The air burned down his throat like old charcoal. Ash and something worse, like a grave that never closed. Fit him better than hope ever did.
Two truths circled in his skull and scraped against the bone. First, revenge was a corpse with its neck cut. Second, raising the scraps of demon-kind against humanity was the same corpse in a different coffin.
He laughed, but it came out rough, broken. Revenge on the Hero? Not in this sack of borrowed flesh. He would have more luck pissing into a storm and calling it strategy. His fingers twitched. The Hero's face rose in his mind again, smug, holy steel shining like a priest's lie. Not now. Later. Much later.
And the Demon World? Feral as ever. The strong ate the weak, with teeth meant for tearing. He'd tried to dull those teeth once. Tried to civilize wolves. He got a shallow grave for the effort.
"…Pathetic."
The word slipped out. His throat rasped, no echo, nothing answering back but the wind chewing through branches.
He turned to the only thing left. Options. Always options. Two of them. Maybe three if dying counted.
First: crawl home to the Demon World. There the black magic ran thick enough to choke on. Recharge, rebuild, hunt out some halfwit ready to kneel and call him King. A farce. His broken carcass staggering across the wastes would only feed the hounds grinning in the shadows. Time made fools of all, and time had gouged too much out of him already.
He studied his hands. Human hands. Thin veins. Soft skin. Blood warm for the first time in centuries. Alive, yet wrong. The irony scraped him raw.
Always metaphors, he told himself. Always self-mockery.
The Demon World was the deep ocean. Black, endless, crushing. He had been stripped on the beach, sucking air that wasn't meant for him. A fish gutted to silence. A turtle stranded where all roads rotted.
"…Deep ocean," he muttered as though repeating it would carve meaning.
Power swirled there, thick as rot in the gutter. To touch it, he would need gills or lungs of molten iron. A body made for torment. What he had was sewn together from scraps, nails, and spit.
Second option. Pretend. Walk among humans. Hide in their shadowed streets. Scavenge on luck, lies, and whatever scraps they let drop.
His lip curled. The taste of the word sat foul. Humiliation. He spat it back on the dirt.
Faces returned. Broken in their last screams. Margarita laughing before the sword hit her throat. That bright sound, cut short. Gone. Nothing left but the sound of iron splitting flesh.
"…Humans." His teeth ground together until his jaw throbbed.
He saw their fields burn. Saw salt poured into their earth. He saw their cities turned to cracked graves. He would do it. He had to.
When?
The question slithered in. Not now. Now he was the carcass. Now he would beg from the same vermin who once ran from his shadow.
"…I have no choice."
The confession stripped him bare. Pride was poison. He swallowed it anyway. Better than rotting in the dirt.
Demon King. Tyrant. Fool. He wore each like a broken crown, splinters gashing the scalp.
His army rotted into dirt. His generals gnawed up in shallow pits. His lover—
Margarita.
Her name cut him worse than any blade. He had led her there. He had led all of them to the slaughter. Strategy burned beneath rage. Reason snapped under the Hero's laughter. And still, still, he charged.
"…Enough."
He lowered his head into the stream. Water sour on his tongue, cold in a way that mocked his hunger. He drank until the churn in his belly demanded he stop.
North, then. To the hunter's village, small enough to crush with one hand, weak enough to strip dry. Humans.
The rings in a felled tree guided him. Nature scratching at meaning it never meant to hold. He smirked.
"As if I need the help."
The forest thinned. Nothing hunted him. For now.
Two hours. The rhythm of a heart holding on too long.
He pushed forward. Each step wrong. Chest like cracked glass. Lungs too shallow. Heart lagging behind his fury. The soul inside this skin never fit the shell, human fibers unable to bear the weight of him. Every step screamed liar.
His pacing grew ragged. Short, brutal bursts. He fixed his thoughts to one line. Survive. Adapt. Wait.
The Hero's face came again, teeth bared in joy, blade smug with purpose.
"…Not yet."
His breath hardened with frost. Time refused him measure. Dawn or dusk made no difference. The air shaped itself into circles.
A crack on the ground pulled him still.
Eyes narrowed. His nose tested the wind. His tongue pressed the air. Silence, but silence had teeth.
"…Paranoid."
But the forest knew no emptiness. He had once learned that behind a knife sliding into his ribs, the smile across from him sharper than the steel.
Keep moving.
The village sat two hours ahead. One breath, two breaths, and he would see its smoke.
He promised himself he would make it.
And he did.
Until he didn't.