It's just the pain talking, he told himself, the thought looping in his mind like a mantra, soft yet unyielding.
His breath came in shallow gasps, each one a battle against the tightness that gripped his ribcage. Was this a panic attack? Or was it his trust issues, those jagged shards of betrayal, slicing their way to the surface again? The darkness had whispered to him, its voice a cold, slithering thing that dragged him back to that place beneath the pond—where the water had closed over his head, and he'd stared into the eyes of something that should not exist.
But he wasn't there anymore. Not really.
Because now, he was here. And she was holding him.
Her arms encircled his trembling form, firm yet gentle, as if she understood the fragility beneath his hardened exterior but refused to let it scare her. The warmth of her body seeped into his, thawing the chill that lingered in his bones from memories he couldn't escape. Her scent—lavender laced with the faint bite of ash—wrapped around him like a dream he never wanted to wake from. Her heartbeat, slow and steady, was a rhythm that anchored him as his own pulse raced too fast to track. In her embrace, the world slowed. The cacophony in his mind softened. His taut muscles unclenched, and the panic dulled into something quieter, something manageable.
And with that quiet came something else—sleep.
It wasn't sleep in the ordinary sense. It was a slide, a pull, a surrender to a deeper current. Belial slipped beneath the surface of thought and fell into a river of memories, warm and wide, that coursed through the recesses of his mind.
He was younger.
Smaller.
His eyes burned with grief and fury, the kind that could consume a boy whole. His father had just died, taken by the war. The ceremony was brief, long and depressing, a hollow ritual for a man who had once commanded respect and fear across the northern continent.
No one knew how to comfort Belial.
Not the cityfolk, who averted their eyes as if his pain were contagious. Not the men who had once bowed before his father, their loyalty crumbling like ash in the wind. They left him alone, a boy of ten, standing in the ruins of what had been his world.
Except for one.
A figure lingered at the edge of the ceremony, his presence as unyielding as the mountains that loomed beyond the city. He was tall and lean, his skin a dark grey, weathered like old iron and etched with deep scars that crisscrossed his chest and arms. His white hair fell in wild, wind-torn waves, and his horns—broken at jagged angles—spoke of battles fought and a stubborn refusal to die. His name was Haku, a humanoid demon, an exile from a clan once feared across the continent. Master swordsman. Survivor. Teacher.
Without a word, Haku approached the boy. Belial's mother, hollowed by her own grief, did not protest when the old man took her son's hand and led him away. It was as if she had already surrendered him to the world's cruelty. Haku carried Belial into the mountains, where the air was thin and the nights bit like wolves. There was no warmth there. No comfort. Only pain. Pain and discipline.
Every day began before sunrise, with Haku 's voice cutting through the predawn chill like a blade. Every night ended long after the stars had risen, when Belial's body screamed for rest but his mind was too stubborn to yield. He trained until his muscles gave out, until his hands bled from gripping the wooden sword Haku had carved for him, until his voice broke from screaming into the void. He wept where no one could hear him, in the shadowed crevices of the mountain. But Haku never stopped. He watched. He corrected. He punished. And somehow, through all of it, he protected, not with softness, but with certainty.
The mountain became Belial's crucible, forging him in fire and ice.
And somewhere in the midst of that torment, something changed.
He remembered the day it happened. The wind had been howling, sharp enough to peel skin from bone, and the cliffs below were swallowed by a swirling fog. Haku stood on the edge of a precipice, his scarred arms crossed, his eyes glinting with something unreadable. "Jump," he said, his voice low but unyielding.
Belial, sixteen and hardened by years of training, refused. "I'll die," he spat, his voice trembling with defiance.
Haku 's response was a shove.
Belial screamed as he plummeted, the world blurring into a chaos of wind and fog. Fear consumed him. Rage. A desperation so deep it felt like it might crack open his soul. And in that bottomless moment, something inside him awakened.
Hax.
It erupted from him like a tidal wave, a shimmering cocoon of dark energy that wrapped around his body. His fall slowed. He hovered in mid-air, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with revelation. When he floated back to the ledge, Haku was smiling—a rare, fleeting thing that felt like the sun breaking through a storm.
"You are no longer Emergent," Haku said, his voice rough but proud.
"You are Dominus."
From that day forward, everything changed.
Belial's training grew more brutal, but his strength grew with it. He no longer cried. He no longer broke. He climbed the frozen cliffs without gloves, his fingers raw and bleeding. He sparred against armored beasts, their claws raking across his skin. He meditated beneath waterfalls laced with ice, his breath visible in the frigid air. He learned to bend his Hax to his will, shaping it into shields, claws, wings. His movements grew precise, his mind a blade honed to a razor's edge.
It wasn't long after that he experienced his first Ascension. The transition was agony, like his body was rejecting itself, being remade from the inside out. He had collapsed in the snow, convulsing, every nerve aflame. For three days, he did not move. Haku watched over him, silent but vigilant, as if he knew the boy would rise.
On the fourth day, Belial did.
GraveSpawn.
Not many achieved it. It required more than power. It demanded resolve. Sacrifice. Belial had stared death in the face and chosen not just to survive, but to become something more. His body was stronger, his Hax more potent, his will unbreakable.
In the warmth of the memory, Belial smiled faintly. It had been hell. But it was his. That mountain, those scars, that pain—it had forged the person he was now.
And now, here he was, wrapped in her arms, finally remembering what it all meant.
He had a purpose. He had a name.
Belial Noctis.
He whispered it in the memory, and the world felt right again.
He had made a promise long ago—not to Haku , nor to his fallen father, nor even to himself, but to the world. To everyone. To all of demonkind. He had vowed to become strong enough to hold the sky together if it meant keeping it from falling on those who couldn't protect themselves. Even when they turned their backs on him. Even when they feared him. Even when he had nothing left to give.
The memory faded like mist under the morning sun, and Belial opened his eyes in the waking world. He wasn't trembling anymore. He was steady. Calm. The whisper in the deep still haunted his bones, but it no longer held him captive.
He looked at her, still holding him, her eyes soft but searching. She didn't ask what he'd seen, what he'd felt. She didn't need to. Her presence was enough.
Belial Noctis rose from her embrace, his movements deliberate, his gaze clear. The pain was still there, a quiet ache in his chest, but it no longer ruled him. He was more than his fear, more than his scars.
He was a promise keeper.