Chapter 5: A Demon’s True Name

Koda stayed on the ledge and watched the armored beast work.

It tore through the grove below like the trees weren’t even there, splintering trunks with each swing of its head, crushing stone under paws the size of boulders. The sound alone was enough to tell him everything he needed to know. He wasn’t ready to battle a beast of that size, not even close.

He guessed its size put it several tiers above anything he’d killed so far. Maybe it was stronger than the winged demon and the pack leader that had chased him during his first hour in this wasteland, maybe even worse.

Fighting something like that head-on would get him killed in seconds, essence or no essence.

’I need to grow stronger first,’ he thought. ’Then I’ll come back for something like that.’

For now, there were easier meals. The beast had left a trail of destruction behind it; broken trees, torn ground, and probably a few smaller creatures caught in the crossfire. Scavenging its leftovers was safer than picking a fight he couldn’t win.

He climbed down from the ledge and followed the wreckage.

He found a carcass an hour later, half-buried under a collapsed tree trunk. Some smaller beast, crushed flat, already picked over.

But something else had gotten there first.

A creature crouched over the body, ripping strips of meat free with sharp, clawed hands. It stood upright on two legs, taller than the scavenger pack that had chased him days ago, with mottled red skin and a face too sharp and too aware to belong to a mindless beast.

This was an Imp.

It noticed him immediately. Its head snapped up, black eyes narrowing, lips pulling back from a row of thin, needle-like teeth.

Koda froze.

This wasn’t a beetle-thing digging through gravel, or a half-dead rat he could pick apart at his leisure. This was the strongest beast he’d faced since waking up in Hell. It was probably at the same level as the pack leader that had chased him down on his first day, worse the winged demon that had injured his shoulder.

The Imp didn’t wait for him to decide anything as it lunged immediately. It was probably trying to utilise the attack-first advantage to stun him.

Koda barely got his arm up in time to block the first swipe. Claws raked across his forearm, drawing blood, and the force of the blow staggered him a few steps backward into the rock behind him.

The Imp came again, fast and low, aiming for his throat this time. Koda twisted sideways on instinct, felt claws graze past his neck instead of into it, and drove his own hand forward in a desperate counter.

But nothing happened. His claws weren’t long enough to reach.

The Imp’s fist caught him across the jaw, and pain exploded through his skull as he hit the ground. He rolled immediately, came up in a crouch, blood running from a split lip.

’It’s stronger and faster than me. I can’t win this by matching it head-on.’

He needed something else.

He swung his tail instead, the sharp arrow-tipped end whipping around low, and caught the Imp across the ankle. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was enough to throw off its balance for half a second.

Half a second was enough.

Koda lunged in close, inside the reach of those claws, and clenched his fists as hard as he could.

Something happened in his hands that he didn’t expect.

Bone tore through his knuckles with a wet, cracking sound; three blades bursting free from each fist, black and slick, curved like claws but 12 inches longer and sharper, clearly built for exactly this. He didn’t have time to process what had just happened to his own body. He drove both fists forward on instinct.

The talons sank deep into the Imp’s chest.

The Imp screamed, high and furious, and clawed at him even as the wound spread dark blood down its front. Koda ripped his fists back and struck again, this time aiming for the throat.

The second strike ended it. The Imp collapsed, twitching once before going still.

Koda stood over the body, chest heaving, blood; his own and the Imp’s, dripping from his new talons onto the ground. His arm throbbed where the first swipe had caught him and his jaw ached where the fist had connected. He’d nearly lost that fight, and some detached part of his mind understood exactly how close nearly had actually been.

He looked down at his hands.

Three curved black bone blades protruded from each fist, still slick with blood, retracting slowly back beneath his skin as his hands relaxed. He flexed his fingers experimentally, and the talons slid free again, then back in, responding to the tension in his fists like they’d always been there, just waiting for a reason to come out.

’I didn’t know I could do that.’

He didn’t have long to marvel at the discovery. The familiar pull of the Devouring Origin was already stirring in his chest, sharper and more insistent than it had ever been with the smaller kills.

Koda knelt beside the Imp’s body and reached for the essence the way he’d practiced all day. The vacuum sensation sparked instantly, far stronger than it had with the rock snake or the crawler or even the demon rat.

A thick stream of black mist rose from the corpse, far denser than anything he’d absorbed before, and poured into his open palm.

It hit him like a wave.

Warmth flooded through his entire body at once, not the gentle trickle he’d gotten used to, but something closer to a flood breaking a dam. His muscles tightened, then relaxed. The scrapes on his ribs and shoulder pulled shut faster than before.

The ember behind his ribs, the one he’d been quietly feeding all day, roared up into something closer to a small fire.

’This is vastly different... So much more than the others.’

He understood why almost immediately. The Imp had been intelligent, aware, stronger, and more developed than the beasts he’d been picking off all afternoon, and the essence it left behind reflected that difference directly.

Quality mattered, just like he’d already learned, but this told him something new: intelligent, higher-tier prey mattered even more than he’d realized.

Then something stirred deep inside him, and a word surfaced in his mind, unbidden, carrying a Primordial and Ancient aura that felt older than anything he’d experienced since waking in this place.

Koda...

It wasn’t a full name. Just a fragment, a single syllable hanging in his awareness like the opening note of a song he hadn’t heard the rest of.

But he recognized it immediately as his own.

Though it looked and sounded similar to his own, it was something Hell itself seemed to be writing into him one piece at a time.

’A name. My name. But it’s not finished.’

He didn’t fully understand what it meant, only that it felt significant in a way he couldn’t easily dismiss; like a record being opened somewhere, a line being written down that hadn’t existed before.

Koda sat with the sensation for a long moment, turning it over, trying to make sense of a system that seemed to be built into the very fabric of this realm rather than something anyone had designed on purpose.

’Hell obviously has rules. This isn’t just something chaotic or out of order. It’s a system, and I’m pretty sure that I’m somewhere near the bottom of it.’

’Quality essence. Intelligent prey. That’s the pattern. If I keep this up, I’ll get stronger quickly. And if I keep this up long enough...’

The thought didn’t get to finish as the air in front of him suddenly tore open.

A ring of pale, geometric light split the space a few feet from where he knelt, humming with a low vibration he felt more than heard, lines and angles folding into a shape too precise to be anything natural.

It hung there, glowing, expanding at the edges like something on the other side was actively forcing it wider.

Koda scrambled backward, blood-slicked talons sliding free from his fists on reflex, every instinct he’d built in the last few days was screaming that whatever came through that ring was not going to be friendly.

The light pulsed once, twice, and the air around it began to crack.