The name is Pain, I am a demon, but don't be quick to judge. You humans attach beliefs to someone the instant your eyes fall upon them simply because of what you think you know. I am a demon, yes, but I am not cruel. You, human, are the cruel and wretched one for assuming I am.
I am not cruel. I create monsters, but unlike other demons you may know of, I give my monsters what they want, what they think they need to be happy.
I am not cruel, and I will prove it by offering you this: whatever you desire.
Understand, of course, that you have to learn somehow. I'll give you what you want, but just as you live every day to get older, there has to be some kind of cost. -- What is the cost? Depends... what do you desire? Make the deal with me and then judge if I am cruel or not...
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A collection of short stories.
All he wanted was to disappear. What he found wouldn't let him go.
Humanity clings to survival in fortified cities, learning to live beside the horrors that slipped in from another plane. Monsters now walk freely among the ruins of the old civilisation.
For a runaway boy scraping by on the streets, danger is nothing new. Hunted by violent men and ignored by a society too busy surviving, he's learned to trust no one. But when he crosses paths with a strange, otherworldly being - one unlike any he's seen before - his life takes a turn for the surreal.
The creature is powerful, unpredictable, and completely alien in thought. It breaks boundaries as easily as bodies, and the boy wants nothing more than to be rid of it. But fate - or an unbreakable, incomprehensible will - keeps pulling them together.
As tension builds and an uneasy bond begins to form, a far greater danger looms. And it's not from the monsters outside the walls.
The story in full, including the explicit excerpts:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5WL39BL (chapters 1 R - 12 BC)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYT3Q7H7 (chapters 13 R - 25 R)
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