The Doom That Came at First Light

In most founder stories, the “demons” are a metaphor. Burnout, anxiety, self-sabotage, whatever the latest LinkedIn thread is yelling about.

In my world, the demon is a literal many-eyed creature you definitely should not have slept with… and the only thing between you and a very permanent performance review in the pit is a cursed sword, three bickering spirits, and a blessed bulldog named Rocco.

This is canon from Founder World, where “Founder” isn’t a job title. It’s what you call the poor bastard the universe keeps throwing Wounds, monsters, and bad decisions in lingerie at—and then expects him to hold the world together anyway.

Founder: bad decisions, cheap lust, and sulfur in the same room.

“MAW WASTED HIS MARK ON YOU!”

The voice hit first—sharp, cold, everywhere at once.

He came awake to teeth at his throat.

Not Rocco’s.

A hand like a hooked bone slammed him into the stone wall so hard the world turned white at the edges. His bare back skidded over old mortar and a nail raked a line of fire down his spine. The room reeked of sweat, wine, and sulfur. His breath tasted like her perfume and blood.

She had been warm against him when he fell asleep. Soft skin. Dark hair. A laugh that curled low in his chest.

Now her hair writhed like smoke, and her eyes—

There were too many eyes.

They bloomed along her cheekbones, her throat, across the ribs he’d kissed an hour before. Every one of them bright and hungry, every pupil a thin slit of black flame.

“You think the Watchers will take you,” she hissed. Her lips still looked like the woman’s lips, full and red. Her teeth did not. “Little stitch-man. Little favorite. They will not come. They cannot.”

Her fingers dug into his collarbones. Something sharp pierced skin, sliding close to bone.

He didn’t answer. Didn’t waste breath on her.

His jaw clenched, muscles bunching. His eyes flicked once to the side of the room.

The sword was by the bed.

Of course it was. The scabbard propped carelessly against a broken chair. A smear of lipstick still on the hilt where she’d taken it in her hands earlier, tracing the carvings, asking about the runes with a playful tilt of her head.

Three voices muttered over each other, far away and far too close.

“…told you she came in wrong,” Ledger snapped, pages flapping in irritation. “Sulfur and cheap lust, classic lesser-court cocktail.”

“You suspected,” Grandfather Ash rumbled. “You did not know.”

Sable’s voice was lazy, amused. “I knew the second she walked in. I just wanted to see how long it took him to notice the tail under the skirt. Spoiler: longer than his stamina.”

Their whispers slid through the cracks of the moment, under the sound of his own heartbeat. They weren’t in the room. They were somewhere else—above it, outside it, arguing over the story while he tried not to die in it.

The demon-woman’s face pushed close to his, all those eyes narrowing.

“Look at you,” she breathed. “Maw’s chosen thread. The one who walks the Wounds. The one who will hold the world together while it bleeds.” Her nails dug deeper. “You should be in chains, not in my bed.”

One of the side-eyes flicked down his chest, amused.

“Well. You were in something.”

Sable gave a low, filthy chuckle. “Technically still are, darling. She left claw marks in places even I haven’t reached yet.”

He drove his forehead forward.

Bone met bone with a crack that rang his own skull, but her nose snapped sideways with a wet crunch. Half her eyes squeezed shut. Black blood sprayed and hissed on the stone.

He dropped.

Not gracefully. More like a sack of grain torn loose from a cart. Her grip slipped and he slid down the wall, ribs screaming, vision hopping with light.

Her claws sliced where his throat had been an instant before.

He hit the floor on one knee, hand already reaching—

A heavy shape smashed into her from the side.

Rocco didn’t bark.

He didn’t need to.

The bulldog was all muscle and momentum, low to the ground and built like a brick that had decided it was done putting up with anyone’s nonsense. He hit her twisted hip with enough force to knock a full-grown soldier off his feet.

She felt him.

The first demon hand that grabbed for him came away smoking. Flesh like burnt paper flaked off her fingers where they brushed his wrinkled shoulder. Light flashed—short, sharp, like someone cracking open a furnace door just a sliver. It burned in the air above him, a jagged brand of something holy that refused to be pretty.

She shrieked, jerking back.

“The cur,” she spat, clutching her hand to her chest as it re-knit in threads of shadow. “The blessed cur. You bring Watchfire into a bed, Maw’s chosen? Do you know what they say about you in the pit?”

Sable purred, delighted. “They say the dog’s better in bed than most princes. Present company included.”

