I was pulled from sleep by the most ear-splitting scream I'd ever heard.
"WAKE! UP! YOU! LAZY! PIECE! OF! SHIT!"
Each word was punctuated by what felt like someone stabbing knives directly into my eardrums.
I bolted upright, hands covering my ears, looking around wildly for the source.
And there, floating at eye level beside my bed, was... a tiny person.
No. Not a person.
Asura.
Except, she was maybe six inches tall, hovering in the air with translucent wings that looked like they were made of dark mana. Her white hair, her red eyes, her fangs, all exactly as I'd seen in that white void. Just... miniature. Like someone had shrunk her down to doll size.
A chibi demon.
"Good, you're awake," she said in her normal voice, which seemed impossibly loud coming from such a small body. "Now get up. We have work to do."
"You're... real. Outside my head. You're actually real."
"Of course I'm real, idiot. I'm a demon, not a hallucination." She flew closer, her tiny face inches from mine. "Though I'll admit, this form is... not ideal. I'm supposed to be intimidating. This is the opposite of intimidating."
"How are you.... ummm" I gestured vaguely at her floating form. "How are you outside the dagger?"
"I'm using your mana to manifest physically. Not much I can do with your pathetically small mana pool except exist in this ridiculous size, but it's better than being stuck in the dagger." She crossed her tiny arms. "Speaking of your mana, we need to talk about that."
I finally registered the rest of my room. The blood-stained sheets. The smell. The general disaster of the past year.
And most importantly, the dark mana.
It was everywhere. Thick, visible, purple-black smoke that filled the room like fog. Pouring off me the dagger still lying on my bed, pouring off Asura herself.
"Why isn't anyone...." I started.
"Breaking down your door? Calling the guards? Screaming about dark magic?" Asura gestured with one tiny hand, and I felt something shift around me. Like a second skin settling over my body. "Barrier spell. Cast it on you directly. Now you can walk around and no one will sense your dark mana signature. You'll just seem like a normal, depressed noble to everyone else."
"You can do that?"
"I'm a demon with centuries of experience. Of course I can do that. Though maintaining it constantly will drain a bit of your mana." She made a dismissive gesture. "Worth it to not get executed by the Church, don't you think?"
"How much mana does it take?"
"Not much. I'm the one actually maintaining the spell. I just need your mana to fuel it and maintain my physical form. You'll barely notice the drain." She flew down to land on my shoulder. "But here's the thing about your mana that you need to understand. It's not clear anymore."
"What?"
She held out her tiny hand, and a small amount of mana gathered in her palm. Dark purple, almost black.
"This is your mana now. See? Dark. Corrupted. Delicious." She dispersed it. "Your original mana was colorless, basically pure, neutral, adaptable. Like water. Very rare. Very useful."
"I know all this..."
"Shut up, I'm explaining. Your mana was like water. And I am an impurity. A very large, very powerful impurity. When my dark mana flooded into you last night, it didn't just mix with yours. It converted yours. Transformed it. Like dropping ink into clear water. Eventually, all the water becomes diluted ink."
She flew off my shoulder, hovering in front of my face again.
"Most of your mana is now dark mana. Maybe ninety percent. The remaining ten percent is still converting. Give it a few more days, and you'll be one hundred percent dark mana. Which means...."
"I'm fucked."
"Would have been fucked without the barrier spell, yes. Dark mana is illegal. The Church executes anyone found using it. But with my barrier on you, you're just another noble with mysterious mana nobody can properly sense. Annoying for them, but not illegal." She grinned with those tiny fangs. "And the upside? Dark mana is incredibly powerful. Way more potent than normal elemental mana. You'll be able to do things other people can't even dream of."
"As long as I hide it constantly."
"Exactly! The barrier spell is automatic now. I'm maintaining it. You just have to not do anything stupid like casting dark magic in front of witnesses." She flew in a circle around my head. "But enough about that. We have work to do. Training to start. A year to get you strong enough to not be a complete embarrassment at the Academy."
"I don't want to train."
"I don't care what you want. We had a deal, remember? I give you power, you get strong enough for me to eventually take over. Which means you train. Starting now."
"I'm too tired..."
"Then I'll motivate you." Her red eyes gleamed. "I can access your memories, remember? All of them. Every shameful moment. Every failure. Every regret. I can pull them out and make you relive them. Want me to do that?"
"You're bluffing."
"Try me."
I stared at her tiny face. She looked completely serious.
"Do your worst," I said, calling her bluff.
Her grin widened. "You asked for it."
She snapped her tiny fingers.
And my mind exploded.
