I rushed him.
Two and a half meters of hatred and meat. A goliath that could swat me like a fly and not even pause to laugh about it.
But it didn't matter.
The bones in my body—how many were broken now? Six? Ten? More?
I didn't know.
I didn't care.
Pain had long since stopped meaning anything.
Pain was normal now. Like breathing. Like bleeding.
It was just another thing I carried.
I sprinted toward him, reckless, stupid, mad.
Before the madness swallowed me whole, before the blood finished feasting on whatever was left of my soul, I needed to do one last thing:
Make the bastard feel it.
He saw me coming.
Raised one massive fist, thick and heavy like a battering ram wrapped in skin.
He swung.
A blur of muscle and death.
But I ducked.
Just in time.
The air from his punch blasted over my head, a hot gust strong enough to ruffle my hair like a gale. Strong enough to feel like a physical thing, even without touching.
I dropped low, slammed my feet into the ground, and sprang upward—hands grabbing his bicep like a rope in a burning house.
I hoisted myself up.
Climbing him.
Scaling the mountain of rage and muscle that had tormented this ship.
He snarled.
A deep, guttural sound that vibrated in my bones more than my ears.
And then he grabbed me.
His free hand snatched my torso like it was nothing—his fingers wrapping around me, squeezing.
Hard.
Bone shifted.
Bone cracked.
Pelvis buckling under pressure.
I heard it.
Crunch.
Like brittle wood snapping underfoot.
Pain shot through me, white-hot, pure, and it should've paralyzed me.
Should've ended it.
But I didn't stop.
I didn't scream.
I didn't even slow down.
Because at that moment, there was no pain.
No agony.
No tomorrow.
Just him.
I jammed the pistol up against his face—right against his eye.
The demon saw it.
Saw the gun inches away from his eye socket.
And he panicked.
His grip tightened. Crushing, desperate. I could feel my ribs bending inward. Could feel blood filling my lungs.
But it was too late.
He reached up, his other hand clawing toward the pistol to knock it away.
Too late.
Way too late.
I pulled the trigger.
Point blank.
The gunshot tore through the rotten silence of the ship.
A blossom of fire.
A scream of metal.
A roar of gunpowder and hate.
The bullet punched straight into his eye—through the socket, into the meat of his skull. Buried deep.
He jerked back violently, howling.
A noise so loud it rattled the boards beneath us. A howl that cracked the air, a sound that wasn't human, wasn't animal—something worse.
Pain.
Real pain.
Not just irritation.
Not just amusement lost.
Agony.
The hand that had been crushing me spasmed, then hurled me.
He threw me like a broken toy.
I hit the ground hard, skidding, skipping across the blood-slick boards, smashing through shards of bone and old splinters. I tasted iron. I tasted rot. I tasted victory.
I gasped for breath—wet, ragged, wheezing through broken ribs and crushed organs.
And I smiled.
Because when I looked up, when I wiped the blood and sweat from my one good eye—
I saw him.
The demon staggering.
One hand clawing at his ruined eye, blood pouring in thick, black ropes down his face.
The hole where his eye had been gushed and pulsed, veins throbbing, skin bubbling.
He wasn't dead.
Not yet.
But he was wounded.
Bad.
And he wished—oh, he wished—that he was dead.
But his laugh didn't die.
His giggles still sounded.
Like it was broken but still there.
A gurgling, choking roar of pure, unfiltered rage and pain.
The cabin shook with the force of his howl.
Fucker is crazier than me.
Dust fell from the beams.
Chains rattled.
Even the girl behind the merman flinched deeper into the shadows.
But not me.
I didn't flinch.
I didn't look away.
I just grinned.
Broken teeth, blood-slicked grin.
Because for the first time since stepping onto this cursed ship—
The demon knew what it was like to hurt.
He knew what it was like to bleed.
And he knew it was me who had done it.
Fucking alone.
Fucking broken.
Fucking mad.
I watched him writhe.
The great beast—two and a half meters of brute arrogance—reduced to a staggering, bleeding mess.
Every step he took splashed the floor with his blood. Thick. Dark. Viscous. It poured from his ruined eye, from the ragged hole my bullet had carved into him.
What a sight it was.
What a fucking sight.
The demon who had laughed, who had played god with broken bodies and shattered lives—he was suffering. And I drank it in like a dying man drinks rain.
The blood inside me stirred at the sight.
It pulsed and twisted under my skin, eager, hungry, almost purring.
It got to work immediately.
I could feel it moving—threading through the shattered bones of my pelvis, knitting marrow to marrow, fusing what had been crushed. Hot, invasive, wrong—but necessary.
The sentient blood didn't ask permission.
It saved me whether I wanted it to or not.
My ribs cracked back into place one by one, the pain sharp but fleeting. Flesh sealed. Nerves rewired. Skin stretched taut where it had torn.
I gritted my teeth and moved—slow, shaking off splinters from the body pile like a corpse rising from its grave.
I pulled a shard of bone from my thigh, tossed it aside. A jagged splinter of wood from my ribs—gone. Each time, the blood closed the wound behind it, sealing me up tighter, faster, more wrong.
And then—
Something colder.
Something harder.
Lodged near my heart.
I reached in with trembling fingers and pulled it free.
It wasn't bone.
It wasn't wood.
It was a necklace.
Thin chain. Tarnished silver. The links sticky with blood and rot.
And at the end of it—a locket.
I wiped it clean on my already ruined sleeve.
It clicked open with a soft snap.
Frozen in a moment before everything went to hell.
Someone he had killed.
Someone he had eaten.
Someone who had once laughed, once dreamed—and then became just another part of the monster staggering in front of me.
My grip tightened around the locket until the metal bit into my palm.
It didn't matter.
It wouldn't bring her back.
Nothing would.
But it stoked the fire already raging in my gut.
It gave it teeth.
I slipped the locket into my pocket.
A weight. A reminder. A promise.
I straightened slowly, my legs trembling but holding.
I was healed enough.
Healed enough to stand.
Healed enough to fight.
Healed enough to finish this.
The demon had stopped stumbling.
Stopped roaring.
Now he just stood there.
Breathing heavy through cracked, bloodied lips.
His good eye locked onto me.
No more games.
No more performances.
Just two things left in this room.
Hate.
And blood.
The ruined socket where his other eye used to be pulsed with every heartbeat, leaking black ichor down his ruined cheek. His chest heaved, muscles twitching under his ruined skin. His claws flexed at his sides—still dangerous, still monstrous.
But not invincible.
Not anymore.
I met his gaze.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
We stared at each other across the broken wreckage of this prison, across the stink of death and failure and lost things.
Two monsters.
One born of cruelty.
One born of spite.
I smiled.
A slow, feral thing.
"We're gonna have ourselves a fucking massacre, baby," I muttered under my breath.