Clevatess stood over the broken Hero, his shadow swallowing the light of the throne room. He raised his hand to erase her, but she let out a hollow, bloody laugh.
"Don't bother," she wheezed, her eyes glazed with pain. "The King... he already killed us before we even got here. He chose thirteen of us—his best—and sent us into your jaws just to buy himself a few more hours of life. We were never meant to win. We were just a wall of meat."
Clevatess's ten shadow-tail snarled in unison. "A King who feeds his own 'Legends' to the beast just to sit on his throne a moment longer? Truly, humanity is a glitch in the design."
He didn't kill her. He left her bleeding in the dust and turned toward the capital, Aethelgard. He didn't want to just destroy a city anymore; he wanted to pull the King off his gilded chair and kill him.
He tore through the city gates like a storm of black ink. Buildings crumbled. Soldiers evaporated. He reached the palace square, his eyes burning with a predatory gold light, after killing the king and toring the capital apart.
"Wait..."a voice croaked from the ruins of a collapsed house.
Clevatess stopped. Beneath a stone pillar, a **dying woman** held out a small bundle. "Save... save this child," she gasped.
Clevatess looked down with a cruel smirk."Save what? I am a Demon. I came here to kill your King and erase your human race. This child shouldn't have been born in a capital ruled by such a coward you call a king."
The woman looked him in the eye, her voice firm even as her life faded. "Children don't choose where they are born. They don't choose their kings."
Clevatess froze. The Hero's betrayal and the woman's logic clicked together. He reached down and took the baby, his claws surprisingly gentle.
"Very well," Clevatess rumbled. "Since it did not choose this place, I will give it a choice of its own. I will raise it. I will see if it stays pure, or if it becomes a monster like the King who threw away thirteen heroes."
He wrapped the child in his cloak. The destruction of the city stopped.