Memories.
Not gentle recollection. Not distant images. Full immersion. Full sensory experience. As if I was living them again.
Kenji Yamamoto standing on that rooftop. Hiroshi's console in my hands. The satisfaction of smashing it. The rage in Hiroshi's eyes. The push. The fall. The ground rushing up.
Waking up in the hospital. Learning I'd never walk again. The wheelchair. The humiliation.
Yuki's face when she called me a cripple. The relief in her eyes when she walked away with Takeshi.
Dying alone in my grandmother's house. The smell of dust and regret. The crushing loneliness. The final thought: I'm sorry.
Then the new memories. Aldric's memories.
Destroying the training dummy. My mother's worried face. The fear that had driven me even then.
Training with Cedric. The obsessive need to be strong. The underlying terror of being weak again.
My mother. Marianne. Her amber eyes. Her gentle hands. Her voice singing lullabies. Her smile when she looked at me like I was her entire world.
Her body in the casket. Cold. Gone. Forever.
The funeral. Sera's hand in mine. The warmth. The light.
Then the possessiveness. The jealousy. Watching Sera with Lucas. The ugly, twisted feelings.
The banquet. Trying to draw her attention by bringing up my mother's death. Her struggle. The crack of breaking bone. Her cry of pain.
Lucas's contempt. The duel. Losing. Sera's cold eyes were looking at me, then...
Everyone else.
Not me.
Never me.
A year of rotting in bed. Refusing my stepmother's funeral. My father's disappointed face. At least she never saw what you actually became.
All of it. Every failure. Every moment of weakness. Every time I'd hurt someone. Every time I'd been hurt. Every single shameful, painful, pathetic moment of two lives...
It crashed over me like a tsunami. Thirty-plus years of memories compressed into minutes. No breaks. No mercy. Just the relentless weight of everything I'd been and done and failed to be.
I was on the floor. Don't remember falling. Just found myself there, curled up, sobbing.
Not quiet crying. Full body sobs. The kind that hurt. The kind that come from somewhere so deep you didn't know it existed.
"Make it stop," I gasped between sobs. "Please. Please make it stop."
The flood of memories cut off abruptly.
Asura landed on the floor in front of me. Her tiny face was... troubled. Almost guilty.
"Shit," she said quietly. "That was... that was more than I expected. I felt all of that too. Your memories.... damn," She stopped, shook her tiny head. "I'm a demon. I've seen horrible things. Done horrible things. But you... You're just a kid. Two lives, but you're still a kid and you're just carrying all of that."
I couldn't respond. Could barely breathe through the crying.
She flew up to land on my head, her tiny weight settling in my hair.
"I'm sorry," she said, and she sounded like she meant it. "That was supposed to motivate you. Make you angry enough to train. I didn't realize it would be that bad."
We stayed like that for a while. Me crying on the floor. Asura sitting on my head in uncharacteristic silence.
Finally, the sobs subsided. Became hiccups. Became shaky-breathing.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"What?"
"I needed that." I sat up slowly, wiping my face. "I needed to remember. All of it. Not just the pain. The... the purpose."
"Purpose?"
"My mother. Someone killed her. I promised I'd find out who. Make them pay." I looked at the tiny demon now hovering at eye level. "I forgot that. Forgot everything except the hurt. But that memory, of finding her dead, that's why I need to get strong."
Asura studied me with those red eyes. "Revenge, huh? That's a better motivation than 'I don't want to be weak.' Revenge has teeth. Revenge gets shit done."
"Is that why you want your body back? Revenge on the Church?"
"Among other reasons, yes. They sealed me away for centuries. I have a very long list of people who need to suffer for that." She grinned, showing tiny fangs. "So we have something in common. We both want revenge. We both need to get stronger to get it. Sounds like a partnership to me."
I pushed myself to my feet. Unsteady. Weak. But standing.
"What do I have to do?"
"Finally asking the right questions." She flew around me in a circle. "First, we rebuild your body. You've spent a year rotting in bed. You have no muscle mass, no stamina, no physical conditioning. Before we can do anything with magic or combat, you need to not collapse after walking up stairs."
"How long will that take?"
"Depends on how hard you work. Months, at least. Maybe six months to get you back to where you were before you gave up. Then we can start actual combat training."
Six months. That would put me at... fourteen and a half. Six months before I turned fifteen and entered the Academy.
It wasn't enough time. But it was what I had.
"Tell me what to do."
Asura clapped her tiny hands together. "Excellent! First, and this is important, you cannot use mana for any of this. Every bit of your mana is going into maintaining my physical form and the barrier spell on you. You're training purely with physical effort. Old-fashioned. Brutal. Effective."
