Devil's Prospective
Chapter 1 : The Coin of Existence
As the wise once said, every coin has two sides.
They forgot to mention that the world only worships one.
The night was silent except for the hiss of dying fire. The battlefield stretched for miles, blackened and broken, littered with wings and horns and the bones of faith itself. Naen walked through it barefoot, the ash clinging to his steps like guilt that refused to let go.
He did not look up at the heavens anymore. He had learned that the light above offered no warmth. It only watched.
Why must the light always claim to be good? he wondered. Why must the shadow always kneel?
The wind answered with a whisper of dust.
Naen stopped beside the corpse of an angel its white armor split, its eyes empty but still glowing faintly. He touched the blade buried in its chest. It was his own. He pulled it free, and light bled from the wound like liquid gold. The sight made him sick.
Somewhere beyond the mountains, the war still burned. But here, there was only aftermath. Only silence.
He sheathed the weapon and sat among the ruins, closing his eyes. The cold crept in slowly, gentle and cruel.
He thought of the beginning—not of creation, but of his own.
Long ago, before the heavens called him the Devil, he had been nothing more than a soldier in the pits of the lower realm. His kind had no names, only purposes: to fight, to feed, to exist. Life was simple that way. Pain was honest. No one pretended it was anything else.
He remembered the training grounds: iron dust, cracked earth, the air thick with the smell of blood. The demons fought not for power but for space to breathe. To live one more day was victory enough.
Naen was no different. Until the day he saw the sky burn.
The heavens had opened—a wound of light—and poured judgment upon them. Cities vanished under divine fire. Children burned before they learned fear. Angels descended like perfect machines, voices calm as they killed.
Naen had stood frozen, unable to understand. They said it was "cleansing." They said it was "justice."
He could not tell the difference.
That night, he looked at the stars and realized something that would never leave him:
> "Light does not hate darkness. It fears becoming it."
He began to question everything. Why did the heavens destroy what they called unholy when holiness itself required something to condemn? Why were humans taught to pray to the light that punished and to fear the dark that only wanted to exist?
No one wanted to hear it. Not demons. Not angels. Not even gods.
So he kept his thoughts buried, hidden beneath scars and silence, until the questions became heavier than his sword.
Now, centuries later, sitting among corpses of both sides, he whispered to the void:
"Maybe the coin never had two sides at all. Maybe we just see the one we can live with."
The moon broke through the smoke, painting his face in silver. He looked nothing like the stories said—the horned monster of scripture, the whisperer of sin. He looked tired. Human, even.
He rose, brushing ash from his hands, and looked toward the horizon.
There was still war to the east. Still believers killing believers, angels slaying demons, humans dying in the crossfire. Nothing had changed. Only the names of the righteous.
He walked forward anyway. Each step stirred the ashes, mixing white feathers with black.
If good and evil are just the names the victors choose, he thought, then what am I? A villain in their story, or a victim in mine?
A faint sound broke the quiet a heartbeat, weak but stubborn. He turned. Among the wreckage lay a young demon barely alive, half-buried beneath stone. Naen knelt and lifted the weight off its body.
The creature's eyes fluttered open. "Why… why save me? It's over…"
Naen studied him for a long moment. Then said softly, "Because it isn't over until someone remembers why it started."
He pressed two fingers to the demon's forehead. Shadow rippled, spreading warmth through the dying flesh. The breathing steadied, but the creature would not last long.
Naen stayed until the heartbeat faded. Then, as the body dissolved into dust, he whispered, "Rest. The light won't follow you there."
By dawn, the field was empty.
He stood alone, the last shadow in a world pretending it had conquered the dark.
They would call him the Devil. They would write him into stories as the betrayer, the corrupter, the fallen one. But he knew the truth. He hadn't fallen. He had seen.
And seeing had cursed him far more than any god could.
As he walked away, the sky began to lighten—a cruel trick of color pretending to be hope. Naen didn't look back.
"Let them name me evil," he said quietly. "At least I chose to understand."
The wind carried the words into the dead sky, and for a moment, it almost sounded like prayer.