POV: Caelen - The Void
Caelen stood in the featureless void, his eyes fixed on the smoky figure before him—a woman woven from shadow and memory, her soft laughter echoing in the dim, non-space between worlds.
"A demon," he muttered, the word feeling both alien and heavy on his tongue. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the concept. "You're a demon…"
She twirled a finger through the air, trailing wisps of shadow behind it. "Oh please, say it with more excitement. I used to cause kingdoms to fall with a wink, and now I'm reduced to being someone's historical discovery."
"You're extinct," Caelen said flatly, a fact he'd learned from the church's teachings. "Demons vanished thousands of years ago."
Her eyes, points of amethyst light in the gloom, gleamed. "Correction—we were erased. Slaughtered. Systematically. But not before leaving behind… surprises."
He eyed her warily. "Like you?"
She gave a sultry, dismissive smirk. "No, darling. I'm just the message. The welcome party. The real gift is the choice laid before you." Her shadowy gesture indicated the pulsating black seed that hovered between them.
Still unsure, he shifted the subject, grasping for context. "You mentioned your husband… and something about seven brothers?"
The demoness sighed, a sound like rustling silk, and placed a hand over where her heart might once have been. "Yes. The Seven Primordial Demons—brothers, each the embodiment of a core sin. Wrath, Greed, Envy, Pride…" Her smile turned sharp, possessive. "…and my sweet, dangerous Lust."
She paced her ethereal platform. "They ruled separate domains of our realm. Independent, magnificent powers… until the Virtues decided our existence offended their delicate sense of order. So, the angels devised a plan—covert, surgical attacks on each brother, one by one, in their own homes."
"They were ambushed?" Caelen asked, the history feeling more real and terrifying than any scripture.
"Slaughtered," she spat, the word laced with ancient venom. "Four fell before we even realized we were being hunted. When my husband understood the pattern, the scale of the betrayal, he turned to me. I was his weapon-maker, his trickster queen. We built barriers, forged artifacts from captured angelic relics, seduced secrets from the enemy, and embedded traps across the demon realm."
Caelen frowned, trying to reconcile this tale of strategic warfare with the church's narrative of a holy crusade. "Then why are you dead? If you were so prepared?"
She tilted her head, a gesture of wistful sorrow. "Because hiding was never enough. Not against their full, focused wrath. They found our last sanctuary. He died protecting the seed you see now—the last hope of our kind. I died moments later—from the blast that triggered the final seal… and from the silence that followed his last breath."
"But you're here," Caelen said, stating the obvious. "Talking to me."
"A remnant," she said softly. "An echo. A whisper of what I once was, bound to this place, to this book, to this moment of choice." Then she chuckled, the sound regaining its mischievous edge. "And since I have so little time left, I intend to enjoy it."
He quickly averted his gaze as she teasingly ran a smoky hand down her illusionary form. "Don't get the wrong idea," he said, feeling a flush of embarrassment.
"Relax," she said with a theatrical wink. "I may be dead, but I'm still a loyal wife."
He shook his head, frustrated. "I didn't mean it like that. I just… I'm trying to understand. You said this seed could make me a demon?"
"It can," she replied, her tone turning serious. "It's laced with my husband's essence and stabilized by my own magic. A new vessel. A rebirth. Not a possession, but an inheritance."
"And you left this all… waiting for someone like me?" The question was loaded with his own self-doubt.
"Someone with a will strong enough to reject a Goddess's claim on his soul," she clarified. "Someone desperate enough to fight gods, but with something—or someone—left to fight for."
Caelen's eyes darkened. "You mentioned the Goddess of Light before. You hate her."
She hissed, the shadows around her vibrating with sudden intensity. "Do not speak her name lightly here. She orchestrated the murder of my husband's brothers and hounded him to his grave. Her 'righteousness' is a blade dipped in honey."
"She spoke to me," Caelen said quietly, the memory chilling him. "During the ritual. She said something about a 'new era' beginning."
The demoness rolled her luminous eyes. "Prophecy nonsense. Always used to justify bloodshed. If she's creating vessels again, then she is planning to return her children, the Virtues, to this world in force."
Caelen went cold, the pieces snapping together with horrifying clarity. "Emma… my friend. She was the focus of that ritual. She's… glowing now. Changed. Is she—"
"A vessel? Almost certainly," the demoness confirmed without pity. "Chosen by the goddess to carry one of her 'daughters' into the mortal realm. And yes, the process erases the original owner of the body. The host doesn't struggle through the transformation except with the passage of time, until nothing of them remains."
His fists clenched so tight his nails dug into his palms. "Then that ritual… it was taking something from me to fuel that. But why am I still standing? Why did I end up here?"
