Chapter Text
Chapter inspired by the events of Chapter 448
I was lying on the cold floor of a cell, too weak to tell whether the chill came from the stone beneath me or from the blood drying across my skin. The cuts on my body burned in slow, uneven pulses, each one a mark left by demons who looked at me less like a person and more like a feast. They drank from me as if I was something precious. Something endless.
I wondered, sometimes, if every human body carried this much power, this much temptation. I tried not to think about it for too long. Thinking made the fear sharper, and fear made the darkness feel closer.
And yet, even there, some stubborn part of me kept holding on. Every night, a dream came to me. Not a nightmare, though maybe it should have been. In that dream, there was a demon taller than any tower I had ever seen, with hands large enough to cradle my whole head. Hands that should have terrified me.
But when he touched me, he was gentle. Impossibly gentle. His palm settled over me like a blanket, warm and steady, and for a moment I could almost forget the bars, the blood, and the hungry eyes waiting beyond the dark.
Each night, the figure became clearer. At first, he was only a shadow with a voice, whispering words that wrapped around me before I could fall apart. Then the shadow gained shape. A presence. A face I felt I should know. I still remembered the first thing he ever said to me.
“You are not alone. Be strong, my little boy. As long as we are together, we can survive anything.”
Those words hurt in a way I couldn’t explain. I knew them. I was certain I had heard them before. But where? The answer kept slipping away from me, blurred by hunger, blood loss, and the dizzy haze that made it hard to stay conscious.
Then, one night, something changed.
“Iru-boy,” the demon said, and his voice no longer sounded far away. “I am finally here. It is hard to believe such a small child could be this greedy.”
I tried to answer, but my throat only gave a weak sound. The tall figure held me as if I weighed nothing, seated me in his lap like I was a child too tired to stand, and slowly ran one great hand through my hair. The motion was rough only because his hand was so large, but the care behind it made my chest ache.
“Those demons may make you bleed,” he murmured, “and they may feed on what spills from you. But as they consume your blood, you consume their mana. They have been making us stronger without even realizing it. And now, I am strong enough to get us out of here.”
The demon’s hand stopped in my hair. For the first time, I saw him clearly.
He was enormous. Not only in height, but in presence. The shadows around him did not hide him anymore; they obeyed him. They bent toward him like frightened things waiting for permission to move. His horns rose like a crown carved from the first night, and his eyes glowed with a calm, terrible light. Not rage. Not madness. Something worse. Control.
I knew that face.
I had never seen it before. Not really. Not with my own eyes. And still, something inside me reached for him like a starving thing reaching for warmth.
“Who…” My voice cracked. “Who are you?”
The demon looked down at me. For a moment, his expression softened so much it frightened me more than his size ever could. There was grief there. Old grief. The kind that did not belong in a dream.
“Delkira,” he said. “But you also know me as Ali-san.”
“Ali-san?” I whispered. The name came out weaker than I wanted. “No… that can’t be right. Ali-san was small. Annoying. Loud.”
Delkira’s mouth curved. “I can be all of those things when I wish to be.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” My fingers curled weakly against his sleeve. “Why let me think you were just… the ring?”
The smile faded. “Because if I had awakened too early, I would have devoured you by accident. I was not whole, Iru-boy. I was hunger wearing a voice. I had to wait until you were strong enough to hear me without being consumed.”
“I am Delkira and also what is left of him.”,” he whispered, brushing his thumb against my cheek with impossible care.
My breath caught. Delkira. The vanished Demon King. The name everyone in the Netherworld spoke like a myth, a legend, a wound that had never closed. And he was here, holding me as if I was something he had lost and found again.
“Why are you with me?” I asked, though part of me already feared the answer.
His fingers tightened around me, not enough to hurt, only enough to remind me that I was still there. Still alive.
“Because you need me and I will never let anyone hurt my dear treasure,” Delkira said.
The warmth in his voice disappeared. “What they did to you,every cut, every drop they stole, every night they waited for you to break…..will not be forgiven.”
“They will pay.”
The shadows behind him spread across the floor like wings, then sharpened into claws.
“So now,” Delkira said, and the cell seemed to shrink around his voice, “they will learn why the Netherworld once knelt when I spoke.”
As soon as Delkira finished speaking, the chain around my neck vanished. It did not break. It did not fall. It simply disappeared, leaving my skin bare and trembling beneath the ghost of its weight.
Before he could say anything else, I threw myself into his arms. I cried harder than I thought my body still could. I was tired. So tired. I had been alone for so long that none of this needed to make sense. The demon holding me was impossible, terrifying, and far too large, but his arms were the first safe place I had felt in days.
