The weight did not leave when the presence did.
Hours after the higher being's aura withdrew, the pressure lingered in him like a bruise that refused to fade. It sat in his joints, in the way his spine resisted flexion, in the shallow ache behind his eyes that sharpened whenever he tried to move too quickly.
Aura residue.
Not a thing he could see or touch — just a reminder that his body had been measured, found wanting, and spared only because it hadn't broken cleanly enough to justify erasure.
He moved anyway.
The tunnel sloped downward into a region where heat vents layered over one another, warm currents rising and tangling like invisible roots. Every step required calculation. His left leg — the regrown one, reinforced aggressively after its last loss — held weight well but lagged in speed. The difference was subtle, but in Hell, subtle asymmetry compounded fast.
He tested it with a short burst of movement.
The result was immediate and unpleasant.
The reinforced joints absorbed impact efficiently, but the tendon routing resisted rapid extension. Momentum transferred wrong. His balance shifted half a beat late, claws scraping stone as he overcorrected.
A predator exploiting that delay would kill him.
He stopped and crouched in the shadow of a collapsed pillar, steam hissing softly through cracks in the floor nearby.
Assessment came without emotion.
The leg was built to endure, not to move.
That choice had kept him alive under aura pressure.
It would not keep him alive under pursuit.
He needed speed.
Which meant he needed to lose the leg again.
Not recklessly.
Deliberately.
The decision did not register as sacrifice. Only as revision.
He did not wait long for the opportunity.
Scarcity meant predators moved wider now, less predictable. Noise echoed farther than it used to, bouncing through partially abandoned corridors where scavengers no longer lingered. Movement drew attention faster.
He found a pack before it found him.
Four demons emerged from a side fissure ahead — lean, jointed things with slick hides and too many elbows, built for rapid ambush. They fanned out instinctively, trying to circle.
They smelled wrong.
Not hunger.
Expectation.
Someone had driven them here.
Ledger pressure.
He didn't retreat.
Retreat wasted data.
He stepped forward instead, posture deliberately aggressive, and let his aura leak — not enough to dominate, just enough to announce presence.
The pack hesitated.
Then rushed.
The first lunged high, claws aimed for his face. He twisted aside and let it pass, ice threading into his forearm as he drove an elbow into its ribs. Bone snapped, ice cracking outward in a fan that froze internal tissue before the demon could scream.
He shoved the corpse aside and pivoted to meet the second.
Too slow.
The delay in his leg cost him positioning. A third demon slammed into his side, teeth tearing into his shoulder, heat flooding the wound.
Pain flared.
Cold followed reflexively, sealing the damage but stiffening the joint too much. His arm locked mid-motion.
Unacceptable.
He released control.
The fourth demon struck low, jaws clamping onto his reinforced leg just below the knee. Its bite strength was impressive — muscle built for shearing, tendons thick with heat — but the ice reinforcement held.
For three heartbeats.
On the fourth, the demon detonated heat internally, sacrificing muscle to overwhelm structure.
The leg shattered.
Bone fragmented. Ice splintered outward. The limb tore free at the joint in a spray of frost and dark blood.
He went down hard.
And felt relief.
He rolled with the fall, letting momentum carry him away from the pack as his aura flared sharply — not dominance, just warning. Enough to make them hesitate again.
That hesitation bought time.
He tore the frozen stump clean with one savage motion, snapping residual ice to prevent uncontrolled spread. Blood tried to flow. He sealed it instantly — Cold Seal — locking the damage into a controlled boundary.
The pack recovered quickly.
One leapt.
He caught it by the throat and drove cold inward deliberately, holding it there until the demon stiffened, then twisted its head until the spine gave. The body dropped, frozen mid-spasm.
The remaining two circled warily now.
He did not chase.
He waited.
Aura residue from the earlier encounter leaked out unevenly, distorting their instincts. They paced just outside reach, uncertain whether advancing would trigger another crushing presence.
He seized the opening.
