All Chapters of Demonbound: Chapter 41
- Chapter 50
74 chapters
41
The world narrowed to motion.Steel sang as Corvin’s daggers flashed, twin arcs cutting through the air with lethal precision. He was fast—faster than most hunters Lumi had seen—his feet barely touching the ground as he closed the distance. The plaza erupted into movement, dust lifting from cracked stone as Corvin struck first, blades angled for the demon’s throat.Igor stepped aside.Not hurried. Not strained.Just… gone.Corvin’s daggers sliced through empty space. He twisted mid-strike, recovering instantly, spinning low to carve at Igor’s legs.Igor pivoted.The flat of his blade met Corvin’s wrist with a sharp clang, knocking one dagger wide. He followed it with a lazy backstep, cloak barely stirring.Lumi lunged a heartbeat later.His sword burned faintly in his grip. He swung from the side, aiming to box Igor in, to force him to commit.Igor ducked between them.For a split second, Lumi and Corvin were facing each other, blades inches from colliding.They both jerked back.Igor
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The training grounds were never truly quiet.Even in the evening, when the sun had sunk low and the sky bruised itself purple and gold, the place hummed with restrained violence. Steel rang against steel. Boots struck packed earth. The air carried the familiar scents of sweat, oil, and scorched magic.Scott stood alone at the far end of the grounds.His staff moved in clean, efficient arcs, each strike precise enough to crack stone if he wished it. He wasn’t sparring. He wasn’t training with anyone else.He was burning off something restless.Each swing cut through the cooling air, controlled but heavy, the kind of motion that came from a mind that refused to slow. His expression was calm, jaw set, eyes focused on a point only he could see.Footsteps broke into a run behind him.Fast. Uneven.Scott sensed it before he heard it.He stopped mid-motion, staff planting into the dirt with a dull thud, and turned.Cleodora nearly stumbled to a halt in front of him, breath ragged, hair loose
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The night air beyond the estate was colder than it had any right to be.Not biting. Not cruel. Just… watchful.Scott stood with his hands in his coat pockets, staring out at the dark stretch of land that marked the edge of their territory. The wards hummed faintly beneath his boots, a low, constant thrum that reminded him where safety ended and the unknown began.Corvin stood beside him, arms folded. Silent. Thinking.Cleodora lingered a step behind them, her posture stiff. She didn’t like this place. She didn’t like standing still outside the protection of stone walls and sigils. And she really didn’t like the way the shadows seemed to lean in, as though listening.They waited.Footsteps approached.Measured. Confident.A tall figure emerged from the estate gates, cloak trailing lightly behind him. The sigil of authority glimmered faintly at his collar. The patriarch’s face was stern, carved from stone and expectation.“What are you doing outside the estate?” he demanded.“Don’t you
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The first thing Lumi felt was the cold.It seeped through his clothes, through his skin, into his bones—damp, metallic, unrelenting. Stone pressed hard against his back. Iron bit into his wrists.He groaned softly.The world came back in fragments.Darkness, cut through by a faint greenish glow. The drip of water somewhere nearby. The distant rush of something flowing fast and unseen. The air stank of rot, ash, and old magic.He was underground.Buried beneath the city like a festering wound no one wanted to acknowledge.Lumi’s eyes fluttered open.He was chained to the wall.Heavy iron restraints pinned his wrists above his head, etched with sigils that burned faintly red. His feet barely touched the slick stone floor, forcing his weight into his shoulders. Each breath pulled cold air into his lungs, sharp and damp.Across the chamber, rusted pipes ran along the walls like veins. Broken walkways crisscrossed over black water below, its surface rippling sluggishly as something moved f
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The sewer swallowed them whole the moment they descended.The air changed first.It grew thick, damp, heavy with the weight of rot and stagnant magic. Each breath tasted wrong—metallic and sour, like rusted coins left too long in the mouth. Water trickled constantly somewhere out of sight, an endless, patient sound that echoed through the stone.The passage opened wider than any of them expected.Not a narrow tunnel, not a maintenance crawlspace—but a vast underground artery carved to carry an entire city’s refuse. The ceiling arched high above, lost in shadow. Stone pillars rose from the glowing water below, ancient and eroded, their surfaces etched with old sigils that had long since failed to fade.The water itself glimmered faintly.Not clean. Never clean.A sluggish current rolled through the channel, thick with waste and broken enchantments, glowing a sickly green as corrupted magic bled into it. Every so often, something disturbed the surface—ripples spreading without a source,