She flew to the center of the room.
"We'll start simple. Push-ups. As many as you can do. Proper form, back straight, arms ninety degrees, chest to floor. Go."
I got down into position. Tried to do a push-up.
My arms shook. Gave out after about three inches down.
I collapsed to the floor.
"Was that... was that a push-up?" Asura asked. "Because it looked more like a fish flopping on land."
"I told you, I haven't trained in over a year..."
"Excuses. Try again."
I tried again. Managed to go down about halfway before my arms gave out again.
"Pathetic. Again."
Again. And again. And again.
After ten attempts, I managed one full push-up. My arms were screaming.
"Good! See? Progress. Now do nineteen more."
"I can't...."
"Then do as many as you can. When your arms give out, switch to squats. When your legs give out, do sit-ups. When your core gives out, go back to push-ups. You keep going until I tell you to stop."
"This is insane..."
"This is training. Now move!"
I moved.
It was hell.
Pure, unfiltered hell.
I managed three push-ups before collapsing. Switched to squats , managed fifteen before my legs turned to jelly. Sit-ups, maybe twenty before my abs cramped so badly I thought I'd vomit.
Back to push-ups.
Asura narrated the entire time, hovering around me like the world's smallest, most annoying personal trainer.
"Come on, one more! Your arms aren't going to fall off. Probably. Okay, they might, but that's what makes it exciting!"
I wanted to hate her. Wanted to tell her to shut up.
But she was right. This was what I needed. No magic. No shortcuts. Just the brutal, honest work of rebuilding what I'd destroyed.
Hours passed. I lost count of how many cycles I went through. Push-ups, squats, sit-ups, repeat. Every muscle is burning. Every breath labored.
At some point, there was a knock on my door.
Two knocks. Clara's pattern.
I froze, gasping for breath, face down on the floor mid-push-up.
"Young master?" Clara's voice, muffled through the door. "Your breakfast."
I didn't respond. Couldn't. Too exhausted to form words.
She waited. I heard her set the tray down.
But she didn't leave immediately.
There was silence. Then I heard her footsteps, but they stopped. She was still there. Listening.
I was breathing hard, ragged gasps from exertion.
"You can do this," I muttered to myself, barely audible. "Just ten more."
I pushed myself into another shaky push-up.
A pause at the door. Then Clara's footsteps, slower than usual, retreating down the hall.
"She heard you," Asura observed from where she was perched on my discarded pillow. "Heard you talking to yourself. Heard you breathing like you're dying. She probably thinks you're having some kind of breakdown in here."
"Let her think that," I gasped. "Better than the truth."
"Which is?"
"That I'm training with a demon."
"Fair point." Asura flew back in front of me. "Twenty more squats. Go."
I went.
The training continued for hours. When I literally couldn't move anymore, Asura finally called a halt.
"Alright, that's enough for today. Any more and you'll injure yourself. We're building strength, not destroying what little you have left."
I lay on the floor, every muscle trembling, drenched in sweat that smelled like death.
"Eat your breakfast," Asura commanded. "You need protein. Then you're showering. You still smell like you died in here. Infact, you almost did."
"Can't move."
"Then you'll starve. Your choice."
I forced myself to crawl to the door, retrieve the tray Clara had left. Cold eggs, bread, and fruit. I ate mechanically, too exhausted to taste anything.
"Tomorrow we do this again," Asura said, landing on the edge of the tray. "And the day after. And the day after that. Every day until your body remembers what strength feels like."
"How long?"
"Until you stop being pathetic. It might be weeks. It might be months, years, even. Depends on you." She looked at me seriously. "But here's the thing, boy. Physical strength is just the foundation. Once you have that, we start on the real training. Dark magic. Combat techniques. Things that'll make you genuinely dangerous."
"You almost seem like you're helping me? You want my body. Wouldn't it be easier if you just made me train my strength and left my magic capacity alone?"
"Short term, maybe. But I need you to be strong enough to handle my power without exploding. Need you capable enough to survive until I can properly possess you. And honestly?" She shrugged. "You're more interesting when you're trying. Watching you wallow was boring. This is at least entertaining."
She flew up to hover at eye level.
"Plus, I felt those memories. Felt what drives you. The mom who loved you, the failure to protect her, the need for revenge." Her red eyes softened slightly. "I understand that. Understand needing to be strong enough to make people pay. So yeah, I'm helping. For now. Until I don't need to anymore."
"When you try to take over completely."
