The ground shuddered beneath Ana and Caden as they burst through the shattered tavern into a storm of flame and claws. Demons poured from broken doorways, their eyes aglow with malice, acrid smoke curling around the timbered homes while villagers' screams rent the air. A hulking fiend blocked their path, jaws gaping in anticipation. Ana didn't hesitate—her axe cutting through, carving a graceful arc that froze the beast mid-leap.

Caden stumbled beside her, gripping a jagged plank. His youthful bravado faltered when a demon's claw grazed his shoulder. "Watch it, hero," Ana snapped. He tripped on the cobblestones, but Ana's weapon had already struck true, sending the monster crashing through a wooden cart in a shower of splinters.

"I'm okay," Caden panted, clinging to his makeshift club.

"Try staying that way," Ana retorted, whirling to meet the next foe. Each demon fell beneath her precise strikes, their roars stifled by her lethal grace. Yet more emerged from burning stalls and smoking ruins—an unholy tide.

"They're multiplying!" Caden cried as a dozen identical demons advanced in perfect sync.

"No...only one is," Ana murmured. The creatures rasped in unison, their guttural voices scraping like stone on metal: "Ai-am Brrraldak, ze My-rri-ad! Ziss village now mine to kuh-laim." Each pounded its chest with clawed fists, a harsh thump-thump-thump that mimicked a mockery of heartbeats.

A massive demon seized fleeing villagers and hurled them through the tavern door. Wood splintered, bodies flew like ragdolls—bones cracking on impact. Caden's heart seized as he recognized one of them—Marta, the baker's wife, crumpled in the wreckage, her apron dark with soot. Gunther, the smith, lay motionless nearby. Others writhed in agony; children screamed, clinging to frightened mothers.

Amid the carnage, Caden spotted a battered sword. "Caden!" Ana shouted, pointing.

He crawled for the blade as Braldak's fist caught Ana in the ribs. She staggered but drove her axe through its chest, bisecting it in a hiss of smoke.

Braldak's voice bellowed, rough and jagged: "You no can win!" His clones charged again. Ana weaved through them, each defeated demon fading into shadowy mist.

Caden froze when he saw a little girl huddled behind a beam. A clone charged her with gleeful malice. Summoning courage, Caden threw himself forward, slamming the sword through its heart. The creature screeched and impaled itself deeper before dissolving into ash.

The girl stared, wide-eyed. "Thank you," she whispered. Ana hauled Caden to his feet, concern flashing across her features before she turned back to the ruined street.

Demons swarmed from every corner, black-skinned and veined with molten red. Caden's panic flared. "We're trapped!"

"Not yet," Ana growled, fighting on despite exhaustion. Then she smiled fiercely, grabbing Caden's arm. "Follow me."

"What are you doing?" he gasped.

"Changing the odds," she snapped. Luring the horde, she darted through the village in a sweeping arc, Caden barely keeping pace.

Ana ducked under a falling beam, pulling Caden after her by the scruff. The air was thick with soot and the stench of scorched mutton. She jammed her heel into the demon nearest her, felt bone crunch satisfyingly beneath her boot, bought a half-second to spot the jagged sign of the smithy still dangling over a collapsed awning. "There!" she barked, and they tumbled through the shattered door together.

Inside, the world shrank to the hiss of hot metal and the wheeze of lungs desperate for air. The blacksmith—Gunther, battered but not dead—notched a red-hot poker at an advancing fiend, fumbling for a weapon aside from the one fused to his hand. He blinked twice at Ana's entry, then at the boy half-dragged behind her.

"Is it only you?" he asked, voice raw. "No one else made it?"

Ana noted the quiver in his arms, the way he stood with his weight back, ready to run. Not the old hammer bear she remembered. She followed his gaze and saw her own hands trembling. The handle of her axe was nothing but a charred rod with splinters for teeth.

She tossed it on the floor. "Give me something with an edge," she said.

He rummaged beneath a table, ignoring the demon's relentless fists beating against the heavy rear door. "The boys—my apprentices—barricaded themselves in the cellar." His voice was a brittle thing, made for quieter times. "Don't know if they'll open up for me."

"That's your problem. Weapons, Smith. Now."

He slid a blade across the table: a squat shortsword, unevenly weighted, but whole. Ana tested its feel, twirled it once. "Not bad." She looked at the boy. "Got a second one?"

Gunther grunted and turned, oblivious to the sweat pouring from his forehead, or maybe just indifferent. He reached for a long, dust-caked bundle lashed with cord. When he placed it on the table, his hand lingered. He untied the knot, unraveled the cloth slowly, as if sure he'd never see what lay beneath again.

