Chapter Text
The red sand of the Badlands didn’t just settle; it stained. It crept into the grain of the weathered spruce planks, dusted the smooth iron casings of redstone repeaters, and clung to the heavy, frayed hems of Ein’s black trousers.
From his perch on the eastern ledge of the border watchtower, the world looked vast, bleeding, and entirely empty. The sunset was doing what it always did out here on the edges of the SMP—smearing a violent, bruised palette of crimson and deep ochre across the horizon, casting shadows that stretched long and jagged over the canyon floors below.
Ein sat with his legs dangling out over the sheer drop. A drop that would easily crush a standard player’s boots or crack a man's ribs if he weren’t careful. He didn’t care. The height didn't make his stomach flip; it just gave him room to breathe air that didn’t smell like someone else’s judgment. He was an island. A solitary, sharp-edged point against the burning sky.
If anyone were to look up from the valley floor—not that anyone ever did unless they were checking to see if he was planting TNT—they would have noticed the wrongness of his posture immediately. In a realm populated by people who stood tall, confident, and rooted in their communities, Ein looked fundamentally detached. His dark blue hair, shot through with that single, stubbornly vibrant streak of electric sapphire, caught the last rays of the sun, but his frame was hunched, defensive, and small.
Standing at a mere 5'5", he was already physically dwarfed by almost everyone else on the server, but the way he pulled himself inward made him look even more like an anomaly. A visual punchline. A broken thing. The lack of presence, the way he seemed to actively try to disappear into his own shadow, was a permanent, public declaration of his inadequacy. It was a physical manifestation of everything he was missing inside.
"Left loop to the comparator, throw the torch variance..." he muttered to himself, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely carried over the whistling canyon wind.
His fingers, pale as ivory against the dark metal components, worked with a frantic, mechanical precision. He was assembling a redstone tripwire grid, small enough to fit inside a hollowed-out cobblestone block. It was a petty piece of engineering. A classic. The moment someone stepped on the pressure plate near the town's northern gate tomorrow morning, the circuit would lock, triggering a rapid-fire dispenser sequence that would launch three dozen splash potions of lingering blindness and glowing magenta dye directly into the air.
It was obnoxious. It was loud. It was entirely unnecessary. And it was the only way he knew how to make sure they looked at him.
Ein adjusted his tool, his hands slightly swallowed by the cuffs of his unzipped deep blue jacket. Underneath those dark layers, he wore a simple white shirt, tucked neatly into his black trousers. He always wore long sleeves, a non-negotiable boundary. The world could have his sarcasm, they could have his malicious grins, they could have his silver eyes flashing with manufactured arrogance—but they didn't get to see the old, pale scars lining his forearms. They didn't get to see where he had bled.
Instead, he drew the eye with a deliberate, grunge aesthetic. A heavy collection of gold chains looped from his belt, clinking softly against his thigh with every slight shift of his weight. Tucked securely among the glittering metal links was a small, light blue plush sheep—a ridiculous little trinket that belonged to Pierce. Ein had taken it before the Daemos returned to their home realm, keeping it as a silent, desperate anchor.
He tilted his head, the metal in his ears glinting in the fading light. He had multiple piercings—three studs lining the cartilage of his left ear, a small industrial bar on his right, and a tiny, cynical glint of metal at the corner of his lower lip. Those piercings had been given to him by Pierce a long time ago, back when things were quiet, back when the giant was the only person who didn't look at Ein like he was a disease.
“Look at him,” a voice echoed in his head, a memory from three days ago at the market pavilion. It hadn't even been whispered. They didn't bother whispering around him anymore. “Still slinking around like he owns the place. Why hasn’t the council just exiled him to the Nether borders yet? He’s a parasite.”
Ein’s chest tightened, a familiar, cold weight settling right behind his ribs, pressing down until it was hard to take a full breath.
He had laughed, of course. In the moment, he had leaned against the stone pillar, tilted his head back until his silver eyes crinkled with theatrical amusement, and loudly suggested that if they wanted him gone, they should try moving him themselves—assuming their brittle little arms could handle the weight. He had flashed his teeth. He had walked away with a swagger that suggested he ate their hatred for breakfast.
It was all a lie. A beautiful, meticulously maintained fiction.
