Chapter 7
Elrien woke with a strangled gasp, his body drenched in sweat that felt like ice against his burning skin. The nightmare clung to him like smoke—always the same images, the same crushing despair that had shaped his earliest memories. His hands trembled as he pressed them against his temples, trying to banish the echoes of a child's terrified screams that still rang in his ears centuries later.
Since the day the old witch Imera came and prophesied about little Elrien being a plague demon, his entire world had crumbled like ash in his small hands. People had begun to avoid him like a curse—not just avoiding him, but recoiling in visible terror whenever he entered a room. The transformation had been swift and merciless.
One day he was a beloved prince with friends who laughed at his jokes and played games in the castle gardens. The next, those same children would cross themselves and flee when they saw him coming, their parents pulling them away with whispered warnings about the "cursed child" who would bring doom to all he touched.
None of his friends would play with him anymore. They would always leave whenever he joined them, sometimes running so fast they left their toys behind rather than risk being contaminated by his presence. The loneliness had been immediate and devastating—like having his heart ripped from his chest while he was still breathing.
His father, the former Demon King Valdris, had been caught between duty and paternal love. After being told by the queen that the kingdom itself was in danger, he had refused to kill his only child—but only just barely, and only because Elrien was his sole heir. The king's love had cracked under the pressure of fear, becoming something conditional and fragile.
After weeks of the queen's relentless manipulation about the kingdom not being safe with an evil omen like Elrien around, his father had finally broken. The man who had once lifted little Elrien onto his shoulders and called him "my little prince" had agreed to lock his only son away like a dangerous animal.
That day lived in Elrien's memory with crystal-clear, torturous detail. He had been painting in the drawing room—the brushes had become his only companions since no one else would stay in a room with him. The canvas showed a family of birds in a nest, all huddled together for warmth. He had been adding tiny details to their feathers when the woman he called mother barged in with a contingent of guards.
"Take this child away from here now!" Queen Serap had commanded, her voice shrill with disgust and fear. She couldn't even look at him directly, as if the sight of her own son burned her eyes.
"Mother?" seven-year-old Elrien had whispered, paint brush falling from his trembling fingers to clatter on the floor. "What's wrong? What did I do?"
But she had already turned away, unable to bear even that much interaction with him.
The guards—demons who had once bowed respectfully to their prince—grabbed him with rough hands that left bruises on his thin arms. Elrien was dragged away as he begged his mother to have mercy, his small voice echoing through the halls he had once run through with joy.
"Mother, please! I haven't done anything wrong! I promise I'll be good, I'll be better—" His desperate pleas had fallen on deaf ears, but she had turned back one final time to deliver the words that would haunt him forever.
"You're not my son," she'd said with devastating finality, her beautiful face twisted with revulsion. "My son died the day that witch spoke her prophecy. You're just the thing that took his place."
Even now, centuries later, those words still had the power to make him feel like that frightened seven-year-old boy whose entire world had shattered in a single moment. The memory could still bring him to his knees with its cruelty.
Elrien was taken to the deepest, darkest part of the castle—chambers carved from living rock where no sunlight ever reached and the walls wept with condensation. The isolation was immediate and total. Every day the boy sat alone in that dreadful place, hungry and cold and forgotten, watching the thin beam of light that filtered through a crack in the ceiling mark the passage of time.
The other demons—servants and courtiers who had once bowed to him as a prince, who had smiled and brought him treats and called him "young master"—now whispered about him when they thought he couldn't hear. But his demon hearing was acute, and every cruel word reached his sensitive ears.
"Plague demon," they'd hiss with voices full of fear and loathing. "Born to bring ruin to everything he touches. He will bring our demon realm down to ash. The witch said he would destroy us all."
"I heard his mother won't even say his name anymore," another would add. "Calls him 'the thing' when she has to refer to him at all."
"Good thing they locked him away. Can you imagine if that creature was allowed to roam free? We'd all be dead within a year."
Their words cut deeper than any blade. Each whispered conversation was another nail in the coffin of his childhood, another confirmation that he was exactly the monster they believed him to be.