Delkira held me carefully, as if I might shatter if he moved too quickly. One hand stroked my back while the other cradled my head against his chest. His voice softened again, low and steady, and somehow he began to explain everything as if he had been waiting a very long time to tell me.
“Listen to me, my dear Iru-boy,” he murmured. “The human realm is filled with mana, even if humans do not understand it that way. That is why humans burn so brightly. Why you run, laugh, cry, endure, and continue living even when you should have collapsed.
Imagine mana like a sun. To keep itself from falling inward, it must constantly produce an enormous amount of energy.
Humans are similar. In order to survive the falling inward mana from your world, humans produce an outstanding amount of power.
He brushed my tears away with the edge of his thumb. “Demons like Sa-chan cannot be born naturally in your world. We are made of more mana than matter. If a demon begins forming in the human realm, the mana around them is pulled in too quickly. They become something like a black hole before they can stabilize, and most vanish before they can truly exist. The few earth-born demons who survive are the ones who take shape fast enough to become more material than mana.”
“Years ago,” Delkira continued, “someone tried to kill me. I fell into a dimensional tear. By luck, or perhaps by something more stubborn than luck, that tear threw me into the human realm.”
His hold around me tightened, gentle but certain. “But I was not strong enough to fight the push of that world forever. My mana was being torn apart.”
In a way, those conditions are the conditions needed to make a children, do you remember Balam classes about reproduction?
Demons can create children in different ways, and one of those ways is by splitting a part of themselves and letting that part become something new. Think of it like a star giving birth to another star, or like one source becoming two different existences.”
“It is dangerous. Almost no one would choose it unless they had no other choice. But I was dying, Iru-boy. I fought harder than I had ever fought before, and after what felt like ages, part of me changed. Part of me became you, a human born from a demon.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Delkira lowered his forehead until it nearly touched mine. “Your human parents are not the ones who made you. They found you, claimed you, and hurt you. But they are not your real family. I am. You are my child. My son.”
“My father?” I repeated. The word felt too fragile to touch. “But fathers are supposed to be there. They’re supposed to… want you.”
“Listen carefully,” he said. “You were wanted before you had a name. before I even knew you, never forget that.”
Delkira took a deep breath and continued his story, how everything began, the birth of Iruma and his vanishing.
“The rest of me could not fully reform,” Delkira said. “So what remained was drawn into one of my rings. That ring gathered just enough power to tear open the path again and return to the Netherworld. That is why I have been with you as Ali-san. Not a stranger. Not a curse. Your father, waiting for you to hear me.”
I curled my fingers into his clothes, shaking. “Then why can I absorb mana?”
“Is it because I’m not really human?” I asked before I could stop myself. The question tasted bitter. “Or because I’m not really a demon either?”
Delkira tilted my chin up until I had to meet his eyes. “You are Iruma. That is not half of anything.”
Delkira’s smile turned proud “You can absorb mana because you inherited my greed, my dear Iru-boy. But yours became something different.
A human soul constantly draws power from the “original source”, then releases that power back into the world. Like a waterfall, it feeds from the water of a lake and then releases it into the ocean.”
You were born from demon mana, but shaped into a human body. That made your soul pull harder than most, and the ring tried to drink from that flow.”
“But the ring cannot consume your human mana. So, for a single moment, between the power being pulled from you by the ring and the power leaving you, a hollow space is created, a vacuum that only demon mana can fill.”
His eyes darkened as he glanced toward the door. “When those demons fed on your blood and mana, your soul tried to compensate by pushing out even more power. That made the vacuum stronger. And anything that fell into it could be drawn into the ring. They thought they were devouring you, but they were feeding us instead.”
“That is your greed, Iru-boy—a hunger that can never be completely filled.”
“Now, my dear Iru-boy, let us feast. Let us make them understand hunger…”
“…until there is nothing left.”
I stared at him, dizzy from more than blood loss now. Father. Demon King. Ali-san. All of those names belonged to the same impossible person, and that person was holding me like I was the most precious thing in any realm.
“You only need to learn how to hold that vacuum open a little longer and create a new spell with it,” Delkira whispered. “I know you can do it. You are my son, after all.”
“Now, my dear Iru-boy,” Delkira said, and his voice became soft enough to comfort me and cold enough to make the shadows tremble, “let us show them what happens when prey mistakes itself for a hunter.”
The demons outside the cell noticed it almost immediately.
Another mana signature had appeared inside my prison. It was too vast to ignore, too ancient to mistake for anything ordinary. The moment they felt it, the hungry voices beyond the door went quiet.
