Chapter 19
Blended seamlessly with the shadows in the corner of the dark room, I observe her.
The human lies limp on the bed, vulnerable and unaware, her long black hair spilling across the pillow and her porcelain-like skin.
Only the faint rise and fall of her chest betrays that she still lives.
But I can hear everything.
Her steady heartbeat pulses in my ears like a soft, tempting drum, and every breath she draws booms through me as if it were my own.
Slow, fragile and deliciously alive.
A deep, hungry rumble builds deep in my chest, my black veins throbbing beneath my skin, eager to reach out and touch her again.
That muffled scream she let out in the street… it cut through the night like a dagger straight into my dead soul. It was a calling, a summon that dragged me there through smoke and shadow.
She didn’t know it then, but she was singing for me.
I glide closer, silent as death, looming over her unconscious form, my deadly claws ticking at my sides.
Beneath that pretty pale body lies a pitch-black mask surrounding her. And yet… deep inside her chest flickers a tiny, little light.
Defiant, resisting, and it makes my mouth water.
I need to feed off her fear. I fucking crave it.
The way it floods her blood-stream, the way it makes her little heart race like prey in a trap. That smell of terror is what keeps me strong—it’s what feeds the abyss inside me.
But it isn’t just hunger for fear I feel twisting inside me. It’s something darker and far more unhinged.
Since emerging on this island, I’ve only witnessed a few humans be washed ashore. But she’s different. Looking at her awakens something inside me that should have remained buried.
The sensation is immediate and strong, and it slips between my thoughts and nests there, cold and rotting, warping everything around itself.
Hunger has always been simple, hunger ends when it’s fed.
But this doesn’t just feel like hunger. This feels like a plague.
I’ve never experienced arousal before, and it settles into me with horrifying ease, as if it has been waiting for someone specifically.
Waiting for her face, her voice, and her scent.
I’ve only just got her, that should matter, but instead, every passing second seems to pull the feeling deeper into me.
I want to break that stubborn light while she screams my name through torn lips.
I want to wrap my tendrils around her soul and squeeze until she shatters beautifully for me.
I want to fuck her cruelly while she begs, fill her up until she’s gushing, then drink every last drop of her despair as she finally realizes there is no escape from me.
I could take her right now, while she’s still passed out and helpless. But breaking her while she’s awake… watching that last flicker of defiance die in her eyes… That will taste so much deadlier.
“…Wake up, little light. I’m so fucking starved for you.”
With a snap of my fingers, she inhales sharply, and an intense shiver races across her body, awakening her with such sudden power that she seems to come alive all at once.
And for a moment, she appears less like a human waking up and more like something answering a call she couldn’t resist.
She gradually pushes herself up by her weak arms, hair still spilling over her face, and I wait, still half hidden by the shadows.
When she slowly lifts her head, peering through the strands of blackness, a sharp yelp rips from her throat and she jerks backward, her spine slamming into the headboard behind her.
No, no, not again.
I hear her thoughts, and they’re too loud, too broken, spilling into terror as she stares straight at me with wide petrified eyes.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real. He’s not really there. Wake up. Wake the fuck up.
For a second, I wonder what I am to her, and what shape I take inside her fractured mind.
I can’t see myself. I have no reflection in mirrors, I’m only absence pretending to be presence—a smear of darkness where meaning should be.
But I can feel myself. Claws that are not quite claws. Hair that’s not quite hair, and a weight behind my ribs that doesn’t behave like anatomy.
But none of it settles into memory, as if my past was never lost, only refused, and something older than thought itself has pressed a palm over it and whispered: you do not get to remember what you are.
And the longer I’ve been on Ninth Isle, the more I understand that humans don’t see me. They render me.
They look at what I am, and their dread completes the rest, filling in the missing pieces until I am no longer what stands in front of them, but what is already waiting inside them.
I’m not what she sees, I’m what her fear finishes.
Maybe that’s why I can smell her pussy so strongly, and why the scent is slithering through me like a sick thirst.
Even now, her body seems to betray her, like it’s remembering something horrific that I can’t.
The thick, musky scent of her scared cunt drifts up to me through the darkness—warm and laced with the sharp tang of terror-sweat. It makes my shadows throb and my mouth flood with ink.
Maybe her fear is that simple and primal.
