Night settled like a lid over the camp. Snoring rose in uneven waves across the shacks, rough and steady, carrying the stench of sweat and fatigue.
Alain lifted himself slowly from the dirt. His eyes scanned the room. Not a stir. Not a cough. The old man beside him twitched once in his sleep, then rolled back into silence.
Alain exhaled quietly through his nose, then cupped his palms together. A faint hum stirred in the air. His lips formed words not meant anymore for this world.
"Gather, scatter, fulfill the intent… form thrice, radiant triangle."
The sound was low, more hiss than voice, old syllables scraping his throat. A violet glow shimmered into being in his hand, fragile like fine ash caught in flame. He raised it to his mouth and whispered something colder.
"Sleep."
The glow broke apart into dust. It spread with a life of its own, drifting into cracks, over wood, out through shutters into the dark beyond. A blanket of silence thickened, tangible.
Alain leaned down and flicked the old man across the cheek. No answer. The breathing remained deep and drugged. He nodded once. Nobody would wake for at least three hours.
He began to move, then cursed under his breath. Retracing his steps, Alain pulled at his bedding and recovered what he had hidden. A small object wrapped in cloth. He slipped it into the pouch and pressed it close to his chest.
Now he stepped into the night.
The sentries along the yard slouched in their posts, heads tilted, drool at their lips, lost to the violet haze lingering in the air. Alain drifted between them like a shadow, lips tight and pace measured. When no alarm rose, no blade swung, he broke into a quick run until the camp fell behind him.
The clearing stretched ahead, pale under the moonlight. His lungs burned but steadied as he scanned the silence. No one else.
"Too early," he muttered, pressing a palm to his knees. Without a clock, he had nothing but the guess of breath and heartbeat. Still, better early than late.
He moved to the largest tree at the clearing's edge and leaned his back against it. The night sky opened above him, framed between branches, clean and sharp. Stars littered the dark, clustered around a swollen moon that looked both pale and unyielding.
The sight pulled at him. He smirked bitterly. "Only you're the same."
Everything else had shifted. Five hundred years. Humanity rising where once his banner flew. The world twisted, too fast, too wrong. His people either dead or scattered. No throne, no war cry, no Demon King.
His jaw clenched until it ached.
When he first clawed his way into this cycle, in this fragile human body, he assumed decades at most before his power returned. Enough to summon legions again. Enough to raise the black flags and choke the kingdoms in fire. He imagined announcing it, announcing himself, Demon King Alaric risen, and seeing human armies break with terror.
But those dreams had long since crumbled.
He saw again his castle collapsing, burning, the air filled with the panic of his own kind. He saw their eyes, pleading, waiting for orders that never came. Instead of steel and defiance, he gave them failure.
Alain pressed teeth into his lip, breaking skin and tasting iron.
If what the old man said was true, many of his subordinates had fled the moment the last gate fell. He cursed at the memory, but he knew it was right. Their instincts saved them. Perhaps some still survived, spread across this world under false names. If he had prepared better, stationed garrisons at the heart instead of trusting fragile defenses… if he had not underestimated humanity's rally…
No excuses saved him. The weight belonged to him.
His breath left in a ragged hiss. He bowed his head, whispered into the dirt. "Forgive me."
The words tasted rotten. His allies deserved better than regret.
But self-pity served no use now. He would not kneel before regret forever. He straightened, eyes as sharp as the cold air.
There was no kingdom left to rule. No army to command. But the path wasn't finished. Survival was the only weapon left to grip. Survival until he could search for those still waiting in secret. Survival until his power rebuilt. Survival until the world realized the war it thought buried was not yet done.
And to survive here, he would do what was needed.
He thought of the girl, red hair falling into her mischievous grin, voice breaking silence like a careless melody. The one who had dragged him from the dirt when he had nothing. The only human in this camp who looked at him without disdain.
Seria.
Her kindness was a knife. And he would turn it handle-first into his grip.
The thought hardened cold inside him. Smile at her. Laugh with her. Take her trust. And then, when the time came, betray her. Burn any bridge if it meant walking free.
The twitch of his fingers betrayed the anticipation he didn't want to admit. He whispered again, voice flat.
"This is what it comes to."
In the center of the clearing, beneath the unchanging moon, Alain sealed his resolve.