The wind carried soot and silence.
Smoke rose in slow spirals from the shattered watchtower as if the land itself was exhaling its last breath.
Anthony lay face-up on the cracked stone path, his arm torn at the shoulder, sealed only by a flickering, unstable barrier that pulsed with his heartbeat. Riley was close, cradling her ruined arm. Bone splinters pierced through flesh. Her face was pale from blood loss, eyes glassy and wet, but she hadn't passed out. She didn't have the luxury.
The people around them were statues. No one stepped forward. No one dared. They had seen what Demetri did. And Demetri—
He was already gone.
He didn't walk away. He vanished mid-step.
"You're fun. But fragile."
That echo of his voice still rang in Anthony's mind.
Then came light—
A door that wasn't there before, made of air and breath and silver lines. The light hissed open, and from it emerged Utan, her cloak dragging across the burnt grass like a tide of mist. Her hands glowed with bio-lantern rings pulsing with yellow-green light. Her face was unreadable.
"Children," she muttered, clicking her tongue.
She knelt beside Riley first, snapping her fingers. Vines moved from under her sleeves—metallic ones, serpentine, shifting with unnatural intelligence. They slithered into Riley's wound, forming a makeshift cast that hummed with heat. Riley screamed, but Utan held her jaw firmly.
"You'll live. Just don't bite your tongue off."
The vines clenched tighter.
Then she turned to Anthony.
His barrier broke just as she reached for it. The pressure released—blood gushed out.
Anthony coughed, eyes fluttering. "Don't... let her die."
Utan ignored the plea. Her vines stabbed into the wound, spreading open the meat of his shoulder like skilled fingers.
"You ever wonder," she began calmly, as if lecturing in a school, "why Hell doesn't flood the earth like a plague?"
Anthony's breath hitched. He twitched. Pain overtook his mind.
"It's because Hell doesn't want to. Not yet," Utan said. "Demons don't breed. They grow. They don't multiply. They become. Just like that Demetri boy. He's not born. He's cultivated."
She began stitching muscle to muscle using thread made from her own bone—flexible, white, and glistening.
"Same goes for monsters. They're wild. Animals in concept. But you push them far enough, and they evolve. Change shape. Learn. Adapt. But demons? They're monsters that never stopped changing."
She flicked blood off her wrist. "Some believe the White Demon was the first one who learned how to keep growing—forever."
Anthony tried to speak but only choked on air.
"Why does this matter to you?" Utan asked as if reading his thoughts. "Because, you're not normal. And you're starting to smell like them."
Anthony groaned. His skin was going pale.
"You absorb power. You grow fast. You adapt. Your infection resistance is unnatural. Even when cursed or wounded, you adjust. That's not human. That's Hell-blood behavior."
Her voice was steady as she removed something blackened from the base of his shoulder and tossed it aside.
"You've changed ever since the Leviathan. You bled through your teeth and lived. Now look at you—half-dead, and still mutating."
She placed her palm over the stump. Magic surged.
"I'm going to reconstruct the nerves. You'll scream. You'll hate me. You'll thank me later."
A searing beam of golden-green energy burned into his shoulder, melting muscle back into place like soldered metal. Anthony thrashed.
Riley, barely conscious, cried out his name. "Ant–Anthony!"
Utan kept working.
"Monsters grow stronger by the second. They remember everything. Every slash, every dodge. That's why we hunt them young." She nodded toward Anthony. "But you? You're like that too. You learn fast. You mimic. You absorb. And the terrifying part is..." She leaned close, eyes glowing.
"You're still not done growing."
The light from her hand faded. The flesh was raw, but sealed. Nerves partially linked. Tendons reforming under a synthetic graft of hardened barrier tissue.
"I couldn't save your arm. Not fully," she said. "But I've laid the roots for something else. Not natural. Not holy. But yours. Let's see what it becomes."
She stood up, stretched her spine with a crack, then glanced at the sky.
"Demetri let you live because he's a child. But mark my words: next time, he won't play."
Anthony didn't respond. He just stared at the ceiling of clouds. Breathing. Alive.
Riley leaned against him, her face buried into his side, tears soaking his chest.
Utan turned to leave. "Heal up. You've got choices to make. And they're going to get uglier."
She stepped back into the doorway of light. Before vanishing, she said one final thing:
"Monsters don't get second chances. Don't become one."
The light vanished. The hill was quiet. Anthony's new arm twitched once. It wasn't flesh.
It was something else.