Red and green flares painted the Lisbon night sky in thick, sulfurous smoke. Sparks rained down on the sea of ecstatic fans below. Joy was a physical force, vibrating through the cobblestones of the Praça do Comércio.
Thousands of voices roared in unison, singing the victory anthem that had been building in their chests for decades. Grown men wept on each other's shoulders, waving flags that bore the armillary sphere proudly.
Screaming fans hugged strangers, beer splashing over shoulders, tears carving clean lines through the red paint smeared on their cheeks. It was the moment of a lifetime, a historic triumph that would be remembered forever.
Leo stood in the center of the madness, his chest tight, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He couldn't share their joy, despite wearing the same red jersey. An icy dread had settled in his stomach, refusing to melt under the heat of a million flares.
Heavy bass from the giant screens shook his boots, but it couldn't drown out the strange, high-pitched ringing in his ears. It was a frequency only he seemed to hear, sharp enough to make his teeth ache.
"De Lisbonne jusqu'à l'Algarve, un peuple entier qui crie et qui s'enflamme!" a man yelled directly into Leo's face, waving a massive flag that smelled of cheap beer and stale smoke. The man's face was flushed with pure, unfiltered ecstasy.
Smiling weakly, Leo nodded and stepped back, his eyes darting up to the sky once more. The stars were wrong. They weren't twinkling; they were pulsing in a rhythmic, hostile pattern.
Something was shifting in the atmosphere, a pressure so heavy it made his skin itch. He pulled at the collar of his jersey, gasping for air that suddenly felt too thin to breathe.
Beneath the joy, beneath the deafening celebration of Portugal's historic victory, a low frequency hummed in the earth. It felt like a giant beast waking up directly beneath the city's foundations.
It wasn't the music, and it certainly wasn't the crowd. The concrete beneath his boots began to feel soft, almost like kneeling on a living, breathing muscle.
Cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck, freezing him despite the sweltering heat of the packed plaza. He tried to take a step forward, but his feet felt glued to the ground.
"Onze étoiles sur un maillot rouge et vert, ont conquis la terre, ont conquis les mers!" the chant swelled around him, thousands of lungs pushing the air out in a desperate, triumphant roar that shook the very air.
Strangers pulled him into a jumping huddle, their sweaty shoulders pressing against him. He wanted to scream at them to stop, to look up, to realize that the world was slipping away.
Ground beneath their feet suddenly buckled, a sharp tremor sending several people sprawling onto the hard concrete. A few laughs broke out, assuming it was just the wild dancing, but the laughter didn't last long.
Dark purple veins shot through the neon green light of a nearby billboard. The screen flickered, the images of the victorious players distorting into grotesque, melted caricatures.
Leo gasped, pulling himself free from the huddle with a desperate shove. He fell backward, his shoulder slamming into a heavy metal barrier.
"Watch it, kid!" a man laughed, completely oblivious to the purple lightning now crackling across the sky. The man raised his plastic cup to the dark clouds, cheering at the display.
"Portugal! Portugal! Champion du monde!" the crowd bellowed, a wave of pure emotion crashing through the plaza, drowning out the first distant rumble of thunder.
Above them, the stars began to blink out. One by one, the pinpricks of light in the night sky vanished, replaced by an oily, suffocating blackness that seemed to swallow the neon glow of the city.
One massive crack split the sky from east to west, glowing with a sickening violet hue. It looked like a bleeding wound on the fabric of reality.
Nobody else noticed until the sound hit. It wasn't thunder; it was a metallic screech, like giant gears grinding against each other in the heavens.
Everyone stopped singing. The silence that followed was instant and terrifying, a sudden vacuum that sucked the air right out of their lungs.
"Notre fierté n'a plus de seconde, après l'attente, après les années, enfin la coupe nous est donnée!" a single, drunken voice tried to continue the chant, but it died quickly in the freezing wind.
Air turned icy in an instant. Leo’s breath hitched, forming a pale plume of white mist in front of his face as the temperature plunged below freezing.
Leo’s hands shook as he looked down at his palms. Black veins were crawling up his wrists, pulsing in sync with the violet crack in the sky.
Whispers started crawling into his ears, slithering past his defenses. They weren't speaking Portuguese, nor any language he had ever heard, yet he understood the malice behind them.
