Flesh so decomposed it had turned to liquid.

  It clung to my skin, slick and stinking, soaking into my clothes, into my pores. It dripped on my lips as I dragged myself up from the heap of human remains.

  It tasted of rot.

  Of helplessness.

  Of all the promises that were made and broken in this ship.

  The sentient blood inside me surged. It moved like fire in my veins, mending what it could. Bruises disappeared. Torn muscles stitched themselves whole again. Bones that had cracked under the impact pressed back into pce with a slow, deliberate burn.

  The blood repaired the body.

  But not the mind.

  Not the soul.

  Because when you realize you’re rising from the corpses of the innocent—the ones you were supposed to save—the ones whose screams you never heard—something in you tears.

  And some wounds no magic can stitch shut.

  But did it matter?

  Did it fucking matter anymore?

  I wiped the gore from my mouth with the back of my hand, smearing more rot across my skin, and I looked up.

  At him.

  The demon.

  He stood exactly where I had been a heartbeat ago. No rush. No excitement. No triumph. Just... presence. Heavy, looming, certain.

  It had taken him one arm—one zy, backhanded sweep—to send me crashing through the air like a broken puppet.

  And now he was staring at me.

  That grin, that damn grin, wide and stitched to his face like a brand.

  And that sound.

  That wretched, rattling ugh. That endless giggling—wet and broken, like something ughing with its throat torn open.

  He was drinking in the sight of me.

  Broken.

  Beaten.

  Bleeding.

  He ughed harder. Higher. The sound bouncing off the walls of the prison cell, echoing in the spaces between the chains and the blood and the silence of the dead.

  He was ughing because, in his mind, it was over.

  Because he thought I'd done everything I could.

  Because he thought I'd pyed my st card—and lost.

  I looked at him.

  I looked into that swirling, star-spun madness behind his eyes.

  And then—

  I ughed too.

  At first, it was a chuckle.

  Dry. Broken.

  It scraped up from my chest like gss dragged over stone.

  But it grew.

  And grew.

  Until it wasn't a ugh anymore—it was an eruption.

  A howl.

  A crack splitting my ribs open.

  I ughed so hard the cell shook.

  So hard the breath burned in my lungs.

  So hard it drowned out the demon’s own giggles until they faltered, stuttered—and finally stopped.

  He watched me.

  Silent.

  Confused.

  Because in his world, in his script, prey didn’t ugh.

  Victims didn’t ugh.

  People who broke didn’t howl at the sky like wolves drunk on their own blood.

  And that's when I realized.

  That's when it hit me, sharp and clean as a bde between the ribs.

  I had forgotten.

  In my pnning. In my scheming. In my desperate, scrambling rationality—

  I had forgotten what this world truly demanded.

  This world—this broken, bleeding, bastard world—didn't need reason.

  It didn't care for pns.

  It didn't reward calm minds or careful hands.

  This world spat on the rational.

  It chewed them up and buried their bones with the others.

  It needed madness.

  It needed the ones mad enough to ugh when everything fell apart.

  Mad enough to not flinch when the world started peeling itself inside out.

  Mad enough to know that the only way to survive hell was to enjoy the burning.

  I had been too rational.

  Too cold.

  Too calcuting.

  I had plotted the ritual with careful steps. I had tried to coax the merman into alliance with reason. I had pointed a gun at an innocent girl and called it a tactical move.

  All with the hope that logic would win where brute force couldn’t.

  But I forgot.

  This pce didn’t need logic.

  It needed something worse.

  Something mad.

  Something that howls and ughs and rips the script out of the demon’s hands.

  So I ughed.

  I ughed because what else was there to do?

  I ughed because the blood in my veins demanded it.

  I ughed because for once—for the first time in too long—I wasn’t trying to be something I wasn’t.

  I wasn’t a hero.

  I wasn’t a savior.

  I wasn’t some clever tactician pulling strings from the shadows.

  I was a monster.

  Just a smaller, angrier, bloodier monster standing before a bigger one.

  And monsters don’t plead.

  Monsters don’t pn.

  They tear. They rend. They roar.

  I pushed myself to my feet, muscles screaming, vision blurring at the edges.

  The blood inside me howled with me now, like wolves baying at a blood-red moon.

  I stood, swaying but standing, ughing so hard it hurt.

  And the demon?

  He stood still.

  Watching.

  No longer ughing.

  No longer certain.

  Because now he understood.

  I wasn't pying his game anymore.

  I wasn’t pying anyone’s game.

  I wasn’t thinking about winning.

  I wasn’t thinking about surviving.

  I was just thinking about hurting him.

  About making him bleed.

  About making him remember.

  That even in the ruins of all things rational, even in the st twitching breath of sanity—

  There was still something left that could tear him down.

  Me.

  I spat the rot from my mouth and grinned, teeth fshing.

  The blood sang in my ears, sweet and savage.

  The broken world around me blurred into colors of rage and madness.

  I pointed at him.

  Not with a gun.

  Not with a sword.

  With a bloodied finger, like the curse it was.

  And I ughed again.

  Low.

  Deep.

  And somewhere between us—

  the st thread of control snapped.