When I was twenty-one, I made the most reckless decision of my life.
At a deserted crossroads beneath a moonless sky, I made a deal with a demon.
My soul…
In exchange for absolute, unbreakable immortality.
I expected lightning.
Blood.
Some horrifying ritual.
Instead, the demon glanced at the contract, yawned, signed it with an elegant flourish, handed me a copy, and laughed.
“You’re going to regret this,” he said.
Then he vanished.
From that day forward…
Nothing could kill me.
I tested it.
At first, carefully.
A knife.
The wound closed before the blood reached the floor.
Later…
More recklessly.
I jumped from cliffs.
Walked through burning buildings.
Survived plane crashes.
Once, during a scientific expedition, I volunteered to descend into an active volcanic vent.
The molten rock swallowed me.
I climbed back out three days later without a single scar.
Governments tried to study me.
Religions declared me a miracle.
Conspiracy theories called me an alien.
I simply disappeared whenever people became too curious.
Decades passed.
Friends grew old.
Families faded into history.
Empires changed.
Technology transformed the world.
I remained twenty-one.
Eventually, I stopped counting birthdays.
I stopped fearing anything.
I even stopped remembering what pain felt like.
Then, eighty years after signing the contract…
I found a gray hair.
Just one.
I laughed.
Until a crushing pain exploded through my chest.
I collapsed onto the floor.
For the first time in eight decades…
Something hurt.
I rushed to the underground vault where I kept the only digital scan of my contract.
Multiple encrypted backups.
Offline servers.
Air-gapped storage.
The file was gone.
Every copy.
In its place was a single video.
The demon appeared on-screen.
He looked terrible.
One horn was broken.
His suit was torn.
Dark blood covered one side of his face.
He kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting something to burst through the wall.
When he finally spoke, his voice trembled.
“If you’re watching this…”
“…I’ve already been found.”
He swallowed hard.
“I lied.”
“I never took your soul.”
I stared at the screen.
“What?”
He continued.
“I sold the contract.”
“It was too valuable.”
He forced a bitter laugh.
“You weren’t buying immortality.”
“You were becoming collateral.”
The room suddenly felt much colder.
He leaned closer to the camera.
“There are beings older than demons.”
“They don’t collect souls.”
“They collect promises.”
“The contract wasn’t ownership.”
“It was a receipt.”
A tremendous crash echoed somewhere behind him.
The camera shook.
He whispered urgently.
“I sold your debt.”
“And debts…”
“…always mature.”
The screen flickered.
“They’ve finally come to collect.”
The video ended.
At that exact moment…
My gray hair turned white.
Another appeared.
Then another.
My skin wrinkled.
Not slowly.
Instantly.
Eighty years of stolen time hit me all at once.
I stumbled toward a mirror.
Every second…
I aged another year.
Twenty-two.
Twenty-three.
Thirty.
Forty-five.
Seventy.
My bones screamed.
My vision blurred.
Then…
Everything stopped.
I looked eighty-one years old.
Exactly the age I should have been.
The pain disappeared.
I smiled.
“So that’s it.”
“I finally became mortal.”
Then someone knocked on my vault door.
Three slow knocks.
The steel door was twenty inches thick.
No one should have known it existed.
Another knock.
This time…
The metal bent inward.
A calm voice spoke from the other side.
“We’re not here for your life.”
“We’re here for the interest.”
The door folded open like paper.
Three figures entered.
They wore perfectly tailored black suits.
Their faces had no features.
Only smooth skin.
One carried an impossibly long scroll.
Another held an ancient ledger bound in something that looked disturbingly like human skin.
The third simply smiled…
Without having a mouth.
The tallest figure opened the ledger.
“Original debt.”
He looked up.
“Soul.”
Then turned another page.
“Eighty years of compound immortality.”
Another page.
“Unauthorized resurrections.”
Another.
“Repeated violations of natural death.”
He finally closed the book.
The sound echoed like a judge’s gavel.
“Total balance due…”
He looked directly at me.
“…cannot be paid by one soul.”
I backed away.
“What does that mean?”
The faceless figure tilted its head.
“It means…”
“…you owe us every life you refused to surrender.”
Suddenly, the room filled with voices.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
People I had outlived.
Friends.
Lovers.
Children.
Entire generations.
Not accusing.
Simply waiting.
The final figure reached into its coat and produced the original contract.
The paper hadn’t changed.
Except for one sentence that had never been there before.
At the bottom, written in fresh black ink, were the words:
Payment may be deferred.
It is never forgiven.
The figures stepped aside.
Behind them wasn’t the hallway anymore.
It was an endless staircase descending into complete darkness.
The tallest collector gestured politely.
“Your first installment…”
“…is due now.”
I looked back one last time at the world I’d spent eighty years refusing to leave.
Then I finally understood why the demon had laughed.
Immortality had never been the reward.
It had simply been the longest possible way to calculate the bill.
