The air in the office smelled of old parchment, infernal sulfur, and the sharp, clean scent of bergamot from the tea steeping on the desk.
Dr. Aris Thorne lit a cigarette with a steady hand, the flame from his silver lighter a tiny, defiant sun in the oppressive gloom. He took a long drag, letting the nicotine smooth the raw edges of his nerves. His new office was absurd. A vaulted ceiling lost in shadow, walls of polished black basalt lined with books bound in what he hoped was not human skin, and a single, enormous stained-glass window depicting a scene of celestial carnage. His modern, ergonomic chair looked like a plastic tumor amidst the Gothic opulence.
Summoned to another world. Standard Isekai boilerplate. But instead of a sword, they gave me a notepad. Instead of a harem of eager heroines, I have a roster of genocidal maniacs with attachment issues.
The summons had been… violent. One moment he was in his downtown apartment, reviewing a particularly stubborn case of borderline personality disorder, the next he was vomiting onto an obsidian floor while goat-headed creatures in butler uniforms tittered nervously. The explanation, delivered by a trembling imp with a clipboard, was succinct: The Seven Sin Lords of the Apocalypse were mentally unfit. Their trauma-induced instability was causing their world-ending powers to leak, threatening reality itself. The traditional solution—sending Heroes to kill them—had failed. The last Hero had made it to the throne room before the Lord of Wrath, in a dissociative fugue, had accidentally erased the man's ancestral village from the timeline.
Their new solution: therapy.
Aris was their Hail Mary. A "Mind Healer" with a supposed gift of "Absolute Empathy."
The heavy oak door to his office trembled. Not a knock. A deep, resonant thud, as if something massive had leaned against it from the outside. The brass fittings whined in protest.
"He is here, Master Healer," squeaked the imp secretary from a speaking tube on the desk. "Lord Gorn, the Embodiment of Wrath. He is… early. And he brought his axe."
Aris stubbed out his cigarette. "Send him in."
The door didn't open. It exploded.
Splinters of ancient wood showered the room like shrapnel. Framed diplomas from a world that no longer existed here—his PhD in Clinical Psychology—clattered to the floor. In the doorway stood a mountain of scarred muscle and dark iron plate. Eight feet tall at least, with curled ram's horns smoldering at the tips. In one hand, he held a double-bladed axe large enough to cleave a car in half. The air around him shimmered with a palpable heat haze of pure, undiluted fury.
His eyes, like pools of molten brass, scanned the room and landed on Aris.
"YOU," the voice was a rockslide, a cataclysm given sound. "THE MIND-WORM. THE ONE WHO THINKS TO POKE IN MY HEAD."
Aris did not flinch. He leaned back in his chair, the plastic creaking. He picked up his steaming cup of tea. "I prefer 'Doctor.' And the door was unlocked, Lord Gorn. That was unnecessary."
The demon lord took a step forward, the stone floor cracking under his weight. "I UNLOCK DOORS WITH MY AXE. IT IS MORE HONEST."
"It's also more expensive for the castle maintenance staff. Please, sit." Aris gestured to the couch opposite his desk. It was a deep crimson piece, large enough to accommodate his client's frame, and reinforced with what the imp had assured him were "adamantium core supports."
Gorn stared at the couch as if it were a treacherous beast. "I DO NOT SIT. I STAND. I CONQUER."
"This is a session, not a battlefield. Here, we sit. We talk." Aris took a sip of tea. His heart was a frantic bird in his chest, but his voice was a placid lake. This was the dance. The patient tests the boundaries. The therapist holds them firm. Even if the patient can vaporize him with a thought.
With a grunt that shook the room, Gorn stomped over and threw himself onto the couch. It groaned in agony but held. He planted his axe between his knees, hands resting on the haft. The heat radiating from him made the air in the room stifling.
"Fifty minutes, Lord Gorn," Aris said, placing his teacup down and opening a fresh notepad. "What would you like to talk about today?"
"I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THE BEST WAY TO SPLIT YOUR SKULL."
"A common resistance. Let's table the homicide and start with something simpler." Aris met those hellfire eyes. "The summoning scroll mentioned 'leakage.' Your emotional state affects your dominion over the Sin of Wrath. Can you describe what that feels like?"
Gorn's grip tightened on the axe. The smoldering tips of his horns flared. "IT FEELS LIKE A FURNACE IN MY CHEST. IT BURNS. AND WHEN IT GETS TOO HOT… THINGS CATCH FIRE."
"What things?"
