The Whispering Woods gave way to sparser country as the day wore on—scrubland dotted with low hills, patches of gorse, and the occasional ruined shepherd's hut. Elias kept to the shadows of the ridges, avoiding the main roads where Church patrols would be thickest after the morning's slaughter.
His forearm still bled sluggishly where the inquisitor's blade had bitten. He had torn a strip from the hem of his shirt to bind it, but the cloth was already soaked dark. Hunger gnawed at him worse than the wound. He had eaten nothing since yesterday's midday meal, and the cold rain of the night before had leeched what little strength remained in his limbs.
He found shelter at dusk in the hollow of an overturned boulder, a natural cave just wide enough to curl inside. The wind moaned through the cracks like distant voices. Elias pressed his back to the stone and drew his knees to his chest.
For the first time since the obelisk, the world felt quiet enough for thought.
He lifted his shirt again. The sigil had changed. The broken crown at its center was sharper now, almost three-dimensional, as though carved from obsidian rather than burned into flesh. The black veins had retreated during the day's run, but they still spiderwebbed across his left pectoral and up toward his throat. When he touched them, they felt cool—like metal left in shadow.
You are tired, Abaddon said.
The voice was softer than before. Not gentle—never that—but patient, the way a predator waits for prey to weaken.
"I'm not talking to you," Elias muttered.
Yet here we are.
Elias closed his eyes. He tried to picture Mira's face, his mother's hearth, the smell of bread baking in the village oven. Anything familiar. Anything human.
Instead he saw the charred skeleton of Father Aldric kneeling in the road. The way the black fire had eaten light itself. The way his own mouth had spoken words he had not chosen.
Tears came then, hot and sudden. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, refusing to make a sound.
Weeping will not undo what is done, Abaddon said. Nor will it feed you.
"Shut up."
Silence for a long minute. Then:
You will die out here. Slowly. The Church will find your corpse in a week, or the wolves will find it sooner. Either way, your blood returns to me. I simply wait longer.
Elias opened his eyes. "Then why talk to me at all? If I'm just… a shell."
Because you are more interesting awake.
A pause.
And because I am curious. Most vessels fight me for months—years, sometimes—before they break. You have not even tried to pray the binding litany. Why?
Elias laughed, a short, bitter sound. "Because I know it won't work. I felt what happened when Aldric tried his golden light. You laughed."
I did.
Another silence.
Ask, Abaddon said at last. You have questions burning behind your eyes. Ask, and I will answer truthfully. No riddles. No lies.
Elias stared at the darkening sky visible through the mouth of the hollow. Stars were beginning to prick through the clouds.
"Who are you?" he asked quietly.
I am Abaddon. The Devourer. The World-Eater. The one the heavens locked away because they feared what would happen if endings were allowed to finish.
Elias swallowed. "And what do you want?"
To finish what was begun long before your kind drew breath. To unmake the lie they call creation. To eat the false order until only silence remains.
Elias felt the words settle into him like stones in deep water.
"And me? What am I to you?"
A door. A key. A voice through which I speak in this world again. You bonded willingly—your blood on the stone was consent, whether you understood the words or not.
"I didn't mean—"
Intent is irrelevant. Blood remembers.
Elias pressed his forehead to his knees. "Can I… get rid of you?"
No. Not while you live. And if you die, I simply wait for the next vessel. But you will not die easily now. I will not allow it.
Elias lifted his head. "Why not?"
Because I have plans, boy. And you are useful.
"Useful for what?"
For war.
The word hung between them.
Lucifer sits on a stolen throne, Abaddon continued. He wears the face of an angel and calls himself God. The Church bows to him without knowing his true name or the smell of brimstone on his wings. He imprisoned me once. He will not do so again.
Elias's mind reeled. "Lucifer? The devil?"
Names are cheap. He is the Light-Bearer who fell because he questioned the cage we were all born into. Now he rules the cage and pretends it is paradise.
"And you want to kill him."
I want to unmake everything he built. Starting with his pretty little kingdom. Starting with his pretty little saint.
Elias frowned. "Saint?"
The boy they keep in Sanctum. The one who switches faces. They call him blessed. They do not know he shares a body with their so-called God.
Elias remembered fragments of Church doctrine—whispers of a living miracle, a child who could heal with a touch, who spoke with divine authority. The Holy See's greatest treasure.
"You want me to fight him?"
I want you to survive long enough to reach him. The rest will come.
Elias shook his head. "I'm not a soldier. I'm not even brave. I just want to go home."
Home is ash by now, Abaddon said, not cruelly, only factually. The inquisitors burned it to cleanse the taint. Your mother prayed until the smoke took her breath.
The words landed like a fist.
Elias made a small, broken sound.
Grieve later, Abaddon said. Live now.
Something rustled outside the hollow—soft footsteps, too deliberate for an animal.
Elias tensed.
A figure appeared at the entrance, silhouetted against the starlight. A girl, perhaps seventeen, cloak hooded, a short bow in one hand and a waterskin in the other.
She did not raise the bow.
"You're the one from the village," she said. Her voice was low, careful. "The one they're calling demon-touched."
Elias scrambled backward until his shoulders hit stone. "Who are you?"
"Someone who knows what it's like to be hunted." She stepped closer. Firelight glinted off silver earrings shaped like crescent moons—pagan sigils, forbidden. "Name's Elara. I saw the black fire from the ridge. Felt it, too. Like the sea turning inside out."
She crouched, keeping distance. "You're starving. And bleeding. I have bread. Water. No tricks."
Elias stared at her. His stomach twisted painfully at the mention of bread.
Abaddon stirred.
She carries one of mine, the demon said suddenly. Leviathan. Deep and old. He recognizes me already.
Elias didn't know what that meant, but the tone in Abaddon's voice was different—almost pleased.
"Why help me?" Elias asked aloud.
Elara shrugged. "Because if they catch you, they'll come for the rest of us next. And I'm tired of hiding."
She tossed the waterskin toward him. It landed at his feet.
"Drink," she said. "Then decide whether you trust me enough to eat."
Elias looked at the skin. Then at her face—hardened, but not unkind.
He uncorked it and drank. The water tasted of iron and moss, the best thing he had ever swallowed.
Abaddon watched in silence.
For the first time since the stone, Elias did not feel entirely alone in his own skin.
But the quiet was deceptive.
Far to the south, in the golden halls of Sanctum, a silver-haired boy of fifteen paused mid-prayer. His eyes—normally soft hazel—flashed molten gold for a single heartbeat.
Lucifer smiled inside his vessel.
"He wakes," the fallen angel whispered.
And somewhere deeper still, beyond light and shadow, an indifferent eye opened wider.
The game, after all, was only beginning to grow interesting.
End of Chapter 3