The chains around her wrists bit into her skin, pulsing with an enchantment she didn’t understand. Cold stone pressed against her knees, yet her spine remained straight—like defiance was stitched into her bones.
Across the room, cloaked in shadows, he watched.
The devil.
His eyes glowed like dying embers in a fire long since turned to ash. Silent. Powerful. Ancient. He had destroyed kingdoms for sport—yet here he was, silently observing the girl who’d accidentally freed him.
A girl who dared to mock him... and live.
He finally spoke, voice silk wrapped in iron.
“You wear your rebellion like armor. But underneath it, you're trembling.”
She laughed—not loud, but sharp, bitter.
“Trembling?” She met his gaze. “If I feared you, I wouldn’t have insulted your horns.”
He moved closer, silent as smoke.
“You don’t get to joke. You’re mine now.”
She clenched her jaw but said nothing.
He towered above her now, and for a moment, she thought he might strike her down. But instead, his voice dropped to a near whisper.
“What made you like this, human?”
She blinked. The question didn’t sound curious—it sounded dangerous. But she answered anyway.
“Life.”
He raised a brow. “Be more specific.”
She stared past him, to nothing.
“I was six when they locked me in a cellar.”
His silence was instant.
“My village. They thought I was cursed. Said I was the reason crops failed. Livestock died. My mother... didn’t even look back when they dragged me away.”
The devil’s expression didn’t change, but something in the air around him... stilled.
“I screamed for days,” she went on, her voice even. “Until my throat bled. No one came. It was dark. Wet. The only company I had were rats. I named them. At least they didn’t lie to me.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “Funny, huh? I played with bones. Talked to shadows. Learned to listen when the wind whispered.”
His fists slowly curled at his sides.
“When they finally let me out—weeks later—I wasn’t a scared little girl anymore. I was something else. I didn’t cry. Didn’t beg. I ran.”
Silence stretched between them like a blade.
“I survived. So now,” she said, voice hardening, “when someone like you tries to break me, I don’t flinch. Because I already was broken. And I put myself back together.”
She looked up at him, and for the first time... he saw her not as a foolish, reckless mortal—but as a survivor. A fire forged in frost.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
She scoffed. “What? Shocked that a pathetic little human girl has scars deeper than your dungeons?”
He turned away slowly, cloak sweeping behind him. But before stepping into shadow, he said, without looking:
“Pain makes monsters, girl. But you… You wear it like a crown.”
Then he vanished.
---
That night, the guards were ordered not to chain her again.
The door to her chamber... remained unlocked.
And though she didn’t sleep, somewhere in the silence… the devil stood atop the tower, staring out into the black sky—wondering why her words wouldn't leave his mind.
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