Sleep came like a cold blade, slicing through Kael's consciousness without mercy. His body collapsed onto the bed like dead weight, and the world vanished.
Then the memories came. Not his own. They belonged to the previous owner of this body.
Kael Black.
A thirteen-year-old boy, huddled under the kitchen table while Bael clan enforcers kicked in the door of their miserable home in the outer districts. His father—a common low-class demon, a manual laborer in the mines—tried to beg. "Just one more extension, my lords. Production was down this month…"
The lead enforcer, an arrogant pure-blood from a minor Bael branch, let out a dry laugh. "Extension? You low-class scum think the Underworld revolves around your excuses?"
There was no negotiation. A spear of black demonic energy pierced his father's chest. The body hit the stone floor hard, blood pooling slowly. No regeneration. No second chance. Common demons like him didn't have that—only the Phenex possessed the gift of rising from ashes. His father died right there, eyes wide open, in front of his son.
His mother screamed.
What followed lasted an entire year.
The enforcers returned every week. They didn't kill his mother—that would have been "wasteful property." Instead, they violated her. In front of Kael Black. They forced the boy to watch, chained in the corner with demonic bindings that seared his skin. "So you learn," they said. "So you remember that low-class pays or loses everything."
His mother stopped speaking after the fourth month. Stopped meeting his eyes after the eighth. At the end of the year, she hanged herself in the back room with a makeshift rope. Her neck snapped. No regeneration. No return.
Kael Black, now fourteen, was left alone in the world.
Then came her.
Elara. Low-class like him, with ambitious eyes that always looked beyond the filthy streets. They met stealing food in the market, sharing scraps of hard bread, whispering small dreams of escape. She said she loved him. He believed her.
But when a young pure-blood from a lesser clan—not one of the main 72 Pillars, but with enough status to offer protection—began courting her with promises of full meals, a clean room, and safety in the inner city… Elara chose.
"You're good, Kael," she said on their last night, voice almost regretful, avoiding his gaze. "But good doesn't stop what happened to your parents from happening to us. I want status. I want to live. I'm sorry."
She walked away hand-in-hand with the pure-blood. She never looked back.
Kael Black, at fifteen, shattered.
But the shattering turned to fire. He began planning in secret. Scrolls hidden under the floorboards: ideas for rebellion, ways to climb the ranks fast, stolen studies of ancient demonic energy to bypass birth limits. He trained alone in the shadows until he collapsed from exhaustion.
His dream was bigger than personal revenge.
He wanted to become the sole Demon King.
Not sharing power with the Four Great Satans. Not accepting the 72 Pillars as eternal law. An absolute king who would rewrite everything: equal rights for all demons—low-class, reincarnated, marginalized. End the blood caste. Ensure no one else lost family or dignity over unpaid "taxes."
But dreaming that big was dangerous.
Someone betrayed him—perhaps a frightened low-class "friend." The scrolls were found. The Bael returned.
This time, they beat him until his bones shattered beyond repair. They left him alive, but broken. A living warning.
Kael Black dragged himself back to the rented room. Stared at the cracked ceiling. Thought of his dead parents. Thought of Elara. Thought of the dream that now seemed insane.
He took the dagger. Cut deep—one, two, three times—until blood flooded the floor and life slipped away.
He died alone. No regeneration to save him.
The memory ended like thunder.
Kael awoke with a choked scream, his whole body shaking. He sat up abruptly, chest heaving in short, painful gasps. Pure hatred coursed through his veins like acid—hatred for the Bael, for the pure-bloods, for the entire system that allowed it. And grief, a crushing grief that squeezed his chest: for the father who had worked himself to the bone to protect his family, for the mother who had endured hell for a full year just to buy him one more day. They had done everything. Everything. And it hadn't been enough.
Hot tears fell. Kael wiped them away angrily, grinding his teeth until they ached.
"It won't stay like this," he muttered, voice hoarse and broken.
He rose slowly, legs still unsteady. His stomach growled loudly—real hunger, the kind he hadn't felt since arriving in this world. He went to the tiny kitchen, opened the old, cracked cabinets. Nothing. Not even crumbs. Just dust and emptiness. The original Kael Black had lived on the edge; nothing was ever left over.
He returned to the bedroom. Grabbed the old jacket hanging on the chair—worn fabric, smelling of mold and sulfur. Pulled it on over his threadbare shirt, slipped into the scuffed shoes. Glanced at himself in the cracked mirror: red eyes bloodshot, golden hair disheveled, pale face carrying too many ghosts.
He opened the creaking door and stepped out.
The city swallowed him—dark streets of the outer districts, flickering lanterns, shadows moving like predators. The cold Underworld air hit his face.
As he walked, he saw it all echoing the memories: low-class families cowering, High-Class enforcers collecting with cruel smiles, broken bodies that wouldn't return because only the Phenex could rise again.
Kael stopped in the middle of the street, fist clenched until nails dug into his palm.
"I will become the sole Demon King," he whispered, voice low, laced with venom and promise. "And I will end all of this."
At that exact moment, the system flickered in the corner of his vision, materializing as a translucent window:
[Memory Fragment unlocked: Kael Black's Past and Ambition]
[Template integration: Meliodas – 1.5% complete.]
[Partial immortality curse: Latent (not yet activated)]
[New long-term objective: Become the Sole Demon King | Total Reform of Demonic Society – Equal Rights for All]
Kael read the lines slowly, his heart beating harder. A cold smile curved his lips.
"Perfect," he murmured. "We'll do exactly that."
Hunger still gnawed at him. He kept walking toward the nearest rundown market, empty bag in hand.
The path began now.
End of Chapter 3.