He slammed into me like a goddamn freight train.
It wasn't a punch. It wasn't a shove.
It was a fucking collision.
A moving mountain that decided my body wasn't worth going around.
The air ripped out of my lungs before I even realized I needed it.
Gone—like it had never belonged there in the first place.
But I didn't lose my grip.
No.
The rifle stayed clutched in my hands like it was fused to my bones.
It didn't matter that the shot wasn't lined up right.
Didn't matter that the sights shook and blurred in my half-blind vision.
I held it.
Because that was the only thing I could hold onto.
The demon didn't let up.
Not for a second.
He crushed me against his chest with arms like rusted steel beams, squeezing the breath out of me, battering me against the nearest wall like he was trying to drive me straight through it.
Wood splintered against my spine.
Jagged shards punched deep into muscle and bone.
I could feel them.
Breaking through skin.
Nestling into the marrow.
It didn't matter.
The blood inside me churned—living, breathing, healing.
But slow. Too slow.
Pain wasn't even pain anymore.
It was a sound. A color. A background hum that I'd gotten used to, like a bad song on repeat.
Still, I didn't loosen my grip.
Didn't shift my aim.
The rifle barrel pressed somewhere against his chest, not good enough for a killing shot, but it stayed there.
Because I stayed there.
He punched me again, a savage hook to the ribs that sent another crack screaming through my body. I barely felt it. Another broken bone on a pile already too high to count.
He was smarter now.
He wasn't showing his weak points.
No exposed eyes, no open mouth, no staggered steps.
He was just overwhelming me with force—pure, brute survival instinct.
Good for him.
Bad for him too.
Because even as he slammed me into the wall again, even as my spine buckled and wood jammed deeper into my flesh, my hands moved.
Down.
Slow.
Creeping.
Toward his face.
Toward his wounded eye.
I couldn't see it.
Didn't need to.
I could feel it.
The wetness.
The sagging, ruined meat.
The slip of blood and half-clotted fluids slick against my fingers.
Found you, you bastard.
I shoved two fingers into the socket.
Deep.
He let out a sound that wasn't human.
A raw, animalistic shriek—half roar, half screech—that rattled my teeth in their sockets.
His grip loosened.
Not enough to make me drop free, but enough that I could breathe for half a second.
Long enough to know he was hurting.
Long enough to know it worked.
But it cost me.
Before I could twist the knife—before I could dig deeper—his massive hand clamped around my arm like a vice.
Flesh on flesh.
Bone grinding under pressure.
And then he threw me.
Not tossed.
Fucking launched.
I flew backward, weightless for a sick second before gravity punched me in the gut.
And where did I land?
Straight into his crew.
A pile of stunned half-broken men who hadn't even seen the real fight begin.
I slammed into them like a wrecking ball.
Their bodies broke my fall—or maybe mine broke theirs.
I couldn't tell.
All I knew was the sharp, wet sounds of wood and bone tearing through flesh.
Some of them screamed.
Some of them didn't have time to.
The broken planks lodged deep in my back turned into weapons.
Skewering those unlucky bastards as my body hit them, pinned them to the deck like insects to corkboard.
For a heartbeat, the whole ship tilted again.
Chaos.
Blood.
Noise.
And me, crawling up out of it, piece by piece.
I gritted my teeth and ripped the wood from my back one shard at a time.
Each pull a flash of white-hot pain.
Each pull a baptism in agony.
But I did it.
Because I had to.
Because the blood in me—the sentient, seething, crawling blood—couldn't do its work properly until the pieces were out.
And I needed to heal.
I needed to stand.
I needed to finish this.
So I rose.
Slow.
Uneven.
Swaying.
But standing.
The rifle was still in my hands.
Bent a little now.
Splattered with blood.
But loaded.
Still loaded.
I staggered forward.
The broken, bleeding bodies of his crew gasped and whimpered at my feet. I didn't look at them.
Didn't step around them.
I walked over them.
Because there was only one thing that mattered.
Him.
The demon.
The beast who was supposed to be invincible.
He stood a few meters away, hunched over, his one good eye glaring daggers into me.
Blood dripped in thick ropes from his ruined face.
Each breath was a wet, broken rattle.
His body shuddered with every movement, pain twisting his once-proud frame into something ugly.
He was still laughing.
The giggles had dried up but they continued.
The breathing remained—labored, rasping, furious.
And he was staring at me.
At the man he should've crushed by now.
At the man who refused to stay dead.
At the man who crawled out of the pit, bleeding, broken, and smiling.
We locked eyes.
No words.
No taunts.
No promises.
Just the silent agreement written in blood and bone:
We're going to have a massacre, baby.
And I'm going to love every second of it.