She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper that vibrated in his very bones. "Because your spirit rejected her. It means you are not bound to her light. You have a spark of something else—something that belongs to the darkness. You still have a choice."
Caelen stared at the seed again, its dark pulsations now seeming like a lifeline.
"If I take this… I become a demon," he said slowly, working through the consequences. "Everything changes. I become what the church taught me to hate."
"Yes," she whispered, the single word filled with immense weight. "But you will gain the power to protect those you care for. You will never be powerless again. The cost, of course, is that the world you know will become your enemy."
He was silent for a long moment, weighing the life of a hunted fugitive against the certain death—or worse, the erasure—of himself and Emma. The choice was no choice at all.
He stepped forward, dropped to one knee in the formless void, and raised his hands, not in supplication, but in acceptance.
"I will make sure this is the last time I am ever a victim," he vowed, his voice steadying with newfound resolve. "If you are serious about this… if you are choosing me… then thank you. You are changing my life forever."
The demoness smiled, a sad, beautiful expression that held millennia of loss and a flicker of hope. "Then take it. The world has forgotten us… but perhaps the prophecy she spoke of was right. Maybe the Primordial Era is returning after all."
She leaned down, placed the cold, pulsating seed into his open palms, and as her form began to unravel into wisps of smoke and fading memory, her smile remained—sharp, wistful, and wicked to the very end.
POV: Third Person - Earth, Deep Within the Forest
Not much time had passed in the waking world. The moon still hung in the same position in the sky.
The priest, Father Luziel, was tidying the clearing, brushing away loose debris and gathering the last of his ritual tools with practiced efficiency. A deep satisfaction warmed him, despite the chill night air. It was done. The Goddess's will was being enacted. His eyes drifted toward the distant tents where the Saint, soon to be a Virtue, slumbered within her cocoon of light. With a quiet, fulfilled sigh, he turned to leave—
Hm?
A sudden, unnatural chill crept down his spine. He spun around.
Behind him, the space where the magic circle had vanished was no longer empty. It glowed once more, but this time the light was a deep, ominous crimson, pulsing with a malevolent energy that made the air hum.
The priest froze, his blood running cold. "No… it cannot be. Not again."
Fear, pure and instinctual, overrode his training. He raised his hand, chanting quickly, and conjured a sphere of radiant, holy light. "Begone, you foul thing!" he screamed, hurling it directly at the corrupted circle.
The light struck the center—and fizzled out without a sound. The crimson circle didn't shake, didn't flicker. It simply sat there, humming with a steady, terrifying power.
Panic seized him. He cast another spell, and another. Bolts of purifying energy lanced toward the sigil, each one dissolving into harmless sparks against the growing aura of absolute darkness.
Then, as if time itself had taken a breath, the red light surged inward before erupting outwards in a silent, concussive pulse of force.
The priest was lifted off his feet and thrown backward like a ragdoll. He crashed into a thick tree trunk with a sickening crunch, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. Blood splattered against the bark as he slid, limp, to the forest floor. His world narrowed to a tunnel of agony before darkness swallowed his vision completely.
Above the circle, something unfurled from the fading crimson light.
Massive, membranous wings, black as pitch, stretched wide, blotting out the moon and the canopy. As the evil light dimmed, it revealed a figure standing at the epicenter of the sigil. A young man, his posture regal and unnaturally still. His hair was now a cascade of silver-white, lifting as if in an unseen wind. He was clad in a tailored black suit that seemed to drink the moonlight, and a faint red mist clung to the ground around his boots.
The priest, through his fading consciousness, could only glimpse him—the pale skin, the elegant horns curving from his brow, the eyes that glowed with hellish crimson light against sclera of pure black. In his last moment of awareness, a profound, soul-deep terror took root. He would regret this night for the rest of his life.
The young man—Caelen—touched down softly, his wings dissolving into shadows.
"Just at the right place," he murmured, his voice a low, melodic baritone that was both familiar and utterly alien. "It looks like time barely moved at all."
His boots crunched softly on the grass as he stepped toward the fallen priest. He looked down at the broken form, a flicker of cold fury in his demonic eyes.
"I should kill you now," he mused, the words calm, almost conversational. "Strike while you're broken and bleeding. It would be… efficient." He knelt slightly, bringing his face closer to the priest's. "But that would be cowardly. And unsatisfying."
He stood again, his gaze sweeping over the man with contempt. "I'll grow stronger. I'll meet you at your peak, when you think your faith makes you invincible. Then I'll kill you."
He turned without another word and began walking toward the tent camp, his presence leaving behind only a ringing silence and the faint, ozone-like hum of residual magic.
POV: Caelen - The Forest
Caelen's new boots, part of his demonic attire, pounded a steady rhythm on the forest floor. His body was a marvel of power and endurance; he felt no fatigue, only a driving urgency.
