — coiled in her throat until she had to swallow it down. And beneath it all, the sensation of something invisible hooked into her spine, pulling, moving her like she was on strings.

Her jaw tightened. The bridge under her seemed to narrow.

And then the later memory forced itself in — Tomas erupting into a tangle of limbs and meat — arms, legs, and obscene, phallic growths that writhed and reached from his torso, slick with heat and rot.

The abomination had come at her and Alyssa with the mindless hunger to rape and tear and keep tearing until nothing was left. She remembered the sound of the tendons stretching, the way its new skin split at the seams, the heat of its breath as it lunged for her throat.

The anger wasn't hot. Not yet. It was ice, so cold it burned. The pressure of it in her chest was volcanic, but the eruption never came. She kept it sealed, channelled, pressed into a single fine point.

Her eyes never left Belphegor.

The rest of the bridge blurred into shades of meat and mist, the noise of the fight fading into something dull and far away. All that remained was the straight line between them — her and him, the crest of the tide, the end of this.

He was still framed like a king. Untouchable. Above everything. How wrong he was.

She intended to change that.

***

The shadow of the tide broke over her as she stepped beneath it.

A wall of puppet clones surged forward to block her path — stitched smiles, Tomas-grins, stolen faces from Prague. She didn't slow. She didn't even adjust her stride.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She phased through them like smoke through a loose net.

A heartbeat later, their bodies gave way. Heads slipped from necks with soft, wet sounds, steam rising from the stumps. Limbs fell in pieces. The deck drank the marrow in slow, sticky streams.

She was close enough now for him to notice.

Belphegor's head tilted slightly, the light catching his sharp cheekbones. He studied her as though she were an interesting variation in a specimen tray. The smug drawl slid into place, smooth as oil.

"Little scalpel. My beauty. Do you really think—"

She passed through the snap of a tendril mid-sentence, her blade already in motion. The cut landed deep in his side — a clean, surgical line that severed tendon and opened his coat in one neat sweep.

He recoiled. Not in pain — there was no flinch for that — but in confusion. His hand shot out for her jaw, and it met nothing. His fingers passed through her cheekbone, grasping only the cold void of her ghost-form.

Another lash of tendon. She stepped through it.

A puppet lunged from his flank; she cut its spine in passing without looking.

More tendrils snapped in from above. Her outline blurred, and they struck air.

The polite mask he always wore — the one that said I am in control, and you will learn it the hard way — trembled.

His tone dropped an octave, the warmth gone. Teeth showed in the low light. "You… can't be touched."

She didn't answer.

Her blade moved again — a short arc across his wrist, a downward thrust into his thigh, each cut perfectly placed to ruin movement without spilling effort.

Belphegor lashed back with everything at once. Tendrils coiled and snapped. Puppets poured in, limbs grasping for her hair, her wrists, her throat.

All of it passed through her.

Every miss fed something she didn't bother naming.

She slashed. Cut. Took another piece. Moved through him as though he were already falling apart.

The realisation was in his eyes before it reached his mouth — this was a bad match. The kind of opponent he couldn't dominate with a touch or trap in his tide.

And beneath the calculation, there it was.

Panic.

Not a scream, not a full collapse, but the first hairline crack in something that thought itself unbreakable.

She stepped in close enough that her blade's tip kissed his sternum. You feel it now, she thought, her face a mask of stillness.

Good.

She cut again — the tendons behind his knee this time, the blade slipping between muscle sheared down to the grain. His leg sagged for half a breath before the tide propped it up.

In her head, she saw them all. The thousands of faces he'd worn, the thousands of bodies he'd puppeted, the ones that would never be buried whole because he'd pulled them apart to make something useful. Every scream. Every prayer. Every last moment before the light went out of their eyes.

She would take all of that back.

A thousand cuts for a thousand stolen lives.

Belphegor lashed out in a frenzy now — tendrils snapping, puppets throwing themselves at her in a meatstorm. Words spilled from him in a quick, ugly rush. "Mine—stop—hold her—"

Nothing touched her.

She wasn't there to be caught. She was there to cut.

A quick arc across his wrist — bone splintering under the edge. A plunge between shoulder and collarbone, just deep enough to leave his arm hanging useless. Every strike deliberate, each one a tally mark carved into the debt he owed the dead.

The first trace of panic touched his eyes. He had never fought someone he couldn't touch, couldn't infect, couldn't defile.

And Chloe wanted him to know exactly how long this would last.

She stepped in until her blade's point rested just over his sternum. Her voice was steady, quiet enough for him alone.

"One cut for every life you've taken. We'll see how long you last."

***

She moved in silence.

The blade hummed faintly in her hand, the phasing edge vibrating like a live nerve. She stepped into him, re-solidifying for a fraction of a heartbeat — just long enough to cut.

The sweep was clean, almost gentle. His right wrist parted without resistance. The hand tumbled into the tide, fingers twitching, before it vanished beneath the swell.

A dozen clones in the immediate circle went still, their stolen faces sagging slack. They toppled like puppets with their strings cut, marrow steaming from the stumps of their necks.

He roared. Swung with his remaining hand, tendrils snapping from his shoulder like lashes.

She slid under the arc, came up inside his guard, and cut again. The left hand went at the forearm this time — a wet snap of tendon and a rush of black steam from the stump.

The tide buckled under him, trying to surge and swallow her whole. She phased through it, came out at his flank, and in the same smooth motion opened his right hamstring.

Then the left.

He dropped to one knee. The snarl in his throat broke halfway into something guttural, raw with surprise.

Chloe planted her boot between his shoulder blades and drove Tenso down his spine.

The human shape peeled open from nape to tailbone, parting into two glistening halves. The tide beneath them spasmed — the clones convulsed, faces twisting, bodies collapsing into limp, steaming heaps.

