Joji drove his sword into Jaime's torn chest and pried.
The demon heart came free with a wet pull. It was small enough to fit his palm, black as obsidian, and it still beat outside any body.
As a doctor, he knew it was impossible. As a man in Primeria, he had learned to stop arguing with impossible things.
"This is a fantasy world after all," he murmured.
Then he ate it. He forced it down in hard swallows.
The taste hit like licorice at first, sweet in a wrong way, then the bitterness bloomed and clung to his throat like a curse.
Heat rolled through him. Veins across his arms and neck darkened, black lines crawling under skin.
His pupils shifted. Pressure built behind his skull. A horn pushed up at the back of his head, blunt at first, then sharper.
He staggered, breath hitching, and clawed at his cuirass.
Something pressed at his back like bone trying to unfold.
He tore the armor off and a wing burst out, stretching with a sound like wet cloth ripping.
