My Femboy System
Chapter 62: The Shape of Damnation

Chapter 62: The Shape of Damnation

I dropped to my knees.

It wasn’t a poetic fall. There were no choir of angels or slow-motion gasps. No dramatic swell of violins in the background. Just the hard, undignified thud of bone against cold stone and the wet slap of blood pooling at my side, sticky and obscene.

My legs had simply given up on the concept of existing beneath me, and so I collapsed, not out of grace, choice, or narrative elegance—but because the pain had finally turned louder than my pride. There was no strength left to pretend otherwise.

The world slowed, not with reverence, but with silence. The kind of silence that stretches too long, makes your skin crawl, makes your thoughts sharpen until they’re razors turning inward. I blinked, once, twice, but my vision was thin at the edges, curling like paper near flame. A low sound vibrated through the stone—a pressure rather than a noise—threading through my spine with a frequency that made my teeth ache.

The light bent.

Not visibly. Not like a trick of the eye. It simply... shifted. Like the room itself was tilting its attention toward something too large, too wrong, for it to ignore.

Then behind me, it moved again.

No sound. No steps. Just presence. The suggestion of mass. Thought forming in the dark, blooming with intent.

I turned slowly—very slowly—because every instinct in my bones told me I didn’t want to see what was there, but I looked anyway. Of course I did. Because I’m an idiot. Because I’m a hero. Because I’m the kind of stubborn, masochistic moron who thinks staring at your own doom would make it flinch.

It didn’t flinch.

It stood.

And gods did it stand.

It was tall. Lean, shaped like pain refined into structure. Its limbs were too long to be natural, jointed in places where joints had no business existing. Its arms curved back into themselves like folded steel, wicked with edges that hadn’t been forged—they’d been grown. Its torso narrowed in impossible ways, geometrically wrong, as if someone had tried to map it in Euclidean space and failed.

The head was worse.

Where a face should’ve lived was something else entirely. Not a mask—masks hide. This revealed nothing. Two long black shards descended from where eyes might have been, angular and symmetrical, as if a god had tried to draw mourning and ended up with violence. No mouth. No expression. Just a smooth, sloping suggestion of decision, chilled with finality.

It didn’t hesitate.

There was no roar, no threat. Just movement.

Its claws, long and bladed like sickles made of glass and hate, slammed down on either side of my skull. My ears rang. And then came the pressure.

It was immense in ways my brain couldn’t even begin to comprehend, like every thought was being crushed against the inside of my skull, my regrets rising like rot pushed through an open wound. My lungs seized. My voice died somewhere between my throat and my ribs.

My skull began to creak. The bones themselves protesting, groaning under the weight of something too vast, too ancient for them to withstand, like a violin string of agony being pulled tighter and tighter, begging to snap with each passing second.

And then—

The air split with impact.

Leo spun like a weapon unsheathed—pure motion, sharp and sudden. His foot arced through the air toward the creature’s head with enough force to rattle the bones of anyone watching. Every step, every line of his body carried the weight of intent. It was precise. Clean. The kind of strike that would have landed against any creature, god or beast alike.

But it didn’t.

The creature moved faster. Effortless. One jagged arm lashed upward mid-flight, catching Leo by the leg before the blow could land. It stopped him cold—suspended in air like a marionette snagged on a hook, all momentum gone in an instant.

Leo had a heartbeat of wide-eyed surprise, a short grunt halfway between curse and disbelief, before the thing slammed him into the stone floor hard enough to leave a dent.

My breath caught. I tried to rise, but my body gave me tremors in return.

Willow moved next.

She stepped forward like an oath, hands glowing faintly at her sides. The temperature dropped. Her voice came low, ragged, not from fear—but from will.

"I swear to every whimpering god who’s ever crawled through a chapel," she hissed, voice trembling not with fear but power, "if you touch him again, I’ll wrap your soul in chains and drag it screaming through my nightmares."

The floor beneath us groaned.

Chains erupted—bright, burning, inked in runes that didn’t belong in this world. They snaked up from the stone like serpents waking from some buried hell, lunging toward the creature. It screamed again, but not from pain, it seemed to be placed with a sense of precision I couldn’t yet place. That sound—metal bent too far, breath inhaled backwards—lit something within its figure and in a rush of smoke and ash, it vanished. The chains hit nothing but air in their wake.

Then it reformed, across the room, already descending upon Miko.

Miko cursed under his breath before vaulted upward, barely catching the lip of a broken staircase, the beast’s strike carving a crater into the wall where his head had been. He dropped down, spun into shadow, and rematerialized a few paces away.

"Seriously?" he muttered, low and sharp, eyes scanning for another angle. "Just what the fuck even are you?"

He didn’t shout. Didn’t laugh. Just baited the creature with his presence.

Then came the game.