The truth was, the words didn't just graze him; they cut deep, clean, and permanent. Every glare from Aaron, every cold, dismissive sigh from Aphmau, every muttered insult from the villagers who crossed the street just to avoid walking in his shadow—it all collected inside him like lead shot. He remembered every single syllable. He replayed them at night in the dark of his isolated shack, turning them over and over until they became his own internal monologue.
Parasite. Freak. Untrustworthy. Freak.
He had no self-worth left. The reservoir was dry, cracked, and empty. He knew exactly what he was to this SMP. He was the villain who had failed to die. He was the reminder of bad times, the stain on their perfect, cooperative canvas. Everyone hated him. It wasn't a guess; it was an objective, verifiable fact written into the very architecture of the town. The only reason he hadn't been cast out into the void was because the council preferred to keep their enemies where they could see them.
Except for Pierce.
The thought of the stoic, quiet Daemos caused a strange, sudden ache in Ein’s throat. Pierce hadn't looked at him like he was a problem. Before he had disappeared back into the Daemos realm months ago to deal with the integration fallout, Pierce had just... been there. Quiet. Solid. A massive, blue-armored anchor in a world that felt like it was constantly spinning out from under Ein’s feet.
Ein snapped a redstone torch into place with a bit more force than necessary, the wood splintering slightly under his thumb.
"They're going to hate the pink dye," he murmured, a harsh, humorless smirk twisting his lips. "Good. Let them spend three days scrubbing it out of their pristine wool coats."
This was his survival strategy. His armor. If he couldn't make them love him—and he couldn't, because he was fundamentally, unalterably broken—then he would force them to hate him on his own terms. If he was going to be the monster in their story, he was going to direct the scene. When they screamed at him tomorrow for the slime and the dye, it wouldn't be because he was a failure or a freak; it would be because he had chosen to ruin their morning. It gave him power. It gave him a twisted, fragile sense of control over his own misery.
If I make them angry, their hatred is my choice. Not my identity.
It was a pathetic coping mechanism, and he knew it. It was a cry for attention from a man starving in a crowded room. As a pansexual guy who had spent his life looking at people’s souls rather than their labels, he had always craved connection—deep, raw, and unfiltered. He didn't care what form it took; he just wanted to be seen. But out here, in the cold reality of the SMP, the only connection he could successfully forge was a strike of flint against steel. Friction. Anger. Sparks. It was better than the void. It was better than being invisible.
He wiped a smear of redstone dust across his forehead, his silver eyes narrowing as he checked the delay on the repeater. His mental health was a house of cards built on top of a fault line. Some days, the paranoia was so thick he couldn't leave his bed, convinced that if he stepped outside, Aaron would finally lose his temper and put a Netherite blade through his heart. Other days, like today, the numbness took over, a heavy, gray fog that made his limbs feel like stone and his thoughts move like sludge.
The pranks were the only thing that woke him up. The click of the gears, the rush of adrenaline when the trap sprung, the temporary illusion that he was the one pulling the strings.
The sun dipped entirely below the horizon, the crimson bleeding out into a dark, suffocating purple. The first stars began to pierce the veil, cold and indifferent. Ein set the completed trap down on the wooden bench, his hands suddenly trembling. The heat of the day was gone, replaced by the sharp, biting chill of the Badlands night.
He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs, tucking his chin into the open collar of his white shirt. He looked down at the empty floorboards, feeling the draft cut through his clothes, his fingers brushing the smooth, soft fabric of the light blue sheep toy dangling from his chains.
"Just another day," he whispered to the empty canyon, his thumb tracing the tiny plush ear. "Just another trap."
He closed his eyes, listening to the wind howl through the scaffolding of the tower, feeling entirely, utterly alone in the dark.
The silence didn't last. It never did.
By the time the moon reached its peak, casting a silver, ghostly sheen over the red rocks, Ein had completed three more variants of the trap. His fingers were raw, the silver bar in his right ear thrumming with a dull ache from where he’d accidentally caught it against his jacket collar. He didn't mind the pain; it was a physical point of data. It meant he was still here. Still breathing. Still the resident problem.
He leaned back against the central support beam of the watchtower, staring up at the framework of the roof. His mind was a chaotic theater, replaying old arguments, rewriting scripts where he actually had the upper hand, where his voice didn't shake, where he didn't feel like he was constantly apologising just by existing.
