>>3936100The stone walls of the cell were cold, the air heavy with the damp scent of decay. Time had worn away the beauty of the once-proud fortress, leaving only broken bricks and cracked mortar. In the far corner, flickering torchlight barely illuminated the figure of the wizard—gaunt, shackled, and defeated. His eyes were sunken, yet there was a glimmer of something in them: curiosity, desperation, the faintest flicker of a man who had not yet completely surrendered.
His name was Elric, and he had once been powerful. Once, his soul had been his own.
Now, it was bound to something far older than him. Far older than any mortal or immortal being could comprehend.
The shadow at the corner of his cell shifted, a pulse of cold air sweeping through the small space. The daemon was here. The bond was never far away. The creature who shared his soul, who fed on his life force and yet kept him alive, materialized in the dim light. A shape both solid and shifting, a wolf-like figure with eyes that gleamed with ancient wisdom and untamed hunger.
The daemon’s presence was not a simple thing—it was a force. A primal, chaotic power that existed beyond the rules of this world, a power that had once been a wraith, but now, through the bond, walked beside him as flesh and blood.
“Do you feel it, wizard?” the daemon’s voice rumbled, both soft and dissonant, as it slithered into the air. “The power, the magic—your power—and mine.”
Elric didn’t respond. He knew all too well the cost of that power, the price he had paid to survive. The bond could never be undone. Not without the price of his soul.
And yet, as the daemon stepped closer, his glowing eyes fixated on Elric, the weight of the ancient pact hanging between them, Elric felt something stir within him. Hope? Or was it despair?
In the end, it didn’t matter.
The daemon was always there, a constant reminder of what he had become.
