"Imagine my shock when I saw who it was," Tristan said, one hand casually resting on the wheel as the car sped down the quiet road. "It wasn't my fault, okay? The brat was a lunatic. He claimed I trespassed on his 'sacred ground.' Can you believe that?"
Shin leaned back, his voice flat. "You probably did trespass."
"Excuse me, I was trying to seal a dimensional rift, not crash someone's picnic." Tristan grinned. "Anyway, he threw a boulder at me, an actual boulder, Shin. Who even does that in this realm?"
"Someone who met you," Shin replied calmly.
Tristan clutched his chest dramatically. "You wound me. Seriously though, don't you have any idea who I'm talking about?"
Shin finally turned his head, eyes narrowing slightly. "You're saying he wasn't human?"
Tristan's grin faded. "Shin, you're not listening, are you? What kind of human can throw a boulder?" His fingers drummed restlessly against the steering wheel.
Shin's brows drew together. Truthfully, his mind had been drifting back to Yeri sleeping alone. "So you met a demon trying to enter this realm through the rift?"
Tristan hesitated, glancing at him before looking back at the road. "Like you."
Silence settled in the car, broken only by the smooth hum of the tires on asphalt.
Shin's tone was mild, but underneath it was a chilling sharpness. "You're saying you fought a version of me?"
"Well," Tristan said quickly, "he didn't have your charming personality, but he definitely had your temper. Power. Aura. That crazy brat almost killed me."
Shin didn't answer right away. His gaze sharpened, menacing. "Did he escape?"
Tristan let out a tired sigh, recalling the chaos. "No. I somehow pushed that brat back into the rift before closing it. But because of him, that island was completely destroyed, erased off the map. Lucky for us, it was uninhabited."
"Somehow?" Shin asked, voice dangerously low.
Tristan offered a weak smile. "You have to understand...it's not easy fighting a demon in this human body."
Before Shin could retort, a sudden surge of demonic aura burst from the backseat, sharp, malicious, unmistakably formidable.
Shin reacted instantly. Without a word, his dark mist lashed backward, striking Tristan's suitcase. The aura inside flared violently.
A fireball the size of a fist shot out but it wasn't normal flame. It flickered in unnatural colors: black, crimson, molten gold.
In a heartbeat, the orb twisted and stretched, transforming into a serpent. Its scales gleamed like hammered gold, and its red eyes burned with hostility as it released a hiss of ominous black smoke.
But Shin moved faster. His hand closed around it, and his dark mist surged forward, coiling around the creature like chains binding a frenzied beast.
The serpent recoiled in fear.
Against Shin, a demon emperor, it had no chance.
Outside, the sky rumbled faintly as if the realm itself felt the disturbance, either protesting or issuing a warning. Something foreign had crossed into a world it shouldn't have.
Within seconds, the serpent stiffened. The gold along its body hardened, its scales locking together until not a living creature remained, but a shimmering golden ornament sealed completely by Shin's power.
Tristan sagged in relief, shoulders dropping as tension drained from him. "Finally," he muttered. "You have no idea how much that damn snake exhausted me."
"Why do you think I asked you to pick me up?" Tristan continued, his hands slightly trembling. "That brat threw one of his orbs at me the moment the rift closed. I've been containing that thing for a while now. I was already at my limit, if you hadn't arrived in time, the airport would've plunged into chaos."
Shin didn't respond. His expression stayed grim, even though he had sealed the orb with almost no effort.
Before awakening, he had dreamt of the succubus Yeri, surrounded by thick black fog and just beyond the fountain's edge were three glowing orbs. He hadn't recognized them then. Now he did.
The "crazy brat" Tristan was talking about...was his demon son.
Prince Xati Svade, the little demon he had with Jewel. Or more accurately, the demon forged from his essence and the succubus Yeri's.
For Yeri, her rebirth into human form had been a new beginning. But for the demon realm, the past had continued unbroken. Centuries passed, but memories, grudges, and consequences endured.
The sudden appearance of the serpent orb had torn open that sealed portion of Shin's mind, dragging him back, back into a throne hall of obsidian, back into a life drenched in desire, fear, and madness.
A life with Jewel.
Back to the throne he once ruled.
After he had punished her by casting her into the deep abyss, the illusions of their relationship had begun to crumble. The lies, the fragility, the madness, everything revealed itself with cruel clarity, like old sins resurfacing beneath long shadows.
Jewel maintained the façade of innocence and naivety, yet wielded those traits like weapons. She would cry and apologize, sulk and disrupt him, grow coquettish and clingy, or glare with open disdain.
