The Yandere Demon Lords & Me-Chapter 34: Blood Debt and Blade Vows - 3

The fire was dying by the time Rein found himself standing at the edge of the clearing again, the mist curling low around his boots like quiet hands.

He wasn't looking at Iris.

He was looking at her blade.

It lay abandoned in the grass a few paces from the fire, cracked down the center, its sigils darkened but not dead.

The broken metal shimmered with faint, oily red veins—like something inside it was still alive, but trying not to be.

Zeraka watched from where she crouched on a half-fallen tree, chin on her fist.

"Leave it," she said.

"I was going to throw it in the ravine," Rein said.

Valaithe's voice drifted over lazily. "You sure you want to toss something that tried to taste your blood?"

Elaris didn't speak.

She just watched Rein's fingers as they hovered over the blade's hilt.

Iris had fallen asleep, barely, curled up with her back to the fire, but even in sleep, her body trembled slightly—like her dreams couldn't decide whether to love or punish her.

Rein crouched.

He reached for the hilt.

His fingers touched it.

And the blade pulsed.

Once.

Bright.

Hot.

The world dropped out from under him.

He was standing on black soil, surrounded by a field of ash-petaled flowers.

The sky above was cracked like stained glass—gold leaking from the seams.

In the distance, bells tolled.

At his feet—

Iris.

Lying in his arms.

Bleeding out from a wound in her chest shaped like a perfect, circular mark—not a stab wound.

A seal. Broken.

She smiled.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You made me real."

His hand brushed her cheek in the vision, fingers shaking.

"Why does it end like this?"

"Because I asked it to."

Her voice was soft.

Final.

Her last breath hitched.

And her broken blade—this very one—lay beside her, glowing with the same sick-red light.

Rein gasped and dropped the weapon.

The vision snapped.

The field vanished.

The clearing returned.

Mist. Fire. Rain.

The sound of crows far in the distance.

He staggered back a step, hands shaking slightly.

Zeraka was already on her feet. "What did you see?"

He didn't answer.

Valaithe tilted her head, stepping closer, curiosity burning in her eyes.

"It's a binding blade," she whispered. "That flash? That was a soul-thread memory."

Elaris stepped forward. "Did it show you her death?"

Rein looked down at his hands. They still felt warm from holding her.

"No," he said.

"It showed me how she wants to die."

Behind them, Iris stirred.

Eyes opening slowly.

And locking directly on him.

"I told you," she whispered, voice cracked from sleep.

"I saw myself dying with you."

"And smiling."

_______

She didn't say she was staying.

She just never left.

When they broke camp the next morning, Iris rose with them like she'd always been part of the group.

No ceremony.

No explanation.

Her red cloak was damp with dew, her blade strapped carefully to her back in two pieces, wrapped in cloth like the remains of something sacred.

She walked behind Rein.

Not beside him.

Not among the others.

Behind him.

Two steps back. Always in his shadow. Silent.

Zeraka noticed it within minutes.

"Why is she walking like your ghost?" she muttered.

Rein didn't answer. He didn't have one.

Zeraka growled low and dropped back in the line until she was side by side with Iris.

She didn't say a word—just walked beside her for five slow paces.

Then she suddenly veered, bumped Iris with her shoulder, and whispered,

"You stare at his back like you're waiting for it to open."

Iris's voice didn't rise.

"I'm making sure no one else stabs it."

Zeraka's eyes narrowed.

Then, without another word, she dropped back into her usual place next to Rein—and hooked her arm through his with deliberate weight.

He shot her a look.

She bared a tooth in a grin.

"I just like how warm you are."

Later, when they stopped to rest, Valaithe brought Rein a strange-looking fruit and held it up to his lips like a priestess offering a sacrament.

"It's bitter," she whispered. "But it clears the fog from your blood."

"Is that a metaphor?" he muttered.

"Only if you taste it."

He bit it.

She smiled.

Then reached up and slowly wiped the juice from the corner of his mouth with her thumb.

"He even chews charmingly," she said to no one in particular.

Zeraka rolled her eyes hard enough to sprain something.

Elaris didn't speak.

But when Rein reached for his water flask and found it missing, she was already holding it out before he turned.

"You forgot this," she said.

"No I didn't."

She didn't smile.

"You were about to."

And through all of this—

Iris watched.

She didn't eat.

Didn't ask questions.

She simply tracked Rein with her eyes every time he moved, like he was the only point of orientation in a collapsing world.

And when he glanced her way—

She didn't look away.

That night, as they set up camp near a crumbled stone wall overgrown with vines, Rein laid out his bedroll under a half-fallen tree and closed his eyes.

He felt the warmth of Zeraka beside him almost immediately—her arm slung possessively across his waist like a seatbelt he hadn't agreed to.

Valaithe was nearby, humming under her breath, fingers idly tracing symbols in the dirt like runes from an older alphabet.

Elaris stood at the edge of the camp with her back to the fire, sword drawn, unmoving.

And Iris...

He opened one eye.

She was sitting against a tree ten feet away.

Legs tucked beneath her.

Eyes still fixed on him.

She didn't blink.

She didn't sleep.

She just waited.

Like she was guarding something too sacred to touch.

