The last thing the Demon King remembered of his own world was fire.
Not the wild, untamed fire of magic storms or dragon breath, but the precise, merciless blaze of the Hero's final spell. It burned through obsidian towers, shattered ancient runes, and tore apart the throne he had ruled from for centuries. The sky itself had cracked, bleeding light like a dying god.
So this was how it ended.
For a being feared across continents, worshipped and cursed in equal measure, death should have been loud. Glorious. Instead, it was silent, heavy, and suffocating.
No.
The Demon King refused that ending.
With what little strength remained, he tore open the deepest seal within his soul. A forbidden technique, one he had never dared to use. Not resurrection. Not reincarnation. Something far more desperate.
A transfer.
His soul ripped free from his crumbling body just as the Hero's blade pierced his chest. Pain followed him, even without flesh, stretching into infinity as the world collapsed into white noise. Space twisted. Time unraveled. He felt himself falling, not downward, but away.
Away from magic-saturated skies. Away from armies kneeling in terror. Away from the name that once shook the world.
Then—darkness.
When awareness returned, it was wrong.
There was no body to rise from the ground. No lungs to draw breath. His senses were muffled, dulled, as if wrapped in layers of soft cloth. He tried to speak and produced nothing but a faint, alien sensation in his throat.
What… is this?
He opened his eyes.
The world was enormous.
Blades of grass towered over him like trees. The sky was a vast, endless blue, untainted by mana clouds or arcane scars. Colors felt sharper, brighter, almost painfully vivid. He tried to move and stumbled forward, his balance completely off.
He looked down.
Small hands—no, paws—white and delicate. A slender body, light as air. He caught his reflection in a puddle of clear water and froze.
A small creature stared back at him.
Green helmet-like hair. Red horn-shaped fins on the sides of its head. Large, innocent eyes filled with confusion and fear.
A Ralts.
For a long moment, his mind simply rejected reality.
This had to be an illusion. A curse. A lingering hallucination from death. Yet the ground was solid beneath him, the breeze cool against his skin. No matter how many times he tried to summon magic, nothing answered. His vast demonic power, once capable of bending continents, was gone. Replaced by a faint, unfamiliar warmth deep within his chest.
Psychic energy.
No…
Days passed. Or perhaps weeks. Time felt strange in this world. He wandered forests and hills, hiding instinctively from larger creatures. His body moved on reflex, guided by instincts that were not his own. When danger approached, his heart would race and his emotions would spike, sending waves of psychic force outward without conscious thought.
That frightened him more than anything.
Emotion had always been a weakness. Something he crushed beneath cold logic and absolute control. Yet now, fear, loneliness, and confusion echoed through him, amplified by this fragile form. He realized with growing dread that the body was not merely a vessel.
It was influencing him.
For three months, he fought it.
He meditated endlessly, trying to tear his soul free, attempting to force open dimensional cracks or call upon demonic contracts that no longer existed. Each attempt failed. Worse, every failure drained him further, leaving him weak and trembling.
One night, beneath a sky filled with unfamiliar stars, the truth finally settled in.
His soul was no longer inside the body.
It was bound to it.
The transfer spell had succeeded too well. The laws of this universe had accepted him, rewritten him. There was no return spell etched into reality here. No ancient demons to bargain with. No Hero to kill in revenge.
Only a small Pokémon body, trembling in the dark.
The Demon King let out a soft, broken sound that might have been a laugh.
"So this is my punishment," he murmured, the sound emerging as a faint cry no louder than the rustling leaves. "Not death… but survival."
As he curled into himself, something stirred nearby. A presence. A gentle mind brushing against his own, curious and warm. Another Ralts, watching him from behind a tree, eyes glowing softly.
For the first time since his fall, someone reached out to him—not with hatred or fear, but empathy.
The Demon King recoiled instinctively, psychic energy flaring.
Yet the presence did not retreat.
It waited.
And in that moment, he understood something far more terrifying than death.
In this world, strength did not come from domination alone. Bonds mattered. Emotion mattered. And if he wished to survive—if he wished to reclaim even a fragment of his former self—he would have to learn the rules of this universe.
The Demon King closed his eyes.
A new life had begun.
Not as a ruler. Not as a monster.
But as a Ralts, in a world that had no idea what it had just inherited.