The entire village lay in ruin, a skeletal landscape of charred wood and rising ash that choked the remaining light from the sky. At the center of this desolation stood the Demon Lord, a towering silhouette of darkness. A cold, jagged smile stretched across his face as he raised his arms, inhaling the scent of incineration as if it were a royal perfume.
"Now," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that cut through the silence. "This is what I call a warm welcome."
He stiffened. A sound had fractured the stillness—a ragged, rhythmic sobbing, thick with unadulterated terror. He turned his head slowly, his eyes glowing with a predatory crimson glint, and fixed his gaze on a woman huddled amidst the debris. She was curled tightly around a bundle in her arms, clutching her infant as if she could pull him back into the safety of her own womb.
He approached with heavy, rhythmic strides. When he loomed over her, he paused. His brow furrowed; he sensed a strange resonance emanating from the child—a pulse of energy he knew all too well.
He leaned down, his shadow swallowing her whole. "Tell me, woman," he demanded, his voice slicing through her cries. "Has your son turned into a demon?"
The woman trembled so violently her teeth rattled. She could manage nothing more than a frantic, jerky nod.
"And you?" he continued, his tone dropping to a chilling level of indifference. "Have you turned as well?"
"No..." she choked out, her voice drowned in salt and sorrow. "I haven't."
The Demon Lord's eyebrow arched in mocking disbelief. "How? Your son is a demon, yet you remain human? Explain this."
She tightened her grip on the child, burying her face in his swaddling clothes. "I don't know... I don't know why I didn't change. Please," she wailed, "don't hurt us."
"Does he possess the power of healing?" he snapped.
As she nodded again, a flash of pure, volcanic fury erupted across his features. His eyes ignited like dying stars, as if he were watching a ghost of his own bitter past manifest before him. "Damn it!" he roared, the force of his voice shaking the ruins. "Why must the children always bear the sins of the adults? Why?!"
The mother shrank back, unable to comprehend his words, seeing only the face of death. The Demon Lord exhaled a long, weary sigh that seemed to carry the weight of centuries.
"Woman," he said, his voice now a terrifying whisper. "Do you have any idea who caused the demonic power in your child's heart?"
The fear suddenly drained from her face, replaced by a raw, desperate spark of hope. She looked up at him, her eyes searching his. "Can you... Can you heal him?"
He let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "Ha! It seems your courage only wakes when it concerns your own flesh and blood."
She stroked the infant's cheek with a trembling hand. "Yes. I live my life only for him."
The Demon Lord's smile turned cruel. "Then sacrifice what remains of that life for him. Because the cause of the darkness in his body... is you. He absorbed that energy from you while in the womb. It is part of him now. Congratulations—your son is a half-demon."
The words hit her like a physical blow. The world seemed to stop; the air vanished from her lungs. With eyes wide and leaking tears that looked like blood, she spoke in a shattered voice: "I am ready to sell my soul. Just... heal my son."
"I cannot," he replied coldly. "It is woven into his very being."
Her strength collapsed. In a hollow whisper, she uttered a single word: "Kill me."
He cupped a hand to his ear in mock confusion. "What? What was that?"
"Kill me!" she screamed, her voice breaking. "I don't deserve to live. If my son must suffer because of me, then what kind of mother am I?"
Without a moment's hesitation, he drew his blade and, in one fluid motion, drove it into her abdomen. As the blood stained her tattered clothes, he looked down at her with clinical detachment. "With pleasure. Do you have any final requests?"
"Please," she gasped, the light fading from her eyes. "Let my son live."
"And why," he sneered, "do you think I would grant that?"
"I don't know..." she whispered, her last breath rattling in her throat. "But my heart as a mother tells me you will."
She looked at her child one last time. "My little one... I'm so sorry."
Then, the impossible happened. The infant, barely days old, reached out with his tiny hands and grasped his mother's stiffening finger. A warm, radiant light erupted from his palms, beginning to seal the fatal wound. He wailed—a sound of pure, instinctive grief—as if begging her not to leave him.
The Demon Lord watched, frozen. Deep within him, the soul of Andrei stirred, shaken by the echo of his own mother's final words.
He grit his teeth, his face contorting with rage. "I don't understand!" he bellowed at the infant. "A child of mere days, healing a wound this grave? Is your mother so precious? She cared for you for days, yet you cling to her! There was one who was cared for for twelve years, only to be abandoned despite everything he tried!"
In his fury, a figure flickered behind him. Oliver appeared like a frost-wraith, plunging a dagger deep into the Demon Lord's hand. Oliver retreated instantly as blood gushed, but the Demon Lord didn't scream. He stared at his hand in a trance. "Pain? Is remembering the past this painful?"
In an act of pure madness, he took his own sword and stabbed his wounded hand again, pinning the pain to the present. He glared at the woman. "I give you seconds to run with your child! I am filled with rage now. I will slaughter these 'heroes' and burn this village until it is nothing but ash! Run!"
Black hellfire erupted from his blade, cleaving the earth. The ground shivered and split, swallowing the ruins in dark flames. Then, a sudden, heavy stillness fell.
The frozen earth exploded as massive, grotesque arms began to claw their way out of the depths. The Covenant Beast rose, a titan of ancient power.
The Demon Lord's eyes widened with a mix of shock and dark delight. "Covenant Beasts? I haven't seen your kind in ages. This makes things simpler. You are my second target... after the Lord of the Dead."
The battle began in a blur of violence. The beast's massive arms lunged for him, but his black flames devoured the limbs as fast as they could regenerate. He struck the ground, sending a horizontal wave of fire through the ice, only for the beast to create a phantom double and launch an ice spear that shook the very foundation of the world.
Suddenly, the beast vanished.
The Demon Lord's gaze fell upon the arm of the Ice Lord, where strange, ancient incantations were beginning to glow. He chuckled darkly. "So... you are the one who wrote the last covenant for the Ice Beast? Is this the mission you and your comrades were sent for?"