Burn

CHAPTER 5

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions blood
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He couldn't breathe. It was as though all the air had been sucked from the room.

Distantly, Carter was aware that couldn't be true; if the oxygen had truly disappeared, he and Margo would be dead.

But his lungs were aching, and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, and he could scarcely think, let alone breathe.

"Carter?"

He stood slowly, with great effort, at Margo's whisper, and met her wide, terrified gaze with his own shocked expression.

"What do we do?"

Carter merely shook his head, mouth gaping stupidly. His throat felt raw and dry, as though he'd been screaming for hours, though as far as he knew, he had barely uttered a word.

He couldn't think, and he couldn't breathe, and although the room was silent, it was so overwhelming, so chaotic and frantic, and he just-couldn't-think-

"Carter."

Ryu's voice was like a life raft in the middle of a treacherous sea, and Carter grasped onto it, clinging desperately as he struggled to remain rooted in reality.

"Carter, look at me."

It was a struggle, like wading through the murky waters of a swampy bog, but as his eyes dragged to Ryu's own bright, piercing pair, he felt a strange wave of calm wash over him, dissolving his initial despair.

"Ryu." It was a breathless whisper. A plea.

The demon looked conflicted. A million indecipherable emotions flitted across his face, ranging from fear to joy, and his eyes seemed to brighten even further, if that were possible.

Finally, he nodded. It was barely anything, just a slight incline of his head, but it sent dizzying coils of relief sweeping through Carter.

For a moment, a terrible tension hung through the air, thick and suffocating. Carter and Margo tensed, both struggling to remain lucid as the dark entity pulled at them, fighting for the remnants of their consciousness.

And then, with such otherworldly speed it almost made Carter sick to witness, Ryu lunged.

It should've been absurd, to witness a demon attack another demon (a non-corporeal one, at that) and yet somehow, the entire situation made an awful, terrible kind of sense, as though everything had accumulated into this one moment, this singular point in time. There was an eery silence to the way Ryu moved, a preternatural stillness that raised the hair on Carter's arms.

The second demon seemed to absorb Ryu as they collided, its inky presence consuming his figure until nothing but that same obsidian mist remained, hovering eerily. The pressure in the room appeared to build and build, drawing Carter and Margo as taut as puppets on a string; it was as though time had suspended, the world frozen in its eternal rotation.

And then, just when Carter felt as though he'd burst if he had to endure another moment of it, as though his heart would give at any moment, the pressure...stopped.

Carter and Margo slumped to the ground, shivering as their bodies registered the sudden shock of the situation, and exchanged wide-eyed stares of horror. Carter scrabbled numbly against the smooth hardwood floor with shaking hands, his stomach hollow and aching.

What...

He was so shaken he could barely form a coherent thought.

What was that?