He hated how much he cared. He hated that a single dirty look from a passing farmer could ruin his entire week. He wanted to be the ruthless, unbothered person he pretended to be. He wanted to be ice.
A sharp, metallic clink from the base of the watchtower ladder shattered the quiet.
Ein’s posture locked instantly into a rigid, defensive stance. His hand slid automatically toward his pocket, his gold chains rattling in a soft, musical warning. His silver eyes hardened, the vulnerability of the last few hours vanishing behind a wall of pure, unadulterated arrogance.
The armor was back on. The stage was set.
"If that's the perimeter guard," Ein called out, his voice dripping with loud, theatrical boredom, "you're three hours late, and your footsteps sound like an iron golem wading through a swamp. Seriously, try lighter boots."
He waited, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs despite his cool tone. He adjusted his lip piercing with his teeth, waiting for the inevitable sigh, the inevitable curse, the inevitable reminder that he didn't belong here. Tomorrow, the town square would be pink. Tonight, he was just a ghost on the wall, waiting for the living to tell him to move.
The metallic rattle of the chain-link harness at the base of the tower was the first true indicator that Ein’s solitary vigil had reached its expiration date. It was a heavy, rhythmic sound—the unmistakable cadence of steel-toed boots striking the lower rungs of the watchtower ladder. Down in the valley, the red sands had fully surrendered their heat to the canyon drafts, leaving the air thin and painfully sharp.
Ein didn't move from his position against the central support beam. He stayed frozen for a fraction of a second, his white-knuckled fingers still curled loosely around the brass gears of a redstone repeater. His heart did a familiar, violent drop, slamming hard against his ribs like a bird hitting the bars of a cage. The sudden surge of adrenaline was almost sickening, a cold, oily wave that left his mouth tasting like copper.
He didn't need to look over the edge to know who it was. The server only had a few people who patrolled the perimeter with that specific brand of military precision.
With a practiced, fluid deliberation, Ein let out a long, heavy breath, forcing the tension out of his shoulders. The vulnerability that had pooled in the dark of his chest over the last few hours was shoved down, locked away behind thick iron doors. He reached down, his fingers lightly brushing the soft, light blue wool of the tiny plush sheep nestled against his gold hip chains. Pierce’s. The small, ridiculous thing felt warm against his ivory skin, a brief, grounding point of reality before the theater began.
He adjusted the heavy drape of his deep blue jacket, pulling the unzipped edges further apart to flash the white shirt beneath, and stepped toward the wooden railing. He didn't just walk; he sauntered, his gold chains clinking in a loud, musical rhythm that practically begged for attention.
"Well, well," Ein called out, leaning his weight heavily against the rough spruce guardrail, his elbows propped up as he peered down into the gloom. He let his voice carry—sharp, dripping with theatrical boredom, and perfectly steady. "And here I thought the universe had finally granted me some quality isolation. What’s the matter, did the village square run out of virtue for you two to police?"
At the foot of the ladder, the two figures halted.
Even from thirty feet up, the shift in the atmosphere was instantaneous, dropping the temperature faster than the desert night. The casual, low-voiced conversation Aaron and Aphmau had been sharing as they checked the glowing perimeter wards died on the wind.
Aaron stood slightly in front, his dark eyes locking onto the watchtower ledge with the unerring focus of a predator tracing a scent. He didn't speak. He rarely did when it came to Ein. Instead, he simply adjusted his grip on the leather strap of his broadsword, his jaw tightening into a hard, rigid line. The look he shot upward was completely devoid of humanity—it was cold, entirely untrusting, and filled with a quiet, lingering promise that he was simply waiting for a reason to cut Ein out of the server's code permanently.
Beside him, Aphmau sighed, the sound sharp and exhausted. She stepped out from Aaron’s shadow, her arms crossing over her chest as she looked up.
"We're checking the border wards, Ein," she said, her voice cutting through the canyon breeze.
Usually, out of everyone in the entire SMP, Aphmau was the one who managed a shred of civility. She was the one who didn't immediately reach for a weapon when he entered a room. But tonight, the weariness of months of tension had eroded even her baseline patience. Her voice lacked its usual warmth, replaced by a biting, defensive edge that hit Ein like a physical blow to the sternum.