It was a shorter sword, almost cerimonial, edges hand-etched with runes no blacksmiths bothered with anymore. Even in this light it gleamed, the shine of memory clinging to it.

She met his eyes. He wouldn't look back.

"It's not for me," she said, but he shook his head.

"No one left to wield it. Take it." His voice cracked. "Please."

Ana nodded, took the sword.

The demon at the rear door gave up pounding and started battering with its horns. The hinges shrieked. Time ran thin.

Ana checked Caden's stance. "Widen your feet. Sword in both hands." She managed not to wince at the awkward grip. "Just don't drop it."

He tried to smile, but his lips barely moved. "I'll try."

They fanned out, weapons ready. Gunther hunkered behind the anvil, face drawn and strange in the flicker of the forge. Ana felt the weight of the sword in her right hand and the balance of the dagger in her left. Both would serve.

The door caved in. The demon was hulking, near human except for the bone plates trailing down its back. Ana lunged before it finished crawling through. Her first swing with the sword sheared off its ear, sent gore splattering the wall. She ducked the counterblow, rolled, and came up under its arm, driving the dagger between ribs. The demon erupted in black smoke, but another followed, slithery and fast, jaw yawning with glee.

Caden screamed, high and reedy, and thrust the lost sword straight into its face. He didn't pull back, just shoved, screaming until the hilt hit bone. The demon thrashed, then folded, limp on the stone.

Caden staggered, staring at his hands. Ana wanted to say something, but another shadow was already at the window.

"We can't hold here," Ana said, voice level. "We go out the back. Head for the ley line marker. If we're lucky, they'll stop chasing once we cross."

Gunther paled. "That's open road, Ana. Too many—"

"Better than burning alive." She seized his shoulder, stared him down. "You want to die trapped in your own forge, or fighting?"

He fumbled for his own weapon—a matte-black hammer—and nodded.

Ana led, kicking aside demon limbs and molten-smelling clots. Caden followed, knuckles white, sword at his chest like a talisman. Gunther cursed under his breath but kept pace. The world outside was smoke and blood and the wail of things not quite mortal. Ana set her jaw and advanced, swinging the rune-marked dagger and sword with each step. They cut clean.

Survival was the only plot, and in that moment, it was enough.

Caden pressed a trembling hand to his chest where claws had torn him.

"Can you walk?" she asked, voice rough but softer than before.

He nodded, pain flaring with each breath. Ana offered a wry half-smile. "Then keep moving."

They limped down the smoke-choked street past overturned carts and wide-eyed survivors. Ana glanced at Caden. "You said you were ready."

"I thought I was," he whispered.

"Almost died, huh?" she said quietly.

Caden nodded, swallowing against the ache.

"Stay off my path next time," Ana said, tone gentle under its edge.

He met her gaze—fear still in his eyes, but something stronger too: resolve.

Cinders flickered in Ana's lungs. Pain. Pure and clean, clarified her mind like a blade in honing oil. The brunt of the horde pressed behind them, but Braldak barreled ahead, separating from his clones, shouldering through the inferno with a self-importance that reeked even through the layers of burnt flesh. Ana locked eyes with him—his breath scintillant in the dark, mouth curled in some demon parody of a smile.

She pivoted, stepped between Braldak and the others. Caden's ragged breathing, Gunther's muttered prayers—background noise now. She flicked spittle and blood from her mouth, weighed the sword, then the dagger; didn't matter, these things preferred pain to persuasion.

"Ai-am Braldak," he hissed, flexing claws big as butcher's hooks. "You respect strength, yes?"

"Show me," Ana said, low, and charged.

Braldak surged, but Ana ducked the first swing, let the momentum carry her inside his guard. She hammered the shortsword into his knee, a sick burr of steel against bone. He shrieked—more offended than hurt—and spun, swiping a backhand that caught her shoulder. The world spun sideways. She rode the impact, let the fall become a roll, came up behind him. The dagger plunging into the muscle above his hip. She twisted, yanked, and black ichor splattered the cobbles.

The town collapsed around her—shouting, flame, the clatter of more demons at the periphery—but Ana's world shrank to Braldak's silhouette and the ringing behind her eyes. She parried, slashed, let him believe he was winning. The shortsword chipped at hard hide. The dagger found the weak points: armpit, jaw, groin. Braldak bled, but never slowed.

"Just kill the bloody thing!" Gunther, cries.

Ana heard it all but ignored it. Braldak's pattern—left-right, feint high, stamp low. Repetition was comfort for demons. She'd lived long enough to sense the hollow in their rhythm. She feinted a stumble, let him close, let him taste triumph. Blade up. Step back. Dagger ready. When he lunged, she braced the sword with her second hand and jabbed upward, straight through the mandible. The metal punched through palate into skull. Braldak's momentum slammed him into her, knocked her flat, but the sword held. His breath was a furnace against her cheek.

