Sacred Cathedral — Midnight
The moon hung red over the stained-glass windows, casting bloody patterns across the stone floor. Shadows flickered against holy icons, warping saints into monsters.
Pope Arkel stood at the altar, clad in radiant gold robes, jeweled rings glinting under candlelight. His wrinkled hands gripped a staff etched with divine scripture, but his eyes—cold, calculating—were fixed on the silent child at the center of the ritual circle.
Amon.
Wrapped in silk and bound in quiet, he stared back at the priests and nuns surrounding him. His breath fogged the cold air, but he made no sound. He did not cry. Only watched.
The cathedral floor had been cleared. Chalk runes stretched in a spiral, glowing a faint crimson. Fresh blood—goat's, supposedly—dripped along the lines, kept warm in silver bowls by small incense fires. The scent of myrrh mixed with the metallic tang of blood.
A nun trembled beside the Pope. "Your Holiness… Forgive me, but… this boy. He's just a child. Not even three winters old. If we send him to that realm—he will die."
Another priest spoke, his voice cautious. "That world… The Abyssal Gate has never been used without a binding. The demons beyond—"
"Enough." The Pope's voice cracked like thunder cloaked in velvet. "You speak of mercy to a demon's seed?"
"But—he's done nothing…"
Arkel turned slowly. His face remained kind, even gentle. "You fear for his body." He stepped closer to Amon and knelt. "But this vessel… is blessed."
Then, when no one could hear—
In his mind, his voice laughed like broken bells.
A royal vessel. Alpin blood—pure, ancient. Even the gods we pretend to worship would kill to claim such a frame.
He's not a mistake. He's a gift. And soon—mine.
He stood and raised his staff.
"Begin the chant," he commanded. "By the holy light of the First Flame, we cast away the impure. Let the gates open."
The circle blazed. Flames coiled upward, forming a shimmering portal of red-black smoke.
A few priests took a step back, unease rippling through the congregation. "Your Holiness, the ritual—he's unbound! He won't survive the passage!"
The Pope's smile remained serene. "Then we will pray he learns to swim in hell."
He approached the portal. Amon stared up, eyes wide, silent still.
The Pope whispered, low and reverent:
"Go on, little lamb. Let the wolves raise you."
And then—he pushed.
Amon fell into the portal, swallowed by swirling light and shadow.
The moment he vanished, the portal snapped shut with a shriek of torn air. Candles shattered. Nuns screamed. One priest vomited on the stone floor.
Silence returned—thick and suffocating.
The Pope turned back to the room. His expression was calm, divine even.
"Clean the blood," he said. "Offer prayers."
Then he turned toward the holy statue of the goddess above the altar and bowed.
"Forgive me," he murmured, "but the world needs a devil."
Abyssal Frontier — Unknown Time
There was no floor. No sky. Only cold.
Amon drifted through nothing, a speck of flesh in a sea of screaming silence. Colors bled and inverted around him—purples that pulsed like wounds, blacks that swallowed sound. Time had no meaning here. Pain did.
The moment he entered, the void ripped into him. Not with claws or fire, but hunger.
It tried to eat his name.
His memories.
His soul.
Amon flailed, tiny hands grasping at the nothing. No stars. No ground. Just the abyss and its devouring will.
Then—
A whisper.
Not a voice. A presence. Watching.
The abyss had eyes.
Amon's body arched, convulsing. His veins glowed black, crawling like ink beneath translucent skin. Symbols etched into his bones. The void marked him.
And then it began to… change.
From beyond the dark came tendrils of power. Cold, but not dead. Ancient. Curious.
They wrapped around him—not crushing, but cradling. Like a mother who had forgotten how to love.
They whispered into his marrow.
Devour to survive. Break to become. Rule or be unmade.
Something stirred in him. A flicker.
Amon screamed—not from pain, but defiance. And the void heard him.
A platform of obsidian crystal burst beneath him. Flames erupted skyward, red and violet, swallowing the shadows.
The abyss did not reject him.
It crowned him.
And something else happened.
Dark figures emerged from the void—specters of past kings, remnants of failed vessels. They circled him, studying, whispering in long-forgotten tongues. One reached out—a skeletal thing wrapped in robes of shifting ink—and placed a finger to Amon's forehead.
Visions exploded in his mind.
Endless wars. Throneless empires. Kings begging for power and being consumed by it.
But Amon stood firm.
He would not beg.
He would take.
He reached out—tiny fingers closing around the specter's wrist—and the ghost screamed as Amon drained it dry. Power flowed into him, unfiltered, unearned. And yet—his body endured.
The abyss approved.
It whispered again:
You are not food. You are famine.
The obsidian platform expanded into a staircase, winding downward into the unknown. With every step, the dark pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
And he walked.
Silver Sea — The Demon Realm
Lightning danced across a broken sky. Black mountains loomed in the distance. Rivers of molten black iron cut through dead land like open veins. No stars shone above—only a ceiling of writhing, bleeding clouds.
This was no world.
This was the Silver Sea.
And into it—fell a child.
Amon.
He landed on scorched obsidian, silk in tatters, body steaming. The void's marks still burned beneath his skin—etched power, foreign and ancient.
Above him, the wind howled like the cries of butchered gods.
He coughed.
Moved.
And stood.
Somehow.
Across the jagged plateau, a presence stirred. Something massive. Watching. Measuring.
A figure emerged—a towering demon cloaked in black and red, adorned with a crown of curving bone. A sword longer than a man was strapped to his back. Eyes glowed like twin suns behind his horned helm.
The King of Gorgoroth.
He approached slowly, each step cracking stone.
"...So this is the gift they send from the human world," he growled, voice scraping the air. "Barely alive. Not even bound."
He reached down, claws inches from Amon's throat.
The boy did not flinch.
The Demon King paused.
Silence stretched between them—then a rasp of low amusement.
"You looked into the abyss… and it looked back, didn't it?"
He lifted the boy, inspecting him like a weapon yet to be sharpened.
"…Interesting."
Turning away, he carried Amon into the storm without another word.
And so began a story not of mercy, but of survival. A tale written in scars and fed on blood.
The Silver Sea had claimed its heir.