Chapter 294: The Demon Who Stepped Back

"LEAVE MY PAPA ALONE!"

A small voice echoed through the ruined street.

Vezrath froze, and for the briefest moment, his fingers loosened around Yuuta’s throat.

Yuuta dragged in a broken breath. His vision was almost completely blurred from exhaustion and lack of air, leaving the buildings, streetlights and wreckage around him smeared together into shapeless shadows. But that voice cut through everything with impossible clarity.

No.

He knew that voice.

Yuuta forced his heavy eyelids farther open and turned his head as much as Vezrath’s grip allowed. Through his unfocused vision, a small figure gradually became visible farther down the ruined street.

Elena stood there.

Her tiny fists were clenched tightly beside her body, trembling so badly that she couldn’t hide how frightened she was. Tears filled her eyes as she stared at her father hanging helplessly from the demon’s hand. She had never expected to find him like this, covered in blood, barely conscious and unable to even stand on his own.

Yet Elena didn’t run.

"LEAVE MY PAPA ALONE!"

Her voice cracked this time, but she shouted even louder.

Yuuta stared at her in disbelief.

Why...?

His mind struggled to process what he was seeing.

Why is she here?

He had hidden her. He had looked directly into her eyes and made her promise that no matter what happened outside, she wouldn’t come out.

Yet she was standing right there.

Completely exposed.

Fear struck Yuuta harder than Vezrath’s hand around his throat ever could.

His body moved.

Barely.

Yuuta’s right arm trembled violently before lifting perhaps an inch from his side. Every damaged muscle screamed against the movement, his shoulder felt as though it were being ripped apart, and there was almost no aura left inside him to force his exhausted body any farther.

Still, he tried.

Move.

His fingers twitched toward Elena.

Please... just move.

Vezrath felt the pathetic movement against his arm and looked down curiously. Only moments earlier, the human had been on the verge of losing consciousness, yet the sight of that child had somehow made him struggle again.

Then Vezrath looked back at Elena.

His violet eyes narrowed.

Red.

Even through her tears, Elena’s eyes carried the same unmistakable blood-red color as Yuuta’s.

Vezrath’s expression slowly changed.

"So..."

His gaze moved between them.

"You’re his daughter."

Yuuta stopped struggling for a fraction of a second.

That was enough.

Vezrath noticed.

A hideous smile slowly stretched across his poison-scarred face.

Yuuta’s stomach dropped.

"No..."

The word escaped his damaged throat as little more than air.

Vezrath looked almost delighted by the reaction. The Demon King had commanded them to capture the red-eyed human alive, which meant Vezrath couldn’t simply crush Yuuta’s throat no matter how badly he wanted revenge for his fallen brothers.

But nobody had given him such an order about the child.

"Hell must have heard my prayers tonight."

Vezrath’s smile widened as he looked toward Elena again.

"After what you did to my brothers, I was wondering how I could make you suffer without killing you."

Yuuta’s crimson eyes widened.

He felt it.

The change in Vezrath’s presence.

The murderous intent was no longer directed at him.

It had shifted toward Elena.

Every trace of exhaustion inside Yuuta’s mind disappeared beneath immediate terror. His body was still broken, his arms still refused to properly move and his aura was nearly gone, but none of that mattered anymore.

Vezrath’s smile widened as he watched the terror spread across Yuuta’s face.

Then his fingers opened.

Yuuta dropped.

There was no strength left in his body to protect himself from the fall. He struck the road like a discarded doll, his knees hitting first before his upper body collapsed forward and his chin slammed painfully against the pavement. The impact should have made him cry out, but only a weak breath escaped his lips. His arms remained where they fell, and for several seconds even keeping his eyes open became impossible.

Vezrath turned away from him.

His footsteps began moving across the street.

Yuuta heard them.

Step.

His eyelids trembled.

Step.

He forced one eye open.

Step.

Through his blurred vision, Yuuta saw Vezrath walking directly toward Elena.

"No..."

His fingers scraped weakly against the road, but his body refused to rise. Yuuta tried forcing his elbow beneath himself, only for his damaged shoulder to collapse immediately beneath his weight. His cheek struck the pavement again as he watched the distance between the demon and his daughter grow smaller.

Elena remained where she was.

Her little hands were clenched tightly in front of her, and tears still gathered beneath her crimson eyes. This was different from every frightening situation she had experienced before. There was no enormous dragon standing beside her, no mother protecting her and no powerful adult between her and the monster approaching.

