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Chapter 2 - Chapter 2: First Human Encounters

The taste of copper clung stubbornly on his tongue. Every swallow dragged the memory back—of shadows lashing, of a goblin's throat snapping like dried twigs. A small victory, yes, but not without a cost: his body had betrayed him. His chest had burned, his muscles had shaken, and he had collapsed against the bed afterward, heaving like a dying man. A king should not gasp for breath the way mortals did.

Azrael sat now at the desk, hunched over in Kai's narrow chair like a predator caged in straw. His eyes fixed on the strange glowing slab he had thrown down last night. Still glowing. Still alive, in its way. The "phone." The word surfaced from Kai's lingering memories, patched together like old cloth.

It wasn't just glowing. It was screaming—shaking the desk with its pitiful vibrations, its shrill cry repeating again and again, as if demanding his attention.

Azrael's shoulders stiffened. "What sort of pathetic relic shrieks for its master?" The words spilled, a low growl under his breath.

He prodded the thing with one finger, not gently, as though it might bite. The surface shifted when he touched it. Numbers flickered. Words marched across it. Strange little pictures. The light was too clean, too sterile, stabbing at his eyes.

His instincts told him this was magic, some trapped soul bound to serve. Yet even his oldest demonic wisdom failed at reading these marks. His mind braced for patterns of conquest, weapons, strategies—but this? Symbols and pictures? Hollow distractions.

Kai's faint presence stirred somewhere deep inside—old habits, nameless fragments. Alarm. Work. Late. Whispers, nothing more. Not wisdom. Not skill. Desperation carved into old memory.

Azrael's lip curled. Work… Was that all this body had lived for? Work? Not conquest, not battle, not claiming thrones, but… lifting boxes? Serving for coins tossed like scraps?

He shut the screen off with a grunt, dragging a breath through lungs that wheezed like defective bellows. This shell was too small.

He stood, pressing a palm to the desk as his balance swayed. His knees buckled slightly; his shoulders ached from the act of pushing himself upright. The humiliation of even standing made his teeth clench. Still—he wandered the small apartment.

Four walls. Narrow, suffocating. No lava rivers underfoot, no throne, no banners. Just peeling wallpaper smeared with time's filth.

He dragged a hand over the cracked sink. He brushed dust off ugly, chipped bowls stacked on the counter. His fingers caught the limp fabric of shirts hung by the door—clothes slack, drained of any pride or presence.

Memories soaked into him. Kai had sat here often, evenings collapsed into silence. Cheap meals eaten cold. Endless exhaustion. Lying on the bed too weary to even remove shoes. Staring blankly at the ceiling with eyes as empty as the walls.

A hollow laugh broke from Azrael's throat, weak and cutting. "This man lived as if buried long before death found him."

He pressed a hand to his chest, felt the fragile rhythm of the human heart beneath weak muscle. A pathetic flutter compared to the furnace his demonic heart once was. Yet still—it beat. Still, it kept him here.

The curtains were cheap and yellowed. Daylight bled weakly through them. He smelled stale bread leftover in the corner bin. Humiliation clenched his jaw tight.

"This is my cage," he muttered bitterly.

He left.

The city hit him in the face.

Noise. Blades of it, sharp and constant. Horns blaring like mock fanfares, tires shrieking on black roads, a million voices overlapping into one maddening chant.

Azrael stopped on the cracked pavement, eyes dragging upward. Towers rose high, not carved stone nor hardened spire, but a forest of gray rectangles stretching into haze. Metal beasts barreled down the roads fast enough to maim, yet humans barely glanced at them. They strode with backpacks, cups steaming in their hands, mouths chewing on bread and meat as though eating was a ritual done mid‑march. Screens glared from storefronts, flaring every corner with too‑bright light.

It made his senses reel. He had commanded legions. He had drowned cities in night. And here he stumbled at the shriek of a bus braking inches from his legs. Instinct had screamed, enemy attack! but the humans around him had not even flinched.

