Ashes of the Brothel.

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Location: World-5 (parallel)

Object: Entertainment House “Red Flower”

Status: Slave (category: leisure)

Code: 1/4 demon (dormant)

Time remaining: 6 days 23 hours

Resource: 3%

The cold iron chains pressed against his wrists, their chill seeping deep into his bones and sending tremors through his exhausted frame. Before him stretched the punishment room, patient and expectant, its very walls seeming to breathe with anticipation. The crimson-black surfaces bore the dark, indelible stains of countless nights—stains that had soaked into the ancient plaster far deeper than the ornate golden molding that adorned the ceiling, a grotesque testament to the designer’s twisted sense of aesthetics and god complex. At least the blood on the walls didn’t hurt the eyes. Practical, in a horrific sort of way.

Opposite him stood a meticulously organized rack of instruments—metal, leather, and wood, each piece polished to a blinding, almost sacred shine by the sweat and suffering of those who had come before. The gleam cut through the dim, flickering light like shards of broken glass. The sentence for spilling a drink on a client’s lapel: seven days in chains. Open access. First evening. Resource at absolute zero.

His body knew the protocol intimately, tensing automatically with the practiced precision of a soldier before battle, like bracing for a plunge into icy, unforgiving water. His breath hitched in his throat, but he forced it to level out through sheer willpower.

Inhale. Exhale.

Just another routine in this endless cycle of degradation. Heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, their rhythm deliberate and menacing. Two distinct cadences—one confident and authoritative, the other lagging slightly behind in subservient uncertainty. The heavy door opened without a sound, revealing two figures silhouetted against the dim hallway light. A female and a male. The smell hit him first, a visceral assault on his senses: wet fur, sharp adrenaline, and cheap perfume desperately trying to mask the overwhelming pheromones but losing the battle miserably.

Lycans.

Koel clenched his jaw so hard the joint cracked with an audible snap. Of course. The evening had started poorly, which meant it would end the same way—as had everything in his life for the past few torturous years. A single drop of sweat trickled down his spine, a reflexive burst of primal fear he couldn’t control despite years of conditioning. His body braced for the inevitable blows, like a dog cowering before an approaching thunderstorm. Beast masters. They always came for the exotic, leaving with satisfied, sated expressions. Standard client cycle. Apparently, they lacked the imagination, or perhaps the courage, for anything more refined.

“Look at this exquisite specimen.”

Rough fingers grabbed his chin with brutal force. A sharp, painful twist. Nails dug into his skin, leaving crescent-shaped moons that instantly turned white from the pressure.

“Little bird. Will you deliver pleasure?”

She kicked off her shoes with casual disdain. Undressed slowly, methodically, with the supreme confidence that only absolute impunity and unchecked power can give. The male was already choosing his instrument of torment. He sifted through whips, hooks, and clamps with the discerning eye of a connoisseur. He stopped at a heavy leather whip adorned with cruel metal spikes, weighing it in his hand like a butcher selecting the perfect knife for the slaughter.

“I want blood,” he said, his voice eerily even, though his fingers trembled slightly on the handle. The choice was obvious, predictable. Clients loved the classic set. No innovations, no surprises, just the reliable, time-tested formula of pain.

His heart skipped a beat, then hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird desperately seeking escape. His pulse spiked dangerously. Adrenaline flooded his veins, hot and bitter, preparing his body for the onslaught.

Strike.

Air exploded from his lungs in a ragged, painful hiss. Skin split with a sickening tear, and pain shot through his nerves—sharp, clean, precise, like a surgeon’s scalpel cutting through flesh.

Strike.

Streams of blood trickled down his shoulder blades, warm and sticky, painting his skin in crimson. The metallic scent of iron mingled with the lycans’ overwhelming lust, creating a sickeningly sweet, heavy aroma. The smell of rotten flowers after a summer rain, cloying and suffocating.

Koel half-opened his swollen eyes. The female’s pupils were dilated, almost completely black, swallowing the iris whole. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her tongue traced her lips in a slow, deliberate motion, and in that movement was something hungry, desperate, almost feral. A predator sensing vulnerable prey. Or perhaps a predator afraid the prey might vanish before the kill.