It was as if she were constantly testing the thin thread of his patience, determined to see whether it would finally snap.
Despite the complaints, unease, and outright hatred from countless demons, he never once considered dethroning her.
When had his intentions changed?
When had the prideful desire to flaunt his strength, proving that he, the Demon Emperor, could subdue the cursed jewel of the realm shifted quietly into affection?
He never noticed it happen.
Jewel had seeped into his heart, carved out a place, and settled there like a stubborn, radiant poison.
That realization shook him.
Fear, denial, pride, it all stormed inside him, and where affection should have softened, it instead sharpened into cruelty. He could not afford to be weak. Not as Emperor. Not before her.
And so he mirrored the sins of the emperors before him: responding to affection with malice, desire with punishment.
Their relationship became a battlefield, resentment and desire tangled into wounds that never healed.
As the centuries passed, he understood the madness of the previous emperors. Their obsession. Their downfall.
Yet she was not blameless in fate.
Jewel was exactly as her name implied. Mesmerizing, flawless, coveted yet hollow, emotionless, a being crafted by a dark mage, formed through forbidden sacrifice, bound by seals.
Not a demon by nature.
The so-called love of past emperors meant nothing to her; she could not comprehend it. Their affection only twisted into obsession, then despair, then violence, an endless cycle.
She, too, suffered. Forced into a role she never chose.
And so the cycle repeated: The emperors loved her. She could not love back.
Their devotion rotted into insanity. She suffered as they suffered.
He, too, repeated that tragedy.
He yearned for her love. He wanted her to feel what he felt. Needed it. Became intoxicated by it. Yet he knew she couldn't.
And believing her immortality made her impervious, his unstable emotions drove him to punish her, execute her in every possible manner whenever she disobeyed. She died countless times, only to rise unmarred moments later.
In his madness, desperate to bind himself to her for eternity, he decided they would have a child.
Demons were born from shared essence buried into the ground, nurtured by a demon tree until one fruit becomes a child.
But Jewel wasn't a natural demon. She doesn't have that essence. She couldn't conceive.
He, unlike them, refused to give up.
Mages, trembling under fear of his wrath, conducted endless experiments. Paris Helle mobilized knights across the realm to seek forbidden knowledge.
At last, a taboo method was crafted, allowing him and Jewel to produce a successor. Jewel bore a child the human way, an anomaly that defied every law of their kind.
Prince Xati Svade.
However, the little demon grew fiercely attached to Jewel. And he, who had wanted a proof of their love, a bond no one could sever, instead found himself replaced. His son became his rival, defiant, resentful, hostile, always shielding Jewel from him.
And then, he lost her. Jewel died.
The unthinkable. Her immortality shattered. And both he and Xati plunged into madness.
He, drowning in desperation and madness, carried Jewel's remaining soul fragment into the human realm but Xati never knew.
Now, because of the dimensional rift and Tristan's encounter, that brat must be suspecting something.
The serpent orb was one of Xati's abilities, an extension of his senses, his eyes and ears across dimensions.
"Shin! Shin! Are you alright?" Tristan shook him urgently.
Snapping out of his memories, Shin glared. "Don't touch me."
Tristan raised his hands in surrender. "I called you again and again, you weren't responding. I thought sealing that orb affected you."
Shin frowned, gaze distant. "Did Xati figure out who you were?"
Tristan thought for a moment. "He was shocked a human could fight him, but it won't take long for him to realize I'm a demon too. Whether he knows I'm Paris Helle… maybe not yet."
Though Tristan sealed the rift, a high-rank demon like Prince Xati would eventually find a way across. It was only a matter of time.
Shin felt a dull throb forming behind his temples. When he lifted his gaze, he realized where Tristan had driven them.
Before he could ask, Tristan answered. "My phone's been blowing up. Zahn said he couldn't reach you, then Saeki said you lured him to this exclusive club only to find Zahn Neri there instead."
"I thought you were exhausted," Shin said coldly.
"Use your ability on me," Tristan said with shameless confidence.
Shin gave him a long, contemptuous look. "Get out."
"Oh come on, don't be stingy. You know how disastrous that brat is. If I hadn't stopped him from entering this realm, well, you of all demons should know what he's capable of. After all, he's your son. A mad demon, same as you." Tristan said the last part more softly.
Shin didn't bother arguing. With a flick of will, he restored Tristan's strength.
If Tristan weren't trapped in a human body, a little demon like Xati wouldn't have stood a chance.
It would have been like an adult bullying a five-year-old.