Ledger hissed. “Princess, please.”

“What? It’s true. Rocco doesn’t finish in thirty seconds and roll over pretending the world ended.”

He pushed off the wall, ignoring the way his joints protested. The room tilted, then steadied.

Rocco was already between them, thick neck low, legs spread, a rolling growl rumbling out of his barrel chest. Drool shone on his jowls. He looked like a statue someone had carved out of stubbornness and then set on “attack anything from Hell.”

“You know,” Sable’s voice drifted in, amused, “we could have mentioned she smelled like brimstone in the doorway.”

Ledger’s pages snapped. “You could have mentioned.”

“I thought he’d notice,” Sable replied. “He is supposed to be learning.”

Ash snorted, a sound like boulders mating. “Learning what? That perfume and possession both start with P?”

The demon’s eyes—dozens of them—snapped from the bulldog to the man now hauling himself to his feet. Her mouth peeled back in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“You don’t deserve him,” she hissed. “You don’t deserve your blade. You don’t deserve the angels’ scraps they threw you from mercy. The Maw marked you for the pit. You should be ours.”

His knuckles whitened. He took one step toward the bed, bare feet sliding in spilled wine.

“Of course he doesn’t deserve it,” Grandfather Ash murmured, voice like old coals. “That’s never been the point.”

“Is anyone going to mention the whole ‘Maw’s chosen’ thing to him?” Ledger asked. “Or are we still pretending he hasn’t put that together?”

“We are absolutely still pretending,” Sable said. “Look at him. He’s busy.”

“Busy bleeding and brooding,” Sable continued. “His second and third favorite hobbies. Right after bad decisions in lingerie.”

He was.

The woman’s body twitched and stretched as she drew herself taller, bones rearranging under skin like bad ideas. Her legs lengthened; extra joints budded beneath her knees. Her many eyes ringed the room, opening in the dark corners, watching from every angle.

“You walk the Wounds,” she purred. “You close the cracks he opened. You seal his work. Do you know how that looks from below? You re-write the Ledger. You steal the names that belong to the Maw.”

She leaned down, so close he could smell the sex still on her, sour now with smoke.

“You are blasphemy,” she whispered. “And still I would wear your mark. Still I would brag that I killed you. Still I would feed your heart to the pit with my own hands.”

Sable actually moaned. “Gods, threaten him again. He’s into that. I can feel his pulse from here.”

Ledger: “I swear on every unturned page—”

Ash, dry: “Let the princess have her fun. Boy’s been celibate since the last apocalypse.”

He reached the bed.

The sword waited where he’d dropped it, half tucked under a torn sheet, the hilt familiar as the lines on his palms. His fingers wrapped around leather worn by years, by other nights like this that hadn’t started with laughter.

He drew.

The blade came free with a low, hungry sound, metal too old and bright to be anything men had forged. Runes near the guard woke in a slow glow, not showy, just sure—light bleeding along their grooves like memory returning.

The demon flinched.

“Reckoning,” she breathed. Some of her eyes closed in reverence, others narrowed in hate. “The edge they gave you. The edge that ends us. The Watchers carved it for their pet.”

Her lip curled.

“But the Watchers won’t walk into this room, stitch-man. They will not step down for you. They only touch the world in feathers and accidents, in mutts and misfires. You are alone here.”

Rocco snorted, a wet, offended sound.

“They will watch you fall,” she went on, voice rising. “The Maw will laugh when we drag you down, piece by piece. You think family will save you? You think love matters in the pit? We ate your vows. We drank your promises. Your dead cling to you like ash and you still—”

He moved.

Not with grace. With decision.

A single step forward, shoulder turning, blade rising in a tight arc aimed not at her heart—not yet—but at the nearest cluster of eyes gathered along her ribs. She lunged to meet him, claws outstretched, legs bending in too many directions.

Rocco hit her first.

The bulldog drove into her shins, a compact battering ram of muscle and faith. Her lower legs went out from under her. For a heartbeat, her whole awful body was suspended, off-balance, all those eyes wide.

Reckoning’s edge came down.

The sword bit through shadow and stolen flesh. Three eyes went dark in an instant, bursting into flecks of greasy smoke. She screamed—not just with her mouth, but with all of her, the sound scraping the bones of the tower.

Sable again, breathy: “Harder, darling. She’s almost pretty when she screams.”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t shout. Didn’t give the scream anything to cling to.

He just kept cutting.