Cold compressed inward, then funneled down his remaining leg. He pushed himself forward in a low, awkward lunge, unbalanced but sudden.
One demon reacted too late.
He crashed into it bodily, driving claws through its chest and pinning it to the stone. Ice surged not to kill, but to hold shape, locking organs in place while it still lived.
He leaned close and bit down on its shoulder, tearing muscle free and swallowing it hot.
The third demon fled.
He did not pursue.
The fight was over.
He dragged himself into a shallow side chamber and collapsed against the wall, chest rising and falling in sharp, controlled breaths.
The stump throbbed.
Good.
Pain meant pathways were open.
He began feeding immediately, tearing muscle from the pinned corpse and consuming it in measured intervals. Heat intake was slow, deliberate. He forced regeneration to wait, compressing cold around the wound to delay growth.
This part mattered.
Regeneration always wanted symmetry.
Ice could override that — but only if applied before patterning resumed.
He visualized the change.
Longer femur.
Tighter tendon lines.
Reduced mass.
Less reinforcement.
More elasticity.
Speed at the cost of durability.
He released control incrementally.
Flesh flowed.
Bone extended, thinner than before, forming under constrained pressure. Ice laced through the lattice lightly — not armor, just guidance. Tendons grew taut, routing tighter than natural anatomy would allow.
Pain spiked as nerves knit wrong, then right, then wrong again.
He held steady.
When regeneration tried to thicken the structure, he denied it, freezing growth points just long enough to force elongation before release.
The process took longer than his usual regrowths.
Hours passed.
By the time the leg finished forming, he was shaking, core strained from sustained compression. Sweat froze on his skin in thin crystalline sheets.
He did not stand immediately.
Standing tested results prematurely.
Instead, he flexed the limb slowly.
Range of motion exceeded the other leg by a noticeable margin.
Stability was lower.
He accepted that.
He rose carefully, weight shifting forward.
The leg responded.
Not smoothly.
But quickly.
He took one step.
Then another.
Then pushed.
Movement surged forward sharper than before, balance precarious but adaptable. He stumbled once, caught himself, adjusted gait.
Speed returned.
Not free.
Earned.
He left the chamber before scavengers arrived.
As he moved deeper, something else changed.
Predators avoided him.
Not fled — avoided.
He noticed it in the way corridors went quiet ahead of him, in the absence of heat signatures where they should have clustered. Lesser demons turned away before seeing him fully, instincts misfiring under aura residue and the wrongness of his movement.
His aura wasn't stronger.
It was unsettling.
Unstable in a way that did not invite testing.
That reaction cost him.
Food became harder to find.
Scarcity tightened further.
The Ledger adjusted again.
He felt it in the environment — tunnels collapsing in his wake, heat vents dimming unpredictably, scavenger routes rerouted to avoid zones he passed through.
Pressure responded to pressure.
Late in the cycle, he sensed another presence watching from afar — not crushing, not dominant, but focused. The attention didn't press directly. It aligned instead, tracking his changes, his routes, his inefficiencies.
Verrik.
He did not see the other demon.
He did not need to.
The pattern was enough.
Two optimizers now operated in overlapping space, each reducing waste in incompatible ways.
That would escalate.
He retreated into a narrow shaft and rested briefly, compressing cold inward to stabilize the new limb. Microfractures formed and sealed repeatedly as the structure adjusted under use.
Acceptable loss.
Necessary data.
He understood something now, deeper than before.
His body was no longer a single design.
It was becoming modular.
Each loss an opportunity.
Each correction a divergence.
That made him harder to classify.
Harder to suppress.
And eventually —
Harder to account for.
He rose again and moved on, faster than before, aura whispering wrongness into the stone beneath his feet.
Scarcity followed him.
Pressure tracked him.
And with every step, his form drifted further from anything Hell expected to survive.
Which meant, sooner or later, Hell would be forced to respond with something stronger than accounting.
When it did, he would be ready to break himself again —
and build something better in the ruin.