I stared the demon down like it was a beast, and I was the one who belonged in the cage.
No more flinching. No more shrinking. Fear had burned out of me miles ago. All that was left was instinct—cold, clean, razor-sharp. Fear didn’t guide me anymore. Fear just made sure I didn’t get cocky.
He raised his hand slowly.
Not like a fighter.
Like a priest reaching for a relic.
Like a dying man reaching for morphine.
And as that blackened, blood-slick finger inched closer to the brick—
Boom.
Another water bullet slammed into his side, the force of it snapping his body sideways like a toy hit by a truck. He flew off his feet and crashed hard into a pile of shattered planks. Wood splintered, something metal clanged, and for the first time in minutes, the demon wasn’t moving toward me.
He wasn’t the only one who came back from the dead.
The merman vaulted onto the deck again.
He landed heavier this time, slower. His skull was caved in on the left, a jagged crater where the demon’s fists had done their work. He shouldn’t have been standing.
And yet—he was.
Blood poured from his head, but his mouth was clenched around something long, scaled, and twitching. A tail.
I knew that tail.
It was my first kill. It was what made me lose my two finger.
The Komodo bastard.
Guess the merman went back in the water for a snack.
He bit down again. Flesh tore. Bone crunched.
In his other hand, he held the limp corpse of the Komodo thing, its jaws slack, its eyes glassy. He sank his teeth in like it was jerky, chewing slow and savage, blood running down his chin.
And then I saw it.
His skull—
It started mending. Cracks shifted, bones groaned, reshaping under the skin. The crushed side of his face began puffing out, realigning like puzzle pieces forced back into place. His scales, once dulled and peeling, now shimmered with silver-blue fury.
He was healing.
Not like the demon. The demon fed on blood like it was sacrament, drinking it through his skin, gorging on gore like it made him holy.
The merman healed by devouring his kill. Bite by bite, he was reforging himself from the inside out.
I blinked, once.
The world was still absurd when I opened my eyes.
The girl behind me let out a breath she’d been holding. It wasn’t relief. Not really. Her shoulders dipped slightly, her grip on the rifle relaxed for half a second—but her eyes stayed sharp. Trained. Like a wolf cub that had learned to growl but not yet to bite.
She didn’t run to me. Didn’t scream for the brick. Didn’t go rabid like the rest of them had when the obsession set in.
That?
That surprised me more than the demon getting the sentient blood or the merman’s corpse-snack recovery plan.
She was sane.
In this world, that was practically a miracle.
The merman tossed the Komodo carcass aside like it was a peeled fruit rind. His gaze landed on the demon, who was already pulling himself back to his feet. One arm gone. Blood soaking into his skin. That single burning eye locked back on the bricks.
But now it was different.
The merman had changed.
Not just physically. Not just from the healing. His whole presence had shifted.
Before, he had lunged like an dying animal trying to protect something. Now, he stood like a healed animal. Not rushing. Not flailing. His claws extended slowly, water dripping from their tips like liquid razors.
And for a moment—a sharp, horrifying moment—I felt like I didn’t belong here at all.
These two creatures weren’t just fighting over a relic. They were bound to it. Bound by me to it. Designed for it. Like two parts of a cosmic lock, snapping at each other for the right to be whole.
And me?
I was just the dumbass holding the key.
A dumbass that was forced into this mess.
And a dumbass trying to win it all.
The demon straightened. The blood had thickened his frame again. Veins popped along his arms, twisted and black. His wound had closed, sealed by the blood he’d stolen from the deck, from the dead, from his crew.
His hand which was chewed off started to clot. It was healing.
Two monsters.
Both resurrected. Both unkillable by any sane metric.
And both absolutely, fanatically obsessed with the bricks I was clutching.
Still, the girl didn’t move. Her chest rose and fell fast, but she didn’t tremble. Her stance didn’t break.
I looked at her again, really looked this time.
No desperation. No madness. Just... purpose. Survival buried under fear, but solid. Whatever this twisted world had done to her, it hadn’t broken her mind. She was intact.
And somehow, that made her the rarest thing here.
Was it stupidity but I moved my brick in front of her hoping that she was truly sane.
She looked at me and the brick but she focused more on the merman and the demon than me or the brick.
She was sane. She wasn’t corrupted by the brick.