(The Devil)
Pain.
Real pain. Not the distant echo of a blade that never quite reached him, not the dull, background ache of ancient wounds long since turned to myth—this was sharp, immediate, present pain that lit up his nerves like a struck sigil.
The spear tore into his back-left shoulder with a force he had not felt in centuries. The wood punched through fur, past hide, scraping through muscle like fire-tipped teeth. Hot blood surged around the wound, spilling in thick rivulets down his flank. Each pulse of it felt wrong, an insult to the very idea of what he was—Devil, nightmare, pact-bound sovereign—reduced, in this moment, to a body that could be so easily pierced.
He roared. It wasn’t a warning. It wasn’t dominance. It wasn’t ritual. It was shock. The sound ripped out of him raw
