Though Jessamine couldn't see herself in a mirror to confirm it, she knew her face was covered in gashes. She sensed their stinging across her skin, and remembered how often she'd had to dodge swipes from monstrous beasts who'd lunged at her to stop her from locking them up.

The demons were, for the most part, supposed to protect her and Landon. But with such an outburst of otherworldly beings, with so many creatures to restrain, immobilize, and shove through gates, it was hard for them to be everywhere at once. Thankfully, the demons inside Jessamine reacted fast enough to avoid any dangerous damage. She had slashed arms and bruises on her legs and a few cuts on her fingers and neck, but she was otherwise unharmed.

But the pain from all her injuries was immense. Similarly to earlier, when she'd gotten too close to the exit door, she felt as though barbed wires wove around her arms, digging their spikes into the flesh of her thighs, calves, even into her feet. As if they'd sliced into her while she fought off portal monsters, aggravating her already irritated skin.

There were no barbed wires; the proximity with portals and so many foreign creatures was causing her hallucinations. It took her some time to understand that, and soon enough she stopped imagining the wires, the spikes. Because the invaders had given her the wounds she now blew on, begging them to stop bleeding. Blood attracted certain of the escaped monsters, or so the demons within had warned. So she hurried to wipe off the flow of the copper-smelling liquid before its stench filled the air.

They were almost done. A handful of gates remained, and Landon and Jessamine were headed towards them, weeding through the crowd of zombified not-quite-humans who'd been drawn over by a cluster of demons hurling insults at them.

Jessamine was woozy. She couldn't tell if it was because of her ongoing injuries, her continued panic, the threat of more hallucinations, or if the beings inside her were the ones making her nauseous. She leaned towards the latter idea, persuaded that the demons were working so hard against their instincts—to fully possess her, to turn her evil—that it hurt them, which hurt her.

"Indeed," said one demon, reading her thoughts as she and Landon floated on towards a gleaming, metallic gate awaiting closure. "Our battle takes a toll on your body, and believe it or not, we're sorry for it."

As they lowered themselves on either end of the gate, Landon squinted at her. "This place is going to collapse," he said, gesturing at the chaotic crimson sky, the worsening lightning, the horde of skeletal fiends racing up to the demons blocking the portal. "You need to get out. I bet I could finish this on my own."

Jessamine panted, catching her breath. Flying, in itself, wasn't exhausting, since the demons controlled most of it. Yet her lungs squeezed in her chest and she struggled to take in sufficient oxygen. Had the air in the realm grown hostile to her? Or had she been hurt internally by one of the monsters, and not realized it? Or were the invaders capable of changing the atmosphere and making it harder to breathe?

"I can't," she said, also motioning at the oncoming attack, cringing. "We're not done here. You can't handle all that alone."

"But I probably could. We got through the most challenging of them, I'd say." Landon scrunched his nose, slightly tilting his head; he was talking to the demons in him, though he was glancing at Jessamine. "Because you," his gaze shifted from Jessamine's face to her still bleeding arm, "aren't looking so good."

She flinched, holding in a hiss as a burning sensation reached from her wrist to the crook of her elbow. She spotted the wound there, and it was deeper than she'd thought. The worst of the bleeding had passed, but blood still seeped out of her and trickled down through her fingers. The stickiness made her want to gag.

"We can't heal that one," said another demon, its voice pinched. "For some reason, the blows your body takes are having a harsher effect than before. Those creatures affect you more than anyone else down here."

"I'll be fine," she said, gritting her teeth, pretending like that visible wound was the only one bothering her. In truth, she had scathing pain under her pants, and her head ached something fierce from all the screeches, the booming thunder, and the flashes of lightning.

"You won't," one demon spoke, as Landon said the same thing, out loud. "With us going against our impulse to control you, it's messed with our powers, with our regular state of being. Which messes with yours. This was meant to be temporary, but... it's taking longer than we'd hoped. There are more beings than we'd prepared for. We can't promise to keep you safe much longer."

Jessamine frowned, and Landon raised his eyebrows at her. "So? What are they saying?"

"They're not designed to be inside me and not go about their goals," she said, using her sleeve to wipe the sweat from her brow. "That we should have been done by now, so my body's having a poor reaction to them..."