*Run,* a voice hissed inside his skull, sharp and commanding.
Crimson light erupted from the center of the plaza, but it wasn't a flare. A pillar of dark fire shot upward, vaporizing the giant screens and the steel scaffolding in a fraction of a second.
Cracks tore through the asphalt, glowing with a sickening, violet energy that swallowed the screaming fans closest to the center. The ground was opening up like a hungry mouth.
Screams of joy morphed into shrieks of terror. The massive crowd turned into a stampede, people trampling over each other in a desperate bid to escape the expanding void.
People fell by the dozens, their screams cut short as they slipped into the glowing violet fissures. Leo tried to run, but the gravity of the rift was pulling him backward.
Gravity seemed to tilt completely, making the flat plaza feel like a steep cliff. He scrambled on hands and knees, his fingers scraping against the cold, breaking stone.
"Chaque tacle, chaque passe, chaque sueur, a construit cette immense ferveur!" a dying radio speaker blared from a collapsed food stall, the audio slowing down into a demonic groan.
Black claws, thick as tree trunks and covered in jagged scales, reached out from the void, grasping the edges of the cracked earth.
Leo scrambled backward, his fingernails tearing against the rough stone as he tried to find purchase. His grip slipped, his boots sliding over the edge of the abyss.
Huge, shadowy figures rose from the darkness, their eyes glowing like dying embers in the purple fog. They weren't beasts; they were executioners.
"Du gardien jusqu'à l'attaquant, une nation derrière son onze tenant..." the song groaned one last time before a massive explosion of dark energy shattered the speaker into dust.
Total darkness swallowed Lisbon, and Leo fell into the void.
---
Silence followed the blast, heavy and absolute. There was no wind, no screams, no sound of his own breathing.
Leo opened his eyes to find himself floating in a gray, endless expanse. The world of stone and celebration was gone, replaced by a graveyard of floating ruins and dead stars.
Ash drifted through the air like snow, landing softly on his torn red jersey. He tried to move, but his body felt weightless, suspended in a thick, gelatinous vacuum.
"Where... where am I?" he muttered, his voice swallowed instantly by the void. No echo returned to him.
Pain bloomed in his chest, a white-hot spike driving straight through his sternum. He gasped, his back arching as a burning sensation spread through his ribs.
He screamed, clutching his shirt as a brand burned itself into his flesh. It felt like liquid metal was being poured directly into his veins.
Dark purple light leaked through his fingers, smelling of ozone and burnt copper. The pain was absolute, stripping away his thoughts until only raw survival remained.
*Deamon,* a heavy, gravelly voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating through his very bones.
"Who's there?" Leo gasped, collapsing onto his knees as a solid floor of obsidian suddenly materialized beneath him.
Shadows coiled around his limbs, sinking into his pores like liquid ink. They weren't hurting him; they were filling him, replacing his blood with something infinitely older and darker.
"Disais-tu que tu voulais vivre ?" the voice mocked, its accent strange, shifting between an ancient tongue and a modern whisper. "Do you truly possess the will to survive the transition?"
Leo gritted his teeth, his jaw aching from the sheer force of his clenching muscles. He looked up, staring into the dark gray expanse.
"I don't plan on dying here," he spat, blood dripping from his lip onto the black glass floor. "I don't care what I have to become."
Power surged through his veins, hot and volatile. It was a violent, destructive force that demanded to be let out.
It felt like drinking liquid fire, a brutal heat that threatened to melt his bones from the inside out. Yet, he welcomed it, wrapping his soul around the burning core.
Crimson markings crawled up his neck, mapping out ancient glyphs of power that glowed with a dangerous intensity.
*Accept the contract,* the voice demanded, the pressure in the air rising until his ears began to bleed. *Become the flame that consumes the night.*
"If it gives me the strength to tear down whatever did this to my home," Leo snarled, his eyes flashing a dangerous, demonic red.
"Then I accept!" he roared, slamming his fist into the obsidian floor.
Darkness exploded outward from his body, shattering the floor into a million fragments and sending him plunging down once more.
---
Falling felt like an eternity, but this time, he wasn't afraid. The wind didn't freeze him; it carried him.
Wind whipped against his face, tearing at his clothes as he plummeted through a sky painted in shades of bruised purple and toxic green.
