Rai trotted beside him, small paws tapping softly, sparks popping off his fur in tiny, nervous bursts.
His chest hurt.
Not from the broken ribs.
Not from the mana-burned nerves.
Not from the bruises or the strain.
This pain was older.
Sharper.
Stranger.
Mira’s hand had rested on his head as he’d left.
“Stay out of trouble, okay? I’m here if you need anything, boy.”
So simple.
So soft.
Too warm.
It shouldn’t have hurt like this.
Rai pressed against his calf, whining quietly.
Azhareth stopped walking.
The hallway seemed to fold in on him.
His breath grew shallow.
Six hundred sixty-six lives…
And only now did he understand why his heart had always felt incomplete.
It had never known warmth.
Memories flooded him—pulled from the depths now that his wish had restored everything.
Faces.
Voices.
Hands that pushed.
Hands that never held.
A woman with bloodshot eyes, hair tangled, shouting every morning:
“You should’ve never been born! If not for you, he wouldn’t have left!”
A clay bowl shattering against the wall beside his head.
A woman clawing at his cradle, sobbing:
“He left because of you. BECAUSE OF YOU!”
Her grief seeking a target.
Finding only the newborn.
A mother with a gambler's eyes.
She sold their clothes, furniture… everything but him.
He remembered nights with an empty stomach, watching her stumble home reeking of alcohol and smoke. She never looked at him.
By five, he ran away.
A noblewoman in silk, turning her back as armored men took him away.
“He’s of no use to me. Take him as hostage if you must.”
His hand had reached for her.
She never turned around.
A woman kneeling over him with a holy symbol, eyes wide with terror.
“You’re cursed… you bring misfortune… I have to purify you…”
Cold water.
Choking.
Her muttered prayers were more frightening than any demon’s curse.
A remarried woman clutching her new son tightly.
“He’s my real child. You don’t belong here. Find somewhere else.”
The door closed in his face.
A fanatic mother prostrating herself before him.
“You are divine. Mortals will taint you. You must be isolated.”
He’d been locked away, starved of human contact in the name of worship.
A mother on a sickbed, eyes sunken, voice bitter.
Her last breath spent on:
“If you weren’t born… maybe I wouldn’t have suffered so much.”
He’d watched her die with quiet, empty eyes.
His final life as Azhareth.
He never remembered her face.
She left before he turned one, disappearing in the night. Her friends had said:
“She can’t ruin her reputation by raising a child. Especially one like that.”
And then—
One memory surfaced slowly, like a fragile bubble rising from deep water.
A young woman with gentle eyes humming a lullaby.
He didn’t remember the words.
Only the feeling.
Warm arms.
A soft voice.
A hand stroking his hair.
She died days later from fever.
He hadn’t remembered her until now.
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Across all his lives… she’d been the only one who tried.
And now Mira—
with her scolding, fussing, and shaking hands—
had touched that same frozen place.
Rai pressed his forehead more firmly into Azhareth’s leg, letting out a soft, worried whine.
As if he, too, remembered how long his master had been alone.
Azhareth lifted his hand to Mira’s door.
His fingers trembled.
“This is foolish,” he whispered to himself.
He knocked anyway.
Mira opened the door, still in her house clothes, towel thrown over her shoulder.
“Raine? Did you forget something—”
He stepped forward and hugged her.
There was no warning.
No build-up.
No words.
He just grabbed onto her like a man clinging to a ledge over an endless drop.
Mira froze.
Her towel slipped to the floor.
“Wha—Raine?!”
Then she felt it.
The way his fingers clutched the back of her shirt—
not like a flirtation,
not like a joke,
but like someone who had never had anyone to hold onto before…
and was terrified this one would vanish if he let go.
Her eyes softened.
Slowly, she wrapped her arms around him, careful of his injuries, and rested her chin lightly against his shoulder.
“…You’re okay,” she murmured. Her voice cracked, but stayed gentle. “I’m here. You hear me? You’re not alone, Raine.”
He didn’t trust his voice.
If he tried to speak, something would break.
His vision blurred.
He stayed like that just a heartbeat longer—
Then he pulled away abruptly, as if burned.
“I… must go,” he said stiffly.