"EVERYTHING." The word was a low, dangerous ember. "THE AIR. THE STONE. THE MEMORIES OF THOSE WHO ANGER ME. LAST WEEK, I THOUGHT OF THE HERO WHO SLEW MY WAR-HOUND, KARROG, THREE CENTURIES AGO. THE ANGER CAME. WHEN IT PASSED, THE ENTIRE WESTERN BATTLEMENT WAS GLASS."
Aris made a note. Affective lability with destructive somatic manifestations. Triggers tied to perceived injustice/loss. "And how did that make you feel? Afterward."
The demon lord was silent for a long moment. The fury in his eyes flickered, and for a second, something else peered out. Something old and tired. "IT MADE ME… EMPTY. THE FURNACE GOES OUT. ONLY ASHES REMAIN. AND KARROG IS STILL DEAD."
There it was. The crack in the armor. The pain beneath the rage.
"Tell me about Karrog," Aris said softly.
The session proceeded not as a conversation, but as a series of volcanic eruptions. Gorn spoke in bursts of anger, each memory stoking the furnace. Karrog was a massive, three-headed hound from the Pits of Grief. He had found Gorn as a young, lesser demon, being hunted by his own kin. The hound had fought for him. Had been his only companion in the endless, brutal wars of the lower planes.
"THE HERO CALLED HIM A 'FOUL BEAST.' HE SMILED AS HE DROVE THE LIGHT-SPEAR THROUGH HIS CENTRAL HEART. HE SMILED."
The temperature in the room was rising. Papers on Aris's desk began to curl at the edges. The glass of his teapot developed a hairline crack with a sharp ping.
"I see his death was a profound betrayal," Aris said, his own brow beading with sweat. "Not just a loss, but a violation. The smile."
"YES." The axe-head began to glow a dull red. "THE SMILING ONES ARE THE WORST. THEY TAKE. THEY BREAK. AND THEY SMILE."
"You carry that betrayal with you. It fuels the furnace. Every injustice, large or small, adds another log to the fire."
"IT IS WHAT I AM!" Gorn roared, surging to his feet. The couch skidded back a foot. "I AM WRATH! I AM THE FIRE THAT BURNS THE UNJUST WORLD CLEAN!"
"Are you?" Aris remained seated, though every instinct screamed to run. "Or is the fire burning you clean? Leaving nothing but ashes. You are not just an embodiment, Lord Gorn. You are a person. And that person lost his only friend."
The demon lord froze. The glow faded from his axe. The hellfire in his eyes guttered, confused. The concept was alien to him. A person. Not a force. Not a Sin. A being that could… lose.
He slowly sat back down, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a vast, bewildered exhaustion. "WHAT… WHAT DO I DO WITH THAT?"
"We sit with it. We feel the loss, without letting it become the fuel for a fire that destroys everything else." Aris picked up his pen. "For our next session, I'd like to try something. A technique to help you contain the furnace, rather than be consumed by it. Would you be willing?"
Gorn looked at the human. So fragile. A breath, a glance, a stray thought could end him. Yet he sat in the presence of divine rage and spoke of containment. Of sitting with loss. It was the greatest act of courage the demon lord had witnessed in millennia.
He gave a single, slow nod.
"Good." Aris smiled, a small, tired, but genuine thing. "Same time next week. And please, use the doorknob."
After Gorn had left, the shattered doorframe gaping like a wound, Aris slumped in his chair. He lit another cigarette with trembling fingers. The session had been a success. A crack in the dam.
But as he exhaled a plume of smoke, a sharp, psychic pain lanced through his temple. A flash of memory-not-his-own: the feel of coarse fur under a clawed hand, the metallic scent of a heart's-blood on sanctified steel, the crushing weight of a smile filled with righteous contempt.
Cost: Absorbs the patient's trauma.
It wasn't just a phrase in a system description. It was real. He had taken a fragment of Gorn's core trauma into himself. The grief, the betrayal. It sat in his mind, a hot, foreign coal.
He looked at the speaking tube. "Next appointment?"
"Lady Sylene, the Whisper of Envy, Master Healer," the imp chirped. "She has been… observing… the security crystals of your session with Lord Gorn. She demands to know why you spent more time with him than her scheduled slot will allow."
Aris closed his eyes. One crisis averted. Another, of a completely different and perhaps more dangerous nature, was already at the door.
He wasn't saving the world from demons.
He was running a psychiatric ward for the most powerful, damaged, and romantically possessive beings in existence.
And he had just gotten started.