Miko vanished into the dark like breath on glass, and the creature—whatever it was, smoke, sinew, and screaming speed—pursued him with a hunger that defied shape. They flickered between pillars and wreckage, one chasing the other in a dizzying ballet of shadow. Where Miko danced, it followed—never more than a second behind, never fully catching him.

Then Willow was beside me again.

I didn’t even hear her come. Her hands found my right shoulder—what was left of it—and she winced. The stump was still bleeding, sluggish now but persistent. Her palms lit with a familiar heat, that same deep red glow marking the incantation she’d used before when healing my fingers, the one that exchanged flesh and sinew for bits of her life. But this was different. Slower. More dangerous.

"You’re losing too much blood," she whispered, voice tight.

Her magic flared. I could feel it tugging at the edge of time itself—pulling something older than her own years, offering them up in trade.

I caught her wrist, barely.

"No," I rasped. "Not for this. Not for me. Don’t burn yourself, just to keep me on the board."

Her eyes searched mine, wounded. She hesitated—just long enough to nod once, tightly, and draw her hands away. Her magic dimmed.

And then Miko screamed.

The creature had him now—lifted like an afterthought. Its claws curled around his neck, hoisting him with the same effort someone might toss a coat over a chair. Miko kicked. Twisted. His face flushed with pressure.

The creature wasn’t killing him. It was toying with him.

I didn’t have time to think. Not really. Not in the way that thinking was useful. My brain was a ruined library at this point—books torn from shelves, thoughts overturned like tables, blood dripping down the margins. But I still had instinct. And instinct screamed one thing through the fog of pain and the red-curtained haze: get a weapon.

"Willow!" I barked, my voice a fractured echo of its usual swagger. She turned toward me, wild-eyed, blood on her cheekbone like warpaint. "Spear! Now!"

She didn’t hesitate. Goddess bless her dark little heart, she saw what I meant without a word. One boot planted on the ribs of a fallen guard, she kicked up a spear like she was born in a blood opera, snatching it midair and spinning it once. Then, with that casual defiance that only Willow could conjure in the face of annihilation, she tossed it behind her—no look, no warning.

And I caught it.

One hand. My left. Not even facing her. It smacked into my palm with a weight that made my bones groan, but I didn’t falter. My body screamed, my shoulder lit up in agony, but I held firm.

I turned. Planted my foot into the floor. I felt every tendon in my leg protest like a union on strike. "Alright, asshole," I growled, leveling the point of the spear like a curse. "Let’s see if smoke bleeds."

The throw was everything. Pure rage, channeled through technique, hurled with the precision of a man who had lost too much and wasn’t in the mood to lose more. The spear cut through the air like a hymn turned violent—fast, whistling, divine in its intent.

But the bastard screamed again.

That same sound—the one that pulled at your soul like a hangover and a breakup all at once—ripped through the room, and it was gone. Not dead. Not pierced. Just gone.

Smoke.

The spear passed through the now-vaporous mass, clanging harmlessly into the wall with a sad little tink.

Miko hit the floor.

Gasping like a fish dragged from water, his limbs spasmed and his eyes rolled before he sucked in a full breath and shoved himself upright with a snarl. Alive. Thank the gods.

But the creature wasn’t finished. That oily, tar-thick smoke came barreling toward me, and before I could react, it was on me—around me—circling like a starving predator that had decided to savor the scent before the kill.

I froze. The air was wrong again. I could feel it pouring into my mouth like a lost lover, pooling in my stomach with the urgency of a secret kept too long. My head spun. Vision dulled, everything warping at the edges like a drunken painting. He was going to use the same trick he pulled when I first faced him after stepping off the elevator. My knees buckled.

"Cecil!" It was Miko’s voice, ragged yet commanding.

"Hold your breath!"

I didn’t think, just obeyed. My mouth snapped shut, breath caught, clenched in my chest like a ticking bomb. My lungs screamed, and not in the sexy, post-coital way I preferred. No, this was the kind of agony that made you earn every second.

But then—the world steadied.

Color returned. The room righted itself. The fog behind my eyes cleared just enough to see that the creature was losing interest, slithering backward into its monstrous shape.

I let out the breath in a staggered, shaking exhale, just as it fully materialized.

Right in front of me.

"Cute trick," I muttered. And then I pulled Vincent’s revolver from my belt with the flair of a man who wanted vengeance and theatrics.

I fired.

Again, and again, and again. Each shot was loud, violent, and personal. But the thing moved. Not like a creature, but like a glitch in space. Its arm jerked in sudden, crisp spasms, catching each bullet in its palm like it was collecting raindrops. One by one, the rounds clattered to the floor.

"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me," I breathed.

It looked at me—not with eyes, but with awareness. Like it knew what I was about to think before I thought it. Which was precisely when the idea struck me.

