The air was the color of pulverized amethyst and burned with the acrid scent of ozone and spilled ichor. Lord Kael'thas, the Arch-Fiend of the Tenth Circle, looked down from his Obsidian Throne and found only broken glass where his glorious kingdom once stood.
For three hundred years, the armies of the Demon Lord had darkened the skies of the mortal realm, but even a millennium of absolute power could not stand against a well-aimed celestial blade wielded by a perpetually self-righteous fool.
Kael'thas was a ruin of black scale and smoking leather, his left horn sheared, his usually commanding figure bowed over the pommel of his shattered sword. He didn't feel pain; pain was for weaker beings. He felt failure.
"It ends here, Fiend," a voice boomed—the grating, sanctimonious voice of Seraphin, the High Paladin of the Sunstone Order. Seraphin stood, not triumphant, but exhausted, his silver armor dented, his greatsword humming with the last reserves of holy light. Behind him stood the other three members of the Hero's Vanguard, equally spent.
Kael'thas lifted his head, a grotesque smile splitting his charred face. "End? For me, Paladin? Perhaps. But for you… the price of victory is always steep."
He raised a clawed hand, not in attack, but in a final, meticulous ritual sign. It was an ancient spell, a desperate fail-safe known only to the first generation of Arch-Fiends. It did not promise resurrection; it promised relocation. A temporal and corporeal jump to the future, to an unwitting, available host. A second chance, if one could stomach the humiliation of a new, weaker form.
The Paladin lunged, his cry a battle prayer. "In the Light, you are judged!"
The tip of the holy blade plunged through Kael'thas's chest, pinning him to the Obsidian Throne. A torrent of blinding white light, scalding and absolute, erupted from the wound, searing away his essence.
Let them celebrate their victory, Kael'thas thought, his consciousness dissolving into agony. Let them believe they have cast me into the void.
The final word of the ancient spell, a guttural vow that clawed its way out of his throat, was not a curse or a threat. It was a single, cold directive: Adapt.
The light consumed him. The Obsidian Throne crumbled to dust. The Arch-Fiend of the Tenth Circle ceased to be.
Then, silence.
Cold. Damp. And the faint, cloying scent of cheap herbal tea and mildewed paper.
Kael'thas's perception flickered back on, a sputtering candle in a hurricane. He was lying down. He tried to open his eyes, but they were already open. He tried to move his enormous, scaled arm, but the limb that responded was terrifyingly thin, pale, and weak.
He was not in the sulfurous ruins of his throne room. He was in a small, cramped room with peeling wallpaper, surrounded by towering stacks of musty, leather-bound books. Sunlight—actual, unfiltered sunlight—streamed through a dusty window, illuminating floating motes of dust.
His colossal Arch-Fiend mind, used to processing infernal wars and multi-dimensional contracts, was suddenly choked by a torrent of alien, mundane, utterly human memories: the distress of a failed examination, the embarrassment of a ripped dress, the precise formula for extracting dyes from rare fungi.
He sat up quickly, a sharp ache running through his unfamiliar human ribs. He looked down at his hands—small, delicate, and entirely female.
He was no longer Lord Kael'thas. He was Elara Vane, a 16-year-old human scholar with a severe case of myopia and a profound aversion to confrontation.
The Arch-Fiend swore, a silent, boiling oath of fury, humiliation, and, worst of all, weakness. His second life had begun. And he was absolutely certain he was going to fail his next class assignment.