Chapter Text
It was a marvelous day—if one can call a “catastrophe” marvelous for a demon.
Before this happened, Beerus was hurrying on his way back to his rundown little shack.
The horizon was already tinged with pale white light. Demons are creatures of the night; at this hour he would normally have long since burrowed into bed.
The air was cold and restless. Even the wind had grown agitated, slicing down the last clinging, dying leaves, sending them spinning among the bare, skeletal trees like ghosts that refused to lie down.
He pulled his cloak tighter and lowered his head to push forward, yet he couldn’t ignore the odd scent the wind carried—
It smelled different. There was the clean freshness of green grass, laced with a faint, peculiar metallic tang… like blood.
He stopped walking. Lifted his head. A pair of golden eyes narrowed in scrutiny.
The faint dawn over demon territory remained, as always, a heavy, muted gray, streaked with thin veins of dark purple cloud. Those pitch-black branches reached toward the sky like withered, clawed fingers.
There was no verdant grass in the demon realm. Even the rare few blades that managed to sprout would have withered and died by this season. The scent of fresh grass shouldn’t exist here. He had only ever smelled it in one place—another domain, that lofty holy land where the noble angels dwelled.
All around was silence, save for the voice of the wind. Most demons were surely asleep by now. Why was he standing in the woods letting the cold bite him when what he craved was the warm bed waiting in his room?
The moment he took a step, a sharp crack—a dry branch snapping underfoot—rang out unnaturally loud in the quiet.
As if the sound had been a signal, the forest stirred. Several shrill, piercing screeches tore through the air. A flock of pitch-black birds erupted from the trees, wings beating in frantic panic, streaking away like dark meteors.
Beerus flinched, then glared irritably at the retreating shadows, muttering under his breath amid the few feathers that drifted slowly down in their wake: “Filthy crows.”
Their racket had drowned out other sounds. Just as he lowered his gaze to resume walking, something shifted abruptly in the air above. In the split second he had, he only managed to catch a blurred silhouette.
“—?!”
Completely unguarded, he took the full impact. His body was hurled backward. A sledgehammer seemed to slam into his chest; the back of his head cracked against the frozen ground. Stars burst across his vision, his skull ringing.
“Ow—gods damn it…” The unlucky demon sucked in a breath, unable to stop a groan. “What the hell was that…?”
Something white and solid had crashed squarely onto him. He forced himself up on his elbows and caught a glimpse of long, elegant wings. At first he thought it might be a wild crane—then immediately realized how wrong that was. The thing was bigger than any crane, and it had hands. Those hands were now scrambling in panic to push away from his body.
More importantly, the metallic scent had grown much thicker. It was unmistakably the smell of blood.
He snapped alert in an instant.
Don’t tell me an angel just dropped down here?
He pushed himself to his feet and stared hard at the strange creature.
It really was an angel.
“My gods…” the demon murmured in genuine awe. Never in his life had he seen an angel this close. Against the surrounding gray-black desolation, the angel seemed to glow from within. Clearly injured, its wings fluttered weakly, unable to lift it into the air. It couldn’t even stand. All it could do was crouch on hands and knees, babbling in some incomprehensible tongue while frantically trying to crawl away from the spot.
Where could it possibly go? This place was utterly alien to it: barren ground where not even a single blade of grass survived, where the cold wind had already chased away every last fallen leaf, and naked trees thrust their sharp, accusing branches into the sky without mercy. Everything here must have terrified the creature.
The angel kept glancing around in bewilderment, then clutched at a tree trunk as though intending to climb it. But the wounds were too severe; strength failed almost immediately. Helpless, it shrank back against the bark and finally turned its head toward the demon.
Only then did Beerus get a clear look.
It was still just a kid—an adolescent angel who looked no older than his early teens. Beautiful in that heartbreaking, ethereal way angels sometimes are. A pair of large black eyes brimmed with pain and terror, making him look unbearably pitiful. Yet the gaze he directed at Beerus held no plea for help—only wariness and caution.
The demon felt oddly exasperated. He spoke in a flat, chilly tone: “What are you lookin' at me like that for? I didn’t do a damn thing. If anything, you’re the one who crashed right into me out of nowhere—and you still haven’t said sorry.”
Well, it couldn’t be helped.
He was a filthy demon. And the child before him was a pure angel who had just fallen into the demon realm.
He glanced left and right—naturally, there was no one around. Of course there wouldn’t be; the sky was already brightening. He looked up again; nothing there either. Even the damn crows had flown off.
The demon rolled his eyes and let out a long, exasperated sigh toward the heavens.
He couldn’t just leave the little thing here. A wounded creature like this would either end up as dinner for some wild beast or get snatched by some ill-intentioned scum. And a pretty, high-grade specimen like this one? If it fell into the wrong hands, there probably wouldn’t even be bones left.
“Fine, guess it’s my bad luck.” he muttered.
He unclasped his cloak and stepped forward. The angel immediately panicked, thrashing desperately. Its damaged wings flapped in feeble bursts, sending white feathers scattering like snowflakes through the air. That incomprehensible language grew even more frantic, even more terrified.
“Damn it, you—!” He reached out and pinned the angel’s struggling wings down. His sharp black claws and pitch-dark skin, set against the pristine white feathers, looked like scorched charcoal dropped on fresh snow—stark and jarring.
His grip wasn’t exactly gentle, but he did make sure to avoid the wounds. He could see them clearly now: three long gashes carved across the angel’s back, stretching from one wing to the other, still oozing that strange ice-blue blood.
He bundled the angel up inside his cloak and hoisted him over his shoulder. “Stop squirming,” he growled. “Quit wriggling, or you’ll kill yourself before I even get the chance to.”