For an instant, he smiled. Then his body went slack, all his borrowed pride evaporated at once.

Ana shoved the carcass off, gasped air, then scrambled to her feet, blades raised. She searched for more—the rest of the pack—but they'd frozen, scattered, leaderless. She pressed forward, slice and slash, until the last of them broke and ran into the burning woods.

The village was silent, except for the cinders. She spat blood, flexed her bruised shoulder, and checked the others. Gunther sat with back to a wall, hammer clutched in both hands, staring at something years away. Caden stood among dead demons, chest heaving, eyes wide but unblinking.

Ana made herself walk to where Braldak fell. She yanked the sword from his throat. The hilt was sticky, and the runes glowed as if the blade remembered every cut it had ever made.

She turned, sword still dripping. "Anyone else want to try their luck?" Voice like gravel, but it quivered in her throat.

No answer, only the wind and the low crackle of ruined homes.

She dropped the shortsword. Kept the dagger—old habit. Turned to the boy, forced herself to see not the shivering, blood-smeared child, but a survivor. He stared at her, not blinking now, not looking through her, but at her.

"How bad you cut?" she asked.

He looked down, bewildered by the blood crusting his shirt. "Don't know."

"Gotta get patched up. Gunther, you alive?"

"Never meant to see a sunset again," the smith croaked, wiping tears with soot-blackened hands. "They'll come back, won't they?"

Ana shrugged, looked at the night sky, thick with smoke and a few orphan stars. "They always do." She nodded at the ley line marker past the edge of town. "But not tonight."

Caden limped to her side, close enough to touch. "What now?"

A shadow moved in the periphery—a limp in the step, a shape warped by the heat. Ana only realized the threat when cold steel pressed against Caden's throat, just beneath his jaw. The demon stank of burnt berries and metal. The pressure spiked, sharp enough to count every shallow pulse of his heart, but the blade never drew blood.

"Move or he bleeds," the demon breathed. Its voice was wrong—lilting, almost tender, as if crooning a lullaby. Reflex snarled in Ana's chest, but she stayed rooted.

Caden froze, eyes wide, sword hilt trembling in his fist. Ana raised her own blade, useless in her shaking hand.

The demon's grip was deliberate, almost human, though the hand on Caden's shoulder seemed jointed in too many places. Up close, its skin veins shimmered; when Caden dared to glance at its eyes, they burned a sickly, luminous blue—nothing like Braldak's molten brood.

"Ghul'kharaz," it whispered, savoring the old tongue. Ana's blood ran cold. Demon Killer—once her title—clung to her like an ill-fitting cloak she'd begged to shed.

She forced her breath slow and even. "You're not local," she said flatly.

The demon tilted its head, amused. "No. I am envoy. Braldak was...distraction. I am Orders-Taker. Some call me Vektra." The dagger traced a fractal line along Caden's throat, teasing the skin. "But names matter little. Only message."

"Then speak it," Ana growled, "and end the theatrics." Behind her bravado, she calculated leverage angles, weight shifts—she could rip that blade free, but Caden's life balanced on her hesitation.

Vektra's lips curved. "The Demonking's daughter sends memory. He says: If Ghul'kharaz returns east—returns home—he will unmake every village you touch. Grind down the ley lines, let the void creep in until nothing is left but ashes and smoke trails." It paused, savored the words. "And if you flee, he sends more Braldaks. One new pack for every day you run. Each sworn to strip hope from you—and from any who follow."

Ana glanced at the boy. If Vektra meant to kill him, it would have already happened. The Demonking's cruelty lay in the waiting.

"Tell your master," she said through clenched teeth, "that he doesn't scare me. He never did."

Vektra laughed, a sound born in some inhuman chest. "No. But you scare us, Ghul. Even now—old ones whisper: she will come back—burn us out from root to rind." It withdrew the dagger with a soft hiss, then spun away, leaving behind the scent of ozone and rotten ice.

Ana didn't flinch. She waited until Vektra dissolved into shadow, then exhaled. Her hands shook—hers and Caden's. The street flickered in her vision: broken houses, bodies, smoke. Not this village, but another—years gone, same odor of ruin.

She hated that the demon knew her name.

Caden's face was pale.

She pressed a hand to his shoulder. "You start sword lessons tomorrow. No point dying for nothing."

He met her gaze—stone-faced, eyes bright. Hopeful, maybe. Or reckless. She could live with either.

Ana turned toward the village. Toward whatever sunrise was left to them.