*Content Warning: This chapter contains mature themes, violence, blood, and morally dark actions. Reader discretion advised.*
After the battle with the God of Lightning, Leon slowly opened his eyes.
All he saw was white.
A silent, endless world of pale light stretched in every direction—no sky, no ground, no horizon. He floated in it like a speck of dust in a blank eternity.
Leon's voice trembled, halfway between a sad laugh and a sob.
"What the hell… is that all I amounted to?"
His words disappeared into the emptiness.
"I… I ranted so much about becoming the strongest, about surpassing Master… but in the end…" His throat tightened. "I couldn't even kill a god. A mere god. Is this how it ends?"
He looked around the white void, eyes unfocused.
"Where even is this?" he whispered. "Heaven? On the way to hell? Or just some limbo for idiots who thought they were special?"
No answer came. Only the white.
***
While Leon drifted in that colorless world, the real battlefield told a different story.
The God of Lightning stood over Leon's ruined body, laughter rolling from his chest as he pressed his foot down on the hole in Leon's chest.
"Look at you now," the god said, grinding his heel into the torn flesh. "The mortal who dared bare his fangs at a god."
Lightning snapped lazily around his leg as he pushed harder. Bone creaked.
"You roared about standing above everything. You copied my techniques like some talent‑drunk beast. And in the end, you're just another corpse under my feet."
He glanced toward the distant horizon, where Void had once stood.
"That other brat… Void, was it?" A thin smile spread across his face. "I'll erase him next. Can't have two little monsters running around thinking they can touch the heavens."
His tone turned mocking.
"Relax, Leon. Consider this a favor. You won't have to watch your Master die."
***
Far away, the Empire watched.
In the capital, nobles and ministers gathered around scrying mirrors as the image of Leon's crushed body flickered before their eyes.
"So that boy is finally dead," a noble snorted. "Good. He was getting… unsettling."
"Honestly, provoking a god like that," another said with a laugh. "What did he expect? A pat on the head?"
The Emperor leaned back on his throne, a faint, arrogant smile tugging at his lips.
"In the end, he was still a tool," he said. "Useful, yes. But tools break. Better that a god takes responsibility for destroying him than our Empire."
The Empress crossed her arms, gaze cold.
"He dared to fight a god head‑on. That alone is insanity." She paused, then added lightly, "But at least now our hands are clean. He absorbed the hatred of gods in our place."
Across the nations, rulers, generals, and common folk spoke in similar tones—awed, dismissive, relieved, arrogant—like background voices at the edge of a stage.
"That boy was terrifying while he lasted."
"Good thing the god handled it. Imagine if he'd turned on us."
"Just a wild dog that bit too high."
***
The God of Lightning lifted his foot at last, turning away from the corpse.
"Your story ends here, Leon."
He took a step, preparing to leave.
That was when it happened.
A laugh echoed.
Not in the air, but directly inside everyone's skull.
"Kahahahahahahaha…"
The sound slithered into minds across the Empire, into palaces and slums, into temples and taverns. The God of Lightning froze mid‑step. Soldiers dropped their weapons, eyes wide.
Leon's supposedly dead body twitched.
His hand slapped his own cheek once, twice, as if waking himself up. Then he pushed himself to his feet, swaying, a wide smile carving itself across his blood‑stained face.
"So that was the condition to take over this brat's body," the voice chuckled through Leon's lips. "Death. How fitting."
***
Everyone stared.
"The corpse… moved…"
"Impossible. I saw him die. His chest was—"
"W‑Wasn't his heart gone?"
In the imperial palace, the Emperor shot to his feet, fingers digging into the throne's armrest.
"Did the god… revive him?" he muttered. "Or is that something else inside the boy?"
The Empress's face had gone pale.
"Those eyes," she whispered. "They're not the same as before."
On the battlefield, Leon—no, the body wearing Leon's skin—lifted his head slowly.
The golden eyes that had once reflected lightning's fury were gone. In their place burned a pure, blood‑red glow—cold, predatory, utterly inhuman.
"The boy's eyes…" a knight choked out. "They're red. Completely red."
"That's not him," a priest said, backing away, holy symbol shaking in his hands. "That… that thing isn't Leon anymore."
In distant nations, those watching through mirrors and divinations felt a chill crawl down their spines.
"Is that a god's possession?" a foreign king asked.
"No," his court mage answered, voice barely a whisper. "This feels… wrong in a different way. Older. Hungrier."
In the capital, a general swallowed hard.
"If that isn't Leon," he said slowly, "then who the hell have we invited into our world?"
***
The God of Lightning turned back fully, lightning flaring around him in instinctive wariness.
"How in the hell are you still alive?" he demanded. Then, more sharply, "No—wrong question. Just *who* in the hell are you?"
Leon's body didn't answer.
The figure simply stood there, smiling too widely, red eyes half‑lidded as if amused by the entire world. Blood dripped from his chest, but he seemed to wear the wound like an accessory.
In the empire's streets, in royal courts, in hidden sects and distant kingdoms, people whispered, argued, trembled—every one of them scrambling to name the thing that now stared down a god using Leon's face.
"Is he a demon?"
"A god's enemy?"
"A curse?"
"Or… was that monster inside him from the very beginning?"
The questions multiplied. Fear thickened.
But the red‑eyed figure did not speak.
For now, the Mind Demon only watched in silence—wearing Leon's body like a new set of clothes—while the world around him tried and failed to understand what had just been born.
***
**Author's Note:**
Leon's body is back on its feet… but it isn't Leon behind those eyes anymore. The Mind Demon has finally taken the wheel, and everyone—from the God of Lightning down to the commoners—is treating him like a walking question mark with a death flag attached.
If you're enjoying Throne Beyond the Veil and this Mind‑Demon‑takes‑over twist, drop a comment with "Whose body is this really?"or tell what you think the Mind Demon's first spoken line should be when he finally decides to open his mouth. Your theories and chaos help shape how far this possession arc goes.