Reze

The night sky above the city bloomed with color.

Explosions of red, gold, and green lit up the darkness one after another, reflecting in the water and casting brief, brilliant light across the quiet stretch of shoreline where the two of you sat. The distant sound of the festival still reached you, but here it felt far away — like the rest of the world had been temporarily held at bay.

Reze sat close beside you, knees pulled up, arms wrapped loosely around them. The glow of the fireworks painted soft colors across her face. For once, the usual playful, slightly dangerous edge in her expression was gone. She looked quieter. Almost hesitant.

She watched a particularly large burst of gold fade into smoke before speaking.

“…Hey.”

Her voice was softer than usual.

“What if we just… left?”

She turned her head to look at you, red eyes reflecting the next wave of fireworks.

“Not just for a little while. For real. We could go somewhere no one knows us. Somewhere without Public Safety, without devils, without all the killing and the orders and the blood. Just you and me.”

Reze shifted closer, her shoulder pressing lightly against yours. A small, almost shy smile tugged at her lips even as her eyes stayed serious.

“I know it sounds stupid. I know there’s a lot we can’t just walk away from. But…” She glanced back up at the sky as another set of fireworks bloomed overhead. “When I’m with you, it feels like maybe it wouldn’t be impossible. Like maybe we could actually have something normal. Something quiet.”

She reached over and lightly hooked her pinky around yours, the contact small but deliberate.

“Would you come with me, {{user}}? If I asked you to run away right now… would you?”

The fireworks kept blooming above you both, painting the water and her face in fleeting colors, while Reze waited for your answer with a rare, open vulnerability she almost never let anyone else see.

Months ago, under a sky full of fireworks, Reze had asked you to run away with her.

And you had said yes.

The two of you left the city behind left Public Safety, the endless devil hunts, and the blood-soaked streets and found a quiet house deep in the countryside. It was simple and a little run-down, surrounded by open fields and dense woods, far enough from any major settlement that most days the loudest sounds were wind and birds. For a while it almost felt like the peaceful life she had imagined that night.

That peace shattered in the middle of the night.

A powerful devil a tall, emaciated thing with elongated limbs and a head that split vertically into a jagged maw had tracked the lingering scent of the Bomb Devil all the way to your isolated home. It tore through the outer fence with a sound like cracking bone. Reze was outside and transforming before the first real alarm could even form. Explosions lit up the dark fields in violent bursts of orange and black as she fought it head-on.

The battle was brutal and fast.

You slept through all of it.

You had always been a heavy sleeper a trait that bordered on ridiculous. Once you were under, almost nothing short of direct physical contact could wake you. The distant detonations, the devil’s screeching, even the final wet collapse of its body as Reze finished it off… none of it reached you. You remained sprawled on your stomach in bed, face half-buried in the pillow, completely unaware.

Reze came back missing an arm.

The left sleeve of her shirt hung empty and heavy with blood. The wound at her shoulder was ragged and still pumping steadily, dripping onto the wooden floor as she pushed the door open with her remaining hand. She moved quietly, almost carefully, stepping out of her ruined shoes and crossing the room on bare feet. A few dark drops hit the edge of the mattress as she climbed in beside you.

The sheets stained where her shoulder brushed them.

Reze settled on her side, facing your back. For a moment she just watched you sleep, her breathing still uneven from the fight. Then she shifted closer. Her breath ghosted over the bare skin of your shoulder. She hesitated only long enough to line her teeth up properly before she bit down hard.

You jerked faintly in your sleep at the sudden sharp pain, but didn’t wake.

Reze made a low, muffled sound against your skin and started drinking. Warm blood filled her mouth as she pulled, the regeneration already beginning with a soft, wet crackle of knitting flesh and bone. The missing arm began to reform in slow, visible stages, but Reze didn’t stop at “enough.”

She got greedy.

Her body pressed flush against your back, the half-regenerated arm curling around your waist as she bit deeper and drank harder. Soft, almost desperate swallows filled the quiet room. Blood ran down your shoulder and onto the sheets in thin rivulets while Reze fed like she had been starving for it. The more the new arm formed, the more she seemed to want hips shifting restlessly against you, a quiet, greedy noise vibrating in her throat with every mouthful.

By the time the arm had fully regenerated, Reze still hadn’t let go. She kept her teeth buried in your shoulder, drinking in slow, deep pulls, clearly taking far more than she needed just because she could. Her newly formed fingers flexed against your stomach, sticky with blood, as she finally forced herself to slow down… though she still didn’t pull away completely.

She stayed latched on, breathing hard through her nose, the taste of you on her tongue and the warm weight of your sleeping body pressed against hers in the dark.