Two days had passed since the orphanage burned.
Two days since the holy temple went silent.
Two days since Daemon returned with blood on his boots and the Book of the Demon King in his hand.
And now—
The palace was buzzing.
From his chamber window, Daemon could hear everything:
The clang of armor, the rush of servants, the endless shuffle of nobles arriving from all corners of Varyndor. Drums echoed from the outer courtyards. Trumpets sang hymns of hope.
"Today is the day the kingdom celebrates its sun," Daemon muttered. "Their perfect boy."
Gabriel's coronation had finally arrived.
Daemon leaned back in his chair, arms resting lazily behind his head. He hadn't left his room in days—not since stabilizing his Astral Core after the temple fight. He could feel the fourth star pulsing beneath his ribs, quiet now... but growing.
Still, what amused him more were the whispers he'd overheard.
The king hadn't slept in days.
His father's hands trembled now when he lifted his goblet.
He'd started seeing things in mirrors.
Daemon chuckled. "Lady Vexen must've been doing incredible work. I should give her a medal."
Between the illusion-curse water and the disguise of his mother, Daemon knew the old man was cracking from the inside. If he broke a little more, the throne itself might collapse with him.
Even better—
Lilac had gone mute.
The Saintess. The pillar of divine grace. The voice of the Goddess herself.
Now a ghost.
Rumor had it she hadn't spoken a word since the fire. She'd refused food. Refused counsel. Stared at walls for hours.
Daemon tilted his head back and laughed.
"One percent," he whispered to himself. "Only one percent of what you all deserve."
He stood from his chair and stretched, his joints cracking slightly. His body felt lighter. His power more balanced. The infernal pressure in his core had settled.
"Stable. Finally."
His eyes drifted to the black-bound Book of the Demon King sitting on the nightstand.
Daemon picked it up slowly, flipping to where he'd left off.
Page after page... was disappointing.
Not spells. Not revelations.
Just madness.
Daily entries from a sadistic tyrant. Descriptions of torture. Gloating about massacres. Scribbled threats written in a language older than time.
"Is this it?" Daemon muttered. "I burned an orphanage... for a diary of a monster?"
His jaw clenched.
Still—he kept reading.
And then... something changed.
At first, it was all blood.
Slaughter. Sadism.
Pages and pages filled with the screams of cities and the dates of their destruction.
Daemon flipped them with mild interest, brow furrowed.
"This... was me?"
He wasn't impressed.
Until he reached a new page—no longer written in madness, but with something quieter.
Something more... human.
"Today, I didn't fight. There was no one left worth the effort. I'm bored."
Daemon scoffed.
"Bored? After killing half the continent?"
Another line:
"Even the angels don't scream like they used to."
He frowned. Then kept reading.
And then...
"I miss you,lumina. My beautiful goddess."
The words made him freeze.
Lumina.
That name—it echoed in him like a distant bell.
Familiar.
But unreachable.
His fingers hovered over the ink.
And the page pulsed beneath his hand.
Reality cracked.
The walls of his chamber bled away.
The sound of coronation drums faded into nothing.
A wind not of this world howled around him.
Then—
Darkness.
....
And within it—
A voice, soft as moonlight:
"Come back to me... if you remember who I was."
Daemon's body seized, his breath caught in his throat.
And then he opened his eyes—
But he wasn't in the palace anymore.
He was inside a memory.
Daemon stood in a land of fire and broken halos.
Mountains of white ash.
A sky that bled gold.
Statues of angels cracked and weeping.
And at the center of it all—A man once called beautiful.
"An Angel ?"
Wings torn. Horns sprouting.
Eyes like dying stars.
Daemon could feel it—not just see it.
The hate. The pain. The betrayal.
"Seraphiel," a voice whispered from the wind. "The one they cast down."
He saw a younger version of the demon king... radiant, smiling, standing beside a woman draped in morning light—Lumina.
"No way he was an Angel ?"
They touched hands.
They spoke without words.
And then—
The heavens split.
The council screamed blasphemy.
Chains wrapped around Seraphiel's wings.
And lumina....watched.
She didn't cry.She didn't beg.
She just let go.
"Your love is forbidden."
"I am sorry."
And Seraphiel fell.
.
.
In the Demon Realm—he rose.
Not as a Man.
Not as a beast.
But as a fallen angel with vengeance in his blood.
Beneath skies choked in ash, he dragged himself from pits lined with broken wings and cursed bones. Seraphiel, stripped of light, now breathed flame. His grace had been ripped away, but his will remained—sharpened into something crueler.
He built his kingdom with ruin.
Brick by brick, soul by soul.
The screams of the damned became his choir.
He did not conquer the Demon Realm.
He devoured it.
From the heart of its deepest abyss, he formed the first Hell Gate.
From the bones of gods, he forged a throne.
And when his armies rose—a legion of twisted angels and beasts of nightmare—he gave them only one command:
"We march to heaven."
And they did.
The realms collided.
Angels wept as cities fell.
But he didn't want destruction alone.
He wanted her to see it.
He wanted Lumina—the goddess who let him fall—to watch her heavens crumble.
"If I cannot have heaven..."
"I will make her watch as I burn it."
But the gods made their move.
Michael—his old friend.
The golden sword. The chosen one.
Reincarnated in a new form.
Pure. Loyal. Holy.
And when Michael struck the final blow—piercing Seraphiel's heart in the battle that cracked the sky—Lumina came to him at last.
Not with tears.
But with prophecy.
She knelt beside the dying Demon King, the war collapsing behind her, and whispered:
"You will live again."
"And you will know only hatred."
"Just as you believe I hated you."
•••••
Daemon gasped awake.
His whole body shuddered, drenched in sweat.
The air in his chamber felt too small—too clean for what he had just witnessed.
The book sat on his lap, glowing faintly like it had just exhaled.
Daemon stared at the cover, fingers tightening around its spine.
"Seraphiel..."
That name wasn't just ink.
It pulled at something ancient inside him.
Something buried beneath centuries of rage and silence.
He didn't remember it all.
But now, he knew this much:
He is not just Daemon.
Not just a disgraced prince.
Not just the child of a curse.
He is the echo of a fallen archangel.
The king of hellfire.
The man the gods once feared.
And if the rest of his past still lingers—
scattered in ruins, memories, weapons, and names—
He will find it.
And when he does—
The heavens will burn again.