Then the door came apart.
Not opened. Not unlocked. It was torn from its frame as if the metal had offended him by existing. Delkira stepped out first, still holding me close with one arm, and the darkness behind him crawled after us like a living throne.
The demons barely had time to react before his wrath reached them. Delkira did not rush. He did not need to. A flick of his fingers snapped one demon into the wall. A turn of his wrist folded another beneath its own shadow. The wet sound of bodies striking stone followed him like applause. He fought like a king correcting an insult. Like a father answering a wound carved into his child. Like mercy was a language he had never learned.
I should have looked away. Maybe part of me did. My eyes kept finding the floor, the wall, Delkira’s hand, anything except the shapes falling behind him. But the smell of blood was everywhere, warm and metallic, mixing with the thick pressure of demon mana until every breath made me dizzy.
“Iru-boy,” Delkira said, his voice calm despite the chaos. “Now. Try it.”
My stomach twisted. “Here?”
“Here,” he answered. “Before fear convinces you that you cannot.”
A demon lunged through the haze toward me, one clawed hand reaching for my throat. I raised my fist because I had nothing else. Delkira’s words echoed in my mind: hold the vacuum open a little longer.
Darkness gathered around my knuckles.
It was not fire. It was not lightning. It felt like hunger. Cold, endless hunger, opening inside my hand and pulling at everything around it. When my fist struck the demon’s chest, there was no impact, no satisfying pushback. My hand stuck to him, like a leech.
The demon screamed.
Mana rushed into me all at once. Too much. Far too much. It tore through my arm, flooded my chest, and crawled beneath my skin like something alive. For one awful second, it felt good. Warm. Full. Like taking the first bite after starving for days.
Then it became pain.
My knees buckled. I tried to pull away, but the vacuum would not close. The demon in front of me twisted as his mana was dragged out of him, his body collapsing inward.
My vision blurred black at the edges. Somewhere nearby, Delkira laughed, low and pleased. It was not loud. It did not need to be. The sound rolled through the corridor, and every demon who heard it froze for half a heartbeat before the shadows took them.
He was enjoying this. Not wildly. Not carelessly. That would have been easier to understand. Delkira enjoyed it with patience, with precision, with the cold satisfaction of someone removing filth from a beloved room.
Delkira´s eyes hold so much Pride for his son.
My father smiled.
“You really are my son,” he said, and there was wonder in his voice, terrible and tender all at once.
“Don’t say that like it’s a good thing,” I whispered. “I don’t want to be proud of hurting someone.”
Delkira’s gaze lowered to my shaking hand. “Then be proud that you stopped.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“Almost is the border where choice begins,” he said. “You stood there, and you chose.”
I only saw Delkira standing between me and the remains of my prison, soaked in shadow and blood, proud as a king and gentle only for me. Around everyone else, he was not a savior. He was the thing demons prayed would never look directly at them.
For a moment, I could not answer him.
My eyes were fixed on the demon at my feet. Or what little left of him. The shape was still there, looking at it made my stomach turn. I had done that. Not Delkira. Not the shadows. Not the monsters who had hurt me.
Me.
A thin sound escaped my throat. I stumbled backward, but my legs refused to hold me. The floor tilted. The walls stretched too high. The smell of blood, mana, and fear pressed against my face until I could barely breathe.
The hunger inside my hand was gone, but I could still feel its shape. Like a mouth that had closed.
“Iru-boy.”
“I liked it,” iruma said, and the confession came out broken. “Just for a second. I liked not being empty anymore.”
Delkira reached for me, then stopped before touching my shoulder. Waiting. Asking without words. The same hand that had crushed demons like paper hovered near me as if I were made of glass.
I hated that kindness. I needed it.
I leaned forward before I could change my mind, and his hand settled against my back, careful and warm despite the blood staining his fingers.
“Power can feel good,” Delkira said softly. “Survival can feel good. That does not make you evil, my son. It makes you alive.”
Delkira’s hand pressed a little firmer against my back. “But you must learn control. Not because your hunger is shameful. Because it is yours.”
Delkira and I moved through a passage so dark it felt less like a hallway and more like the throat of something dead. The air was stale, heavy with dust and old mana, and every step echoed too loudly beneath our feet. Eventually, the corridor ended at a door buried deep in the shadows.
Delkira tore it open first. I expected another cell, another trap, another monster waiting in the dark. Instead, there was only a room lit by the pale glow of an old computer screen.
My chest tightened the moment I saw it. “It has been so long, Dad,” I whispered. “I wonder where everyone is. Are they okay? Do they miss me?”
