What would you do if you were suddenly given another chance after being caught in a bus collision that ended with a fuel tanker explosion?
Live up to your foster parents' expectations?
Avenge your new family?
Or disappear into the farthest corner of the world?
Those were the thoughts that filled Malrik's mind as the sounds of flesh meeting flesh echoed in his ears.
The sound itself was distinct—and if you still didn't have any idea of what was going on, the smell alone would have made it clear.
Sex.
Raw, in its unfiltered beauty—a primal act of indulgence and reproduction.
And no, he wasn't partaking in any of it, as much as his new body wished for it. His mind refused to join the twisted, green orgy happening behind him.
Bon appétit, Malrik thought, ignoring the grunts and animalistic moans behind him.
His mouth stretched wide, lips cupping around the ripe pink areolas of a pregnant woman, chained to the dirt walls deep within the cave.
The instant his tongue met her skin, warm liquid began to fill his mouth. It tasted bland, but...
It was thick and nourishing, pulsing with heat like freshly drawn blood.
Malrik swallowed slowly, his throat working as a faint shiver crawled down his spine—not from revulsion, but instinct. The kind that ran deeper than memory, older than morality.
Before he knew it, he was suckling like a newborn.
He didn't know how long he sucked and only began to stop when he was fully fed, sleep beginning to crawl in. But he still suckled a bit longer—the bland taste of warm breast milk growing on him.
When he finally pulled away, a trickle of milk ran down his chin, which he wiped away with the back of his tiny, soft, chubby fingers—faintly stained with dried dirt and fitted with a delicate silver ring that gleamed dully in the torchlight.
His toddler-like body pressed against hers, his mischievous spade tail dancing between her thighs and moving up her skirt.
This prompted the pregnant woman to close her thighs and let out a whimper.
"O Selviane..." she whispered, the name clinging to her lips like a long-forgotten prayer.
Her voice was hoarse, cracked with fatigue and sorrow, but filled with reverence. Her eyes fluttered shut, and fresh tears slipped free, tracing silent paths down her face. They fell softly, landing upon the small, dark horns that curved gently from the infant's head.
Malrik sat swaddled on her lap, silent, breathing slowly as he leaned against her belly as a headrest. Two dark, goat-like horns curled from the top of his head—small but sharp, glistening faintly under the flickering torchlight.
The rough linen cloth that bound him securely to her body hugged him tightly. His mind began to drift as sleep took hold, the pained and pitiful moans behind him dying down as his spade tail made its way into the woman's folds. His consciousness no longer held his subconscious instincts at bay.
Warm...
His hair was thick and dark, falling over his brow, slightly curled at the ends, and clinging to his forehead from the damp cave air.
His eyes—dark and depthless—stared ahead, unfocused, like he was listening to something far away for the last few seconds, as his eyelids grew heavy.
"Good night, my lord," a black-haired woman in a scantily clad maid's outfit said, looking into the hollowed eyes of the girls currently being piled on by tiny green creatures in depraved acts too graphic to mention.
Yet she held no sympathy for the women. Her duties lay only in keeping her master's son safe—and that's what she'd do, no matter what.
"Go... ood... ni..." Malrik began to mutter, then stopped—he still couldn't speak just yet.
Good night, Velmaria, he said internally after failing to speak, as he drifted off to sleep.
Everything that had happened—and everything that would—faded into the backdrop.
For that brief, fragile moment, he didn't have to worry about anything.
He wasn't Malrik Thorneveil Tenebris.
He wasn't a demon hated by the world.
He wasn't the spawn of Thorneveil Tenebris.
He wasn't Kamizawa Takeshi.
He wasn't... Thamor, the Lord of Consorts.
The flickering torchlight dimmed further as sleep swallowed the young demon whole.
—
Long before Kamizawa Takeshi drew his first breath and became a member of the demon race—before he was known as Malrik Thorneveil Tenebris—the land was ruled by his bloodline.
The Demon King stretched his arms across the world, ushering in a great era of demonkin.
But the Demon King—his grandfather, Abyzrakul Tenebris—was not merely a monarch. He was calamity incarnate. A being born of darkness, fire, and ambition. His presence was a curse upon the heavens and a nightmare upon the earth.