The next blow landed squarely on his chest, the force reverberating through his entire body. It grazed his cheekbone, and the copper taste of blood exploded in his mouth. A moan tore from his throat against his will, a sound of pure agony. Oxygen burned in his lungs like concentrated acid. His body begged him to shut down, to slip into the merciful darkness of unconsciousness.

He didn’t allow it. Couldn’t allow it.

Counting to ten didn’t help, the numbers dissolving into meaningless static. He switched to survival tactics: breathe through the nose. Don’t look at the instrument of torture. Fix his gaze on the crack in the wall—thin, winding, like a river on an ancient map, leading to somewhere far away from this hell.

The blows came chaotically now, without rhythm or mercy. His left eye swelled shut, the world narrowing to a single, painful slit. Blood flooded his temple, warm and seemingly endless. Nausea crawled up his throat, but he swallowed it down with grim determination.

The last blow knocked him off his knees with devastating force. He collapsed onto the cold, unforgiving stone floor. The surface smelled of dampness and old blood—someone else’s, long absorbed into the porous rock, a permanent stain of suffering.

The female crouched beside him with predatory grace. A finger dipped in his blood. She licked it slowly, answering the taste with a low moan, and in that moan was something resembling shame, or perhaps satisfaction.

“Not enough,” she decided, her voice trembling slightly with barely contained excitement.

A sharp claw traced a line from his collarbone to his stomach, cutting deep. Down to the muscle, where a vein pulsed with frantic life. Koel screamed, a raw, primal sound torn from the depths of his soul. From the pain and the overwhelming overload of his nervous system, when there were too many signals and they were all screaming at once in a cacophony of agony.

He tried to crawl away, to escape the torment. A heavy boot slammed into his ribs with brutal force. Another crunch, louder and more sickening this time.

“Where the fuck are you going, you little shit?”

She breathed into his face, her hot breath carrying an unbearable smell—a toxic mix of desire, fear, and something rotten deep inside her soul. His heart slipped into dangerous arrhythmia, skipping beats like an old man at death’s door. The male abruptly spun her around with rough hands. Threw her onto the bed with careless force. The springs shrieked in protest.

It began. Moans. Slaps. Animalistic growls. Background noise. Audio accompaniment for the procedure they called pleasure. Koel lay in a growing puddle of his own blood, his consciousness drifting like a fragile chip in a violent current. Pain pulsed in time with their movements—rhythmic, almost musical in its cruelty.

Choke on it, he thought with bitter hatred. Gorge yourselves. Until you burst. Until you die in your own disgusting skins. Lustful beasts. Rotten. Blind.

But inside, beneath the thick layer of hatred, something else stirred. Not fear. Not pain. Pity. For those who needed someone else’s agony to feel alive, to feel human.

And hatred. Pure, concentrated hatred.

Like the last backup circuit when the main systems failed catastrophically. The body was too weak to resist. The mind too clouded with pain to plan.

But hatred—it didn’t require strength. It synthesized it. From pain. From humiliation. From the memory of who he was before this room, before this life.

It seeped into his blood slowly, thickly. Drowned out the scream of overloaded nerves. Gathered his unfocused vision into a single, burning point.

On their backs. On the rhythm of their breathing. On their confidence in their own impunity, which was already tearing at the seams.

I will remember, he thought, the words crystallizing in his mind. Not as an oath. As a promise to himself.

Every blow. Every smell. Every word. Every tremor in their hands.

Something clicked inside. Not in his head. In his spine. In the very structure of his blood, where the quarter demon slept, waiting for its hour.

The quarter responded. Not with a roar. Not with fire. It sensed high-quality fuel—hatred, purified and refined by pain.

And then the sensation came. Heat crawling from the base of his skull down his vertebrae. An itch under the skin, as if something long asleep was waking up inside. The taste of blood in his mouth changed—sharper, more metallic, almost electric.

I will survive, a dry inner voice fixed, cold and absolute. Without a tremor. Like a verdict.

Shell updating. Code activating. The demon inside stretched, feeling the cage crack.

I will take the next blow. And the next. Until it’s enough. Until the time comes.

He exhaled slowly. Air hissed out of his lungs, and in that sound was something resembling laughter, dark and knowing. The pain didn’t leave, but it stopped being chaos. It became background. A tool.

Remembered to use. Remembered to survive. Remembered to become.