Chapter 39 When Demons Bleed
Chapter 39: When Demons Bleed
AZRAETH'S POV
The alarm screams through Lilith's fortress the moment Mireya's shadows touch the iron chains.
"Trap!" I snarl, but it's too late. The magical wards explode like fireworks, painting the dungeon in blood-red light.
Witches pour from every corridor. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
"Get them free!" Mireya shouts, already throwing up a barrier of shadow-fire between us and the charging witches.
I tear at the chains holding the three demons. Kael's mother, Sera, hangs limp in her restraints. Her son whimpers beside her, barely conscious. The third demon—an elder named Thorne—has burn marks covering his arms where the iron seared through his skin.
The chains resist my claws. Anti-magic iron. Designed specifically to hold creatures like me.
Behind me, Mireya's breathing hard. Through our bond, I feel her power draining fast. She's holding back thirty witches alone, and more keep coming.
"Azraeth!" She gasps. "Hurry!"
I channel raw force instead of magic, gripping the chain anchoring Sera and pulling. The metal screams. My shoulders burn. The curse scar on my chest throbs with every heartbeat—a reminder that I'm still dying, still weakened, still not the king I used to be.
The chain snaps.
Sera collapses into my arms. She weighs almost nothing. They've starved her.
"Two more," I mutter, lowering her gently before attacking Kael's chains.
An explosion rocks the dungeon. Part of Mireya's barrier shatters. Three witches break through, sending curses screaming toward us.
I spin, one hand still gripping Kael's chain, the other summoning darkness. The shadows intercept two curses. The third—
Mireya catches it with her bare hand and crushes it like paper.
My heart stutters. She shouldn't be able to do that. That level of control takes decades to master.
She glances back at me, eyes glowing gold, and grins. "Stop staring and free them!"
Right. Focus.
I rip Kael's chains apart, then Thorne's. The old demon tries to stand but his legs buckle. Broken. They broke his legs.
Rage floods hot through my veins. Old rage. King rage. The kind that once made armies kneel.
"Can you walk?" I ask Thorne.
He shakes his head, jaw tight with pain and shame.
No time for pride. I scoop him over my shoulder like a sack of grain. He's heavier than Sera, but I manage. Barely.
"Mireya! We're moving!"
She doesn't argue. Her barrier collapses inward, becoming a wave of shadow that crashes into the witches and sends them flying. We run.
The fortress is a maze of stone corridors and magical traps. Mireya leads—she memorized the layout from stolen maps—while I follow with Thorne over one shoulder. Sera and Kael stumble between us, holding each other upright.
Witches chase us through every turn. Curses blast chunks from the walls. One nearly takes my head off.
"Left!" Mireya shouts.
We burst into a wider corridor. Twenty witches block the exit ahead. Twenty more close in from behind.
We're surrounded.
Through the bond, I feel Mireya's calculation. She's almost empty. Maybe one or two more big attacks before she collapses. I'm not much better—carrying Thorne while fighting drains me faster than the curse ever could.
"Ideas?" she asks, breathing hard.
I set Thorne down carefully, putting myself between the demons and both groups of witches. "You get them out. I'll hold here."
"No."
"Mireya—"
"I said no." She steps beside me, shoulder to shoulder. "We leave together or not at all."
Stubborn, infuriating woman. I should've known.
The witches advance from both sides. Their leader—a woman with silver tattoos covering her face—raises her hand. "Surrender the demons. The High Witch wants them alive, but she'll accept their corpses."
"Tell your High Witch," I say quietly, "that the Demon King doesn't negotiate with kidnappers."
"You're not the Demon King anymore," Silver-Tattoos sneers. "You're a dying relic clinging to a half-trained witch. Lilith will strip the power from both of you and—"
Mireya moves.
One moment she's beside me. The next, she's a blur of shadow and rage, crossing the distance to Silver-Tattoos in a heartbeat. Her hand closes around the witch's throat.
"Say one more word about him," Mireya whispers, her voice layered with demonic harmonics I didn't teach her. "I dare you."
Every witch freezes.
Through our bond, I feel something shifting in Mireya. Something dark and vast unfurling like wings. Her power shouldn't feel like this—wild, chaotic, ancient.
This isn't just demon magic she's channeling.
This is something else.
Silver-Tattoos chokes, clawing at Mireya's grip. "You're... you're not... what are you?"
Good question.
I move to Mireya's side, ready to pull her back before she kills the witch and triggers a full assault. But before I can reach her—
The floor beneath us cracks.
Not a normal crack. Reality itself splits open like a wound, and something impossibly cold breathes out from below.
Everyone stops. Witches, demons, all of us frozen as ancient magic floods the corridor.
"No," I breathe, recognizing the signature. "Not here. Not now."
Mireya releases Silver-Tattoos and stumbles back. "What is that?"
The crack widens. Through it, I glimpse something massive shifting in the darkness below the fortress. Something that wasn't there when we entered.
Something that shouldn't exist anymore.
"The Old Gods," I whisper. "Lilith didn't just trap demons. She was using their blood to wake the Old Gods."
And we just gave her exactly what she needed—our combined power, demon and bonded witch, bleeding into the fortress foundations during our escape.
The thing below roars.
The fortress shakes. Stone rains from the ceiling. Witches scream and run. Our trapped demons cry out in terror.
Through the widening crack, three burning eyes open in the darkness.
They lock onto me and Mireya.
And a voice older than kingdoms speaks directly into our minds:
"THE MARKED ONES. YOU WILL OPEN THE DOOR. OR WE WILL TAKE WHAT WE NEED FROM YOUR CORPSES."
The floor collapses.
We fall into darkness, into the place where gods sleep, and I realize with horrible clarity that freeing three demons was never the mission.
We were never rescuing anyone.
We were the sacrifice Lilith needed all along.