Mira blinked.
“…What got into you, you silly boy?”
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
So he turned and walked away without another word.
Mira watched his back disappear down the hallway.
“…That kid has been through something,” she whispered to herself. “More than he lets on.”
Rai, still in the hallway, glanced back at her and wagged his sparking tail once, as if in thanks, before hurrying after his master.
Back in his cramped apartment, Azhareth shut the door behind him and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, back against the wood.
Rai hopped clumsily into his lap and pressed his muzzle into Azhareth’s chest.
Azhareth rested a hand on the puppy’s head.
“…What did I just do…?”
He, Azhareth.
The Demon Lord who had shattered armies and drowned heroes in despair.
Had just hugged a middle-aged woman in a dingy apartment hallway because she patted his head.
He stared at the cracked ceiling.
“If the Demon Council could see me now,” he muttered, “they’d explode from laughing.”
Rai barked in agreement.
“And you,” Azhareth continued flatly, “are no help at all.”
Rai licked his chin.
Azhareth groaned and covered his face with one hand.
“…This is humiliating.”
Rai made a sympathetic little sound and curled more tightly against him.
Time passed.
The emotional storm inside him slowly calmed.
Reality returned in the simplest, rudest way possible.
GRRRRLLLL.
He blinked.
Rai’s stomach growled.
A beat later—
GRRRRLLLL.
His own stomach answered.
He stared at Rai.
Rai stared at him.
“…We’re going to starve to death in this life,” Azhareth said calmly, “aren’t we?”
Rai yipped miserably.
Azhareth forced himself up with a pained grunt and went on a full investigation:
- Fridge: empty except for a single cracked ice tray.
- Cupboards: dust.
- Shelves: one bottle cap.
- Under the bed: lint and regret.
- Trash bin: an empty cola can.
- Drawer: expired salt packet.
He stared at the salt in silence.
The universe, apparently, had a sense of humor.
His pride as a demon king had been ground into dust long ago.
Now, even as Raine, he had fewer resources than most peasants.
He dropped the packet back into the drawer.
Rai sat in the middle of the floor, staring up at him with the gravest expression a tiny lightning puppy could manage.
“…Don’t look at me like that,” Azhareth sighed. “We’ll figure something out.”
Rai’s stomach answered with another growl.
Azhareth’s lips twitched.
“The timing of this life,” he muttered, “is truly abysmal.”
Outside the apartment window, an A.R.E.S. scanner drone hummed by, casting the glass in a cold blue glow.
He felt the mana pulse, the searching pattern.
He didn’t move.
They were hunting for an unknown savior.
They wouldn’t think to look for a half-crippled F-rank in a crumbling building…
Not yet.
DING.
DONG.
Azhareth blinked.
Rai snapped to attention, sparks popping along his fur as he planted himself between Azhareth and the door like a tiny guard dog.
“…If that is a debt collector,” Azhareth murmured, “we run.”
He stood, ribs screaming, and opened the door.
A figure stood there.
Coat.
Cap pulled low.
Oversized sunglasses hiding half her face.
Awkward posture.
Trying very hard to look casual and failing completely.
“I’ve come to bargain,” she said, voice low and cool.
Azhareth stared.
She took off the sunglasses.
Rina Everhart’s face came into view.
Her eyes were sharp, focused—but up close, he could see the faint tremor in her fingers where they gripped the frames.
She wasn’t trembling from the cold.
She was trembling because what she’d seen in her secret footage
should not exist.
Rai’s fur rose, tiny bolts arcing as he growled, stepping in front of Azhareth’s leg.
Rina flinched.
That wasn’t a normal dog.
That thing radiated mana like a compressed storm.
For just a moment, standing in front of Raine Ashveil’s door, she felt it:
A pressure.
Not visible.
Not directed.
Just… there.
Like standing near the mouth of a deep cavern, with something great and ancient sleeping at the bottom.
Azhareth felt an old instinct stir deep inside him—
The prickling sensation of being hunted.
He met her gaze evenly.
“…And you are?”
“Rina Everhart,” she replied softly. “And you’re Raine Ashveil.”
Her eyes didn’t waver.
“And I think you and I,” she continued, “have a lot to talk about.”