The night brought no relief. If anything, the fever intensified as darkness settled over the medical pen. The torches along the walls burned lower, their flames guttering and casting dancing shadows that seemed to move with malicious intent. The temperature in the room dropped slightly, but Velrith's body felt like it was burning from the inside out, the infection spreading its poison through her blood.
Her consciousness became increasingly unstable, reality and hallucination blending together until she could no longer distinguish between what was actually happening and what her fevered mind was creating. The transition into full delirium was gradual but inevitable, her brain's normal processes disrupted by the combination of infection, pain, and exhaustion.
The first hallucination came as she lay staring at the rough stone ceiling. The surface began to ripple and shift, the solid rock becoming liquid and flowing like water. Faces emerged from the stone—demonic faces with fangs and glowing eyes, watching her with hungry expressions. She tried to look away but found her head would not turn, her neck muscles locked and unresponsive.
Then the scene shifted completely. She was no longer in the medical pen but back in her childhood home on Earth. The familiar living room surrounded her, but something was terribly wrong. The furniture was overturned and broken. Blood splattered across the walls in wide arcs. The smell of copper and rot filled her nostrils, thick and nauseating.
Her family was there. Her mother, her father, her younger sister. They sat on the ruined couch, their bodies torn and broken, their eyes empty and staring. Standing over them were demons—massive, brutal creatures with thick horns and slavering jaws. The demons were eating, tearing chunks of flesh from her family's bodies with their teeth, chewing slowly and deliberately.
Velrith tried to scream, tried to move, tried to do anything to stop the horror unfolding before her eyes. But her body refused to obey. She could only watch as the demons continued their feast, blood running down their chins and dripping onto the floor. Her mother's head turned slowly toward her, the movement wrong and jerky like a broken puppet. Her mother's mouth opened and words came out, but the voice was wrong, distorted and layered with other sounds.
"You left us, Joseph. You abandoned us for your fantasy. Now look what happened. This is your fault."
The accusation hit like a physical blow. Guilt crashed over her in waves, mixing with the horror and fear. Had she abandoned them? Had her obsession with demon novels and dark fantasies somehow caused this? The logical part of her mind knew this was a hallucination, that her family was safe on Earth and she was the one in danger, but the fevered part believed completely.
The scene dissolved and reformed. Now she was in a different setting, one that felt familiar but wrong. It was a fantasy castle, the kind depicted on the covers of the harem novels she used to read. Ornate columns, flowing banners, beautiful architecture bathed in golden light. Standing in the grand hall were the heroines from those stories—beautiful, powerful women in revealing outfits, their bodies perfect and their faces cold.
They were laughing at her. Their voices were sharp and cruel, filled with contempt and mockery. One of them, a warrior woman with long silver hair and a sword at her hip, stepped forward and pointed directly at Velrith.
"You thought you could be the protagonist? You thought you deserved to be reborn as a powerful demon? Look at you. You are nothing. Weak, pathetic, broken. You are not the hero of this story. You are not even a side character. You are just expendable meat, waiting to die."
The other heroines joined in, their laughter growing louder and more vicious. They began to list all of Joseph's failures, all the ways he had wasted his life on Earth. Every regret, every mistake, every moment of weakness was thrown back at him with cruel precision. The psychological assault was devastating, cutting deeper than any physical wound.
Velrith tried to defend herself, tried to argue back, but her voice would not work. She could only endure the verbal barrage, each word adding to the crushing weight of shame and self-loathing. The heroines began to fade, but their laughter continued, growing distant but never quite disappearing.
Back in the medical pen, Velrith's body began to convulse. The physical symptoms of the infection had reached a critical point. Her muscles spasmed uncontrollably, her limbs jerking and twitching without conscious direction. Her back arched off the dirt floor, the movement putting agonizing pressure on her infected brand. Foam gathered at the corners of her mouth, mixing with blood from where she had bitten her tongue during the convulsions.
The other wounded slaves near her shifted away, creating a circle of empty space around her thrashing form. They had seen this before—the final stages of infection, the body's last attempts to fight off the poison before death claimed it. None of them moved to help. Helping would accomplish nothing and might draw unwanted attention from the guards.
During the convulsions, a new sensation emerged. Velrith's horns, the elegant black curves with their red and purple lines that marked her as a demon, began to ache with a strange internal pressure. It was not the sharp pain of injury but a deep, building pressure that seemed to originate from inside the bone itself. The pressure built steadily, growing more intense with each passing minute.
The feeling was alien and frightening. The horns were part of her body now, part of this demonic form she inhabited, but she had no experience with what they should feel like under normal circumstances. This pressure suggested something was happening inside them, some process or change that her fevered mind could not understand.
The pressure intensified, becoming almost unbearable. It felt like the horns were trying to grow or change, internal structures shifting and expanding against the confines of the bone. The sensation radiated down from the horn tips through her skull, adding to the already overwhelming pain of her infected shoulder and beaten body.
Velrith's convulsions grew stronger, her body arching and twisting as multiple systems fought against the infection and whatever strange process was occurring in her horns. Her hands clawed at the dirt floor, fingers digging furrows in the compacted earth. Her legs kicked out randomly, striking the ground and nearby objects with enough force to leave bruises.
