<\/p>\n
At twenty-one, I made the most reckless decision of my life.<\/p>\n
It happened at a lonely crossroads just before midnight.<\/p>\n
I had lost everything.<\/p>\n
My job.<\/p>\n
My girlfriend.<\/p>\n
My family.<\/p>\n
I was angry enough to believe death itself couldn’t be worse than the life I was living.<\/p>\n
That’s when he appeared.<\/p>\n
A man in a black coat standing beneath the dead streetlight.<\/p>\n
His eyes were wrong.<\/p>\n
Not glowing.<\/p>\n
Not red.<\/p>\n
Just impossibly old.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to live forever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to never die.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cSame thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I told him I’d give anything for immortality.<\/p>\n
He held out a contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolute immortality.\u201d<\/p>\n
I expected blood.<\/p>\n
Fire.<\/p>\n
Pain.<\/p>\n
Instead, he simply handed me a pen.<\/p>\n
I signed.<\/p>\n
The demon laughed.<\/p>\n
Not an evil laugh.<\/p>\n
Almost a nervous one.<\/p>\n
Then he signed his name, folded the contract, and handed it back to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep it safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happens now?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’ll find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he vanished.<\/p>\n
That night, I stepped in front of a speeding truck.<\/p>\n
The truck hit me.<\/p>\n
It was destroyed.<\/p>\n
I stood up without a scratch.<\/p>\n
I thought I had won.<\/p>\n
Over the next eighty years, I survived things no human should have survived.<\/p>\n
A plane crash.<\/p>\n
Three explosions.<\/p>\n
A building collapse.<\/p>\n
A shipwreck.<\/p>\n
A gunshot through the heart.<\/p>\n
Even a fall into a volcanic crater.<\/p>\n
Nothing could kill me.<\/p>\n
I didn’t age.<\/p>\n
At thirty, I looked thirty.<\/p>\n
At fifty, I looked thirty.<\/p>\n
At eighty, I still looked twenty-one.<\/p>\n
I changed identities every few decades.<\/p>\n
I watched everyone I loved grow old and die.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I stopped making friends.<\/p>\n
Stopped falling in love.<\/p>\n
Stopped believing anything could hurt me.<\/p>\n
I thought I had outsmarted Hell.<\/p>\n
Then, on my eighty-first birthday, I found a gray hair.<\/p>\n
I stared at it for nearly an hour.<\/p>\n
Then the pain hit.<\/p>\n
A crushing pressure exploded in my chest.<\/p>\n
I collapsed.<\/p>\n
For the first time in eighty years…<\/p>\n
I was afraid.<\/p>\n
I ran to the secure room where I’d stored the original contract.<\/p>\n
The steel vault was still locked.<\/p>\n
The biometric system still recognized me.<\/p>\n
But the file was gone.<\/p>\n
In its place was a single video.<\/p>\n
I pressed play.<\/p>\n
The demon appeared on screen.<\/p>\n
But he didn’t look powerful anymore.<\/p>\n
He looked terrified.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen carefully,\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never took your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
My blood ran cold.<\/p>\n
He swallowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sold it to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The screen flickered.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone who offered me something I couldn’t refuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked over his shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re coming to collect.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at the screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
The demon’s eyes widened.<\/p>\n
Something moved behind him.<\/p>\n
A tall figure slowly entered the frame.<\/p>\n
The demon turned.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The video went black.<\/p>\n
Then a voice came from my own room.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou finally noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n
I froze.<\/p>\n
I slowly turned around.<\/p>\n
Someone was standing behind me.<\/p>\n
He looked exactly like me.<\/p>\n
Same face.<\/p>\n
Same eyes.<\/p>\n
Same twenty-one-year-old body.<\/p>\n
Except his eyes were completely black.<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’ve had my immortality long enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn’t move.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
He stepped closer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason the demon needed your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
My chest tightened again.<\/p>\n
He pointed toward the contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou thought immortality was the payment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was it?\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cInterest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he explained.<\/p>\n
The demon hadn’t given me immortality.<\/p>\n
