BAM.
The door slammed shut with finality.
"...Wha—what just happened?"
The words slipped from Allen Drake's quivering lips. He stood frozen, his tall frame trembling beneath the weight of betrayal. Confusion carved deep into his expression, caught between disbelief and devastation.
Tears welled in his honey-brown eyes, threatening to spill over—the dam of composure breaking. His mouth hung open, but no words could carry the storm inside him.
He stumbled backward, resting against the peeling wall of his one-room apartment, sliding down slowly until he sat on the floor, back pressed to the wall, gaze locked onto the door as though it might open again—and Aria would walk in, laughing, saying it was all a joke. But no, every single word she said, she meant it.
"...Not after everything," he muttered, voice fractured.
A broken scoff escaped him as the first tear finally fell. His left hand dug into his disheveled jet-black hair while his right clutched a small, gleaming object in his palm.
A diamond ring.
A cushion-cut diamond set in otherworldly metal—it pulsed faintly with unnatural light, whispering ancient secrets. It was the only thing left to him after his parents' untimely death. The only thing he had left to give Aria.
But now, even that was meaningless.
Flashes of Aria flooded his mind—her laughter, their promises, the warmth they once shared. She had been his solace through grief, his anchor after his parents passed five years ago. From childhood friends to young lovers, they had grown together across school walls and life's harsh stages.
Until today.
She left him. Without reason. No tears. No goodbye worth the word.
Just one cold sentence:
"I've lost the feeling."
"Feeling…" he whispered. The word burned like venom on his tongue. "Gone?! Damn FEELING!"
He exploded, hurling the ring against the wall with all the rage his soul could summon. It hit with a hollow clink, bounced, and landed motionless—taunting him.
You're not worth the ashes of my destiny.
Her voice echoed through his mind like a curse.
Allen screamed—a guttural cry of raw agony. Tears streamed freely down his cheeks, his breath sharp and erratic. He turned automatically toward the kitchen corner of his apartment, his hollow eyes settling on a knife resting near his utensils.
His breath quickened.
Not from heartbreak.
But from hatred.
Not for Aria.
For himself.
"I'm a waste. A nobody. No destiny."
The self-loathing struck deeper than any blade could. He crawled toward the knife with trembling limbs, picked it up—so easily, as if fate wanted no resistance—and held it in his palm like a relic of finality.
He scanned the room one last time: the stained mattress on the floor, the flimsy plastic table with melted corners, the picture frame on it...
Him and Aria.
She smiled in his arms, both dressed in red, arms wrapped around his neck. The photo was from their first anniversary. She had arranged everything herself—outfits, framing, the memory itself.
He collapsed to his knees, as if struck straight through the heart.
"Damn the gods who made me belive in love!" he roared, flinging his arms to the heavens as if demanding an answer from gods who never spoke, as blissful memories of her continued to haunt him.
His gaze locked back on the ring. His chest heaved like a volcano on the brink. Fury overtook reason.
He rose.
Blade in hand.
And stabbed.
Tink.
The knife barely scratched the diamond ring. It was futile.
But Allen wasn't satisfied with futile.
His madness had momentum.
Elsewhere.
Beyond the realm of man, within the ring itself, a dimension of infinite radiant void unfolded—boundless and blinding.
At its center stood a throne, not made, but born of diamond, erupted from the crystalline floor like a crown of jagged glory. On it sat a figure—still, ominous, divine.
His hair flowed like shadows, shoulder-length and slick. Moonlit-black, alive with depth.
His eyes—impossible to forget—burned with demonic purple stars crested in his purple pupils. Sharp, ancient. Commanding.
He rested his chin on his fist, silent and unmoved, as a slow fracture spread across the heavens above him. The crystalline sky began to crack... chrome shards webbing outward like spider veins in time.
The seal was breaking.
"Curse love…!"
Allen kept screaming, stabbing the ring over and over, madness growing with each blow.
Until—
Crack.
A fine fracture sliced across the diamond's flawless surface.
