Hell Has Rivers - Decembers Journal
The smell of blood doesn’t frighten me anymore.
It tells me I’m still alive.
The first thing I remember is the impact.
One heartbeat I was moving. The next… something struck me square in the chest with enough force to lift my feet from the stone. My ribs screamed. Air vanished from my lungs. I remember the wall more than the creature—old stone slamming into my back hard enough that I tasted iron before I understood I’d bitten through my own lip.
For a moment I thought…
This is how it ends.
Not beneath some dragon.
Not before a hag.
Not in glorious battle.
Just another body swallowed by the dark.
I coughed blood onto the forge floor.
Then survival took over.
It always does.
I rolled behind Run& Yum before whatever had hit me could finish the job, my hands already reaching for the healing potion before my mind caught up. My chest burned with every breath as the magic knitted flesh together just enough to let me move again.
Not healed.
Just… still moving.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Then the wolf came.
Shadow wrapped around muscle and hunger, racing through the darkness where most people couldn’t even see.
I could.
I planted a boot on Rum’s shoulder, another on Yum’s shield, threw myself into the air, and for one heartbeat everything became wonderfully simple.
Just me.
The knife.
The target.
Gravity carried me onto the beast’s back, and Widow Tooth found the place beneath its skull where monsters stop pretending they’re immortal.
One thrust.
Silence.
I slid from its corpse already looking for the next thing that wanted me dead.
Because there is always another thing.
Always.
The forge was worse.
Heat poured through the doorway like opening the mouth of the world. Thirty feet below, lava crawled through the stone like liquid hatred.
Even hell has rivers.
Across it waited a demon.
A creature made of shadow and patience.
It asked for help.
I stayed quiet.
Bony Alice had already taught me what happened when I bargained.
The scars around my wrists tightened.
The circles around my throat felt cold.
Don’t speak.
Don’t negotiate.
Live.
Simple.
Then…
I looked at it.
It looked back.
And I couldn’t help myself.
“Could you…”
Just one question.
Just curiosity.
Just...
Agony.
The Geas didn’t punish.
It annihilated.
Something invisible drove a spike through my skull.
Every memory I owned exploded at once.
The walls turned gray.
The forge disappeared.
I saw hobgoblin chains.
I heard hags laughing.
I felt dragon claws carving a mark into my forehead.
I smelled the river where I cried because I had been stupid enough to believe kindness could survive in the Vale.
Every terror.
Every failure.
Every nightmare.
At once.
I remember falling.
I don’t remember hitting the ground.
When I opened my eyes…
…it was smiling.
The demon had healed me.
Not because it cared.
Because investments should survive.
Its power settled beneath my skin like cold water poured into my veins.
Shadow answered when I breathed.
Not around me.
Inside me.
It said I owed it a favor.
Of course I do.
Everything in this cursed place demands payment.
Even survival.
Especially survival.
We destroyed the forge.
The portal opened.
Darkness rushed through it like starving wolves finally finding a door.
Then…
Nothing.
Or almost nothing.
I remember the feeling.
Like someone opening the door to a house they already owned.
Something walked into me.
Not through my skin.
Through…
me.
There are no words for that kind of violation.
I wasn’t asleep.
I wasn’t dead.
I was simply…
…moved aside.
Like I had become a room.
And someone else decided to live there.
I can still feel it.
Even now.
When I close my eyes.
When I sharpen Widow Tooth.
When everyone else laughs around the fire.
There is another breath that isn’t mine.
Another heartbeat.
Another silence.
Waiting.
Listening.
Patient.
I spent so long fearing things outside the darkness.
Now…
The darkness came home with me.
I used to dream of leaving the Vale.
and now I’m not even certain I’ll leave my own body.