"And we're making sure you aren't up there planting explosives to blow the northern gate open again," she added, her tone sharp and accusatory. "Because some of us actually want to sleep tonight without wondering if the town infrastructure is going to collapse by sunrise."
The words weren't a screaming match. They were casual. Ordinary. A routine assumption of his malice. And that was exactly why they tore into him so cleanly. It wasn't an outburst of anger; it was just the standard, baseline reality of how they viewed him. A parasite. A demolition risk. A saboteur.
Ein didn't let his eyes blink. He didn't let the corners of his mouth twitch. Instead, he leaned further over the railing, tilting his head back until his dark blue hair fell away from his face, highlighting the single, electric sapphire streak. He flashed his teeth—a wide, mocking, fiercely overconfident smirk that hid the sudden, suffocating pressure behind his breastbone.
"Explosives? Me? Oh, Aphmau, you hurt my feelings," Ein drawled, his silver eyes flashing with manufactured amusement. He reached up, casually spinning one of the gold studs in his left ear—the ones Pierce had pressed into his skin months ago. "TNT is so terribly uninspired. If I were going to take down the northern gate, I’d use something with a bit more... artistic flare. A redstone cascade, perhaps. A massive, beautiful display of total inconvenience. You really ought to give my intellect more credit."
Aaron stepped forward, his heavy boot crushing a fragment of red sandstone into dust. The movement was small, but it carried the weight of an absolute threat. He narrowed his eyes, his voice low and dangerous when he finally spoke.
"Keep playing games, Ein," Aaron muttered, the words carrying a flat, lethal promise. "The council is already looking for a reason to dump your inventory into the void and leave you at the world border. Give us one. Just one."
Ein let out a sharp, theatrical bark of laughter, though his throat felt like it was lined with glass. He crossed his arms over the railing, looking down at the legendary warrior with total, feigned indifference.
"Oh, I'm shaking, Aaron. Truly. The big, bad guard is going to throw me in the corner," Ein mocked, his voice dropping into a dry, cynical purr. "Go check your glowing rocks. Some of us actually have real engineering to do up here. Don't let the badlands dust ruin your shiny armor on the way back."
For a long, agonizing beat, Aaron didn't move. He kept his dark eyes fixed on Ein, measuring him, weighing the risk of simply climbing the ladder and finishing the problem right then and there. Ein kept his smirk firmly locked in place, his silver eyes wide and unblinking, challenging the warrior to try it. He looked reckless. He looked entirely unbothered by the concept of his own expiration.
Finally, Aphmau placed a hand on Aaron’s forearm, a quiet, restraining gesture.
"Come on," she said softly to Aaron, her voice tight as she shot one last, disgusted look up at the ledge. "He's not worth the time. Let’s just finish the western line."
Aaron let out a low, grim grunt, his jaw flexing one final time before he turned on his heel. They walked away together, their figures quickly swallowed by the long, purple shadows of the canyon, their footsteps fading into the whistling wind.
Ein stayed frozen against the railing. He kept his head tilted, his smirk perfectly intact, his silver eyes staring blankly at the empty space where they had been standing. He held the pose for a full minute, then two, ensuring that if either of them turned around to glance back, they would only see the untouchable, arrogant prankster.
Then, the distance grew too great. The night fully claimed them.
The moment the last echo of their presence vanished, Ein’s smirk didn't just fade—it shattered.
His entire frame seemed to collapse inward, the artificial height of his posture evaporating in an instant. He staggered backward two steps, his boots dragging against the spruce floorboards, until his back hit the central support beam of the tower. He slid down the rough wood, his black trousers catching on the splinters, until he was sitting flat on the floor, his knees pulled tightly against his chest.
A sudden, violent tremor took over his hands. He pulled his long sleeves down past his knuckles, trying to hide the shaking from the empty night air, but it didn't help. He stared down at his pale, ivory fingers, watching them quiver against the dark fabric of his trousers.
The air in his lungs felt heavy, thick as mud, and entirely unbreathable. His chest locked up, a suffocating, crushing weight clamping down on his ribs until he was reduced to taking shallow, ragged gasps that did nothing to clear the fog in his brain.
Parasite. Not worth the time. Leave you at the world border.