I reached for the pocket where Vincent’s other treasure waited—his stopwatch—but before I could grab it, a brilliant light detonated overhead.

Aria’s star magic flared overhead, bursting in arcs of celestial white and deep, holy violet. I glanced up to see him standing atop a nearby ledge, nose bleeding, eyes like shattered glass barely holding form. But he stood. Gods bless him, he stood.

The creature roared.

Or maybe it was just the wind left behind as it lunged.

I jumped.

More like vaulted, really. A corkscrew flip over its shoulder, one-armed, pain blooming like wildflowers along my spine. I hit the ground behind it in a crouch, breath ragged, heart sprinting like it was late to a scandal.

It spun on me in a whip of motion. I had no time to react.

"Okay," I muttered. "Fist fight it is."

Aria’s voice threaded through my skull like silver. Left, now.

I moved. Just enough to avoid a slicing strike that would’ve removed my head with a sneeze. Aria guided me—not with shouts, but with thoughtful whispers, magic curling around my instincts like a dance partner. I dodged again. Threw a punch. It landed—barely—a glancing blow to its neck. It didn’t even flinch and yet I kept going.

My body was all fire and friction, and I was losing. Not in the conventional sense, but in the way where you know your number’s coming up and you’re too proud to leave the table. Just then, Aria faltered and the ceiling dimmed from overhead.

The creature struck me.

Not with the force of an enemy, but with the inevitability of death itself. Straight in the chest—a thunderclap against my sternum that tore the breath from my lungs and turned the world inside out. My body lifted from the ground, weightless in that brutal moment, suspended between pain and sky. Then came the fall. I tumbled across the stone—hard, cold, uncaring—five, six rolls, each one stealing more breath, more thought, until I landed in a bloodied sprawl like a broken marionette discarded by some cruel god.

My ribs pulsed with agony. Breathing was a gamble; each inhale sharp as shattered glass, each exhale a prayer muttered beneath clenched teeth. Vision shimmered—edges smudging into nothing, colors blooming with unnatural brightness. Somewhere in that kaleidoscope of pain, I felt the press of a hand.

Miko.

He knelt beside me, a blur of blackened shadow, voice sharp with worry but steadied by grit.

"Still with me?"

My mouth twisted, thick with blood. "Define ’with.’"

And still, he smiled. That same stupid, beautiful grin. I hated how lovely he looked, haloed in the ruins, eyes lit with defiance.

"Stay alive, drama queen."

"That’s always been your job," I rasped, the pain blooming with each syllable. Gods, I wanted to kiss him. Gods, I wanted to live.

We both turned.

And there—like a sin incarnate—Willow had mounted the beast.

She rode its back as if taming some devil from the belly of myth. Her thighs gripped it tight, one leg hooked across its middle like a dancer from a darker play, her fingers clawing for purchase as it writhed beneath her. A tangle of pale limbs and firelit hair, her face twisted in something unholy and furious. Smut and divinity all in one breath.

And then...

Stillness.

The creature stopped.

Not frozen by choice, but by force. Not vanishing. Not turning to smoke. No scream. No retreat. It thrashed, yes, but it was trapped. Not by magic

That was when something clicked inside me like a lock coming undone. It couldn’t shift while restrained. The realization roared through me—a divine spark lit in a cathedral of despair. That was it. That was the way.

I grabbed Miko, pulled him close, fingers knotting into his shirt like I needed him to keep me tethered to this moment. My voice came low, serrated with urgency.

"Go. As high as you can. Wait for my signal. When it’s time—you’ll know."

He nodded, silent and sure. I shrugged off my coat, handed it to him like an heirloom. His fingers brushed mine. A small touch. A universe of meaning. And then he was gone, vanishing up the tower’s winding spine like smoke made flesh.

The moment shattered.

Willow screamed.

The creature bucked, and she flew—launched like a discarded thought—crashing across the ground. Her body skidded, blood streaking the stone behind her in a brutal flourish of crimson.

The beast rose. A towering silhouette of malice and shape-shifting menace. It stalked toward her, slow and certain, the way inevitability walks.

But then—

Leo was there in a heartbeat. He moved with a roar, not of fury, but of rebirth. He grabbed the thing’s ankle in both hands, muscles screaming against the strain, and held it fast.

"Not so fast, fuckface," he hissed, so loud even I jumped back in surprise.

And the creature—whatever it was—hesitated.

Just long enough to matter.

I stood there—ragged, broken, one arm dangling useless at my side. Blood dripping from me like poetry, like punctuation in some tragic epic. Vincent’s revolver hung at my hip, but it wasn’t what I reached for.

I whistled.

High, sharp, commanding.

Its head snapped toward me.

And there I was: bruised, bleeding, half-dead and grinning like a villain at curtain call. My remaining hand lifted. In it—Vincent’s stopwatch, gleaming faintly in the flickering light.