Her Papa was lying behind him.

He couldn’t save her.

Elena was frightened enough that her knees trembled beneath her, but when she looked past Vezrath and saw Yuuta struggling helplessly against the road, she tightened her fists instead of running.

She had come out because Papa needed her.

She wasn’t going to abandon him now.

Vezrath finally stopped directly in front of her.

The difference between them was grotesque. Elena barely reached high enough to properly look at him without tilting her head, while Vezrath’s poison-scarred face stared down at her with open amusement.

"Weird..."

He leaned slightly closer.

"What a beautiful little child."

Elena instinctively took half a step backward.

Vezrath noticed.

His smile grew.

"I wonder what that pretty skin will look like when my poison touches it."

Elena’s face paled. She didn’t completely understand what he intended, but she understood enough from his voice to know that he wanted to hurt her.

Then Vezrath deliberately looked over his shoulder.

Yuuta was staring at him.

His face was pressed against the road, blood remained around his mouth and tears had begun gathering in his crimson eyes. There was rage there, but beneath that rage was something Vezrath found far more satisfying.

Helplessness.

Vezrath slowly turned back toward Elena.

"No..."

Yuuta’s voice scraped painfully from his throat.

Vezrath paused as though he hadn’t heard him.

Yuuta forced his fingers against the pavement.

"Don’t..."

His entire arm trembled as he tried to drag himself forward. He gained barely an inch before his strength disappeared again, but he immediately tried once more.

Vezrath watched him struggle.

Then he laughed softly.

"Actually, I’ve changed my mind."

Yuuta froze.

Vezrath raised one hand toward Elena, allowing a faint violet vapor to curl between his fingers.

"I don’t want to kill her quickly."

Yuuta’s pupils contracted.

Vezrath turned his head just enough for Yuuta to see his smile.

"I want to see your face while your daughter melts right in front of your eyes."

Something inside Yuuta snapped.

"N...no."

His nails dragged against the pavement.

Vezrath smiled as he watched Yuuta’s desperation.

He had seen that expression countless times before. Husbands forced to watch their wives die, parents watching their children suffer, people begging him to stop even after realizing that begging only made him enjoy it more. There was always a particular moment when hope disappeared from their eyes, when they finally understood that nothing they did could save the person in front of them.

Vezrath wanted to see that same moment in Yuuta.

He reached beneath his robe and slowly withdrew a small glass bottle.

The liquid inside was green.

Yuuta’s crimson eyes widened the instant he saw it.

"No... no..."

He didn’t know what that particular poison did, and he didn’t need to know. He had already witnessed enough tonight to understand what anything carried by these demons could do to a human body.

"Please..."

Yuuta forced himself forward.

His arms could barely support him anymore, so he stopped trying to stand and began dragging himself across the pavement instead. His fingers scraped against the road as he pulled, his legs trailing almost uselessly behind him while every movement sent fresh pain through his damaged shoulders.

It was humiliating.

It was pathetic.

Yuuta didn’t care.

If crawling like a worm was the only movement his body could still manage, then he would crawl.

"Papa..."

Elena’s trembling voice reached him.

Yuuta lifted his head.

For one irrational second, anger flashed through him. He had told her to stay hidden. He had made her promise, and she had come out anyway. Why couldn’t she have listened to him just this once?

But the anger vanished almost immediately.

She was Four.

She had heard her father fighting outside and had come looking for him.

He was the adult who had left her alone in the middle of an invasion because he believed a hiding place and a promise would be enough.

I should’ve protected her better.

Yuuta dragged himself another few inches.

Then his strength disappeared.

His chest struck the pavement, and his arms collapsed beside him.

Elena was still several feet away.

Several feet.

It might as well have been kilometers.

Yuuta tried again, but his body only trembled against the road. Tears blurred what little remained of his vision as he stared past Vezrath toward his daughter.

"Please..."

This time, he wasn’t speaking to Elena.

His eyes moved toward Vezrath.

"Please... don’t."

Vezrath’s smile widened.

There it was.

The man who had killed seven of his brothers was begging him.

Vezrath looked at the green liquid in his hand, then at Elena.

"No."

He threw the bottle.

Everything happened too quickly for Yuuta’s exhausted mind to follow.

The small glass container left Vezrath’s fingers and shot toward Elena with inhuman speed, spinning through the air as the green liquid inside flashed beneath the streetlights.

Yuuta’s pupils contracted.

