The silence of the birthing chamber was not the peaceful kind; it was a heavy, suffocating weight, broken only by the rhythmic, metallic clinking of elite demonic guards shifting their weight in the corridor. Inside, the air smelled of ozone, ancient incense, and blood.
Alexandros—or at least, the consciousness that was beginning to occupy the tiny, fragile vessel of a newborn—felt the transition like a plunge into freezing water. One moment, there was the screech of tires and the sterile scent of an office cubicle; the next, there was a crushing density of mana that threatened to pop his brand-new lungs.
He tried to gasp, but his throat was tight. He felt small. Terrifyingly small.
"My son..."
The voice was a low vibration that seemed to rattle the very foundations of the castle. It wasn't the soft, melodic lilt of a human mother. It was the sound of shifting tectonic plates, layered with a primal, terrifying tenderness.
Alexandros forced his heavy eyelids open. His vision was a blurry mess of shadows and flickering candlelight, but he could make out a towering figure looming over his silk-lined bassinet. Two obsidian horns curved elegantly from her temples, and eyes the color of dying stars looked down at him.
This was Queen Hécate. The Sovereign of Érébos. The woman who had allegedly leveled a mountain range because a rival king had looked at her envoy with "insufficient respect."
She reached out a clawed finger—each nail sharp enough to rend dragon hide—and gently, impossibly softly, stroked his cheek.
"He is so small," she whispered, her voice trembling with an emotion that felt like a physical heat. "So delicate. My little star. My little... Lulu."
The consciousness of the former office worker internally screamed. Lulu? He was a prince of the underworld, a scion of destruction, and his name was already being dragged through the mud of maternal doting. He tried to let out a dignified cry of protest, but all that emerged was a high-pitched, pathetic squeak.
Hécate's expression instantly shifted from awe to a terrifying, murderous focus. She whipped her head toward the trembling demonic midwives standing in the shadows.
"Why did he cry?" she demanded. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. "Is the silk too coarse? Is the air too dry? If he has so much as a single discomfort, I will feed your souls to the Cerberus hounds before dawn."
"N-no, Your Majesty!" the head midwife stammered, hitting the floor in a frantic kowtow. "It is merely the vigor of life! The young prince is healthy!"
Hécate turned back to Alexandros, her terrifying aura vanishing as if it had never been. She picked him up, cradling him against her chest. To Alexandros, it felt like being held by a volcano. He could feel the sheer, unadulterated power radiating from her—a dark, pulsing ocean of mana that made his new soul ache.
I'm in trouble, he thought, his infant mind struggling to process the sheer scale of his new reality. This isn't just a fantasy world. This is a nuclear family where the mother is the nuke.
As the days bled into weeks, the "Daily Life" of the third prince of Érébos revealed itself to be a surreal mixture of extreme luxury and looming dread. His brothers, Araxès and Castor, came to visit. Araxès, the eldest, was a wall of muscle and scars who looked like he could crush a boulder with his pinky. He stood over Alexandros's crib, staring at him with a frightening intensity.
"He looks weak," Araxès grunted, his voice like grinding stones.
Alexandros froze. Here it comes. The classic 'survival of the fittest' trope. He's going to try to eliminate the competition.
Instead, Araxès reached into his cloak and pulled out a rattle made of enchanted dragon bone. "He needs to start grip training immediately. I have slain a Wyvern to provide him with a teething toy. Only the best for my brother."
Castor, the second son, who looked more like a scholar but carried an air of calculated lethality, leaned over and adjusted Alexandros's blanket. "Mother will execute you if you let him catch a chill, Araxès. And Lulu, don't listen to him. Strength is in the mind. I've already begun drafting your curriculum for Ancient Runic Geometry."
I'm a month old, Alexandros lamented inwardly. One wants me to bench-press dragons and the other wants me to do demonic calculus. And they both call me Lulu.
But beneath the comedy of his overprotective family lay a darker current. Through the windows of the nursery, Alexandros could see the jagged spires of the capital city, and beyond them, the shimmering, artificial barrier that marked the border with the human lands.
He heard the whispers of the guards. The "Peace Treaty" was a strained, ugly thing. The humans hated the demons with a religious fervor, and the demons viewed the humans as fragile, treacherous ants.
One evening, while Hécate was humming a lullaby that sounded suspiciously like a war chant, a messenger entered. He knelt, his forehead touching the cold stone.
"Your Majesty. The human ambassadors from the Institute of Valerius have sent their response. They agree to the integration program. The Prince... he is expected to attend when he comes of age."
Hécate's humming stopped. The shadows in the room suddenly lengthened, crawling up the walls like living ink.
"They want my son to leave the safety of Érébos?" she said, her voice dangerously quiet. "They want him to walk among those who would see him in chains?"
"It is the condition of the treaty, Majesty. To ensure 'mutual understanding'."
Hécate looked down at Alexandros. She gripped him a little tighter—not enough to hurt, but enough to let him feel the possessiveness that defined her.
"Let them prepare their school," she hissed. "But if a single human child so much as speaks to my Alexandros with a curled lip... I will turn their 'Institute' into a mausoleum."
Alexandros looked up at the ceiling, his tiny hand grasping the dragon-bone rattle. He knew this wasn't a coincidence. No one gets reborn as the third son of a Demon Queen just to have a quiet life. He felt the mana inside him—low, dormant, but strange. It didn't feel like the chaotic fire of his brothers. It felt... different. Older.
I just wanted a vacation from my old life, he thought, closing his eyes as the Queen began to rock him again. Instead, I'm the mascot for a cold war.
Outside, a storm began to brew over the mountains of Érébos, the lightning flashing red against the black sky. The Daily Life of Alexandros had begun, and the world was already starting to tilt on its axis.