Page 161 of Demon’s Snack

I feel Isolde behind me, close enough through the bond to steady the storm under my skin.

I feel Sable farther back, furious and frightened and ready to do something reckless if I fall.

I feel Rhazek watching the ritual geometry with old infernal calculation, waiting for the first opening we can survive.

Vaerith speaks from the cracked courtyard behind my left shoulder. “You cannot stop it.”

I do not turn.

“You should have chosen a smaller lie,” I say.

The devourer opens its impossible mouth, and the district shakes around us.

I open my hands.

The hunger gathers.

This time, I give it a target.

24

ISOLDE

By the time I reach Vaerith’s courtyard, the sky over the estate has turned the color of a wound.

Rain falls through red light, each drop flashing briefly before striking the fractured stones and hissing into steam. The air tastes of sulfur, hot iron, wet ash, and something far worse beneath it: the hollow sweetness of soul-energy pulled too thin and burned too fast. The estate gates hang open behind Corin, warped on their hinges, while the courtyard beyond glows with summoning lines Vaerith hid beneath years of polished stone and civic fraud. Every pulse from the circle shakes the ground hard enough to rattle my teeth.

The devourer is halfway through the veil.

That is the first coherent thought my mind manages to form.

Halfway is already too much.

Its antlered silhouette presses up from the torn center of the circle, vast and wrong in proportions the eye struggles to hold. The upper body has pushed into physical form, made of blackened sinew, ash-gray bone, and shadow stretched tight over impossible joints. Its arms brace against either side of the breach, fingers gouging into the courtyard stone as it drags itself upward. Where its chest should be solid, there is a hollow cavity ringed with ribs that curve inward like a cage around darkness.

That hollow radiates hunger.

The force of it rolls over the courtyard in sickening waves, tugging at every living thing in reach. Nobles stagger. Guards clutch their breastplates. Human witnesses cry out and press hands to their mouths, their eyes going glassy with sudden weakness. I feel it too, a thin pull beneath my sternum, like a cold thread hooked into my breath and drawn toward the creature’s empty chest.

Corin stands between it and the estate entrance.

His horns are fully visible in the stormlight. Gold burns under his skin in branching lines, bright through the soaked fabric at his shoulders and throat. He holds his hands open, fingers slightly spread, and black-gold flame coils around his palms without spilling. The hunger in him has gathered into a lethal focus, and through the bond I can feel the strain of it vibrating beneath his control.

He looks terrifying.

He looks alive.

He looks like the only thing in the courtyard that understands what has just entered the world.

Vaerith stands behind the left arc of the summoning circle, one hand raised, robe snapping in the infernal wind. His face is pale and composed in that revolting way of his, though red light carves hard shadows under his cheekbones.

“Witness the necessity,” he calls, voice amplified by surviving runes that crackle around the courtyard. “This cleansing answers the contamination brought into our district. Hybrid instability attracts devouring forces, and only decisive action prevents spread.”

Lady Syrenya’s voice slices from near the trade hall steps. “You summoned the damned thing yourself, Vaerith.”

Several nobles hear her.

Several pretend not to.