ch6

[Several Months Earlier – Outskirts of the Dead Sands]

POV: Lukthee

The air hasn't moved in days.

It clings like rot. Not smoke, not ash—just thick, poisoned breath that sinks into your bones and doesn't leave. It's in the dirt, in the water, in your lungs. We choke on it quietly now. Too tired for screams.

Someone in the far corner died last night. No one said anything. Just shifted their eyes away. Let the flies claim what the air had already started.

I haven't stood up in three days. My joints feel like brittle sticks soaked in poison. The tent—the one made of stitched skin and old bones—groans with every breeze that manages to slip through. But there's no comfort. Just the heat. And the waiting.

'We're all waiting to stop breathing.'

Then… footsteps.

Not the kind that rush in with blades and orders. Not a medic. Not a butcher.

This one's calm. Too calm.

The tent flap lifts.

A silhouette—tall for his age, not hunched or wounded—steps into the space. He moves like he belongs here, but he looks like he doesn't.

Red skin, smooth and unmarred. Horns not broken or chipped but sharp and curved slightly back. Young. Not gaunt. Not coughing.

He scans the tent, eyes sharp, not soft. The way his gaze lands on us—on me—it isn't pity. It isn't contempt, either. Just… observation.

We stare at him like he's something from a better world.

I try to lift my head. My throat rasps, dry as old sandpaper. The effort sends a spasm through my side. I don't speak. I can't.

The old makaian near the back manages it for me—his voice like grinding glass.

"You new?" he croaks.

The red demon tilts his head slightly. No words. Just a small nod.

The old one lifts a hand—trembling, cracked. " Welcome."

No mockery. Just the last manners left in a dying beast.

The young demon gives the faintest of nods, eyes still scanning. Then he turns and walks back out. The flap closes behind him with a dry whisper.

No cough.

No gasp.

The air didn't choke him.

That wasn't normal.

But nothing is normal anymore .

[Elsewhere – A few hours later]

POV: Kael

Kael sat on the edge of a jagged ridge, the molten horizon stretching far beyond what the haze allowed. The sky churned like bruised smoke, pulsing occasionally with flashes of dull red light. He didn't flinch anymore when the ground groaned beneath him or when something shrieked in the distance.

He had lived through worse.

His palm was open, a shallow cut running diagonally across it. The skin had already begun to pull together before he told it to stop.

Not aloud. Not with words. Just with will.

And it obeyed.

The wound held, frozen halfway through healing. It didn't sting. It didn't bleed. It just… waited. Like his body was holding its breath.

He flexed his fingers and watched it.

That was new.

He let out a quiet breath through his nose.

'Regeneration on command. Suppression on command. Ican control my healing…'

He could make himself not heal.

'Why would I need that?'

The question lingered in his chest longer than it should have.

Kael rolled his palm closed, the cut vanishing with a soft shimmer beneath his skin.

That was one trick. He had more.

[Earlier That Week – Eastern Quarry Ruins]

The old ruins were silent except for wind threading through broken pillars. A half-buried shrine, long desecrated, now used as shelter for the wandering or desperate. Kael crouched beside a pool of sulfuric water and studied his reflection.

The red skin. The black eyes. His horns.

He didn't look human. But he didn't look entirely demon either.

He looked… deliberate .

Built.

He focused again.

The change wasn't violent—no twisting pain, no blood.

Just thought.

Muscle shifted. Skin darkened. Height increased. His frame bulked, limbs growing heavier, stronger.

He became a creature like the ones that dominated the lowlands. Intimidating. Broad-shouldered. Horns thicker. Jaw squarer.

He didn't roar. He didn't move.

He just stood.

A new form. A new mask.

He held it for five minutes. Then ten.

Then let go.

Back to normal. Breath steady.

No drain. No cost.

His body simply adjusted.

That wasn't instinct anymore. That was control.

[Later That Night – Along the Black Ridge]

Kael stood at the edge of a high rock wall, watching the sky ripple above the magma fields. Far below, near a dying ravine, he saw the faint flicker of tents—ragged ones, too small to be a war camp.

He didn't want to go down there. But curiosity outweighed disgust.

When he arrived, he found them—a field of the sick. Dozens. Some dying. Some already dead. Most silent.

He stayed on the edge for a long time before stepping into one of the shelters.

They didn't question him. Just stared.

He looked over them—the wheezing, the bloodshot eyes, the too-thin limbs. The poisoned air was suffocating. Even his lungs stung faintly with each breath.

But he wasn't coughing.

Not like them.

[Back on the Ridge – Hours Later]

He had sat for what felt like a full cycle, watching the moons fracture behind the clouds, lost in thought.

That's when the conversation from the barn came back. From weeks earlier.

About Sparda. About the sealed gates.

About betrayal.

He still felt the heat in his chest from that day. Still hated the name. The thought of a demon who chose humans over his own kind felt… wrong.

But something else stirred now. A question he hadn't allowed himself to ask before.

'What kind of power must he have had—to do all that?'

To seal realms. To battle legions. To be remembered.

To be worshiped.

Kael stared at his hand again, flexing the fingers slowly.

A body like his, that didn't break. That didn't die.

That changed.

'If that power came from betrayal, does that mean strength… means turning your back on who you are?'

He shook the thought away.

He wasn't Sparda.

He didn't want to be.

But part of him… wondered.