Leo met my gaze with that wild glint in his eye, the one he got when things finally made sense—the battlefield kind of sense, the math of survival, the rhythm of violence. His breath came in huffs, chest heaving. My eyes darted to the wall, to the iron shackles clinking softly like wind chimes in a storm. And just like that, he knew. No words. No nod. Just that quiet understanding born from shared blood. He let go, just as the creature, mid-lunge, reached for his wrists with hands like razors and malice incarnate.

It screamed—raw and furious—and became smoke again, lunging straight for me, hunger and hatred in its formless sprint.

But I was already smiling.

High above, balanced like some reckless archangel, Miko flared to life. One hand held a torch pulled from the wall, the other clutched my coat. He tossed them both into the air with theatrical flair—always the performer, even in apocalypse—and for a breathless second, they danced like lovers mid-fall. It was the same trick we’d used when first encountering Vincent on the train to Ventri.

The coat caught the torchlight. A flicker. A blaze. And then a shadow, wide and long, painted itself between me and the oncoming smoke.

The creature hesitated. Solidified.

Miko’s voice cracked like thunder as he finished the spell. The shadow shifted—no, grew—not just absence of light now, but something hungry, something with teeth.

That’s when I pressed the stopwatch.

Time didn’t stop.

It crawled.

The world became honey and glue. The creature moved like it had forgotten how limbs worked, like every joint had rusted beneath centuries of rot. It hit the ground—one leg, then the other—inside the trap.

The shadow snapped shut. Too slow to scream. Too slow to vanish.

And Leo? Bless his heart—he was already behind it. Chain looping around that long, sinewy neck in a single, brutal flourish. He yanked like he meant it, muscles coiling with rage, with love, and with vengeance that didn’t need to be spoken.

The creature writhed. But it could do nothing else.

And I?

I picked up the spear bolted into the wall behind me.

The same spear I’d thrown with all my fury, only to watch it fail.

It was still slick with blood—maybe mine, maybe someone else’s—and it felt cold in my single hand. But I didn’t care. I twirled it once, the way a matador might flick his cape before the final blow.

And then, without warning—

I rammed the spear into its chest with all the grace of a judge delivering a sentence. In that moment its body went limp, a thing unmade.

Dead in every sense of the word. No more smoke. No more tricks. Just a grotesque corpse steaming in the shadow of its own undoing.

We stood in the aftermath like survivors of a ruined opera. No applause. No curtain call.

Just exhaustion.

Leo let the chain drop with a clang, his arms falling to his sides, soaked in sweat, blood, and something older than either. Miko descended like the ghost he was born to be, brushing ash from his cheek as if it were just another Tuesday. He and Leo helped Aria up—his eyes fluttering open, lips parted with soft moans of pain as magic sputtered around him like broken constellations. He blinked once, dazed but alive.

Willow was suddenly in my arms, breath hot against my collarbone, clutching at me like I might disappear. Her voice trembled against my neck. Her body pressed tight against mine, frantic and grounding.

Then her hand found the place where my arm should’ve been.

"Cecil," she whispered. "Please. Let me fix you."

My mouth opened, then closed. The pain was bearable now. Or maybe I’d just grown used to it. But the look in her eyes—gods, that look—it cut deeper than any blade ever could. I gave in, like I always did with her.

A soft glow bloomed from her fingers. It wasn’t the dramatic flair of combat healing. It was gentler. More personal. A lover’s magic.

My arm came back in stages. Bone. Muscle. Vein. Skin. Warm, new, and fragile. I flexed the fingers. They trembled, but obeyed.

I said nothing.

She kissed my cheek, and I leaned into it, though not for long.

Her hand lingered at my jaw, thumb brushing beneath my eye like she was trying to memorize me. "You know," she said, her voice barely more than breath, "I didn’t just give you an arm. I gave you time—my time. Years, maybe." Her eyes shimmered, but didn’t waver. "And I’d do it again. I’d trade every second I have left if it meant giving you one more to keep going."

Something in my chest cracked open at that. Quietly. Painfully.

"I love you," I said, the words low, unadorned, but truer than anything I’d spoken in days.

I turned from her slowly. The world still buzzed, full of broken stars and the stink of smoke and metal. My eyes fixed on the double doors ahead—massive, ornate, the kind that usually tried to impress before they tried to kill.

I didn’t wait. Didn’t ask myself what remained behind them, because I already knew.

I slammed my foot into the metal. The doors exploded inward like they’d been waiting for me. And maybe they had. The Tower had played its hand again and again—cruel illusions, smoke monsters, endless games dressed up in sin and spectacle. But I wasn’t here to play anymore.

I was one floor away from the Red Mistress.

And I’d burn the whole fucking Tower down if that’s what it took to reach her.