The words spun through his head in a deafening, chaotic loop, stripping away every ounce of his internal armor until there was nothing left but the raw, bleeding truth of his own worthlessness. They hated him. They truly, deeply hated him. And the worst part—the part that made him want to claw at his own throat until he stopped breathing—was that he couldn't even blame them. Their insults weren't inaccurate. He was a stain on their server. He was the broken piece of the puzzle that didn't fit anywhere.
He reached down with a trembling hand, his fingers desperately searching through the gold chains until they locked around the little blue plush sheep. He squeezed it so hard his knuckles turned white, burying his face into the open collar of his white shirt.
The metal bar in his right ear thrummed with a sharp ache as it pressed against his arm, a harsh reminder of the giant who had put it there. Pierce, his mind whined, a pathetic, silent plea into the dark. Where are you? Why did you leave me here with them?
He curled himself tighter into the shadow of the beam, his silver eyes wide and wet in the moonlight, completely hidden from a world that only ever wanted to see him bleed.
The hours crawled by like insects across stone. By the time the moon began its descent toward the western peaks, the violent shaking in Ein’s hands had subsided into a dull, exhausted numbness. The panic attacks always left him like this—hollowed out, cold, and feeling as though his blood had been replaced with freezing mountain water.
He hadn't moved from the base of the support beam. His unzipped deep blue jacket was pulled tight around his frame, the heavy fabric doing little to block out the systemic chill radiating from his own bones. His mental health wasn't just deteriorating; it was an active landslide, a daily erosion of whatever fragile stability he managed to patch together between the insults.
He reached out, his pale fingers dragging a stray redstone dust trail across the floorboards. He had no self-worth. It was a fact he accepted with the same cold certainty as the gravity that kept him from floating off the tower ledge. He was the server's necessary evil, the lightning rod for everyone’s leftover anger.
"If they hate me for a prank," he whispered into the empty, dark cabin of the tower, his voice cracking slightly on the vowels, "at least it’s because I made them do it."
It was the only narrative he could control. Tomorrow morning, when the northern gate dispenser fired its load of blinding magenta dye into the sky, Aaron would storm through the square, his face dark with fury. Aphmau would look at the mess with that deep, disappointed disgust. They would scream his name. They would call him a child, a nuisance, a menace.
And Ein would stand on the tavern roof, laughing until his stomach ached, throwing out sarcastic remarks about their lack of color coordination.
He would do it because the alternative was letting them see him like this. Sitting in the dirt, clutching a light blue toy, suffocating under the weight of their casual, everyday hatred. If he was going to be an outcast, he would be a loud one. He would force them to engage with his armor, because if they ever broke through it, they would find out just how easy it would be to finish him off.
He pulled himself up, using the support beam to steady his wobbling legs. His black trousers felt heavy, the gold chains clinking with a subdued, melancholy ring in the twilight. He walked back to the edge of the watchtower, his silver eyes fixed on the distant, dark silhouette of the town gates.
The stage was set for the morning. The traps were wired. His mask was mended, ready to be pinned back onto his face the moment the sun hit the red sands.
He was entirely alone, a grunge ghost hovering over a world that wished he didn't exist, waiting for the dawn to bring the noise back.
The pre-dawn light had just begun to gather in the deep cuts of the Badlands canyons, turning the harsh violet sky into a pale, watery grey. Ein remained at the edge of the watchtower, his fingers absently tracing the heavy gold chains looped at his waist. The tiny light blue plush sheep—Pierce’s trinket—pressed cold against the fabric of his black trousers. His bones ached with the residual exhaustion of the night's panic, his ivory skin washed out under the dim twilight. He was already planning his descent, his boots hovering near the top rung of the ladder, when the atmosphere over the valley simply died.
The wind didn't drop; it vanished. The constant, whistling draft that lived in the canyons was cut off as if a massive hand had been slammed down over the horizon.
Then came the pressure.
It wasn't a sound at first. It was a suffocating density in the air that made Ein’s ears pop violently, the multiple gold studs lining his left ear and the industrial bar in his right suddenly tingling with an intense, localized static electricity. The silver bar at the corner of his lower lip felt freezing cold against his skin. He gasped, his silver eyes widening as the space directly in front of the ancient, long-dormant border gate began to distort. The vacuum pulled the red sand off the ground, spinning it upward into a frantic, hovering vortex.
CRACK.
