The deck was slick with blood, but I kept going.
I'd cleaned the bone—carefully, methodically. Each scrap of sinew, each twitching membrane, torn away with the edge of my knife and flung into the surf like rotten meat. The sea didn't mind. It took everything. Always had.
And then I looked at the skull. His skull.
It had changed.
Where empty sockets had once stared blankly, there was now motion—life. Wet threads of flesh squirmed in the hollows, weaving together like spiders birthing capillaries. The meat in his eyes pulsed, shifted. Trying to remember how to see. I held it higher, turning it toward the fading light.
Inside, I saw it. The brain—almost complete. Pink, glistening, disgusting. It pulsed like a parasite. The blood still worked, slow but relentless, curling around the bone like fingers forming a fist. It was reconstructing his head—not just any head. His head. The one I remembered. The one that grinned when things burned. The one that laughed when we screamed.
And I let it happen.
I watched it happen.
Not out of mercy. Not out of weakness. I wanted him be aware. Be Alive. But just a head. Nothing more. A caged beast with no claws. A lion's head mounted as a prize.
His face—when it fully formed—was perfect. Too perfect. It was him, down to the crooked sneer, the scars that time hadn't erased, the eyes that never really blinked, only twitched. His lips moved. Then his eyelids. He looked at me. Not through me—at me. And he blinked.
He was conscious.
He was back.
No body. No limbs. No power. Just a head—my prize.
That was all I needed.
The rest of him—the twitching meat, the half-formed spine, the ribs that still tried to snap together—I fed all of it to the waters. I grabbed it piece by piece, even as it pulsed and cried and tried to crawl. I didn't care. I threw it overboard, watched the water churn red as the monsters below tore it apart. Flesh to the sea. Bone to the void.
Let him feel every loss. Let him see every part of his body be eaten by the beasts of the waters. He deserved to remember what it felt like to have his body be eaten piece by piece. He'd done worse. He was worse.
And still, he lived. I let him.
The head, now fully functional, screamed.
Not a sound like pain. Not fear. Not confusion.
Rage.
It was the same pitch he'd used when he first rose from the pit, when he tore men apart with a smile and spoke in tongues older than sin. The scream rattled in my chest, vibrated up my spine. But I didn't flinch.
He was back. And if it weren't for me throwing his body bits to feed the beasts in the sea—the komodo-bastard, the others—he'd be whole by now. I knew it. He knew it. But I had won this time. Not with fire. Not with steel. With patience.
I held the head in both hands. The neck sealed shut. No blood. No mess. It didn't matter. The heat of him still bled through my palms.
He spat words. Not in a language I knew. But I didn't need to understand the syllables. I felt the intent. It was filth. Venom. Obscenities strung together with hatred. Words meant to curdle sanity. He cursed me with names of things that should not be named.
I didn't like that.
I clenched his jaw shut. His teeth were the size of my fingers, sharp enough to shear bone. This was still a giant's skull, no matter how small the body was now. If he bit down, I'd lose every finger and he'd feed on the meat like it was communion.
So I did what I had to.
I opened his mouth again—forcefully this time—and jammed the wooden butt of my pistol between his jaws. He gnashed and snapped, but the metal core inside the grip held firm. I could feel his jaw trying to snap shut, muscles twitching like ropes pulled too tight.
Not enough. I needed more.
I took another pistol from my belt, and another from the dead man nearby. Jammed both into the mouth alongside the first. Now his mouth was pried wide, three gun butts wedged like rotten teeth in a cursed skull. It made just enough space. Just the gap I needed.
The skull shook in my hands. Rage vibrated from it like heat off a furnace. He couldn't speak anymore, but his eyes burned with the promise of torment. The promise that if he ever got out, if I slipped, even once—he'd take everything from me.
I smiled.
"You're not getting out." I said, almost gently.
He screamed again. But now it was muffled. A strangled, impotent rage. Music to me.
I walked with him, the head cradled in my arms like a blasphemous relic, toward the site of the ritual.
This was no longer revenge.
This was something else.
This wasn't just for me. This was for the dreams he took from the girls. For every scream he silenced. For every despair he made the girl go through. And for the ones he didn't even let them see the sun.
And the demon knew it.