He had borrowed<\/strong> it.<\/p>\n The entity standing before me was the actual owner of the contract.<\/p>\n Every year I remained alive, I accumulated something called a life debt<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Eighty years of borrowed time.<\/p>\n Eighty years of lives that should have ended.<\/p>\n Eighty years of deaths that had been pushed somewhere else.<\/p>\n I suddenly remembered every disaster I had survived.<\/p>\n Every plane crash.<\/p>\n Every explosion.<\/p>\n Every person who should have died alongside me.<\/p>\n I had always thought I was the only one who survived.<\/p>\n I was wrong.<\/p>\n Every time I escaped death, someone else had unknowingly paid the price.<\/p>\n The entity held out his hand.<\/p>\n \u201cYour debt is due.\u201d<\/p>\n I tried to run.<\/p>\n My legs collapsed.<\/p>\n For the first time, my body began aging.<\/p>\n Not slowly.<\/p>\n All at once.<\/p>\n My skin wrinkled.<\/p>\n My hair turned white.<\/p>\n My hands trembled.<\/p>\n I screamed.<\/p>\n The entity simply watched.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy me?\u201d<\/p>\n He leaned closer.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause you were willing to trade your soul to live forever.\u201d<\/p>\n Then he smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cThat makes you exactly the kind of person Hell knows how to use.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at the contract.<\/p>\n There was one line I had never noticed.<\/p>\n A clause hidden beneath my signature.<\/p>\n THE SOUL MAY NOT BE CLAIMED UNTIL THE DEBT IS COMPLETE.<\/strong><\/p>\n I suddenly understood.<\/p>\n The demon hadn’t tricked me into becoming immortal.<\/p>\n He had tricked me into becoming a container<\/strong>.<\/p>\n My soul had been accumulating eighty years of stolen life.<\/p>\n And now someone wanted all of it.<\/p>\n But there was something the entity hadn’t expected.<\/p>\n I had spent eighty years studying the supernatural.<\/p>\n I had learned languages that no living person spoke.<\/p>\n I had collected forbidden books.<\/p>\n I had searched for loopholes.<\/p>\n And one sentence from an ancient manuscript came back to me:<\/p>\n \u201cA debt willingly transferred may be returned to its original creditor.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I looked at the entity.<\/p>\n \u201cYou bought my soul from the demon.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen the demon owes you.\u201d<\/p>\n The entity stopped smiling.<\/p>\n I continued.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the contract says the soul cannot be claimed until the debt is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n His expression changed.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the debt isn’t complete.\u201d<\/p>\n I pointed at the contract.<\/p>\n \u201cYou transferred the debt to me.\u201d<\/p>\n He stared at me.<\/p>\n \u201cSo if I return the debt to the demon\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The room went silent.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026you lose the claim.\u201d<\/p>\n For the first time, the creature looked afraid.<\/p>\n I grabbed the contract.<\/p>\n The paper burst into flames.<\/p>\n The entity screamed.<\/p>\n Somewhere far away, the demon screamed too.<\/p>\n The room shook.<\/p>\n Then everything stopped.<\/p>\n The entity disappeared.<\/p>\n The pain vanished.<\/p>\n And for the first time in eighty years, my heart beat normally.<\/p>\n I looked in the mirror.<\/p>\n I was no longer twenty-one.<\/p>\n I was eighty-one.<\/p>\n Gray hair.<\/p>\n Wrinkles.<\/p>\n A body that finally belonged to me.<\/p>\n And I smiled.<\/p>\n Because I finally understood what immortality had cost me.<\/p>\n I had spent eighty years terrified of dying.<\/p>\n But death had never been my enemy.<\/p>\n Living forever was.<\/strong><\/p>\n I burned the last piece of the contract.<\/p>\n Then I walked outside.<\/p>\n For the first time in decades, I didn’t know how many days I had left.<\/p>\n And somehow…<\/p>\n that made every single day feel priceless.<\/p>\n Years later, when my real death finally came, I was lying peacefully in my own bed.<\/p>\n No demons.<\/p>\n No contracts.<\/p>\n No bargains.<\/p>\n Just silence.<\/p>\n I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n And somewhere in the darkness, I heard a familiar voice whisper:<\/p>\n \u201cYou finally learned.\u201d<\/p>\n I smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n Then my heart stopped.<\/p>\n And this time…<\/p>\n nobody came to collect.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I Sold My Soul for Immortality\u2014But the Demon Sold It to Someone Else At twenty-one, I made the most reckless decision of my life. It happened at a lonely … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21467,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21466\/revisions\/21467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}