Hunger did not fade after feeding.
It changed.
That was the first lesson he learned after killing twice and hiding the remains like a miser hoarding coins. Hunger was not a condition to be solved. It was a function—one that adapted as the environment changed.
The cold knot in his chest no longer pulsed erratically. It rotated, slow and deliberate, like a weight settling into its proper place. Each turn drew heat from his surroundings in shallow, efficient sips. Not enough to announce itself. Enough to remind him it was there.
He remained in the crevice long after the echoes of the greater demon's bellow faded. Time in this place did not pass cleanly. There was no sun to measure it by, no sky that changed color. Only cycles of violence and brief, brittle quiet.
He watched.
Lesser demons moved in patterns dictated by hunger and fear. The weak clustered near cracks where heat seeped upward, burning themselves slowly in exchange for survival. The bold rushed lone targets and died quickly. The clever waited until screams drew larger predators away, then scavenged what remained.
No one guarded territory for long. Territory was temporary. Meat was not.
He catalogued it all without judgment.
When he finally emerged from the crevice, he did so cautiously, forcing his frost to remain close to his skin. Where his claws touched stone, the chill bled through despite his restraint, pale veins of cold tracing outward before he could stop them.
He adjusted immediately, lifting his hands and spreading his weight differently, minimizing contact. Control would come with time. For now, awareness was enough.
The swarm had shifted. Bodies littered the ground, some half-eaten, others ignored entirely. He approached one at random—a demon torn nearly in half, its upper torso missing.
The exposed flesh steamed faintly.
He crouched beside it and pressed his palm against the corpse.
Heat flowed.
Not like breath. Like pressure equalizing.
The cold knot tightened as it drank, and frost crept from his palm into the corpse, sealing the wound edges, stopping the steam. The process took seconds.
The hunger sharpened again.
He withdrew his hand.
Eating here, in the open, would draw attention. Heat loss was subtle, but predators were sensitive to imbalance. They felt when something did not behave as expected.
Instead, he tested.
He moved his hand closer to the corpse without touching it.
The air between his fingers and the flesh thinned. Steam faltered. The demon's remaining tissues darkened, stiffening as internal warmth bled away.
So.
Distance mattered.
That was valuable.
A skittering sound behind him triggered no panic. He had heard it before it reached him. His senses, crude as they were, were already adjusting to heat gradients rather than sound or scent alone.
He turned.
Two lesser demons watched him from a low ridge of stone. One was scarred, its carapace split and badly fused. The other was smaller, hunched, its limbs shaking with hunger.
They did not rush him.
They argued instead, hissing and snapping at one another, eyes flicking back to him repeatedly.
He let them.
Conflict delayed action. Delay created opportunity.
The smaller one lunged first.
It was weak. Desperate. Its movements were fast but poorly timed. He stepped into its path rather than away, letting it collide with him.
Contact.
The cold surged.
The demon shrieked as frost raced up its arm, its joints locking mid-swipe. He seized its skull and drove its head into the stone.
Once.
Twice.
The skull cracked.
The second demon bolted.
He did not pursue.
Chasing wasted energy and drew witnesses. He dragged the twitching body into a shadowed groove and fed efficiently, biting at joints and soft tissue, avoiding bone when possible.
The taste was familiar now. Burned iron. Spoiled fat. Cold beneath it all.
As he ate, he felt subtle shifts—not dramatic, not immediate. His jaw strength increased marginally. His grip held longer. The cold remained stable for a few heartbeats more than before.
Incremental.
That was acceptable.
When the corpse was spent, he did not linger. He wiped his mouth against stone until frost replaced blood, then moved.
Movement, he learned, was as dangerous as stillness. The swarm noticed patterns. Anything that survived long enough to form one was either prey worth isolating or competition worth culling.
He needed neither distinction yet.
He descended through the broken terrain, following heat signatures toward deeper fissures where warmth was stronger and prey more abundant. The ground sloped, cracked, narrowed. Shadows thickened.
With depth came silence.
Not the absence of noise, but its compression. Screams did not echo here. They vanished.
He encountered fewer lesser demons and more remains—bones fused together by heat, carcasses stripped with surgical efficiency. Something larger hunted this region.
He halted at the edge of a fissure wide enough to swallow him.
Below, molten light pulsed through veins of stone. Heat roared upward in a constant breath.
