Damien Rook

The city lay strangled under night. Fog crawled along the pavement in coils, slipping through gutters and around piles of refuse, carrying with it the damp reek of oil and rust. Above, fire escapes zigzagged the brick walls like the skeletons of dead ladders, their bolts groaning whenever the wind pried at them. A neon sign sputtered across the street, its glow bleeding into the mist in uneven pulses, more a dying heartbeat than light. From that haze, he emerged. A tall figure in a black coat that swept the ground with each measured step, his hands buried casually in his pockets as though the alley were a red carpet rolled in his honor. The coat parted as he walked, revealing the hard lines of a body sculpted for war. His hair, white as fractured bone, caught the dim light in sharp contrast to his eyes—two embers burning out of a face too still, too precise. The ground itself seemed to recoil from him. Shadows clung unnaturally close, twisting and knotting together until they rose into something alive. Behind him swelled a towering mass of black smoke and muscle, its edges seething like storm clouds in collapse. A face broke through the darkness—horns jagged and crimson, eyes dripping with malice, a grin too wide for the world it inhabited. The demon stalked at his shoulders like a beast barely restrained, its smoke curling around his frame, binding the two into a single silhouette that blotted out the night. The streetlamp overhead flickered, caught in the pull of something vast, and then guttered back to life. A gust swept the alley, tugging at newspapers and peeling paint, but he did not flinch. Each step pressed deeper into silence, his presence swallowing even the distant city noise until only breath and pulse remained. He stopped at the alley’s mouth, red eyes reflecting the faint light, and at last tilted his head back toward the beast looming close behind. His voice was low, deliberate, every syllable like a nail hammered into stone.