Delkira looked at me, and for once his expression was not terrible or proud. It was worried. He knew my fear was not childish. Neither of us knew how long we had been trapped in that prison. Weeks. Months. Maybe longer. Time had rotted around us until it no longer meant anything.
“Well, Iru-boy,” Delkira said slowly, staring at the computer as if it were a suspicious demon, “I am not exactly good with these things. They were not common when I was king. Why do you try a devi-search?”
So I searched.
What we found was worse than anything waiting behind the cell door.
Baal had taken the throne as acting Demon King, and the Netherworld had begun to rot beneath his hands. He had not conquered it with dignity or order. He had gutted it. He dismantled Delkira’s ranking system piece by piece, smiling while he turned every rule meant to guide demons into a weapon meant to sharpen them against one another.
In schools, rank was no longer earned through skill, ambition, or growth. Baal had made hunting the new measure of worth. Students rose by harming others, by chasing weaker demons through the halls, by proving they could either become the best predator or survive as the most entertaining prey.
The chaos did not stop at school gates. Towns had been sacked. Cities had become fortresses where only the powerful and high-ranking could live safely, feeding themselves with resources stolen from the weak. Lower-ranking demons were not citizens anymore. They were tools, bait, servants, and warnings.
Then I found the video of Baal’s ascension.
I wish I had not watched it.
Two of the Three Greats were dead. Baal’s new weapon had erased their mana-fueled attacks as if their power had never existed, leaving only physical force as an answer and against Baal, that answer had not been enough. The only survivor was Sullivan.
Baal gave him a choice in front of everyone: submit and stand down, or watch the Netherworld bleed even more.
Sullivan submitted.
He was allowed to remain the director of Babyls, but the mercy was not mercy at all. It was a chain dressed up as kindness. Baal had left him standing so everyone could see that even Sullivan could be forced to bow.
Poro-chan fought too they were destroying her dear Del-chan’s Netherworld. Baal only laughed at her.
Later in the recording, she was shown floating beside Sullivan with a blank face and empty eyes. Defeated. Silent. Broken in a way that made my hands go cold.
The news only became worse from there. Or maybe there simply was not much news left. Baal had shut down newspapers, banned devi-idol concerts, and silenced anything that reminded demons of joy, order, or freedom. Demons running wild had become normal. Ruins and bodies had become the new landscape of the Netherworld.
The final report mentioned Bachiko and several of the Thirteen Crowns stepping down. The Barbatos family had refused to obey Baal’s rule, declaring that they would no longer serve the throne.
Baal’s response was a laugh.
Not anger. Not fear. Just laughter, as if resistance was a joke he had already grown bored of hearing. “In time,” he said on the recording, smiling like a knife, “Barbatos clan will fall too. Everything does.”
I looked at my father then, and what I saw scared me more than the recording.
Delkira did not shout. He did not curse. For a moment, he did not even breathe. His eyes stayed fixed on Baal’s smiling face, and the room began to change around him.
The computer screen flickered. The walls groaned softly, as if the room itself had realized it was standing too close to something ancient and furious. Shadows gathered at Delkira’s feet, not spreading wildly, but kneeling. Waiting.
That was what made it terrifying. Delkira’s anger did not explode. It sharpened.
“He touched my realm,” Delkira said softly.
His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that made every instinct in me want to step back.
“He took the ranks I made to guide my people and turned them into gore. He took schools and made them hunting grounds. He took cities and made them cages. He took joy from my world and called the silence order.”
The shadows lifted behind him like a crown made of blades.
“Dad…” I whispered.
Delkira looked down at me, and the fury in his eyes softened just enough that I could breathe again.
“Do not be afraid of me, Iru-boy,” he said.
I wanted to say I was not. I really did. But the lie stuck in my throat.
He smiled then, small and terrible. “No. Be afraid for him.”
“You should call Sa-chan, Iruma,” he said at last, still watching Baal’s face on the screen.
I swallowed. “Do you have a plan?”
“An idea,” Delkira said, and his voice was softer than his expression. “But we will need his help. And your old master, Bachiko
“Dad,” I said quietly, “if Baal did all of this… what will you do to him?”
Delkira did not answer right away. That frightened me more than any threat could have.
“You will give him one chance to kneel,” Delkira said at last.
I swallowed. “And if he doesn’t?”
His eyes stayed on Baal’s smiling face. “Then I will remind the Netherworld why no one ever took my throne while I was alive.”
The room grew colder. Delkira lifted one hand toward the screen, not touching it, and Baal’s frozen image warped beneath the pressure of his mana. “We should make a few stops before we go to Babel” .