The fire was just embers when Rein felt the shift in the air.

Not danger. Not warmth.

Intent.

He opened his eyes to find her already kneeling beside him.

Iris.

She hadn't made a sound—just appeared, cloaked in the hush of pre-dawn, head bowed, hands folded neatly in her lap.

Between them, laid reverently across her palms, was the broken dagger.

She didn't speak at first.

Just waited.

Rein sat up slowly, Zeraka's arm sliding from his chest with a reluctant growl. She stirred beside him, blinked once, and immediately bared her teeth.

"If you try to stab him again—"

"She's not here to stab me," Rein said softly.

Zeraka's eyes narrowed. But she stayed quiet. Barely.

Valaithe, already awake and lounging near the ash pile, gave a lazy, pleased hum.

Elaris stood at the edge of the firelight, still as stone, but her grip on her sword tightened.

Iris lifted the dagger.

Held it out to Rein.

"This was forged for one purpose," she said. "To kill the Throne-Born. To silence your soul before it ever spoke."

"It failed."

Rein looked at her.

The blade's crack glinted in the low light like a wound that had scabbed, but not healed.

"You already told me that," he said.

Iris nodded.

Then slowly turned the dagger in her hands until the hilt faced him.

"Now I want it to protect you."

"Even if it's broken. Even if I am."

Rein didn't move.

Zeraka made a choking sound—somewhere between insult and disbelief.

"You're giving him your oathblade?"

"I'm giving him what's left of it," Iris replied.

Her voice didn't waver.

"What's left of me."

Rein reached forward.

Took the blade.

It was warm.

Not with magic.

With memory.

It pulsed once in his hands—then went still.

Iris exhaled slowly, like she'd been holding it for years.

"I swear not to kill for you."

"I swear not to die for you."

She looked up, her eyes sharp, dry, bright with something she hadn't let herself feel until now.

"I swear to guard you."

"Even from me."

Valaithe let out a low, satisfied breath.

"How poetic. A blade who envies her own sheath."

Zeraka crossed her arms, eyes narrowed.

"He doesn't need another watcher."

"Then let me be a wall," Iris said.

Elaris stepped closer to the fire.

"Words are cheap."

"Then test me," Iris said, standing now, slowly, blade back at her side. "Try to touch him while he sleeps."

The silence that followed wasn't empty.

It was tense.

Trembling with new boundaries.

New rules.

New rivalries.

Rein stood, slid the broken blade into his belt.

"No more oaths."

"No more blood."

He looked around at all of them—at the tension, the obsession, the loyalty, the fire just under their skin.

"Just stay. That's enough."

But in each of their eyes—Zeraka's, Valaithe's, Elaris's, and Iris's—he saw the same answer:

It would never be enough.

___________

The whisper spread like a fever in a drought.

No heralds. No letters. No horns.

Just words, muttered from lips to ears like a secret too heavy to bury,

"The Scarlet Blade has joined the Throne."

It made no sense.

It needed no explanation.

It reached capital walls and temple gates before Rein had even finished chewing his morning roots.

In a cathedral carved from silver and white ash, a bishop dropped his wine cup mid-prayer.

It shattered against the mosaic floor, splashing blood-red across the feet of a gold statue of the God-King.

"Not her," he whispered.

"Not the Third."

In a war camp nestled in the spines of the frozen north, Saint Caelus watched a scout deliver the rumor with shaking hands.

He said nothing at first.

Then stood, turned to his knights, and said only, "Send word to the Thirteenth Lance."

"If she's his now... we burn the others before they follow."

Back in the hills, Rein sat beside a slow-moving stream, cleaning the cracked dagger in silence.

Zeraka lay sprawled beside him in the grass, head in his lap, tail flicking idly. She hadn't spoken for several minutes—not since she heard Iris whisper her vow.

Now, she broke the silence with a murmur.

"You keep collecting us."

Rein smiled faintly. "I'm not trying to."

"That's what makes it worse."

She turned her head and bit his thigh lightly—more pressure than pain. He flinched.

"You're not even resisting anymore."

"Maybe I'm tired of running."

Valaithe sat perched in the low branches above them, upside down, braiding tiny cords of vine between her fingers like nooses.

"He's learning to enjoy being worshipped. They all do. Eventually."

Elaris stood downstream, blade unsheathed, dipping it slowly into the water.

She hadn't spoken all morning, but her eyes stayed on Rein—on his hands, his chest, his mouth.

Not hungrily.

Just constantly.

Iris sat alone, just within view, sharpening the edge of a new dagger—a piece of metal Valaithe had scavenged from a fallen war emblem.

She wasn't smiling.

But her eyes were focused in that same way again.

Like Rein was a prayer she hadn't finished whispering.

He looked at them all.

How they moved around him.

How they spoke when he wasn't listening.

How none of them touched without intention anymore.

Even silence had weight now.

And the pull between them?

It wasn't a chain.

It was a gravitational field.

And every step he took forward—

Someone fell.

"They'll keep coming," he said aloud, mostly to himself.

Zeraka yawned into his thigh. "Then let them."

Valaithe smiled upside down. "It's a long way to the bottom."

Elaris finally spoke from across the stream.

"Falling doesn't always mean down."