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Corvin didn’t slow as they ran.The sewers narrowed into branching corridors—arched stone alleys carved by centuries of flowing waste and forgotten magic. The water was gone here, replaced by damp stone paths slick with moss and residue. The walls pressed in closer, breathing down their necks, the air thick with mildew and old enchantments that clung to the lungs.Too quiet.No claws scraping stone.No growls echoing from the dark.No demons.Corvin’s jaw tightened.“There are no demons here.”“Shouldn’t we glad about that?” Cleodora asked. “Rescuing Lumi would be a breeze.”“I don’t think demons would leave their prey unguarded,” Corvin said as he proceeded forward.“They could have their hands full with Scott and Marionette,” Cleodora started. “They’re strong enough individually to take on any demon.”He hesitated for half a second.Then nodded.“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe that’s all it is.”They kept running.The corridors twisted sharply, branching into narrower veins that pulsed wit
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The Blackwell mansion loomed ahead of them, iron gates yawning open like a mouth that hadn’t finished swallowing.Scott slowed first.Then stopped.Someone was standing at the entrance.She stood beneath the archway, cloak drawn close around her shoulders, hair damp against her temples as though she’d walked a long way to get there. The sigils embedded in the gate recognised her and pulsed faintly in greeting.Cleodora.“Cleo?” Scott blinked. “What happened? Why did you leave? You had us worried.”For a moment, she didn’t answer. Her gaze flicked over them—Scott, Corvin, Lumi—lingering for half a second too long on Lumi before settling back on Scott.“I’m sorry,” Cleodora said quietly.That was all.No explanation. No humour. No irritation at being questioned.Just apology.Scott frowned but waved it off, already moving. “We’ll talk about this later. We need to find out what Dad wants.”He brushed past her and headed inside.Cleodora followed.---The moment they crossed the threshold
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The party in the centre of the city spilled far beyond its boundaries.What had begun as a modest gathering had grown into something looser, louder—music bleeding into the night, laughter ricocheting across the open field like sparks from a fire. Strings of lights were hung between trees, glowing amber and soft, swaying slightly with the breeze. Someone had dragged out speakers. Someone else had brought far too much food.The air smelled of grilled meat, spilt alcohol, crushed grass.People lounged on blankets. Others danced barefoot in the dirt. A group near the fire argued cheerfully about nothing at all.For a few hours, the world felt simple.Evan Whitlock stood near the edge of it, drink in hand, watching the chaos with an easy grin. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his sleeves rolled up, knuckles still smudged with charcoal from helping at the grill earlier.Beside him, Mara laughed—full-bodied, unrestrained—head thrown back as she leaned into him.“You’re enjoying this far too mu
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Morning light had a way of making the field look harmless.Dew clung to flattened grass. Discarded cups glinted dully where the sun caught them. The bushline stood quiet and ordinary, leaves stirring lazily in the breeze as if nothing had ever screamed there.Scott arrived first, boots crunching softly over gravel.Corvin followed at his shoulder. Lumi hung back a step, eyes already moving, reading the place in a way that had nothing to do with sight. Cleodora walked beside him, expression unreadable.Police tape fluttered at the perimeter.A handful of officers lingered nearby, tired-eyed, coffee in hand. One man stood apart from the rest, posture rigid, gaze fixed on the trees.Scott approached him.“You’re Huxley, right?” he asked.“I am and you are”“We’re the ones taking this case off your hands,” Scott started. “Have a nice day.”Huxley studied him for a moment. Then nodded.He turned and gestured sharply at one of the officers. “Reed. Pack it up.”Reed exhaled, not bothering to
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The bushes rustled.Not loudly.Just enough to make the air feel wrong.Mara’s mouth pressed harder against the man’s, fingers curling into his jacket as she drew him closer, angling his body toward the shadows. Her kiss was insistent, almost frantic, as if she were trying to drown something out.The man stiffened.“Wait,” he muttered against her lips. “Did you feel that?”She didn’t answer. She kissed him again, deeper this time, hands sliding down his chest, guiding him back another step.The ground beneath his heel dipped slightly.Then the air shifted.Cold slid along his spine.He pulled back sharply and turned.Hands burst from the bushes.Too many.Pale and sinewed, fingers elongated, joints bending the wrong way as they lunged for him—A blade flashed.Steel sang once through the night.The hands were severed mid-grab, sliced cleanly from the wrists. They hit the ground with wet thuds, twitching violently as blackened blood hissed where it touched the soil.The thing in the bu