The commotion finally drew attention. Two overseers entered the medical pen, their heavy boots announcing their approach. They stopped at the edge of the circle of empty space around Velrith's convulsing form and looked down with expressions of cold assessment. One of them consulted a wooden board he carried, running his finger down a list of numbers.
"Slave 447," the first overseer said, his demonic language slow and deliberate. "Fresh arrival, failed first training. Branded three days ago. Infection in the brand site, fever, now convulsing. Prognosis poor."
The second overseer crouched down, getting a closer look at Velrith's thrashing body. His eyes traveled over her form, taking in the swollen, discolored flesh of her shoulder, the foam at her mouth, the way her muscles spasmed uncontrollably. He reached out and roughly grabbed one of her horns, tilting her head to examine it more closely.
"Horn structure is good," he observed. "Red and purple lines indicate potential for advanced affinity development. Body type is prime breeding stock—wide hips, full chest, strong bone structure. If she survives, she might have value beyond expendable class."
The first overseer grunted, considering. "If she survives. Current state suggests death within hours. Not worth the expense of intensive treatment. Recommend disposal."
"Might survive," the second overseer countered, still examining Velrith's convulsing form. "Demonic physiology is resilient, especially in younger specimens. The convulsions could be the fever breaking rather than terminal decline. The horn pressure suggests affinity awakening, which would increase her potential value significantly."
The debate continued above her while Velrith remained trapped in her body, aware enough to hear the words but unable to respond or influence the decision. They were discussing her life with the same casual tone one might use to debate whether to repair a broken tool or throw it away. Her existence hung in the balance, dependent entirely on whether these demons decided she had enough potential value to justify the cost of treatment.
The first overseer checked his board again, making calculations. "Treatment cost versus potential return. Crude medicine available—black compound from the alchemist pens. Effective but painful. Survival rate approximately forty percent in subjects with severe infection."
"Black compound," the second overseer agreed, releasing his grip on Velrith's horn and standing up. "Administer one dose. If she survives the night, transfer her to recovery pen for observation. If she dies, standard disposal procedures."
The decision made, the first overseer turned and walked toward a storage area at the side of the medical pen. He returned carrying a wooden box, its surface marked with symbols that Velrith's fevered mind could not interpret. He set the box down and opened it, revealing several clay vials stoppered with cork, their contents invisible but presumably the "black compound" they had discussed.
The second overseer grabbed Velrith's jaw with one large hand, forcing her mouth open despite the convulsions. His fingers pressed brutally against the joints of her jaw, applying enough pressure to cause additional pain but effectively preventing her from biting down. With his other hand, he gestured impatiently for the vial.
The first overseer selected one of the clay vials and unstoppered it. The smell that emerged was immediately overwhelming—a chemical, acrid stench that made eyes water and throats close. The liquid inside the vial was indeed black, thick and oily, moving sluggishly when the overseer tilted the container.
"Hold her steady," the first overseer commanded. The second overseer adjusted his grip, using both hands now to immobilize Velrith's head despite her thrashing. The first overseer positioned the vial above her forced-open mouth and began to pour.
The black medicine hit her tongue and immediately Velrith knew that nothing she had experienced so far compared to what was about to happen. The liquid was not just unpleasant—it was agony in physical form. The moment it made contact with the inside of her mouth, it felt like liquid fire, burning tissue and nerve endings with chemical fury.
She tried to spit it out, tried to prevent it from going down her throat, but the overseer's grip was too strong and gravity was working against her. The black compound flowed over her tongue, coating her teeth and gums, and slid inexorably down her throat. The burning sensation traveled with it, a line of absolute agony that traced the path of the liquid from mouth to stomach.
The pain intensified exponentially when the medicine reached her stomach. It felt like she had swallowed molten metal, the burning spreading outward from her core in waves that made her previous suffering seem trivial by comparison. Her convulsions, which had been violent before, became even more extreme as her body tried desperately to expel the poison that had been forced into it.
But the medicine was already in her bloodstream, already beginning its brutal work. Velrith could feel it spreading through her veins like living fire, each blood vessel burning as the compound traveled through her circulatory system. The sensation was of being burned from the inside out, every cell in her body screaming in protest as the crude medicine did its work.
The black compound reached her infected shoulder and the pain became transcendent. The medicine attacked the infection with chemical violence, killing bacteria and damaged tissue indiscriminately. The swollen, infected flesh felt like it was being dissolved and rebuilt simultaneously, torn apart and reconstructed in a process that was agonizing beyond description. Her back arched so severely that only her head and heels touched the ground, her body forming a rigid bridge of pure suffering.
The scream that tore from her throat was inhuman, a sound of such raw agony that even the hardened overseers took an involuntary step back. The compound continued its merciless journey through her veins, burning its way through every inch of her body, and Velrith understood with terrible clarity that she would either survive this and be forever changed, or die in screaming agony. There was no middle ground, no gentle recovery. The black medicine was fire in her blood, and it would either forge her into something stronger or consume her completely.