"When I succeed in taking over completely." She grinned. "But that's a future problem. For now, we're partners. Mutual exploitation. Shared goals. Try not to die before I can steal your body."
"Comforting."
"I'm a demon, not a therapist. Now shower. Seriously. The smell is getting to me even in this tiny form."
I forced myself to stand, grabbed a change of clothes from my wardrobe, the first time I'd changed in... I didn't want to think about how long.
Made my way to the private bathroom attached to my room. Looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in months.
I looked like death.
Pale skin. Sunken cheeks. Hollow eyes with dark circles. Hair long and matted. Beard coming in patchy and unkempt, I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, at that awkward age where facial hair started but looked terrible.
I looked like someone who'd given up on living.
"Yeah, that's rough," Asura said from where she'd perched on the sink. "We're fixing that, too. Clean yourself up. You're a noble. Start looking like one."
I filled the bath, sank into the hot water. Let the heat work into my screaming muscles.
Asura stayed perched on the sink, pointedly looking away to give me privacy. Which was oddly considerate for a demon trying to steal my body.
"Can I ask you something?" I said after a while.
"Sure."
"Why were you sealed? What did you do?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I existed. That was my crime. The Church doesn't tolerate demons, even ones who aren't actively causing problems. They hunted me for years. Finally cornered me. Sealed me in that dagger."
"Were you... hurting people?"
"Define 'hurting.' I fed on fear. That's what demons do. But I didn't kill indiscriminately. Didn't destroy villages for fun. I had my territories, my rules. Compared to most demons, I was practically civilized."
"But you did kill innocent people."
"Yes. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'm a demon. Hurting people is in my nature." She looked at me with those red eyes. "Just like violence is in yours. You can pretend to be civilized, pretend to be better, but we both know what you're capable of. What you've done. What you'll do again if pushed."
"I'm trying to be better."
"Are you? Or are you just trying to be stronger? There's a difference." She flew closer. "Here's some advice from someone who's existed for centuries: Don't lie to yourself about what you are. You're not a good person. Neither am I. But we can be useful people. Dangerous people. People who accomplish things."
"Even if those things are revenge and violence?"
"Especially if those things are revenge and violence. At least that's honest." She landed on the edge of the tub. "The world is full of people pretending to be noble while doing terrible things. I prefer people who know they're terrible and own it."
I thought about that as I washed away months of filth and shame.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn't a good person. Maybe I'd never be what my mother hoped I'd become.
But I could be strong. I could be dangerous. I could find who killed her and make them pay.
If that made me a monster, so be it.
I'd been trying to be good for two lives now. It hadn't worked out either time.
Maybe it was time to try something else.
I emerged from the bath clean, changed into fresh clothes, and looked at myself in the mirror again.
Still pale. Still too thin. Still looked half-dead.
But cleaner. A start.
"Better," Asura approved. "Now, back to your room. Rest. Eat when Clara brings lunch. Tomorrow we train again. And the day after. Every day until the Academy."
"What about my father? The rest of the manor? They'll eventually notice..."
"Notice what? That you're staying in your room like you have been for a year? That you're not attending meals or functions?" She flew to my shoulder. "Keep doing exactly what you've been doing. Stay invisible. Let them think you're still wallowing. Meanwhile, you get stronger in secret."
She had a point. The less attention I drew, the better. No one would question the depressed child staying in his room. It's what I'd been doing for over a year anyway.
"What about food? I'll need more than what Clara brings."
"Tell her you're eating again. That your appetite is coming back. Noble brats have weird phases all the time. She'll just be happy you're eating." Asura settled onto my shoulder. "The barrier on you hides the dark mana. As far as anyone can tell, you're just a sad noble recovering slowly. Let them think that."
I returned to my room, climbed into bed. Every muscle ached. My body felt like it had been beaten with hammers.
But beneath the pain, there was something else.
Purpose.
"Sleep," Asura commanded, curling up in my hair. "Your body needs to recover. Tomorrow we train harder."
I closed my eyes and fell into darkness.
No nightmares. No dreams. Just rest.
When I woke the next morning, Asura was already screaming in my ear.
"UP UP UP! Day two of operation 'stop being pathetic'! Let's go!"
I groaned but got up.
Started the routine again. Push-ups, squats, sit-ups, repeat.
My muscles screamed in protest, still sore from yesterday.
But I pushed through.
Because I had a goal now. A reason. A purpose.
Find my mother's killer.
Get strong enough to make them pay.
And survive the demon trying to steal my body long enough to do both.
It wasn't a good plan. It wasn't even a sane plan.
But it was a plan.
And that was more than I'd had in a long time