Night settled heavily over the city park.
The streetlights flickered like dying embers, casting jagged, sickly shadows across the ground.
The midnight fog was thick, cold, and tasted like damp iron.
Natalya sat on a wooden bench, trembling, clutching the burned, jagged remains of the photograph Diana had destroyed earlier.
Only a fraction of the woman’s face was left—a sliver of a smile, cold and knowing.
Natalya stared at it, her mind racing.
“…What even are you…”
Then, the world went dead.
Silence.
Not the quiet of a late night, but a total, pressurized void.
No crickets.
No distant traffic.
Not even the rustle of the wind.
Even the park itself felt like it was holding its breath.
Natalya stood up, her skin prickling.
The park felt hollow.
Empty.
Watching.
Tap.
A footstep.
Soft, deliberate.
It echoed against the concrete like a hammer.
Natalya gripped the photo.
“H-Hello?”
Tap.
Tap.
Something was carving a path through the fog.
Her breathing hitched, coming in jagged, uneven bursts.
Then she saw them—four pinpricks of crimson light glowing in the dark, floating motionless.
A figure stepped under the halo of a dying streetlight.
“…Mikhail?”
It was her brother.
But it wasn’t *him*.
His skin was the color of a bruised corpse, pulled tight over bone.
Dark, infection-like veins snaked up his neck, pulsing with a life that wasn’t his.
And clinging to his back—fused into his spine like a parasitic growth—was the girl from the photo.
She looked beautiful.
And entirely, fundamentally wrong.
Two more crimson eyes flicked open beneath her dark, tangled hair.
Four eyes total.
They bored into Natalya.
The demon smiled.
That same, sickening smile.
“Mikhail…” Natalya gasped.
The boy’s lips fluttered, his eyes fighting against the rot.
For a split second, he looked human.
“…Run…”
The girl’s grip tightened.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders like hooks.
CRACK.
Mikhail shrieked.
The demon tilted her head, watching him with the bored amusement of a child pulling wings off a fly.
“Oh dear…”
“It seems he still loves his sister.”
Natalya scrambled backward, her heels catching on the grass.
“Why are you doing this to him?!”
The demon girl didn’t look away from her prey.
Her crimson eyes caught the streetlight, burning like coals.
“What do you want?”
“The Lord demands sacrifice from all of us.”
The way she said the title made the air drop ten degrees.
The ground beneath them seemed to shudder, a low, tectonic groan echoing up from the dirt.
Natalya’s face went white.
“Sacrifice?
You’re going to kill him?!”
The demon laughed—a melodic, hollow sound.
“Oh, no.
He was merely convenient.”
She stroked Mikhail’s cheek, her nails tracing a line of blood.
“I required an adult female born beneath a total eclipse.”
The lights overhead buzzed, screaming as they flickered violently.
“And that…”
Her four eyes locked onto Natalya.
“…is you.”
Natalya couldn’t breathe.
The demon sighed, looking almost annoyed.
“Unfortunately, seducing you directly would have been far more difficult.” She looked down at the boy gasping beneath her.
“So I targeted your brother instead.”
“You used him…” Natalya’s voice broke.
“Love,” the demon whispered, “is one of humanity’s easiest doors to open.”
Natalya balled her fists.
The park was freezing now.
“You want me for WHAT?!”
The demon’s expression shifted, becoming reverent.
Worshipful.
“The Lord demanded your blood so He may pass through the seal dividing the human realm…” She grinned, teeth glinting.
“…and Hell.”
Mikhail was thrashing now, a pathetic, weak struggle.
Even through the corruption, his eyes remained frantic and human.
He looked over his shoulder at the creature.
“Even after knowing you weren’t human…” he coughed, blood bubbling from his lips.
“…I trusted you.
I thought you were different, Missy…”
The demon’s face went rigid.
The amusement vanished.
“Enough.”
The temperature plummeted.
The demon lifted her head, her voice vibrating with a supernatural weight.
“There was never a girl named Missy.
You created her yourself inside your pathetic, rotting little dream world.”
Mikhail choked, his eyes rolling back.
The creature turned her attention back to Natalya.
“But perhaps your delusion was useful after all.
“If you want your brother released… come to me instead.”
Natalya stood frozen, paralyzed by the sight of her brother’s agony.
Mikhail struggled, his voice cracking with finality.
“Hell no!
I won’t let you get near my sister!”
The demon groaned in disgust.
“Humans are truly an exhausting species.”
CRUNCH.
She sank her fangs deep into Mikhail’s neck.
Mikhail let out a raw, soul-shattering scream that tore through the empty park.
“Mikhail!!” Natalya lunged forward, tears blinding her.
“WAIT!
PLEASE!”
The demon lifted her head, blood smearing her chin.
She watched Natalya with a victor’s gaze.
Natalya’s voice was a whisper, shattered.
“…I’m coming to you.”
The demon smiled.
Hidden in the deep shadows beyond the tree line, someone else was watching.
Natalya staggered forward.
Her instincts were screaming for her to turn and run, but she kept moving, dragging her leaden feet toward the monster.
“Mikhail…”
“Yes…” the demon purred, her eyes glowing like open wounds.
“A little closer…”
With a savage motion, she ripped her fangs out and threw Mikhail’s body aside like a piece of trash.
“Mikhail!”
Natalya dove to catch him—and the demon struck.
SHRIEEEK.
She launched off the ground like a coiled spring, claws extended toward Natalya’s throat.
BANG.
The sound cracked the night open.
The demon’s head snapped violently to the side as a high-caliber round tore through her cheek and jaw.
She spun in the air, crashing into a wooden bench with a sickening thud that shattered the frame into splinters.
Silence returned.
The demon slowly pushed herself up.
The right side of her face was a ruin of shredded meat and bone, but it was already knitting back together with the sound of snapping wet twigs and bubbling blood.
She roared, a distorted, grating sound.
“WHO.
Who dared—”
She stopped.
Natalya was kneeling on the pavement, shielding Mikhail.
And standing right in front of them, blocking the demon’s path, was Diana.
The white coat caught the faint breeze.
The heavy, ceremonial weight of the sword on her back made the shadows seem to loom behind her.
Diana held a pistol in each hand, the barrels still wisping with acrid smoke.
She looked at the demon, then let out a heavy, bored sigh.
“Honestly?”
She spun one of the handguns on her finger and holstered it.
“I was expecting a beautiful succubus.”
Diana narrowed her eyes, surveying the jagged, regenerating mess of the demon’s face.
“Instead, I found some OnlyFuns model with a botched surgery, Oh Yeah Bootleg Succubus!.”