He leaned forward cautiously and felt the cold knot recoil.
Not fear.
Strain.
The heat here was strong enough to tax his control. Frost thickened around his joints involuntarily, a defensive response rather than an aggressive one.
That reaction was data.
He withdrew and adjusted course. This depth was unsustainable for now.
As he turned, the ground trembled.
Not violently. Deliberately.
Footfalls.
Heavy. Measured.
He retreated into a hollow in the stone as a figure emerged from between two glowing pillars of rock.
It was not a lesser demon.
It stood taller, broader, its body layered with plates that glowed faintly from within, heat circulating like blood. Horns curved back from a skull that looked sculpted rather than grown. Its eyes burned steadily—not feverish, but controlled.
A greater demon.
Not one of the rulers. But not meat.
The demon paused, nostrils flaring. It scanned the terrain with slow, practiced movements, eyes lingering on corpses and scoured stone.
He pressed himself deeper into shadow and drew the cold inward, compressing it into his core until his limbs ached.
The greater demon moved closer.
It stopped near the fissure he had just abandoned and crouched, inspecting the stone. One massive claw scraped frost from the rock where his presence had left residue.
The demon's brow ridges lowered.
It sniffed again.
He remained motionless.
Seconds stretched.
The cold knot vibrated, restrained, eager to drink from a source that rich. The thought surfaced briefly: if he could freeze something that large—
He dismissed it.
The odds did not favor him. Even success would cripple him. Even survival would announce him.
The greater demon rose and rumbled, a low sound that carried irritation rather than alarm. It turned away and continued deeper, heat rolling from its body in waves.
Only when the pressure faded did he move.
He did not exhale in relief. Relief implied safety. He adjusted his internal model instead.
Greater demons noticed residue.
Frost lingered.
That was a problem.
He needed to learn how to erase himself.
He relocated to a narrower tunnel where heat was weaker and corpses rarer. He remained there for a long cycle, feeding only once, suppressing his cold between meals until the ache of restraint became constant.
It was unpleasant.
Which made it effective.
He experimented carefully—releasing cold in thin threads, pulling it back, forcing his body to accept heat without immediately consuming it. Several attempts ended with frost blooming uncontrollably, forcing him to retreat and wait.
Once, he misjudged.
A lesser demon approached too closely as he practiced restraint. He attempted to kill it without releasing cold.
The demon fought back.
Pain flared bright and unexpected as claws tore into his side. Heat spilled into him uncontrolled, and his cold surged in response, freezing both of them together in a grotesque knot of limbs.
When the demon finally died, fused half into his chest, he spent a long time prying its frozen corpse free.
The lesson was immediate and permanent.
Suppressing advantage too far invited damage.
Balance was survival.
By the time he was free, his side had sealed with thick, opaque frost. Movement was stiff but possible. The tradeoff was acceptable.
He fed on the remaining corpse fragments and waited again.
Elsewhere, the swarm shifted.
A rumor began without words.
Not language. Instinct.
Lesser demons avoided certain tunnels. Carcasses were found preserved instead of rotting. Heat behaved strangely in pockets, thinning and pulling away.
None of them understood why.
They only understood that something new had entered the cycle—and the cycle did not like new things.
—
High above, closer to the surface where heat roared and power congregated, a greater demon paused mid-feeding.
It had torn open a struggling lesser with practiced ease when its jaws stopped.
The flesh in its mouth cooled.
Not immediately. Not enough to alarm.
Enough to be wrong.
The greater demon snarled, tearing the corpse apart in irritation. It scanned the horizon, senses flaring, but found no challenger. No rival. No source.
Only absence.
It growled low in its chest, unsettled.
The hierarchy did not tolerate inefficiency.
Something, somewhere, was subtracting heat.
It would be addressed.
—
In the narrow tunnel, pressed into shadow, the last ice demon learned how to wait.
Hunger pressed against him constantly now—not screaming, not urgent. A steady calculation. How much heat he could take without being seen. How long he could remain small.
He no longer thought of his human life except as reference. Ink-stained hands. Narrow rooms. Rain.
Those memories dulled.
This body was simpler.
Simpler systems were easier to optimize.
He closed his eyes—lids rimed faintly with frost—and let the roar of Hell wash over him.
He was not strong.
Not yet.
But the world had already begun to adjust.
That was enough.