The sky didn't just open; it fractured. A sound like a mountain splitting in half tore through the valley, an explosive, concussive wave of pure kinetic force that hit the watchtower like a battering ram. The heavy spruce support beams groaned, splintering under the sudden torque. The sheer violence of the shockwave blew the wooden railing entirely outward, throwing Ein completely off his balance. His 5’5” frame was lifted off his feet, his boots skidding across the grit-dusted planks as he crashed hard against the central mast.
"What the—" he choked out, his throat burning as the smell of ozone, burnt sulfur, and a thick, heavy alien magic flooded his senses.
The air turned a blinding, bruised shade of dark purple, violent arcs of violet lightning lashing out from a jagged, bleeding tear in reality. The portal was tearing itself open, unstable and massive. The watchtower was leaning dangerously, the wood weeping as another concussive thud shook the foundation. Ein didn't hesitate. His survival instincts, honed by months of being the server's primary target, kicked into overdrive. He scrambled toward the ladder hatch, his hands—swallowed by the cuffs of his unzipped deep blue jacket—clutching the iron rungs with frantic desperation.
He slid more than he climbed, the metal burning through his long sleeves as he dropped the last ten feet, landing hard in a crouch on the shifting red sand below. The ground beneath his boots was trembling, a rhythmic, deep tectonic pulsing that told him the boundary between realms had been completely obliterated.
Through the thick, rolling curtains of violet smoke and shimmering energy arcs, figures began to coalesce. The Daemos had arrived.
Ein stayed low, his right hand slipping automatically inside his jacket toward the hidden dagger at his waist, his gold chains clinking in a muffled, frantic panic. His breath hitched in his throat as the first silhouette broke through the haze. Aside from Pierce and Noi—the only two Daemos anyone on the server actually knew—these other entities were completely unknown. Nobody on the SMP had ever met them before.
It was Asch. The royal stranger stepped onto the SMP dirt with an aggressive, heavy stride, his shoulder-length black hair whipped wildly about his face by the residual portal gales. His dark, pitch-black eyes scanned the red canyons with an immediate, furious disdain, his pale face tight with arrogant irritation. Rising from his hair were his signature ivory horns, the white bone smooth and lethal, though Ein’s eyes caught the subtle, metallic glint of the ornate gold rim capping the right one—a badge of his tyrannical status. Subtle, dark eye bags bruised the skin beneath his eyes, giving him the look of a ruler who hadn't slept in an eternity, but his posture was absolute iron.
Right behind him came Rhys, another stranger stepping out of the smoke with an analytical, measured calm that contrasted sharply with Asch's fury. His dark skin was stark against the pale violet mist, his neat, black dreadlocks pulled tightly back away from his face to keep them out of his eyes. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, a single, sharp dark blue eye calculated the atmospheric pressure of the server. His dark blue horns curved gracefully upward from his brow, perfectly matching the deep, scholarly tone of his robes. He already had a ledger gripped in one hand, his fingers moving as if he were preparing to catalog the entire world.
Then, a sudden blur of motion. A third unknown warrior burst through the perimeter. Leif's wild, stark white hair contrasted violently against the dark canyon backdrop. A vicious, jagged scar cut directly across his left eye, trailing down to his cheek, though his cerulean eyes were wide, bright, and flashing with a terrifying, erratic hunger for violence. He was already spinning a pair of heavy daggers in his palms, his green horns curving sharply forward like a ram ready to breach a wall. He sniffed the air, a wicked grin stretching his lips as he locked eyes with the horizon.
Finally, stepping out with a slow, hesitant stride, was Noi. Ein actually recognized the familiar, short orange-pink hair, disheveled from the realm transit, and those bright orange oni horns protruding upward like small, blunt spires. His large, orange-hazel eyes looked wide, innocent, and entirely overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Badlands. He clutched at the straps of his leather gear, looking smaller than the others, his expression dripping with a sweet, anxious vulnerability that seemed entirely out of place among a squad of apex executioners.
Ein’s heart hammered against his ribs, a manic, breathless laugh bubbling up in his chest. Pierce and Noi were back, but they had brought an entire squad of chaotic, terrifying monsters with them. He could already picture the absolute, blinding panic these new strangers would cause in the village square. Aaron would be beside himself. Aphmau would be scrambling. The thought gave him a fleeting, twisted surge of his usual cocky energy. He began to straighten up, preparing to step forward, to fix his smirk in place and throw out a biting, disrespectful welcome to the demonic newcomers.
