What the fuck happened to her before she got here?
These scars are old.
The thought turns dangerously possessive, but I crush it with a deep, feral growl as fast as it came.
I lay my large black hand flat against the center of her chest, and she flinches from the freezing touch.
Then my veins come alive.
Glowing white, writhing coils crawl from my shoulder, down my arm and burrow into her. Her whole body begins to shudder as they spread like dying roots of darkness, forming the intricate, living timer across her soul.
I watch with cold satisfaction as my mark sinks in deeper, counting down the timewehave left.
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Sixty-two tally marks shear themselves into her chest, carving deep beneath the soft skin in writhing black ink. Each vicious line burns itself into place with a sickening scratch, like claws dragging through raw meat.
Sixty-twodays.
Sixty-two beautiful, agonizing days to torture my new plaything. To break her, to feed on her fear, her shame, and to take her unwilling pleasure until there’s nothing left.
Sixty-two days, little light…I whisper directly into her mind, voice thick with dark promise.Let’s see how much of us survives.
Her brows pinch in confusion, because little does she know… it’s no longer just me against her.
It’susagainst each other now, and there’s no going back.
Not for her. Not for me.
This harrowing game has begun, and I have sixty-two days to make her wish she had never summoned me.
I lift my hand from her chest, the fresh black tally marks still pulsing beneath her skin.
“They call me Krool,” I say out loud, my voice a deep, hellish growl that rattles the walls like grinding bones.
With a casual sweep of my obsidian clawed fingers across her mouth, I slice every single stitch down the middle with ease. The harsh threads snap one by one through her already damaged lips.
Her eyes squeeze shut in fresh agony, a muffled whimper echoing between us as blood trickles from the reopened wounds.
The moment the last thread falls apart, she peels her cracked lips open, her jaw widening with a rough rasp.
I linger for one final moment, drinking in the sight of her wrecked and wheezing beneath me.
Then I pull away quickly, black smoke exploding around me as I shoot upward, vanishing through the ceiling like a demon returning to the dark.
???
With shadows sweeping across the dirt like living oil, I weave between the dead trees, leaving the isolated mansion far behind. Staring down from above, I spot them—dozens of little black figures shuffling toward where she stays.
A deep, furious growl detonates from my chest as I accelerate, smashing straight through ruined buildings in a blur of black smoke and violence, wood and concrete exploding around me as I hurtle toward the center of town.
I know they can’t harm her physically… but they’re still going to petrify her and feed on the leftovers of her terror.
Yet by the time I return, I’ll steal every last drop for myself anyway.