"NO!"

Something erupted inside him.

The green aura he had used throughout the fight didn’t return.

Instead, darkness leaked from his body.

Black aura seeped from beneath Yuuta’s fingers and spread across the pavement like smoke. More escaped from his shoulders, his back and the blood covering his hands, growing denser with every fraction of a second as his terror overwhelmed whatever had previously kept it buried.

Yuuta didn’t notice.

He saw only Elena.

The bottle was almost there.

Then....

Elena disappeared.

The bottle passed through empty space.

CRASH!

Glass shattered against the road behind her, and green liquid splashed across the pavement. The asphalt immediately hissed and collapsed inward as the poison ate through it, leaving a smoking cavity where Elena should have been standing.

Vezrath’s smile vanished.

"What...?"

The black aura around Yuuta stopped spreading as abruptly as it had appeared. His crimson eyes widened in complete disbelief while he stared at the empty stretch of pavement where Elena had been standing only a moment earlier. The poison continued eating through the road behind that spot, green liquid bubbling violently as it dissolved the asphalt, but there was no sign of his daughter anywhere near it.

"Elena...?"

Yuuta forced his head higher despite the pain running through his neck. His blurred eyes moved desperately from one side of the street to the other, searching behind the wrecked cars, beneath the broken streetlights and between the surrounding buildings, but he couldn’t find her.

Vezrath appeared equally stunned. He knew how quickly he had thrown that bottle, and the child hadn’t even reacted before it was about to strike her. There shouldn’t have been enough time for anyone to reach her, much less remove her so completely that he hadn’t seen the movement.

"Where is that little girl?"

A woman’s voice answered from somewhere above them.

"How far you have fallen, demon."

Vezrath immediately raised his head. His violet eyes searched the surrounding rooftops, but the darkness between the damaged buildings revealed nothing. The voice had been cold and commanding, carrying none of the panic or hesitation of the humans he had tormented throughout the night.

"Who are you?!"

The woman didn’t answer his question immediately. Instead, her voice traveled through the street again, seemingly coming from several directions at once.

"Who we are should be the least of your concerns. You should be thinking about the sins you’ve committed tonight."

Vezrath’s expression hardened.

"Sins?"

"Tormenting a father while forcing him to watch his child suffer. Throwing poison at a little girl simply because you wanted to enjoy his despair." The woman’s voice became colder with every word. "Even among demons, you’ve fallen remarkably low."

"STOP HIDING!"

Vezrath’s roar echoed between the buildings as violet poison began leaking from his hands. His eyes moved furiously across every rooftop surrounding the street, searching for even the slightest movement.

"If you have the courage to judge me, then come down here and say it to my face!"

For several seconds, there was no answer.

Then the darkness above him moved.

Vezrath slowly looked upward.

At first, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. The roof of the building beside them seemed darker than it had been moments earlier, but then one shadow separated from another. A human-shaped silhouette stood near the edge.

Then another appeared beside it.

Another rose behind them.

More figures emerged across the neighboring rooftops until Vezrath realized they had been there the entire time. They weren’t arriving one by one. They were simply allowing themselves to be seen.

Yuuta weakly lifted his head as well, struggling to focus through his fading vision. He could barely count the silhouettes surrounding the street, but then his eyes found the figure standing closest to the rooftop’s edge.

Someone was holding a child against their chest.

Silver hair caught the streetlight.

Yuuta’s breath stopped.

"Elena..."

His daughter’s frightened face appeared over the figure’s arm. She was unharmed, still trembling from what had nearly happened, but she was alive.

Relief struck Yuuta so strongly that his forehead nearly fell back against the pavement. For several seconds, he couldn’t think about who had saved her or why these people had suddenly appeared. Elena was alive. That was enough.

Vezrath wasn’t looking at Elena anymore.

His attention had settled entirely upon the figure holding her.

The anger disappeared from his face.

His violet eyes widened as he noticed the dark feathers drifting lazily through the air around the rooftop. One passed through the streetlight before dissolving into shadow, and recognition finally appeared in the Poison Warden’s expression.

"No..."

For the first time since Yuuta had encountered him, Vezrath took a step backward.

His voice came out quieter.

"It can’t be."

The woman above remained motionless, holding Elena securely while the other silhouettes watched from the surrounding rooftops.

Vezrath stared at her.

His lips parted.

"Are you..."

His voice trembled.

"...Shadow Raven?"

To Be Contiuned...