"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not."
— Epicurus
---
The demon roared. The sound hit the interior of the Reality Anchor like a struck bell — raw, guttural, vibrating through the sealed air. Dark blood pulsed from the stumps of his severed arms, but even as it spread across the fractured crystal, violet energy crackled at the wounds. Flesh began to writhe. Tendons snaked outward like black worms. Bone extended with slow, wet cracks.
Zeke walked him down.
"I wonder how to kill you," he said, a manic smile spreading across his face. The dome held the smell in — ozone, copper, the faint sulfur of demonic blood. "Slash at you until you run out of energy? Use that ability to burn you to cinder?" A playful glint. "My magic stat stays the same regardless of what I swap to."
He stopped.
"But first — exposition."