Maybe the best way to feed on her isn’t through screams alone… but by forcing that delicious little pussy to drown in shame and unwanted pleasure.
I’ll make her cunt drip for me while she sobs in horror. I’ll drink her panic as I pull her apart, and break her mind and body at the same fucking time.
Yes…That’s exactly how I’ll devour her soul.
Other entities here like to make death as quick but as violent as possible. Just one brutal snap, one delicious burst of final fear, and they get that fast burst of power before hunting their next meal.
Because we don’t last long without feeding.
I’ve seen it happen too many times—strong entities wasting away, and their forms disintegrating when the deprivation grows too deep.
They vanish from the stronger circles of entities, only to reappear as pathetic, withered things. Like lost ghosts drifting through the fog of Ninth Isle, forever trapped, forever weak, and forever starved.
They chew at the edges of reality but can never leave. They just become a mist of what they once were, moaning in eternal agony.
But I won’t become that. Never me. I’m far too fast and fierce.
Yet that’s why she matters, and that’s why I won’t rush this. I’ll drain her slowly, carefully, and thoroughly—milking every drop of fear until she’s nothing more than a vessel that exists only for me.
Ninth Isle will not claim me.
She will sustain me… for as long as it decides I can have her.
I’ll feed on her for days, maybe weeks, if her body lasts that long.
But regardless of all that fuckery, the want gnawing at my core makes one thing brutally clear…
I need to tally brand her, and activate the timer.
I need to know exactly how long this cursed Isle will let me keep her. How many days, how many weeks I have to slowly dismantle her completely before Ninth Isle starts pulling me apart too.
I have to mark her deep and make her irrevocably mine—to hurt, to haunt, to taunt, and to fuck whenever the urge takes me.
Once my claim is burned into her flesh, no other entity will dare touch what’s mine.
They might slink around the edges and try to snatch tiny scraps of fear I leave behind, jumping at her from the shadows for pathetic little hits… but it will never be enough to challenge me.
What is that thing? Her voice creeps through her mind, small and trembling.
Why don’t you tell me? I reply, pushing the words directly into her thoughts.
Her hands fly up to her head, eyes wide with pure shock.
You… you can hear me?
I remain silent, staring at her through the endless black voids of my eyes. Because I usually don’t do this. I don’t converse. I don’t play mind games with my food.
But with her… something about shattering her sense of safety, even inside her own head, feels far too delicious to resist.
You look just like him… she thinks, the thought leaking out before she can stop it. Just far darker and… dead.
My shadowed tendrils betray me, sweeping across the floor with restless hunger, sliding over the wood like living shadows. They climb the sides of the bed, gliding across the sheets toward her body.
She squeaks in terror and curls in on herself, but it’s useless. The moment they wrap around her ankles, I bare my teeth in a vicious snarl and yank hard.
Her body slides violently down the bed, and in a blur of black smoke and rage, I dash across the room faster than lightning itself, hovering directly above her, my massive frame blotting out what little light remains.
She stares up at me, that tiny stubborn light in her chest flickering wildly.
I lean closer, black lips ghosting over her stitched ones.
Good. Then you already know exactly what I’m going to fucking do to you.
She blinks blankly up at me, a single tear spilling down her temple and disappearing into her black hair, fear radiating off of her, and I breathe it in like it’s oxygen.
You know? I purr, my voice a low, velvet rumble inside her skull as my pitch-black eyes rake slowly down her body, lingering on her heaving tits and the way her nipple has stiffened against her will.
Hearing your thoughts isn’t the only thing I can control.
I stare deep into her wide hazel eyes and clench my fist, fast.
Her eyeballs snap backward brutally, rolling deep into her skull until only the bloodshot whites remain, and a choked, terrified whimper leaves her throat.
My own eyes ignite with a cold, glowing white light that bathes her pale, frightened face. The crude stitches in her lips are pulled tight, tearing through bruised flesh.
Her entire body suddenly stiffens like a puppet on strings as I seize full control.
And I explore her.
My senses slither beneath her skin like smoke—probing, tasting, and invading every hidden corner.
They slide between her legs, pushing deep inside her ruined core, and I can feel it all. The damage, the scars, there’s no womb left, just hollowed, scarred tissue lining her walls.