I was nothing more than a mortal, yet I had lived for hundreds of thousands of years.
All because the Demon Sovereign had gazed into the Demon Mirror and divined that I was his fated beloved. If he and I were to unite, we would bring forth a supreme demon god capable of ruling all Six Realms.
Malachar Voss brought me from the mortal world into the Demon Realm, feeding me his heart's blood each day to keep me ageless and undying.
But conceiving with a mortal was nearly impossible for a being like him. Night after night, for hundreds of thousands of years, he lay with me, and only then did I finally quicken with a demon heir.
Malachar was overjoyed. He crowned me Demon Queen on the spot, treating me and the child in my womb as his most precious treasures.
When his own sister accidentally brushed against my belly during a moment of play, he ground her bones to dust and scattered them to the wind. She had been the only princess of the entire demon race.
To safeguard the demon child, Malachar arranged for me to rest and nurture the pregnancy in the Forbidden Grounds.
Cadmus Freewild, drunk and lost, once stumbled into the Forbidden Grounds by mistake. Malachar killed him where he stood, then led his demon army into the Celestial Realm and slaughtered until rivers ran red with blood.
To end the war, the Celestial Emperor had no choice but to offer the most beautiful immortal in all the Six Realms, Seraphina Abbott Crystalis, as a consort to the Demon Sovereign.
Seraphina, emboldened by her status as the Celestial Emperor's daughter, answered to no one. She forced her way into the Forbidden Grounds with an entourage at her back:
"What filthy mortal dares hide in the Forbidden Grounds? Bedding demon guards and getting herself pregnant?"
"Today, I'll clean house for the Demon Sovereign myself!"
She ordered her people to hack off my limbs, then tore open my belly with bare hands and ripped the demon child from my womb.
As I lay dying, Malachar arrived with the mightiest beings of the Six Realms to witness the birth of their future sovereign.
Seraphina dragged me before him and held up the infant she had tortured to death, her face bright with triumph:
"I discovered a filthy mortal whoring herself out to your demon guards. This is the bastard she was carrying!"
"I humbly beg the Demon Sovereign to find the wretch who fathered this thing and grind his bones to ash, so the dignity of the Demon Realm remains unsullied!"
——
Three full years I had carried the child. The heavens themselves had shifted with strange omens.
The movements in my womb had grown fiercer by the day, the unborn stirring with signs that its arrival was imminent.
I was lying in bed, preparing for the birth, when a commotion broke out beyond the doors.
"The Demon Sovereign keeps coming here every other day. Today, I'm going to see for myself what precious little secret he's hiding!"
"But, my lady, I've heard that the Abyssal Palace is part of the Forbidden Grounds. No one is permitted to enter without leave!"
"That's right, Seraphina. They say that when Cadmus Freewild merely wandered in here by accident, the Demon Sovereign executed him on the spot and it sparked a war between the immortals and demons. Barging in like this... isn't it a bit reckless?"
"Reckless? I am the only woman in all the Six Realms worthy of the Demon Sovereign's attention. He would never blame me."
Listening to the noise outside, I frowned. A cold sense of dread settled in my chest.
Malachar guarded me and the child with obsessive devotion.
After the incident where someone had accidentally touched my belly, he had dismissed every last soul from the Forbidden Grounds.
Proud and untamable as he was, he came here himself each day to care for me.
Cadmus Freewild had once been an honored guest, on friendly terms with the Demon Sovereign.
Yet a single drunken misstep into the Forbidden Grounds was enough for Malachar to kill him without hesitation, igniting a war between immortals and demons.
Mountains of corpses. Seas of blood.
If those people outside made it in here, another massacre was all but certain.
I hauled myself out of bed and hurried into the courtyard, hoping to warn them away before it was too late.
But the moment I opened the door, a face stared back at me. A face that looked seven-tenths like my own.
Before I could utter a word, a hand cracked across my cheek.
"Where did this wretched little servant come from, wearing my face in the Demon Sovereign's Abyssal Palace? What, are you trying to steal his favor from me?"
