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Confusion washed over her face. She looked down at her hands… the blood, the body, the brutal carnage.

“Vice?” she whispered. “What… what happened?” He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

He just stared—at the red-soaked stone, the lifeless body, the woman standing in the center of it all like a fallen goddess. And then the memory returned. Cold. Final.

“Your soul is mine,” The demon’s voice slithered through his mind, dripping with satisfaction. “But know this—when you dragged her back from the grave, you bound her to me. She carries pieces of us both now… and when she breaks, it won’t be just you who burns.”

A chill passed through him. His lungs squeezed shut. His blood turned to ice. Ivy trembled before him, waiting for him to speak. To say something—anything.

But he couldn’t. Because now he understood. He hadn’t just brought her back.

He had damned her.