Azrael moved stiffly, shoulders lifted too high, fingers twitching for shadows that would not come freely. His jacket clung too light against the bite of the morning wind. To them he blended in—just another face dulled by weariness. To him this felt like drowning, his crown smashed beneath waves of mediocrity.

Every muscle in this body complained; each step was an insult. His lungs dragged for air; sweat prickled too quickly at his temple. Then came hunger, sharp and gnawing—a beast in the pit of his stomach. A craving he hadn't felt in centuries.

The aroma of food curled from street stalls—fried bread, spiced meat, the sting of oil bubbling in iron pans. He despised the weakness carved into his throat by the smell, the humiliation of his mouth watering.

"What a pathetic body…" he whispered bitterly, jaw locked. He shoved the craving deep.

It was by mistake he heard them.

He had slowed near a café, drawn by exhaustion he refused to name. Through the window, two young men leaned forward over mugs, voices carrying into the street.

"—the Tower of Eternity opened again last night! Can you believe it?"

The words hit Azrael harder than a blade.

"The guild's already scrambling to send parties. Lower floors are full. But get this—someone came back with a shard. Look."

The second man uncurled his hand. A crystal fragment glowed faintly in the café's dim light.

Azrael felt it instantly. Power. Old power. Not of this human world. Not holy. Not pure. His.

His chest tightened; his jaw slowly clenched. That fragment throbbed faint reminders of his throne, of his endless dark banners reduced to ash.

The Tower.

The Tower. The curse's command. Climb, or rot here forever.

He moved without realizing, drawn closer to the open window, close enough to watch the faces of mortals light up with naïve excitement.

They whispered of "floors," of "boss fights," of "gear." He wanted to laugh—how small their words were against the truth. They thought the Tower was adventure. Entertainment. Child's play. Yet in their naïve hands lay shards that pulsed with the same demonic essence that once carved his dominion.

Azrael's fists curled tight until his nails broke against his palm. He didn't even feel the sting of human flesh tearing. His teeth ground hard.

The god's curse was no vague riddle. It had structure. It had rules. This "Tower of Eternity" was gate and chain both. Mortals entered freely. Which meant—so could he.

For the first time since his exile, clarity surged.

The weakness, the aches, the petty hunger—they blurred beneath the rush of purpose flooding his chest. He had a path.

He left the café quietly, blending back into the crowd. His legs dragged, his body ached from nothing more than walking, sweat damp against his collar. But his stride changed nonetheless. His head lifted. His steps steadied.

Inside, the Demon King stirred again—like a coiled storm unfurling, like night sliding back across horizon. Weak shell or not, the Tower had revealed itself. And nothing caged him for long.

Kai's tired mask hid him still, but Azrael knew—his climb had already begun.

He nearly smiled at the thought. Not joy, but a shadowed grin tugging at his mouth. No warmth in it, only hunger—the sharp anticipation of a predator waiting at the edge of light.

That night, he returned to the cramped apartment. The smell of dust hit him first. Piles of old takeout slumped rotting in the bin. Outside, the city refused to rest, its hum and roar slipping through the window's thin glass.

Azrael sat again before the cracked mirror, hands braced on his knees. His reflection looked back at him: Kai's pale skin, lifeless eyes, body still too stiff and slow. His knuckles still raw from before. His chest rose unevenly; his lungs worked like weak bellows. This body was broken pottery pretending to be a weapon.

But… finally, purpose glimmered dimly in the cracks.

"Tower of Eternity," he whispered softly into the stale air. The words tasted like iron on his tongue. "So be it."

His pupils flared red for a heartbeat, Kai's weary eyes bending under demonic fire.

"You are my ladder home. My cage and my path both. And when I stand at your summit, I'll rip the god who caged me from its throne with my bare hands."

The vow sat heavy in the room, falling like ash from unseen fires.

And in the cracked glass of the mirror, a king smiled faintly behind a dead man's skin.

To be continued....

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