When I was twenty-one, I made the most reckless decision of my life.<\/p>\n
At a deserted crossroads beneath a moonless sky, I made a deal with a demon.<\/p>\n
My soul…<\/p>\n
In exchange for absolute, unbreakable immortality.<\/p>\n
I expected lightning.<\/p>\n
Blood.<\/p>\n
Some horrifying ritual.<\/p>\n
Instead, the demon glanced at the contract, yawned, signed it with an elegant flourish, handed me a copy, and laughed.<\/p>\n
“You’re going to regret this,” he said.<\/p>\n
Then he vanished.<\/p>\n
From that day forward…<\/p>\n
Nothing could kill me.<\/p>\n
I tested it.<\/p>\n
At first, carefully.<\/p>\n
A knife.<\/p>\n
The wound closed before the blood reached the floor.<\/p>\n
Later…<\/p>\n
More recklessly.<\/p>\n
I jumped from cliffs.<\/p>\n
Walked through burning buildings.<\/p>\n
Survived plane crashes.<\/p>\n
Once, during a scientific expedition, I volunteered to descend into an active volcanic vent.<\/p>\n
The molten rock swallowed me.<\/p>\n
I climbed back out three days later without a single scar.<\/p>\n
Governments tried to study me.<\/p>\n
Religions declared me a miracle.<\/p>\n
Conspiracy theories called me an alien.<\/p>\n
I simply disappeared whenever people became too curious.<\/p>\n
Decades passed.<\/p>\n
Friends grew old.<\/p>\n
Families faded into history.<\/p>\n
Empires changed.<\/p>\n
Technology transformed the world.<\/p>\n
I remained twenty-one.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I stopped counting birthdays.<\/p>\n
I stopped fearing anything.<\/p>\n
I even stopped remembering what pain felt like.<\/p>\n
Then, eighty years after signing the contract…<\/p>\n
I found a gray hair.<\/p>\n
Just one.<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
Until a crushing pain exploded through my chest.<\/p>\n
I collapsed onto the floor.<\/p>\n
For the first time in eight decades…<\/p>\n
Something hurt.<\/p>\n
I rushed to the underground vault where I kept the only digital scan of my contract.<\/p>\n
Multiple encrypted backups.<\/p>\n
Offline servers.<\/p>\n
Air-gapped storage.<\/p>\n
The file was gone.<\/p>\n
Every copy.<\/p>\n
In its place was a single video.<\/p>\n
The demon appeared on-screen.<\/p>\n
He looked terrible.<\/p>\n
One horn was broken.<\/p>\n
His suit was torn.<\/p>\n
Dark blood covered one side of his face.<\/p>\n
He kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting something to burst through the wall.<\/p>\n
When he finally spoke, his voice trembled.<\/p>\n
“If you’re watching this…”<\/p>\n
“…I’ve already been found.”<\/p>\n
He swallowed hard.<\/p>\n
“I lied.”<\/p>\n
“I never took your soul.”<\/p>\n
I stared at the screen.<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
He continued.<\/p>\n
“I sold the contract.”<\/p>\n
“It was too valuable.”<\/p>\n
He forced a bitter laugh.<\/p>\n
“You weren’t buying immortality.”<\/p>\n
“You were becoming collateral.”<\/p>\n
The room suddenly felt much colder.<\/p>\n
He leaned closer to the camera.<\/p>\n
“There are beings older than demons.”<\/p>\n
“They don’t collect souls.”<\/p>\n
“They collect promises.”<\/p>\n
“The contract wasn’t ownership.”<\/p>\n
“It was a receipt.”<\/p>\n
A tremendous crash echoed somewhere behind him.<\/p>\n
The camera shook.<\/p>\n
He whispered urgently.<\/p>\n
“I sold your debt.”<\/p>\n
“And debts…”<\/p>\n
“…always mature.”<\/p>\n
The screen flickered.<\/p>\n
“They’ve finally come to collect.”<\/p>\n
The video ended.<\/p>\n
At that exact moment…<\/p>\n
My gray hair turned white.<\/p>\n
Another appeared.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
