The demon's head appeared over the edge of the rooftop.
Its yellow eyes found me. That mouth full of jagged teeth opened in a triumphant smile, anticipating the feast about to begin. Its claws sank into the cement as it propelled its body upward, preparing to pounce on me and...
I didn't think.
There was no strategy. No plan. Just instinct.
I jumped.
Straight toward it.
The demon didn't expect it. Its eyes flew wide open, surprise freezing its expression for a fraction of a second. Its predator brain couldn't process that the prey, the weak and frightened human who had been running like a rat, was suddenly lunging at it.
That fraction of a second was enough.
As I fell toward him, as the wind whistled around me and the void opened beneath my feet, I felt the connection with the shadows stronger than ever. The sword in my hand trembled, vibrated, and then changed. The dark metal lengthened, stretched, thinned into a lethal point. The hilt remained the same, but the blade... the blade was now a spear. A long, deadly spear of solid shadow.
The demon tried to react. Its claws rose to defend itself, to deflect the blow, to tear me apart mid-air.
Too late.
The spear buried itself in its head.
The tip pierced the skull with an ease that horrified me. Like butter. As if that eight-foot beast, with its scaly skin and steel muscles, was nothing more than a paper doll. I felt resistance for an instant, and then nothing.
The demon fell.
Its massive body plummeted backward, losing its grip on the rooftop edge, and crashed to the ground several meters below with a dull, wet thud that echoed throughout the street. The shadow spear dissolved on impact, but I no longer needed it.
I stood at the rooftop edge, gasping, looking down.
The demon lay on the ground, writhing. Its body shook with uncontrollable spasms, its claws scratched feebly at the cement, its yellow eyes opened and closed without seeing anything. The head... the head had a clean, perfect hole, straight through.
A few more seconds. A few seconds of agony.
And then, silence.
I had killed it.
Me, a normal human, a coward who had run like a scared dog, had killed a demon.
A strange feeling grew in my chest. Pride? Relief? Disbelief?
It didn't last long.
Because then, the shadows moved.
Not mine. The demon's shadows. That dark silhouette cast by its body under the dim light of the nearby streetlamp began to twist, to seethe, to come alive. And from it emerged something that froze the blood in my veins.
Mouths.
Large mouths with sharp teeth, too many teeth, teeth that gleamed with ancient hunger. They rose from the darkness like snakes from water, surrounding the demon's corpse, sniffing it, tasting it.
"What... what the fuck...?" I managed to stammer.
The mouths attacked.
They lunged at the lifeless body and began to devour it. Not with the violence of a predator, but with the efficiency of a natural process. The teeth tore through the scaly flesh, crushed the bones, absorbed the blood. But there was no blood. No tearing. The flesh simply... disappeared, swallowed by those jaws of darkness.
I wanted to look away. I wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
I couldn't.
I saw everything.
I saw how the mouths consumed every part of the demon, from its claws to its eyes, from its spine to that horrible hole in its head that I had made. I saw how the darkness enveloped it, digested it, absorbed it. And when it finished, when nothing remained of the demon except a faint residue on the cement, the mouths retreated, merged, and slid back into the original shadow.
My shadow.
The one cast by my own body from the rooftop.
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "No, no, no, no..."
I looked down at my feet. My shadow was normal. Perfectly normal. It moved with me, stretched with the light, showed no trace of what had just happened.
But I had seen it.
I had seen everything.
My legs gave out. I fell onto my back against the cold cement of the rooftop, arms spread, gaze lost in the night sky. My chest rose and fell with ragged breaths, my heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst.
And then, it began to rain.
First came scattered drops, timid, striking my face like small warnings. Then it became a torrent, a deluge, a blanket of cold water that soaked my clothes, my hair, my skin. But I didn't move. I couldn't.
I just watched the rain fall.
"Bless this stupid transmigration," I muttered, and my voice was lost in the patter of water against the cement.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. Time lost meaning under that curtain of water, with the weight of what had just happened crushing me against the ground.
Little by little, the rain subsided. It became a drizzle, then just scattered drops falling lazily from a sky that was beginning to clear. The cold had settled into my bones, soaked through to the core, but I no longer cared.
I sighed.
A long, deep sigh, dragging all the fear and tension of the night.
"I guess this is my life now," I said aloud, testing the words. "Survive, kill monsters, and watch my shadow eat them."
It sounded ridiculous. It sounded absurd. It sounded exactly like the plot of one of those light novels I used to read in my previous life.
But it was my reality now.
I slowly sat up, sitting in the puddle that had formed around me. Water dripped from my clothes in small streams, creating ripples on the surface. I looked around: the empty rooftop, the deserted street below, the silent buildings silhouetted against a sky that was beginning to lighten on the horizon.
There was no trace of the demon. As if it had never existed.
But I knew it had. I knew I had killed it. And I knew my power had consumed it.
"Devouring Shadow," I murmured, coining the name. "My power is a devouring shadow."
It didn't sound so bad. Not when I said it out loud. Not when I accepted it as part of me.
With one more sigh, I finally stood up. My body ached, my head spun, and every muscle protested from the night's exertion. But I was alive. That was what mattered.
I was going to get down from the rooftop, find a dry place to spend the rest of the night, and then...
Then I'd figure it out.
But at that moment, as I was about to turn toward the fire escape, something caught my attention.
My hands.
They were different. In fact, now that all the adrenaline and desperate survival instinct had disappeared, I noticed a strange detail.
Although this was my body, it was different. My skin definitely wasn't light before, it was tanned skin, and it wasn't so smooth.
Even my hair was longer, falling down past my face.
I frowned. I needed to see my reflection. Fortunately or unfortunately, it began to rain again at that very moment, and afterward, a puddle formed where I could see my reflection.
Although it was my face, it was slightly different. More cared for and handsome, not so ugly. Fair skin, blue eyes instead of brown, and somewhat disheveled black hair falling down, wet from the rain. From his age, I could tell he was my same age—seventeen.
"What the hell is happening? And why am I me but not me?"