"They need to get out." Landon swerved to the side as a demon was shoved backwards by a monster's blow. As the demon whooshed forward again, Landon hurried over to Jessamine, grabbing her hands. "You're not meant to be here, doing this, and I'm sorry I pushed you into it. They need to get out, and you need to get out of here."

You all pushed me into it.

She knew Avery would have told her not to do it. He'd have been the voice of reason, but when she'd begged for him to come to her at the door, to tell her to find another way, he hadn't responded. Whatever was happening in the human world must have been too threatening for him to risk speaking to her again. That, or he was—

She huffed, refusing to let her mind go to such dark places. "I... yeah, I can't keep doing this." She pressed a hand to her heart, startled at its rapid beating, pushing through her chest. "But what else can I do? There's no way out, Landon."

"You need us in here a few moments more, to keep working on healing you. Look," the demon made her raise her arm and notice how the bleeding had stopped, "you're almost at half strength, which is all you'd need to make a break for it."

She refrained from smiling, knowing the demons wanted to help her get out of their realm. They'd broken her soul, ruined her body, and yet after she'd fucked up all their plans, they still planned to repay her for saving their realm. They were setting her free.

"I still don't think I can leave, but I need a few more minutes," she said to Landon, waving at him to return to his spot at the other end of the gate. "I'll be more alert and steer clear of fighting, but I won't run off on you yet. Gotta help you close this one."

A heavy energy settled behind her, weighing on her spine. Before she had a chance to whip around and lift her fists, a soft, silky, dark voice slithered out of nowhere, wrapping around her as if it were a blanket.

"Perhaps there's another way."

She twisted—more like the demons twisted her—and came face-to-face with the grim-reaper looking being she'd noticed before they'd entered the battle-zone. It had no face, like she'd thought; a dark hole resided under its hood, filled with smoke that swirled and swirled, hypnotic.

"Huh?" She backed away and bumped into Landon, who'd stayed where he was instead of returning to his post.

"What the fuck do you want?" He pointed a finger at the creepy creature. "Get back in your portal, or else—"

"—or else, what?" The reaper—Jessamine didn't know what else to call it—chortled, its laugh smoky, distorted, disjointed. It was a spectral being, not quite transparent, but not full-figured either. Its cloak dangled over the ground, no shoes protruding; it was levitating. "You can do nothing to me, human. And in any case, I'm here to speak with the demons."

The demons inside Jessamine grew agitated. She ignored them, and signaled at a group of red blobbed beings nearby. "There are some over there, if you want to chit-chat. Otherwise," she sent a thumb towards the gate, "it's that way, for you."

"No," the reaper got closer to her, its breath blowing onto her cheeks, "your demons, my sweet. The ones inside you." Jessamine expected to cough, to choke on its odor; and yet, the breath she'd been prepared to sneer at smelled like nothing. Just a whiff of cool air on her skin. "I presume they hear me now; let them know I could stay here, if they permit it. I could stay... and help them fulfill their goals."

Jessamine had no opportunity to protest before the demons shoved her consciousness to the back of her skull. They controlled her completely, taking over her limbs, her movements, her brain-waves. "Oh, yeah?"

"Hey!" Jessamine would have overheated, livid as she was at their treason, but squashed up inside her mind, she had no energy, no power. Her voice was a mouse squeak to them. "Damn you, you idiots! Don't listen to that thing! It's a trap! None of those monsters are going to help you!"

Demon-Jessamine had returned; her muscles bulged with strength, her eyes were on fire, and her tongue demanded a drink. "How could you help?" She took a step near the reaper-being, narrowing her gaze, her upper lip curling. "What are you, hm?"

Despite its lack of an expression, Jessamine could tell the black-hooded monster was smiling. "A creature more ancient than you, than all those invaders, than this entire planet. All dimensions combined. A creature with more knowledge than any other, including those stuck-up Guides in the human world."

"How do we know you're not some phony?" Landon half-hid behind demon-Jessamine, and she felt his fear through the tremble in his words.

