The silence was so thick it seemed to press against his ears.
Kael opened his eyes slowly. The ceiling above was old wood, crisscrossed with fine cracks and dark stains of damp. The air felt still, heavy, and his chest rose and fell with effort, as though the body had forgotten the proper rhythm of breathing.
He tried to sit up.
His arms shook and gave way. It wasn't pain—it was a strange emptiness, as if those muscles no longer belonged to him. His heart suddenly raced, pounding hard and out of rhythm. His vision blurred. Panic arrived without warning: he rolled to the side and collapsed back onto the thin mattress, his whole body trembling.
Breathing short. Fast. His hands rose to his face, pressing against closed eyelids.
What was happening?
Then the memory came. Not as a clear recollection, but in pieces, like torn photographs falling one by one.
The cold barrel pressed to her temple. The man's hand shaking. The smell of rain on wet asphalt. Her eyes—wide, terrified—meeting his for a single second before he moved.
He threw himself in front.
The gunshot was muffled by his own body. The pain came afterward, hot, spreading through his chest like liquid fire. His legs buckled. He dropped to his knees, then onto his side, cheek against the wet ground.
The taste of iron flooded his mouth.
And her screams.
Desperate. Broken. Calling his name over and over, growing fainter as he tried to lift a hand and couldn't.
After that, nothing.
Kael opened his eyes again. His hands moved to his chest, searching for the wound that was no longer there. The skin was smooth. Whole. Cold.
He wasn't dead.
But he wasn't… home either.
With effort, he sat up once more. The room was small and bare, lit only by faint light seeping through the gaps in a heavy curtain. A narrow bed, a worn wooden table, an old chair. Nothing else.
He stood slowly. His legs held his weight, but they felt borrowed, as if they belonged to someone else. He walked to the window and carefully pulled the curtain aside.
Light poured in.
The sky was not blue.
It was purple. A deep, heavy purple, as though twilight had become permanent. Slow clouds drifted across it, stained darker shades of violet. There was no sun. No moon. Only that eternal color, making everything look unreal.
A chill crawled up Kael's spine. He let the curtain fall back into place. His heart was pounding again.
He opened the bedroom door.
A short hallway. Another door—another empty room, nearly identical to his own. A small bathroom with cracked tiles and a foggy mirror. A living room with almost nothing—just a low bookshelf and a table. A functional kitchen with old cabinets and a stained sink.
The house of someone who lived without being noticed. No luxury. No extreme poverty. Just… existence.
In the bathroom, he stopped in front of the mirror. He wiped the fog away with his hand.
The reflection made him freeze.
Golden hair, short, slightly tousled. Serious features, sharp, almost aristocratic. Eyes red—not bloodshot, not tired. Truly red. Pale skin. A tall, lean body with only the suggestion of muscle beneath the loose, worn shirt. Not weak, but undernourished. As if it had gone hungry for too long.
He looked away. He didn't want to accept that face as his own.
In the living room, he sat on the floor and picked up one of the books from the shelf. Hard cover, yellowed pages. He leafed through it without really reading.
Words jumped out at him:
Holy War.
Gremory.
Sitri.
Civil War of the Underworld.
Demonic Houses.
He closed the book slowly. His stomach twisted. He didn't need more details to know where he was. That world was not safe. Not for humans. And certainly not for low-class demons.
He wouldn't leave. Not today. Maybe never.
Hours dragged by.
He went back to the kitchen. Opened the cabinets. Found wilted vegetables, a few roots, a piece of dried meat. He took a knife. Cut slowly, the sound of the blade against the board the only noise in the house.
He put everything in an old pot. Lit the stove on low. Stirred. Waited for the smell to rise.
He ate in silence, sitting at the table, staring at nothing. Washed the dishes with automatic movements.
At times, something strange appeared in the corner of his vision. A thin, almost transparent band. An incomplete bar, advancing far too slowly. It vanished whenever he tried to look directly at it.
He didn't understand what it was.
He didn't want to understand.
He simply waited.
Time kept passing.
And then, when the silence seemed to have become part of him, the band returned. This time it didn't disappear. The bar moved forward to the end, slow and deliberate.
An invisible weight filled the air.
Before Kael's eyes appeared a roulette wheel. Vast. Ethereal. Faces and names spun in an endless circle, each one carrying a presence that made his skin prickle.
Goku. Naruto. Sasuke. Saitama. Gojo Satoru. Sukuna.
And others. Many others.
A cold message formed beneath it, silent yet perfectly clear:
Single choice. Irreversible.
The wheel stood still. Waiting.
Kael felt cold sweat slide down his back. He looked at the names. At the faces. At the weight each one carried. He thought of the alley. The gunshot. The feeling of not having been enough.
Never again.
He took a deep breath.
"Spin."
The wheel moved. Fast. A blur of colors and shapes. Then it slowed.
Stopped.
In the center, motionless, the name remained.
Meliodas.
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Hi everyone, I don't know how often I'll be posting chapters because my computer is having problems and I'm doing it on my phone, but it's very difficult for me. But I will try my best to post every day