Then came the light.
A warm, pulsing white radiance spilled from the ring—not blinding, not burning—but terribly turbulent. It bathed the room in ghostly silence.
Allen froze.
His fury drowned beneath terror. The world he lived in was peaceful—ghosts weren't even believed to exist. Yet here he was, witnessing a non-luminous metal radiate with bright, chaotic energy.
He stumbled backward, crawling away, eyes locked on the cracked ring. His voice broke into a whisper, trembling:
"Ha... have the gods come… to end me themselves?"
White smoke began to pour from the ring like a living serpent. It slithered into the air with impossible speed and grace, overwhelming the room in mere seconds. The scent was neither sweet nor foul—only overwhelming and otherworldly.
Allen fell, convulsing.
His limbs shook. His body fought as though something inside him was trying to crawl its way out.
He clutched his face.
His breath staggered, as though fire licked his very soul.
Heartbreak vanished.
Pain followed.
Only fear remained.
Then his chest arched unnaturally high, mouth gaping open as wisps of soul-light twisted from his eyes and lips—pale tendrils of spirit, escaping his mortal shell.
The spectral threads danced in the air before spiraling inward again—reforming, reshaping—until what hovered above his body was no longer flesh, but a soul made visible. Allen, unchained from the burden of bone.
He drifted above the room, weightless. Hollow. Unfused from his life.
The pain was gone. In its place bloomed something stranger—curiosity. Cold, vast, and final.
He looked down at his body.
He was dead.
His ghost stared in horror at his own lifeless form—but the laws of life no longer applied.
Above him, a gate opened atop the ceiling of the room. A force began dragging him upward toward a realm beyond comprehension—one for the dead.
But before he could pass through, the smoke within the room reversed.
It slammed into his body, forcing its way into him like sentient lightning.
His corpse shuddered once.
Then…
Its eyes opened.
Not Allen's eyes.
Not anymore.
A different gaze emerged—refined, ancient, seething with dominion.
A new soul had taken place: Dravok Velcrune. A name of legend. A king among demonkind. A thought lost to time.
Not reincarnated—not reborn. But awakening.
He hovered mid-air like a god. A cruel smile danced on his lips.
"After one thousand years and... finally."
His voice held the weight of ten wars.
"They'll all pay… to the last cursed breath of their bloodlines." His arms both raising a bit high above his waist in unison.
His gaze shifted to Allen's drifting soul, inching helplessly toward the gate.
With a single command of thought, the winds obeyed. They turned. And pulled the soul back like a puppet.
The broken ring rose into Dravok's hand as if it obeyed unseen commands. He held it out toward Allen's drifting soul.
A flicker of unease—and maybe even a fragile sliver of relief—tugged at Allen's essence as he pulled away.
But the moment he saw the ring floating toward Dravok's hand, the fear returned full force.
"No... please! Wait—!"
The essence shrank, compressed, and sealed itself into the ring once more—now a prison.
"Might be useful," Dravok muttered, casually flipping the ring and catching it.
He snapped his fingers.
"Snap bag."
A brown leather pouch materialized midair, pulsing with spatial magic. Inside it—nothing but an endless dark void.
Dravok tossed the ring in.
Gone.
He scanned the room briefly.
Pathetic. Mortal. Filthy.
Then, he looked down at his vessel—Allen's body.
"Not bad," he said, admiring his form. "I'll wear this skin for now."
A mirror appeared, suspended in the air and summoned by his will alone.
He examined his facial appearance—then altered it with a simple thought. His hair turned midnight black, glowing faintly with residual mana. The front strands fell in a graceful arc above his nose, framing his eyes without obscuring them.
"Now this... this is more like me."
He smirked, hand gliding from temple to nape.
"Let's see what's left for my throne... after a thousand years of absence."
Without a flex of his muscles, his eyes blinked—
and the wind from it tore open a dimensional portal.
And just like that, the demon king took his first step back into his world—cloaked in the flesh of a broken boy, armed with power, and hungering for vengeance.