The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The locked record hissed open when Nahlia scribbled her name next to the First Queen’’s seal.

The page pulled away from the wall. Rather than flatten back into place, it unfolded like a door made from paper: wider than the archive shelves and scribbled from edge to edge.

A HUNGER MAY BE GUIDED. IT CANNOT BE OWNED.

The paper clerks behind them crashed into the broken-crest doorway.

”Read fast,” Kaela hissed.

Austin Veyron stepped forward to the record. His claim seed pulsed beneath his wrist cloth, but the page glared at it coldly. Instead, the record curled away, revealing a woman in a white mask standing in front of a shadowed throne.

”The First Queen,” Nahlia gasped.

The image shifted.

Vharra was holding a black shard in one hand and an open ledger in the other. Crowds of adult demon lords filled the room around her. Each wore chains that claimed to be crowns.

”I crafted no network.” The voice of the First Queen echoed through the chamber. ”I built a warning.”

Words crawled beneath her.

THE DEVOUR SEED WAS DISCOVERED BETWEEN WORLDS. IT YEKS FOR POWER, BUT IT ALSO REVEALS EVERY FALSE CLAIM MADE IN ITS PRESENCE.

Austin Veyron felt his lungs deflate.

Vharra hadn’’t written that seed herself. She had forced that warning around it and turned it into a lie.

The image kept flickering.

”Your future link may come hungry. Do not make him a god. Do not make him a tool. Give him people who will say no to him.”

Elena locked eyes with Austin Veyron but stayed quiet.

The paper clerks burst through the doorway.

Rin slashed at the first with both knives. Sarielle sliced down the second before it could reach Tessa. Seven yanked a fallen shelf into the hallway, buying them seconds.

”Read the rest.” Nahlia pointed at the corner of the page. ”The First Queen locked away more than just her message.”

The record displayed a map of Vharra’’s hidden inner circle: not through the crown hall or chain towers, but through a forgotten ledger hallway deep underneath the palace itself.

CROWNLESS PATH: WILL REQUIRE A LIVING KEY WHO DENIES CLAIM.

A name blinked below the map.

Nahlia of the Ninth Script.

Nahlia flinched away like she’’d been struck.

”I am the key?” she coughed.

”You are a living human.” Tessa grabbed her wrist. ”The record is simply saying you have the choice to unlock it.”

The chain-scribe locked eyes with the doorway in the drawing. ”If I take that route it will lead me to the Queen’’s keep. She will know I fled.”

”She already does.” Veyra watched her carefully.

Austin Veyron stepped away from the record. ”If you don’’t want to come with us Nahlia, you don’’t have to.”

She clenched her pen like a lifeline. ”I spent lifetimes writing people into prisons. If there is a chance to break them out I have to try.”

The record considered her choice for a long moment. Then, it accepted.

A thin trickle of white ink spread between Nahlia’’s pen and the map below it. It wasn’’t a chain around her wrist. It didn’’t connect her soul to Austin Veyron’’s survival. It simply showed her the doorway waiting for her decision.

Behind them, the paper clerks flooded into the archive room.

”We don’’t have time!” Kaela yelled, ripped forward by a dozen clerks at her back.

Austin Veyron tore the record from the archives. The page folded closed into a white blanket in his hands. Dozens of walls throughout the rejected-amendment wing began falling as soon as its seal broke.

They ran.

Ledger hallways branched out in every direction, Nahlia pulling far ahead of the rest. Behind them, the clerks poured after them all, taking claim on every wall they passed. If a sentence started declaring someone’’s name, Tessa or Sarielle cleaved it down. If the ledger tried to turn them into property, the group fought back using only their words.

”I am taking this path.”

” I am claiming my name.”

”I choose to leave when I want.”

Austin Veyron kept quiet until they reached the train platform.

Only then did he kneel down to stare at the white blanket in his hands before speaking deliberately.

”I choose who I become.”

The claim seed flared.

It responded to him.

[CROWNLESS PATH LOCATED.]

[LIVING KEY DECISIONS COORDINATED.]

The Ledger shook with the sound of a thousand chains breaking.

Ahead of them, the eastward train docked with its doors ajar.

Nahlia looked back at the burning library behind them.

”When does the crownless path begin?” Elena asked.

The white blanket unfolded for the final time.

One final name blinked below the map.

THE MIRROR MARKET.

Veyra went perfectly still.

”That place is within Vharra’’s territory,” she whispered, staring down at the empty horizon. ”It is where she auctions off the names of people who think they are free.”

Austin Veyron boarded the train.

”Well then. Let’’s go find them.”

The doors started to close.

It was then that a single paper clerk stumbled through the smoke. Its pen slashed across Nahlia’’s arm, scribbling a thin red line across her skin.

RETURN TO SERVICE.

Nahlia screamed and fell to the ground.

Austin Veyron grabbed the clerk by its paper throat. It hunger screamed to engulf him whole. All he had to do was kill the creature and erase the evidence, leave the city like she never existed.

Instead, he shredded the order from the ledger and threw the rest of the clerk away onto the platform empty.

She stared at the vanishing ink mark on her skin. ”You could have taken its core.”

”I could have.”

”Why didn’’t you do that?”

”Because I’’m trying to decide when breaking a weapon turns into eating a person.”

The train drifted away from the station.

Everyone was silent for several moments. The white blanket from the First Queen’’s ledger lay between them, glowing the path toward freedom in faint light. The journey took them past names of demolished districts, contract holes, and forgotten places where the network had been cut off but never beaten.

Elena began reading the route aloud. ”Mirror market. Bell vault. Under ledgers of the inner court.”

Veyra scowled. ”You know what happens to everyone who walks into the Mirror Market? They pay a price. If we walk in open, we will start a war with half the network before we reach Vharra.”

Rin pressed her forehead against the window. ”Well, I specialize in walking in silently.”

Tessa shook her head. ”The market deals in names. If we take as little attention as possible people will try and sell us individually.”

Nahlia tightened her grip on her pen, holding both hands around it like a blade. ”There is one rule about the market. If someone is missing their own signature, they can’’t be sold. That is how Vharra bypasses the law.”

Austin Veyron stared at his claim seed.

”If we give everyone their signatures back.”

She nodded. ”Yes. But how?”

His seed pulsed with light, showing him a single glimpse: a square room lined with mirrors. Instead of reflections, each one held a different chain around the same person’’s neck.

He would never use his seed again.

He had learned enough to know one thing. His hunger had been feared. Not accepted. Someone had orchestrated for him to become this monster, and it wasn’’t Vharra.

Knowing that made him no better than her.

It just meant his next choice would determine who.