My skin wrinkled.<\/p>\n
Not slowly.<\/p>\n
Instantly.<\/p>\n
Eighty years of stolen time hit me all at once.<\/p>\n
I stumbled toward a mirror.<\/p>\n
Every second…<\/p>\n
I aged another year.<\/p>\n
Twenty-two.<\/p>\n
Twenty-three.<\/p>\n
Thirty.<\/p>\n
Forty-five.<\/p>\n
Seventy.<\/p>\n
My bones screamed.<\/p>\n
My vision blurred.<\/p>\n
Then…<\/p>\n
Everything stopped.<\/p>\n
I looked eighty-one years old.<\/p>\n
Exactly the age I should have been.<\/p>\n
The pain disappeared.<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
“So that’s it.”<\/p>\n
“I finally became mortal.”<\/p>\n
Then someone knocked on my vault door.<\/p>\n
Three slow knocks.<\/p>\n
The steel door was twenty inches thick.<\/p>\n
No one should have known it existed.<\/p>\n
Another knock.<\/p>\n
This time…<\/p>\n
The metal bent inward.<\/p>\n
A calm voice spoke from the other side.<\/p>\n
“We’re not here for your life.”<\/p>\n
“We’re here for the interest.”<\/p>\n
The door folded open like paper.<\/p>\n
Three figures entered.<\/p>\n
They wore perfectly tailored black suits.<\/p>\n
Their faces had no features.<\/p>\n
Only smooth skin.<\/p>\n
One carried an impossibly long scroll.<\/p>\n
Another held an ancient ledger bound in something that looked disturbingly like human skin.<\/p>\n
The third simply smiled…<\/p>\n
Without having a mouth.<\/p>\n
The tallest figure opened the ledger.<\/p>\n
“Original debt.”<\/p>\n
He looked up.<\/p>\n
“Soul.”<\/p>\n
Then turned another page.<\/p>\n
“Eighty years of compound immortality.”<\/p>\n
Another page.<\/p>\n
“Unauthorized resurrections.”<\/p>\n
Another.<\/p>\n
“Repeated violations of natural death.”<\/p>\n
He finally closed the book.<\/p>\n
The sound echoed like a judge’s gavel.<\/p>\n
“Total balance due…”<\/p>\n
He looked directly at me.<\/p>\n
“…cannot be paid by one soul.”<\/p>\n
I backed away.<\/p>\n
“What does that mean?”<\/p>\n
The faceless figure tilted its head.<\/p>\n
“It means…”<\/p>\n
“…you owe us every life you refused to surrender.”<\/p>\n
Suddenly, the room filled with voices.<\/p>\n
Hundreds.<\/p>\n
Thousands.<\/p>\n
People I had outlived.<\/p>\n
Friends.<\/p>\n
Lovers.<\/p>\n
Children.<\/p>\n
Entire generations.<\/p>\n
Not accusing.<\/p>\n
Simply waiting.<\/p>\n
The final figure reached into its coat and produced the original contract.<\/p>\n
The paper hadn’t changed.<\/p>\n
Except for one sentence that had never been there before.<\/p>\n
At the bottom, written in fresh black ink, were the words:<\/p>\n
Payment may be deferred.<\/strong><\/p>\n It is never forgiven.<\/strong><\/p>\n The figures stepped aside.<\/p>\n Behind them wasn’t the hallway anymore.<\/p>\n It was an endless staircase descending into complete darkness.<\/p>\n The tallest collector gestured politely.<\/p>\n “Your first installment…”<\/p>\n “…is due now.”<\/p>\n I looked back one last time at the world I’d spent eighty years refusing to leave.<\/p>\n Then I finally understood why the demon had laughed.<\/p>\n Immortality had never been the reward.<\/p>\n It had simply been the longest possible way to calculate the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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… … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":84528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-honglay"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84580,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84527\/revisions\/84580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/84528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}