The Jinn's Ten-Year Oath

The sunset painted the forest in bruised gold and bleeding crimson. Liora sat fuming by the ashes of their fire, her fingers clawing into the dirt. Each furrow was a silent curse hurled at the devil who shared her body.

Rustling.

The goblin-Kale emerged from the bushes—yellowed fangs, warty green skin, claws curled protectively around a mangled fistful of violets. Flowers, crushed by the very hands meant to tear flesh.

"Here," he grunted, offering them.

Liora slapped them aside. "Are you mocking me?"

Kale watched the petals scatter. Slowly, he picked one up and ate it. "When birds shit on your head," he said solemnly through violet pulp, "it means sky still remembers you." He pointed to the empty sky overhead. It didn't care.

With no further comment, Kale turned to a nearby ironwood tree. His goblin muscles flexed and rippled with each axe stroke, sweat glistening across his borrowed flesh. Twilight rang with the sound of steel against bark.

Liora, seething, skewered fish with a fury that left no room for thought. Ten silver bodies soon crackled over the flames, salted and glazed in precious oil. She devoured them all without tasting.

Fear always made her hungry.

A splash caught her ear.

Kale surfaced from the river, water cascading down his squat form.

"Where are your clothes?" she snapped.

Kale blinked. "Gorillas wear pants?"

He patted his distended belly. "Goblin gut hides everything. But…" His gaze slid to the darkening treeline. "Could use crocodile leather. Keeps out the night."

Liora threw him a patchy hide without comment.

Suddenly, a six-foot monitor lizard exploded from the brush.

Steel flashed—once, twice—and Liora's talisman blade took its head clean off. No core.

Kale descended on the corpse like a starving animal, tearing into raw meat with dull teeth.

"Disgusting rat," Liora muttered.

The goblin's chewing slowed. His yellow eyes met hers—something like shame flickered there. Then it vanished. He swallowed, then began digging a sleeping pit with savage urgency.

---

Night brought owls.

One flew too low.

Liora's talisman ropes ensnared it, but not before it burned through half her remaining reserves. Then came worse—a venomous centipede. It sank its fangs into her wrist. Paralysis crept in like cold ink.

Kale's voice filled her mind. Cut it out. Now.

"Get out of my body!" she screamed.

Say that again and I'll shatter myself, he growled. Even devils keep promises.

With clinical precision, Kale guided her trembling hand, helping her carve out poisoned flesh. Blood poured like ink. Pain seared through her bones.

"You'd cry too," he muttered, "if you saw the damage. I cried once. A long time ago. Then the tears dried up."

Liora hissed, "Your flowers were poisonous."

Kale didn't argue. He crushed herbs into a poultice. "The bugs won't come," he said flatly. "I control them. Mostly."

A beat.

"Not the centipede."

As holy light knit her flesh back together, Liora realized: no insects had troubled them—until Kale had withdrawn. His protection had been invisible, silent… and absolute.

The most twisted kindness of all.

---

The moon hung low when the awakened monkey came.

It moved with eerie silence, claws brushing bark as it closed in. Kale was already on his feet, goblin muscles coiled.

The fight was savage.

Claws ripped across his chest—but he broke the monkey's neck with a sickening crack. No hesitation. No fire.

He didn't cook it—just tore in. Blood dripped down his chin.

Then he tossed Liora the pulsing core. "Absorb it."

She tried—but pain lanced through her crippled arm. Kale's presence slipped into her soul like smoke. He forced the energy where it needed to go, channeling it into healing.

She slept fitfully, her body a battlefield of fire and marrow.

---

Dawn.

A forest cat stalked them—lean, vicious, and too intelligent.

Kale's spear punched through its ribs before it could pounce.

"Another core," he said, throwing it to her.

"I don't need your help," Liora snapped.

Kale said nothing. He turned away, hacking at a tree.

By midday, sweat pouring, they had a crude boat pulled together at the water's edge. Liora tossed him another axe. She hated how capable he was.

---

Then came the goblin warband.

Seven snarling, bony beasts, their clubs spiked with scavenged bone.

"Get in the boat," Kale barked.

She handed him her sword.

The first goblin charged—and lost its head in one clean swing. The second, too. But the rest overwhelmed him with rage and numbers.

"Release the bats!" Kale roared in her mind.

She obeyed.

Twenty shrieking bats filled the sky, their ultrasonic wails disorienting the enemy. Kale used the chaos to crush one's chest barehanded, tearing out its core.

Three goblins dead. The others fled.

Kale stood panting, three glowing cores in hand. "For the bats."

He fed their meat to the surviving swarm. Two bats had died. Twenty remained.

---

They pushed the boat into the current.

But peace did not come.

Liora stared into the river's depths.

Something moved below—large and slow.

Kale's goblin body tensed.

"Row faster."

They pushed the boat into the current—

—when the water erupted.

A hulking goblin burst from the shallows, twice Kale's size, its moss-crusted hide studded with jagged bone armor. In one clawed hand, it clutched a shield carved from a river turtle's shell; in the other, a spear tipped with a human femur. Its eyes glowed faintly—not with the dull hunger of common goblins, but with the cold, calculating gleam of a beast on the cusp of awakening.

Liora reacted first. Her fingers flicked, and a talisman ignited—a streak of blue fire arrowed toward the creature's throat.

*Clang.*

The turtle shield snapped up, deflecting the magic with a burst of sparks. The goblin grinned, needle-teeth glistening. It had anticipated them. Prepared.

Kale moved like a sprung trap.

He lunged, not for the kill, but to grapple—goblin against goblin, muscle and malice. They crashed into the shallows, churning water pink with blood. The bigger goblin was stronger, its strikes hammering Kale's ribs with brutal precision. But Kale fought smarter. He let a blow land, let his borrowed body *break* just enough to get inside the beast's guard—then sank his teeth into its wrist.

The monster howled.

Liora loosed another arrow. This time, the goblin couldn't raise its shield fast enough. The magic seared its shoulder, flesh sizzling—

—and Kale *pounced.*

His consciousness surged forward, not into Liora, but into the wounded goblin. For a heartbeat, both bodies froze—Kale's original vessel collapsing into the water, the new one shuddering as devil-magic rewrote its flesh.

Then the bigger goblin straightened.

Its glowing eyes dimmed.

And Kale flexed his new, powerful claws.

"Better," he rasped, rolling the spear in his grip. He kicked his old, broken body aside—a discarded shell—and turned to Liora. "Now we row."

Behind them, the abandoned goblin form twitched once, then stilled. The river carried it away.

But river isn't safe for them.