For a time, it seemed no force could stop him. His legions surged across the continents—armies formed of beasts, warlocks, demons, and the races he'd enslaved and conquered.
The humans.
The elves.
The dwarves—cunning creatures of stone and metal.
All united. Not in kinship, but desperation.
Even the gods, so proud in their celestial thrones, descended to combat the rising tide.
And still—they failed.
The Demon King slaughtered them.
One by one, the great gods fell. Their divine blood soaked the earth, desecrating sacred grounds. Heaven's gates shattered. Altars once radiant with holy light dimmed into nothingness.
With their champions broken and the world on the brink, the goddesses—the last divine remnants—did what no pantheon had ever dared.
They summoned outsiders.
Thirty souls plucked from different worlds. These were the goddesses' champions. Their Heroes. Humans were born in a world governed by different laws—but this might have been exactly what they needed to end the losing battle.
The goddess race didn't choose otherworlders at random. No—each one was tested, chosen for their compatibility with the remnants of fallen divinity from the gods the Demon King had slain.
It wasn't righteous. But in war, nothing ever is.
From this union, a new race was born into the world: the Demigods. No longer mere children—they became weapons. Forged by panic. Bound in celestial light.
With power stolen from the slain gods, they ascended—walking disasters of justice and retribution.
The tide turned.
The demon armies, so vast they darkened the lands they marched on, were held back at the gates of the human capital. Then they were pushed. Repelled. Crushed.
The goddesses' crusade had begun.
Territory reclaimed.
Cities reborn.
Alliances mended.
And it was during this relentless push for salvation that Malrik was born.
In another life, perhaps he might've known peace. He had marveled once, in his infant mind, at being given another chance. Another life. Another name.
His human one—Kamizawa Takeshi—meant nothing now. What mattered was survival.
And that was a cruel gift in this world.
He was born a prince to a collapsing throne.
A legacy drenched in ash and dying fire.
There was no time to rejoice. No lullabies. No parental love. No sisterly affection as he envisioned.
The castle that first held him soon fell under siege. Its master—ever-cunning, ever-cruel—sent his child through tunnels, dark roads carved beneath the mountain, deeper and deeper into surviving demon territory.
One stronghold after another.
Each one closer to the end.
Five years passed. Not that he could feel them.
He remained in that infant form—body trapped in eternal helplessness—as the world continued to unravel around him.
The war grew monstrous. In desperation, the Demon King declared one final, horrifying command:
Every non-demon within their territories—slaves, civilians, and emissaries—was to be slaughtered. Their essence consumed. Their lives fed into the army's strength, bolstering the surviving demonkin.
It was madness.
It was wrath.
It was war without mercy.
And yet...
Even with that sacrifice, even as rivers ran red and the sky cracked from the weight of the Demon King's power, it was not enough.
The Heroes—those thirty god-blooded warriors—stormed the Demon King's palace. They sacrificed their armies, their allies, their lives… all for one final push.
And they succeeded.
Abyzrakul Tenebris fell.
His death heralded what the world called peace.
But it was not the end.
The demon race did not vanish. They retreated. They scattered—into the deepest forests, the darkest caves, the ruined towers, and the corrupted cathedrals of old.
The world healed on the surface.
But beneath it... something waited.
Because demons do not forget.
They do not forgive.
The heroes—despite their power—are mortal. Every day, their bodies age. Their legacies fade. They are kings now, lords and legends.
But they will die.
And when they do, the demons will rise—with heroes of their own.
The Demon King made sure of it. His final words echoed through the minds of the remaining armies:
They had not lost the war.
Only the first battle.
And in the corners of human territory, in a cavern veiled by shadow and sorrow, a future piece crucial to demonkin's revival sleeps in the arms of a broken woman—guarded by a maid without mercy—his tail twitching with dreams he cannot yet remember.
He is Malrik Thorneveil Tenebris.
Thamor, the Lord of Consorts.
The tenth Demon Lord—bearer of the divinity of Marriage, Possession, and Union.
One of the sixteen pieces.
And he will awaken.