Bal'ark was stunned, no, humiliated. The idea that a great demon lord like him now shared the fragile body of a nineteen-year-old human girl was beyond disgrace. If the other demon lords ever learned of this, he would never live it down. The whispers and the mockery, would be eternal.
What Governor Akira had done was deceptively simple, but wicked in its precision: he had fused Bal'ark's essence with Eleanor's very being. Cruel? Absolutely. Necessary? Without question.
Bal'ark had no one to blame but himself. In his bid to ensure Eleanor's success in capturing Leon, he had given her a fragment of his own essence, an act born from a dangerous mix of desperation and overconfidence. But instead of delivering the Vessel to the demon lord, he had walked straight into Leon and Elizabeth's trap. His essence had been damaged, bound, and locked inside the girl's body.