Then, the portal flared one last time, a deep, midnight-blue expansion of energy that forced the other four Daemos to step aside.
A final figure stepped through the smoke.
Ein froze dead in his tracks. The breath in his lungs didn't just catch; it felt as though it had been violently extracted from his body, leaving his chest entirely hollow. His silver eyes widened until the edges burned, his hands dropping completely away from his belt as his brain simply ceased to function.
It was Pierce. The one person he actually knew and desperately missed. But it wasn't the Pierce who had left.
The realm magic of Daemos hadn't just sustained him; it had drastically, terrifyingly re-engineered his entire physical existence. He stood as a monolithic, unbelievable 7’2”. He was an absolute mountain of a man, his shoulders so impossibly, absurdly broad that he entirely eclipsed the rising sun behind him, casting a massive, suffocating block of pure shadow over the entire watchtower clearing. His dark blue armor looked heavier, thicker, the plates straining against a chest that looked wide enough to halt a charging iron golem. The sheer, colossal scale of him was terrifying, a display of raw, monumental physical power that shifted the gravity of the entire clearing.
Ein stood at a mere 5’5”. He felt like a child. He felt like an insect. To even look at Pierce’s face, he had to tilt his neck all the way back, his chin pointing toward the sky just to trace the line of the giant's jaw.
Pierce stood still for a moment, the dark blue horns protruding from his dark hair casting long, curved shadows over his face. He blinked his deep blue eyes, adjusting to the pale light of the SMP, his expression retaining that familiar, unreadable, stoic calm. He looked down, his gaze shifting past Asch, past the red sand, until his eyes locked directly onto the small, pale, ivory face staring up at him from the dust.
Pierce spotted him. He stepped forward.
Each stride of his massive, armored boots didn't just thud against the earth; the sheer weight of his 7'2" frame caused a physical, localized tremor in the red dirt beneath Ein's feet. He closed the distance between them in three massive steps, towering over Ein like a dark blue fortress, completely swallowing the smaller man in his shadow.
Pierce looked down, his gaze fixed on Ein's face, tracking the silver piercings, the dark blue hair, before trailing down to the gold chains at Ein's hip where the tiny light blue sheep toy hung. A small, almost imperceptible softening flickered across the giant's stoic face.
He opened his mouth, and he spoke.
"Hello, Ein."
The voice didn't just sound different. It was a seismic, terrifyingly ultra-deep octave. It was a low, resonant rumble that didn't travel through the air—it traveled through the ground. The frequency was so deep, so profoundly heavy, that it caused a literal physical vibration to rip straight through the dirt road, traveling up through Ein’s boots, up his legs, and echoing right inside his chest cavity. Ein could feel his own ribs vibrating, his heart rattling against his bone structure from the sheer acoustic weight of Pierce's words. It was a sound that belonged to the shifting of tectonic plates, a deep, dark timber that wrapped around Ein's entire body and squeezed.
In an instant, the fragile, meticulously mended armor Ein had spent the whole night building didn't just crack—it was entirely obliterated.
The long-buried, suffocating crush he had harbored for the stoic Daemos resurfaced with the terrifying force of a tidal wave, slamming into his nervous system and throwing him into an immediate, total, flustered panic. His face flushed a violent, brilliant crimson, the heat rushing up his neck to stain his ivory skin. His silver eyes darted frantically across Pierce’s chest plate, unable to meet the giant’s gaze, his breath coming in short, erratic puffs. His signature cocky smirk wouldn't form; his lips just trembled slightly against his piercing as his mind completely short-circuited.
"Y-You—" Ein stammered, his voice coming out an embarrassing, high-pitched squeak compared to the floor-vibrating rumble above him. He frantically shoved his shaking hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, his gold chains rattling loudly in a dead giveaway of his distress. He tried to force his old, arrogant armor back on, to find a sarcastic comment about the giant's height, but his brain was entirely fried by the proximity, the shadow, and the absolute, crushing resonance of Pierce’s new voice.
He was trapped. Completely eclipsed, thoroughly flustered, and entirely at the mercy of the monolithic giant towering over him in the Badlands dawn.