"You want proof, of course." The reaper's gender-neutral timbre was so sinister, so laced with malice and cruelty that Jessamine curled up inside her own brain, wary the demons controlling her would be swayed, allured by its deep, guttural lilt. "How's this? I can tell you exactly why all this is happening. Why we're all escaping our enclosures. It's her." The reaper sent a shock straight between Jessamine's breasts, knocking her backwards. "That soul inside you, this body; her arrival unbalanced the realms, all of them."

"Me?" Jessamine gulped; her demonic exterior loosened her jaw. "But I'm supposed to be here, sort of, aren't I? The prophecy, and all?"

The demons opened her mouth to speak, likely to relate what she'd said; but the reaper shook its head. "Oh, no need to translate. I can hear her."

Landon gasped, and demon-Jessamine took another step back. "What?"

"As I said," the reaper inclined forward, bowing, "I'm an ancient creature beyond anyone's imagination. I have abilities you've never dreamed of. Anyway," it straightened up, its dark pit of a face like a black hole in space, absorbing all in its passage, "she shifted the dimensions. She loosened the locks. Yes, her destiny was to succeed or die trying, but she was supposed to die before being pushed in. Little known indication on the prophecy, apparently overlooked by the one who received it. Stupid Guide."

"Let me out. Let me be me—I need to talk to him," said Jessamine, regaining her courage. She smacked her fists on the confines of her skull, pleading. "You'll get warped into its tricks, and I can resist better. Please. It can hear you inside me, I'm sure."

As quickly as they'd taken over, the demons relinquished control. Jessamine let out a sigh of relief, hunched over, gathered her bearings, then pulled herself back up, grimacing at the reaper. "I'm the she in question, and you're speaking directly to me, now. So, prophecy? You know about that? That a Guide obtained it? You were in a different realm for eons; how?"

The being seemed to study her, to steer its invisible eyes profoundly into her soul. "Just because I'm in another realm doesn't mean I can't bleed into others. My realm is a dimension similar to Limbo, you see. Smaller, weaker, more desolate, and, to everyone's detriment, not inescapable. I couldn't get out, not fully; but I'm able to astral project... I think that's what you humans would call it?"

Jessamine chewed on her lower lip, and Landon snuck his hand up her back, stabilizing her. "Okay, so you know of the prophecy; great. How would you know that its interpretation was inaccurate?"

"I'm sure you've encountered stories about beings like me. Reapers, I believe they're called. They reap spirits from your plane, take them to another for eternal rest. Those beings aren't real," it scoffed, "and in truth, I'm the only one of my kind. The last of my kind. The most powerful kind of otherworldly being you'll ever encounter, I promise you that."

"Can this dude get to the point?" The demons' agitation caused Jessamine's stomach to ache. "If he doesn't hurry up, we'll have to blast him ourselves."

"And?" She made a waving forward motion with her hand, urging the not-reaper to finish up its annoyingly long speech.

"The point, yes." It paused, stretched its spine, crossed its arms. "I was there, sort of, when that Guide received the prophecy. I suppose you might say I provoked it."

A thud prompted Jessamine to turn and find Landon on the ground, having collapsed in shock. Her eyes grew so wide she blacked out for a moment, before refocusing on the black-cloaked being levitating before her.

Somehow, the ongoing war hadn't reached them as they stood there conversing about prophecies and realms. Demons yelled, hurling attacks, defending their ground; the remaining invaders pushed onward, but didn't make much progress.

"That thing is protecting the area," said one demon, its voice greasy, grumbling. "There's no other reason why we haven't been smacked into by those seeking to take over our world. Why would it have placed us in a protective bubble for this conversation? It's hiding more. Figure it out, Jessamine."

Jessamine forced her jaw back into place. "You," she sucked in the blood-tinged air, "can provoke prophecies? How in the heck is that possible?"

The being unfolded its arms with such intensity that Jessamine feared it'd launch forward and slap her, slash her. But it remained immobile, its soulless, transparent eyes staring at her. "You humans are slow, aren't you? Yes, I can. How? That's not something I'm at liberty to explain to you. And now, you see, I have knowledge you need, and you have what I need: a new home, in this realm. So agree to let me stay here, and not only will I tell you everything you need to know, but I'll help you seal away all the other vermin that have infested this place."

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