"It'll take a while for Emma to be fully swallowed by the light," he reasoned aloud, his voice steady. "But better safe than sorry."
The memory of his brief, instinctual flight in the void came to him. He glanced over his shoulder, concentrating, flexing the muscles in his back. He expected to feel the weight of wings, the surge of power.
Nothing. Just the elegant lines of his suit.
Sigh. "Never mind. Running it is."
He pushed on, faster than any human could, a silver-haired blur in the moonlight. After ten minutes, the tree line broke, and he saw it: the tent field. But it was a scene of devastation. Tents were shredded and scattered like paper after a storm, their fabric whipping in the breeze. The place was utterly empty, devoid of life.
"There was no one in the tents… he killed them all?" Caelen's voice dropped to a low, bitter whisper. The priest's face flashed in his mind, sparking a rage so pure it was cold. That coward.
His fists clenched. For a moment, he nearly turned around, a primal urge to go back and finish the job, to crush what was left of the holy man's spine—
—But a faint, ethereal glow caught his attention, pulling him forward.
It leaked from the only standing tent like luminous mist, a beacon in the ruined camp. And within it, he could feel her. The connection was instinctual, a pull he felt in his new demonic core. It was the same way one feels a storm before it breaks.
"Emma..."
He ran again, his speed a testament to his transformed body.
But the light... it stung. As he drew closer, the radiant energy licked at his skin like acid. What had once felt warm and holy now felt corrosive, a purifying fire that sought to scour the demonic taint from existence. It was a physical pain, a burning sensation that crept under his skin.
He skidded to a halt just a few steps from the tent's glowing walls.
"Can I even get in?" he asked himself, his voice tight.
The pain intensified, a warning. He winced, gripping his arm. That light—so beautiful and comforting when he was human—was now wrath and judgment incarnate. And it hated what he had become.
She was always kind... he thought, a pang of something deeply human piercing his demonic resolve. Always had my back, even when I didn't ask for it. She gave me food, things to sell when I had nothing... She doesn't deserve this.
His jaw tensed. Determination overrode the pain.
"Come on, Caelen. Don't be a bitch. You can take the heat."
He dropped into a low stance—hands on the dirt, muscles coiled like a spring. His crimson eyes locked on the glowing fabric.
"Three... two... one—GO!"
He launched himself forward.
Agony ripped across his chest and arms as the holy light scoured his flesh. He didn't stop. He didn't hesitate. As he barreled toward the tent, he grabbed the edge of the canvas mid-stride, yanking it clean off its stakes as he dove through. The fabric tore and shredded behind him like wings consumed by fire.
He rolled to his feet inside, the light within even more intense. He moved quickly, ignoring the searing pain, and tore strips from the ruined tent, wrapping them around his arms as a makeshift buffer.
Then he saw her.
Emma.
Floating serenely in the center of the space, weightless. Small, feathered wings of pure gold unfurled slowly from her back like the petals of an exotic flower. A soft, radiant halo hovered above her head, and light cocooned her body, shimmering with divine energy.
"Woah..." he whispered, awe and horror warring within him.
She was beautiful. Ethereal. An angel in the making.
And yet… it felt profoundly wrong. A deep, instinctual part of his new nature recoiled. This was not Emma; this was her coffin.
He didn't hesitate.
Caelen bolted toward her again, his movements slower now, more calculated. He could feel the holy energy tearing into him, but he pushed through the torment. His skin screamed in protest. The tent wraps smoldered. He reached her, his hands, now tipped with sharp black nails, gently cupped her face.
Her lips parted slightly, as if in a dream.
And he shoved the smaller, secondary black seed—the one meant for a servant—into her mouth.
I'm sorry, Emma… this is the only way. The thought was a silent apology.
Then, in a sharp, explosive motion, he threw himself backward. On instinct, black wings erupted from his back mid-air, catching the air and propelling him away from the epicenter of light just as a wave of energy erupted from Emma's form. He skidded across the grass outside, coughing from the metaphysical burn, the light roaring like a furnace before beginning to dim.
He lay on his back, chest heaving, squinting at the fading glow. The pain slowly dulled to a throbbing ache. The fabric on his arms was charred to a crisp. His breath began to steady.
And then—
A soft, crimson glow pulsed in the air before his eyes. Lines of elegant, demonic script materialized, writing themselves into existence.
[Congratulations on gaining your first demon servant.]
Caelen blinked, processing the message that floated in his vision like a phantom screen.
Then, a slow, triumphant smile spread across his face.
"So it worked…"
He sat up slowly, his silver-white hair fluttering in the sudden calm. His black horns seemed to absorb the lingering light.
"Guess this really is the beginning of something new."