Belphegor staggered. And then he did something she hadn't seen from him before.

He tried to run.

The flesh-throne ejected him like a parasite shaking off a host. He hit the marrow-slick deck in his lean human form — gaunt, coat torn, eyes wide in a way that was almost human fear.

Chloe was already moving.

His foot came off first — a flash of steel, a single twist, the tendons sheared through. He hit the deck with a grunt, rolled, tried to rise — and she took the leg at the knee.

He regenerated instantly, flesh knitting in a hiss of black steam. She didn't care. She cut again. And again. Each time he reformed, she was there — taking the same piece, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, never letting him find balance.

The other foot went. Then the other leg. His right hand. His left arm. Regrow. Sever. Regrow. Sever. The cycle turned into a grim rhythm, the deck beneath them slick with blood and steaming marrow.

Desperation flared in his eyes. He hurled himself sideways, rolling toward the tide as if to sink back into it, to vanish into the writhing wall and be carried away. The flesh responded, tendrils arching to take him back — but Chloe was already there. She phased through the reaching limbs, re-solidified, and carved a deep line across his chest. The tide shuddered, recoiling from him instead, leaving him sprawled and alone. There would be no escape.

He screamed at first. Then he pleaded. Then the words fell apart into animal noise.

Still she cut.

Minutes passed. The others closed in at the edge of her vision — Dan's light at her back, Alyssa breathing hard, Ying standing utterly still. No one spoke. No one moved to stop her. They just watched.

Dan's voice broke the silence, low and edged. "She's not stopping."

Alyssa didn't look away. "Would you?"

It wasn't frenzy. It was surgery. She worked with the same precision she would have used to dismantle a complex mechanism — each cut deliberate, each step placing her exactly where she needed to be for the next.

Belphegor's regeneration slowed. The black steam thinned. His movements became jerks instead of fluid lunges. She sheared off his nose. Then his ears. Left him without limbs, without the means to strike or flee.

But she left the eyes.

She wanted him to watch.

He was just a torso now, quivering with the effort to pull in air.

"No—no… no more…" His voice was a wet whisper, rattling in a chest that no longer held enough to make it strong.

Chloe's breath came steady, measured. She adjusted her grip and opened another cut across his ribs, exposing the meat beneath.

One cut for every life.

Faces flickered in the steam — a boy from the tribute halls clutching a toy bear, the weaver who'd whispered "please" until her voice broke, the guard captain who'd died on his knees with his throat half-open. All of them watching through her eyes, the blade in her hands theirs as much as hers.

The deck was littered with them now — those silent tallies in steaming flesh.

He tried to turn away from her. Couldn't.

She went on.

A thousand cuts. And not one wasted.

***

Belphegor's upper half still twitched, clawing weakly at the marrow-slick deck. Every scrape of his nails left shallow grooves in the meat beneath, as if he still believed he could drag himself away.

Chloe ended the thought.

She stepped forward and drove Tenso down through the crotch – right at the junction of pelvis and spine — not a slash, but a full, deliberate impalement. The blade punched through to the deck with a wet crack, pinning him there. The sound he made was half-scream, half-gurgle, cut short when she caught him by the jaw.

Her fingers dug in, forcing his face upward. His eyes rolled wildly, catching the light from the mist above.

Movement at her flank — Alyssa, stepping in and catching Liz as she approached, one arm steadying her, the other squeezing her shoulder in silent acknowledgement.

Then Liz was free again, halo burning so hot the mist blushed red around her. She didn't look at Alyssa or the others. Only at Chloe.

Chloe held that gaze for a beat. No words. She didn't need to explain what came next.

Liz stepped into the gap, her boots leaving faint scorches in the marrow underfoot. She stopped beside Chloe, palm rising to rest against the side of Belphegor's head.

Her voice was quiet, stripped bare of anything but intent.

"You love pain so much? Now you'll feel it endlessly."

His jaw strained in Chloe's grip, the beginnings of a snarl forming — and then Liz spoke again, flat and final:

"But you don't get to think anymore."

Her halo flared brighter, and the bloody haze thickened until it seemed the air itself was boiling.

"You will now serve as our tool."

The psychic spike hit like a spear through glass. Chloe felt it as much as she saw it — a sharp, invisible pressure that seemed to dent the world inward around them.

The air thinned in an instant, pressing cold into the sinuses, and every sound on the bridge warped — voices and breath flattening into a single low, metallic hum, as if the world itself were holding its breath.

Belphegor's body seized once, every tendon standing out in sharp relief, his mouth opening in a silent scream. His eyes clouded almost instantly, the colour dulling, focus shattering. Muscles slackened.

The man — the demon — was still breathing, but the awareness was gone. The thing staring out of his eyes was only the reflex of a body left behind.

Chloe let go of his jaw and pulled Tenso free. His torso slumped sideways onto the deck with a wet slap.

The tide reacted like it had been holding its breath — shuddering, folding inward on itself, then collapsing all at once. The waves of flesh and bone dissolved into heaps, draining back into the abyss below the bridge.

Silence followed.

Only the soft slop of dead meat remained.

The others closed in through the thinning mist, their bodies bloodied, their stances unbroken. They stopped in a rough circle around what was left of him — a limbless stump twitching faintly at their feet.

Ying was the first to speak, her voice cutting clean through the quiet. "So we follow the plan. We make him the weapon to protect this city?"

Chloe's eyes stayed on Belphegor's vacant stare. "Yes. He'll live on in mindless torment — but as a tool. He'll protect the people here, whether he wants to or not."

No one argued.

The bridge smelled of blood and steam, but for the first time since stepping onto it, the mist wasn't moving toward them.

They had won.