Page 124 of Lustling

Deimos doesn’t answer. The silence is its own confession.

Bastion leans in, voice low, relentless. “You’re still on good terms, aren’t you?”

Deimos’s jaw ticks. “We don’t exactly drop in on each other for favors.”

“But if there was ever a time to ask,” Bastion presses, “this would be it.”

The silence stretches long and taut, the kind that aches in the ribs. It feels like standing beneath storm clouds, waiting for the lightning to finally break.

I study Deimos’s posture, the hesitation buried in it. He wears his secrets like armor, layered deep enough that even Bastion’s brute persistence can’t crack them. But there’s something there—something he carries alone. Something that weighs him down more than chains ever could.

“He trusts you,” I say quietly. “Or at least, he trusts only you.”

Deimos’s voice drops to a growl edged with guilt. “I promised I’d keep his location hidden. From everyone.”

Bastion lifts a shoulder, shrugging the way a warrior shrugs off blood. “It’s an emergency.”

Deimos scrubs a hand down his face, exhaling through his nose. The sound is heavy—like someone standing at the edge of a cliff knowing they have no choice but to jump. Out of time. Out of options.

Finally, he nods.

“He’s in the mortal world,” he mutters. “Brooklyn. Owns a bar. Keeps his power dampened most of the time, but it leaks through if you know what to look for.”

“And if we’re asking him to help,” I say slowly, “we’re asking him to cross a line he’s drawn for centuries.”

“Exactly,” Deimos says. “Which is why this better work.”

“It will,” Bastion says grimly. “Because if it doesn’t… we lose her.”

The words hang in the air like ash suspended in smoke. Heavy. Inevitable.

It’s etched into each of us now. Into our ribs. Into our pulse. Into the broken pieces we’re barely holding together after weeks of war and waiting and despair.

Deimos doesn’t waste another second. He reaches for the nearest blade—not to strike, but to carve into the air itself. The metal flares once, cutting open a vertical seam that splits the room. The tear glows faintly gold, as if his magic still tries, futilely, to hide itself.

“You’re sure?” he asks, his voice quiet but lined with steel. He stares into the flickering portal, where the muffled sounds of another world leak through—clinking glasses, the groan of traffic, faint music with a pulse of its own.

“No,” I admit. “But we’re doing it anyway.”

Bastion grins, savage and reckless. “That’s the spirit.”

Together, the three of us step through.

And emerge into a very different kind of Hell.

The air here is thick with cigarette smoke and grease. Neon flickers against brick. Horns blare in the distance. The city hums like a restless beast, too alive to sleep, too hungry to rest.

The bar in front of us is unassuming, almost forgettable. A squat brick building tucked between a pawn shop and a psychic who has no idea real magic bleeds through the cracks of the sidewalk at her feet.

The name painted across the door reads:Hellbound Hollow.

Figures.

Deimos exhales. “Don’t speak unless he speaks to you.”

“Copy that,” Bastion mutters, already sizing up the bouncer by the door.

I glance at the building again. Shadows lean beneath the sign in ways that don’t feel natural. They don’t drift—they listen. Watch. Guard. This isn’t just a hideaway. It’s a sanctuary. A fortress wrapped in neon and denial.