Her claws raked across his shoulder. Heat flared. Skin split. Blood ran warm down his arm, slicking his grip. He adjusted his hands by feel and carved another line through the cluster of eyes along her collarbone.

“Listen to me, for once,” Ledger insisted above it all. “Every slash you take on her, the Ledger shifts. Every time you close a Wound, the numbers change. This is why they want you gone.”

“Let him finish the demon before you bury him in math,” Sable said, almost fond. “He is busy not bleeding out.”

“He is bleeding out,” Grandfather Ash observed.

“And still prettier than most of my exes,” Sable added. “Bleeding’s a good look on him.”

He was.

But he stayed on his feet.

The demon staggered, now taller than the rafters, her body a mess of half-healed wounds and too many joints. Her last intact eyes fixed on him, burning.

“You should have been ours,” she rasped. “You should have led us. Maw picked you out of the dirt. And now you whore yourself to the Watchers, to memory, to men who write stories and burn them.”

She spat black blood at his feet.

“We will take your family next,” she hissed. “What’s left of it. Every name you still carry. We’ll write them in the dark, if we cannot have you.”

Something in his chest tightened.

Not at the threat—demons always threatened; that was their favorite toy—but at the word family itself, spoken in that voice. It brushed an old ache, deep and sore, a house that wasn’t there anymore, hands he hadn’t held in years.

His grip steadied.

He cut her in half.

No roar, no flourish. Just a sharp step in, a twist of his hips, the blade drawing a clean line from hip to shoulder. Reckoning sang once, bright and final.

Her body came apart into smoke and ash and falling teeth that turned to dust before they hit the floor. The extra eyes popped like blisters, one after another, until there was nothing left but the stink and a smudge of darkness burned into the stone.

Silence settled, heavy and deep.

Rocco waddled over the soot, unconcerned, nails clicking on the floor, and planted himself at the man’s side. He sat with a grunt, wide jaw hanging open, breath coming in damp, heroic snorts.

The man let the sword tip touch the ground.

He didn’t speak.

But somewhere above him, where stories were weighed and arguments kept, three voices fell quiet for a breath.

Then Sable sighed.

“Well,” they said softly. “That’s one way to introduce him.”

Ledger’s pages turned, counting. Ash’s ember-glow burned slow.

“They will keep coming,” Ash murmured. “The Maw won’t forget his defiance. The Watchers won’t intervene. All he has is that blade, that dog, and whatever family the world hasn’t taken yet.”

“And a good story,” Sable added. “Don’t forget that.”

“And an ass that refuses to die,” Sable finished. “Honestly, the real miracle.”

On the floor of the ruined room, the man rolled his aching shoulder, feeling the pull of scars old and new. He sheathed the sword in a motion that came from long habit, not thought.

Names weighed on him, living and dead.

He did not say them out loud.

The world had taken enough already.

Rocco leaned against his leg, solid and warm, blissfully unaware of Ledger and Maw and Watchers and all the things circling his master in the dark. Or maybe very aware, in the simple, bulldog way that didn’t need words.

Outside, dawn was thinking about climbing over the hills.

In time, people would have words for him. Stitch-man. Wound-walker. Maw’s mistake. The one who kept the cracks from swallowing the rest of them.

For now, he was just a scarred man in a ruined room, bleeding onto cold stone, with a blessed bulldog at his side and another story to add to the long, dangerous list that made up his life.

Soon enough, they would call him Founder.

Lore Notes (for the curious)

Founder – A man whose original name has been burned out of the world. Once marked for the pit by the Maw, he now walks the Wounds in reality and stitches them closed before they swallow everything.

The Maw – An ancient devouring power that loves cracks, pits, and failures. It “wasted its mark” on him when he turned that curse into resistance.

The Watchers – Distant, almost-angelic beings who rarely act directly. They interfere through accidents, feathers, swords, and “blessed mistakes,” then vanish.

Reckoning – The golden sword in his hands. Forged with the Watchers’ help, it doesn’t just cut bodies; it erases certain things from the Maw’s side of the story.

Rocco – A stubborn, blessed bulldog. Touched by Watchfire, his very skin burns demons that get too close. He has no idea how holy he is. Or maybe he does.

Ledger, Grandfather Ash & Sable – Three voices riding in his satchel and in his head:

• Ledger counts every cost.

• Grandfather Ash remembers what burned to get here.

• Sable cares about the drama, the flirting, and whether it makes a good story.

Welcome to Founder World. If this is your first visit, don’t worry—Rocco knows where the exits are.