Below him stretched a ruined world—a twisted mirror of earth, with jagged obsidian towers and rivers of glowing magma winding through ruined streets.
"Le nouveau monde," Leo whispered, the name fitting the nightmare layout perfectly. This was the place where humanity's remnants were meant to die.
Gravity grabbed him with brutal force, pulling him down toward a ruined cathedral that stood like a broken tooth against the horizon.
He braced for impact, rolling as he hit the stone roof, crashing through the rotting timbers to land in a heap of dust and ancient bones.
Groaning, he pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest. The pain was different now; it was a dull ache, quickly suppressed by the dark energy humming in his blood.
His right arm felt heavy, pulsing with an unnatural heat. He raised it, trying to flex his fingers.
Looking down, he gasped. His skin had turned charcoal black, covered in hardened scales that ended in razor-sharp talons. It was the arm of a monster.
A low growl echoed from the shadows of the broken cathedral, drawing his attention away from his transformation.
Three pairs of glowing yellow eyes locked onto him from the darkness behind the shattered altar.
"Welcome to the feeding grounds," a voice hissed from the dark, but it was primal, beastly, devoid of the ancient voice's majesty.
This monster was hungry. It didn't care about contracts or destiny; it only saw meat.
This realization made Leo smile, a predatory grin that felt entirely unnatural on his face. The fear that had defined his life was gone, burned away by the inferno in his chest.
Leo slowly raised his demonic right hand, feeling the hellfire bubbling just beneath the scales. "You picked the wrong night to hunt."
A massive, wolf-like beast leaped from the shadows, its maw dripping with acidic saliva that hissed as it hit the stone floor.
Time seemed to slow as Leo lunged forward, his black claws cutting through the air with a deadly whistle. He didn't think; his body moved on pure instinct.
Bone met claw, and a sickening crunch echoed through the ruins. The beast's skull shattered under the weight of his strike.
Beast whimpered once, its body collapsing into a heap of dissolving black ash, but two more lunged immediately from the flanks.
Leo ducked, feeling the wind of their claws brushing past his cheek. He spun on his heel, sweeping his leg to knock one off balance.
"More," he muttered, a savage joy taking hold of him. He liked this feeling of absolute power.
His heart beat to the rhythm of that old stadium chant, pumping adrenaline and raw, demonic power through his system. The rhythm of his home was still with him.
"Portugal! Portugal!" he muttered under his breath, a manic laugh escaping his lips as he ducked another swipe.
Fear was gone, completely replaced by the burning desire to destroy anything that stood in his way.
He spun, his demonic hand grabbing the second beast by its throat, slamming it into the stone floor with enough force to shatter the tiles.
Lava leaked from the cracks in the floor, reacting to his presence. The very earth of this new world seemed to respond to his rage.
*You are a Deamon now,* the inner voice reminded him, laughing. *Act like one.*
Leo squeezed, and the beast's neck snapped with a wet pop. Its body dissolved into ash, leaving only a dark residue on his claws.
Third beast hesitated, its yellow eyes widening in primal terror as it looked at the human-turned-monster. It began to back away, tail tucked between its legs.
"My turn," Leo said, his voice echoing with a dual layer of human grit and monstrous resonance.
Before he could strike, a massive shadow loomed over the entire cathedral, blocking out the purple sky.
Roof tiles shattered as a giant, armored hand ripped the ceiling away like wet paper, exposing the ruins to the toxic air.
A colossal entity, easily fifty feet tall, peered down at him with a single, burning eye that glowed like a miniature sun.
Its crown of black horns scraped the bruised sky, and its armor was forged from the same obsidian that formed the mountains.
"A newborn Deamon," the giant rumbled, its voice shaking the very foundations of the ruined world and making the remaining beast shrivel in fear.
Leo stared up at the mountain of muscle and dark armor, his demonic hand twitching with anticipation. The sheer scale of the enemy should have terrified him, but it only made his blood boil.
"You must be the boss here," he yelled up, refusing to back down even an inch.
Giant fingers reached down, aiming to crush him into dust against the stone floor.
Leo crouched, black flames erupting from his boots as he prepared to leap straight into the monster's giant palm.
"Let's see if you can handle the heat!" he roared, launching himself upward into the titan's grasp.