The girl with red hair(77)

The demon walked slowly, like a pilgrim on his final march to heaven. But there was no grace in him. No redemption. Just a determined, trudging hunger. Each step was deliberate, as if he feared looking away might break the spell, might lose sight of the thing he needed most.

Me?

I wasn't even a concern anymore.

I was background noise.

The bricks in my hand—that was all that mattered to him now.

He moved toward them, not like a beast charging prey, but like a dying man crawling toward water. Reverent. Starving. A worshipper chasing salvation in the form of cursed stone.

I scanned the deck frantically. Looking for anything. A weapon, a weakness, an answer. Guns and swords lay scattered from the earlier chaos—useless now. I'd already seen how his blood worked. How it crawled back into him like obedient dogs. How it stitched him back together. That blood felt too close to mine. It healed. It remembered.

And the merman?

Gone.

Thrown from the deck like trash. And if he was still alive, he wasn't helping anymore.

I had nothing left.

So I stood there. Still. Empty. Waiting.

The demon kept coming. Each step heavier. More final. The ship groaned beneath his weight.

Then— 

Crack.

A loud bang split the air. A bullet tore past my face, grazing my cheek, the heat of it licking my skin.

It struck the demon square in the chest.

He staggered—barely. A ripple rolled across his torso, a shimmer of blood hardening into armor. The bullet hadn't even pierced.

I turned.

Behind me stood a girl.

Young. Probably barely twenty. Hair chopped short, blue to natural to be dyed. Her grip on the rifle was firm, practiced. She looked like she'd stolen her whole look from a street-fighting arcade game, and I would've laughed if everything wasn't falling apart.

But she was real.

And she was brave.

It took me a second longer to recognize her.

The girl the merman had been protecting.

The girl I had pointed my gun at.

She wasn't hiding anymore. She wasn't cowering in some hold, waiting for the sea to swallow us whole. She was standing her ground.

Rifle in hand. Eyes locked on the demon.

Reloading.

A stupid decision. Pointless, even. The bullet had done nothing—just tickled the monster. His skin had absorbed the damage like it was rainwater. The blood inside him shimmered, then closed the wound before it could even bleed.

And yet she kept going. Hands fast, movements clean. This wasn't the first time she'd handled a gun.

But the demon didn't look at her.

Didn't even blink.

She was as irrelevant to him as I was.

He just kept moving forward. His gaze fixed on the brick.

He wasn't a creature anymore. Not even a demon, really.

He was a husk. A dead man walking, dragged forward by obsession.

A soul on autopilot.

He didn't need breath. He didn't need rage. He had purpose. And the only thing keeping that purpose alive… was in my hand.

Another bullet rang out. Hit him again. Nothing.

The girl cursed, louder this time. She looked at me—really looked, like she wanted to say something. Yell something. But her mouth didn't move.

Her eyes, though? They screamed.

Run.

But I didn't.

I couldn't.

This wasn't just a game of survival anymore.

I had the bricks. I had the key. The Cathedral wasn't a story—it was a door, and I was holding its handle. The demon now taking all the blood in him was proof that the world had broken in ways no one had dared imagine.

Another step. The demon was close now. Ten feet. Maybe less.

His body was falling apart in slow motion. His severed stump oozed thick clots, but the blood creeping along the deck was helping—climbing him, binding to him, merging with him like ink and flesh had made a deal. 

His face was a ruined thing. One eye gone. Half his jaw looked broken. But that remaining eye—it burned.

With want. With need. With a hunger that had long since stopped being physical.

Yet he was healing, being built.

I gripped the bricks tighter.

They pulsed in my hands. Almost like a heartbeat.

One was heavier than before. One colder. They were both changing. Or maybe I was.

Either way, I knew one thing: if he touched them, if he so much as grazed them again—I'd lose something final. Not just a piece of me.

Maybe all of me.

The girl fired again.

The shot missed, or maybe it just didn't matter.

He was five feet away now.

Four.

Still no sound from him. No growl. No threat. Not any laugh nor the sickening giggle. Just the silence of a man who'd already won.

I looked at the girl. She was still trying, still reloading, still fighting a war she couldn't win. Fighting a war she was not a part of even if she was.

I respected that.

But this wasn't her fight. It never was.

It was mine.