Page 203 of Demon’s Snack

Isolde grabs my wrist. “Corin.”

“I know.”

“You are walking into it.”

“That’s the idea.”

“That is a terrible idea without context.”

“I’ll give you context after I survive it.”

Her eyes flash with fury, fear, and trust all tangled together. Then she releases me because she understands the difference between holding me back and standing with me when I choose. That faith almost hurts worse than the attack.

I spread my arms wide and let the devourer slam into me.

The impact tears a shout from my throat. Infernal force floods my chest, burning cold and hot through the same channels the first devourer carved open. My horns lengthen under the pressure, curving heavier from my skull until pain flashes white behind my eyes. Flame erupts along both arms, black-gold and violent, licking toward the ceiling before I drag it back into shape. The crowd screams louder when they see me change, and Vaerith’s face lights with awful satisfaction from behind his wards.

“There!” Vaerith shouts. “Witness the evolution of the threat!”

“Shut up,” Sable yells from behind a column. “We are literally watching your house monster try to crawl into him!”

The devourer begins merging with me.

Its essence pushes through the absorption channel, huge and eager, carrying a consciousness made of endless feeding. It slams against my mind in a wave of alien memory: worlds reduced to quiet ash, lesser demons bending beneath hierarchy, souls pouring into hollow dark until individuality becomes a flavor consumed and forgotten. The thing does not reason with me. It imposes. It tries to make my thoughts smaller than appetite, to crowd me out of my own skull with the sheer weight of what it has devoured.

For one breath, my knees buckle.

The floor rushes up, red runes blurring beneath rainwater and broken glass. I catch myself with one hand against shattered marble. The devourer’s will surges harder, thrilled by the opening, and my hunger rises to meet it with savage violence.

Last night comes back to me in fragments of heat and discipline.

Isolde’s hands in mine. Breath before touch. Desire before command. Power drawn inward, shaped, released into ward stone without damage. Her fingers tracing the base of my horn while she looked at me like nothing in me needed hiding.

I breathe.

Slow.

Deep.

Mine.

The devourer hammers at my consciousness again.

I breathe through it.

The hunger inside me gathers into channels rather than eruption, and the force answering inside my core feels like a commander rather than a beast. It wants direction. It waits for my order.

Isolde pushes through the chaos toward me.

I feel her before I see her, the bond bright and fierce through the devourer’s pressure. She steps over a cracked seal plate, ducks under a whipping strand of red wardlight, and reaches me with ash in her hair and fury in every line of her face. The devourer senses her and sends a hooked pulse down the bond, searching for the harmonic response Vaerith spent generations trying to weaponize.

I snarl.

The siphon lashes toward her through me.

I slam a wall of black-gold power across the bond so hard the floor beneath my knees cracks. The devourer’s hook strikes that barrier and recoils, shrieking through my bones. Isolde reaches me anyway and plants one hand flat over my chest.

Her palm lands directly over the place where the devourer is trying to enter.