The Bleeding File

PROLOGUE: THE NIGHT I DIED AND CAME BACK WRONG

I was nineteen when I met the Devil.

It wasn’t in some back-alley deal or a midnight ritual—just a stupid car accident on a rain-slicked road. My head cracked against the steering wheel, and the world blurred into red and black. I remember the taste of blood, the slow fade of my own heartbeat in my ears. And then… silence.

But death wasn’t the end.

In that last, gasping breath before the dark swallowed me whole, He appeared. Not as fire and brimstone, not as some horned beast from a Sunday school nightmare. No—He was a man in a sharp suit, His smile a knife-s***h of white in the void.

"Damon Veil," He said, like my name was a joke only He understood. "Do you want to seek the truth?"

I should’ve said no.

But I was nineteen, and I was dying, and something in His voice hooked into my ribs and pulled. So I whispered, "Yes."

The next thing I knew, I was screaming awake in my own bed, my eyes burning like someone had shoved hot coals into the sockets. The doctors called it a miracle—no brain damage, no paralysis. Just… new eyes.

Eyes that showed me things.

At first, it was flashes—glimpses of people I’d never met, their faces twisted in fear, their mouths open in silent screams. Then came the bloodstains on the sidewalk that weren’t really there, the phantom hands clawing at my sleeves. And worst of all? The killers.

I’d look at a stranger on the street, and suddenly I was them, standing over a body, feeling the slick warmth of blood on my hands. The visions didn’t just show me the past—they dragged me into it.

But the real curse? I could show others, too.

One glance, one moment of eye contact, and I could force the truth into their skulls like a bullet. Some begged for mercy. Some clawed their own eyes out. And some? Some just broke.

Now, I use it. Not because I’m a hero—I’m not. But because the dead won’t let me look away.

And the Devil?

He’s still watching