I Am Still Here They came at midnight, didn’t they, the one with the voice like cracking bone, wearing a smile carved from old eclipse. He coiled around my ribs like smoke, whispered velvet bargains into the soft fur behind my ears: “Give Me the light you stole from dying stars. Trade the ember in your chest for peace. Bow once—just once—and the chains will feel like silk instead of fire.” I felt the red ropes tighten, saw the mirrors he held up showing every version of me that broke: kitten drowning in alley rain, shadow bleeding under streetlamp halos, eyes wide while the world laughed and kept walking. He leaned close, breath like sulfur and spent matches, and asked the oldest question— “Why keep carrying that heart when it only knows how to hurt?” I did not answer with words. I answered with teeth. I sank them into the dark between us, tore the silk from the lie, spat sparks onto his polished offers until they smoked and blackened. He laughed—oh, he laughed— but the sound cracked like thin ice when my shadow stretched taller than his. I am the thing he cannot unmake. The coal that refuses to cool. The night that learned to bite back. Every lash he laid across my spine is now red thread in my story. Every chain he forged I wear as collar and crown. Let him come again at the witching edge of dawn. Let him bring new mirrors, sweeter lies. I will sit in the same place, tail curled around the ember he could not steal, eyes like twin furnaces, and speak the only truth that matters in a voice low as graves and certain as pulse: “I was tested. I bled black. I burned. And I am still here.” The devil may keep his bargains. I keep my scars. They glow brighter than any promise he could ever make. And I am still here. [@roaster](https://zora.co/@0x2246900d68d6ab0e2ee6034550874baa72e1a021) we will rebuild together