“After millennia, I am finally free and it’s thanks to you, good sir,” a soft yet rigid woman’s voice spoke to Damien as he neared his death. 

“What the hell… Am I hearing things now?” Damien mused with his final breaths, clutching the wound on his waist that was caused by a bullet while holding an effigy with his blood-soaked hand. 

After more than thirty years of doing this line of work, he was finally meeting his end at the age of fifty-four. It was supposed to be just another mission, just another target to eliminate, just another item to steal or retrieve, but the ending was vastly different than usual.

He was meeting up with the broker of his clients in a public space where civilians were abundant. His clients revealed their betrayal right then and there as he was submitting the item to the broker.

A sniper had opened fire in public and hit him in the waist.

The bullet penetrated him and left him bleeding badly.

Damien managed to respond to their betrayal fast but not as fast as he liked. He killed the ones he could and ran with the item he stole for them. There were many lying in wait, other hitmen and mercenaries.

This wasn’t the first betrayal he experienced. He even saw the betrayal coming but he didn’t think they would reveal it in public and in broad daylight. He underestimated their audacity and now he was paying the price for it.

He ended up taking refuge in a narrow alley behind a large building. Knowing that he would bleed out in minutes, he surrendered himself to his fate and decided to at least find out what was so important about the item he stole for his clients to act so brazenly.

He opened the briefcase. He scoffed at the strange and stupid looking object within. A totem, he reckoned it was. An effigy? Whatever it was, he reached out his blood-soaked hand the damn thing that cost him his life.

The carvings on the effigy glowed and it was then a voice began talking to him.

“You are not hearing things, saviour of mine,” the voice replied.

Damien scoffed. “I must be in a worse state than I thought…”

“This is real, Damien. I am real.”

“Of course, you’d know my name… This is a hallucination after all.”

“This is all real, Damien, but it matters to me not whether you believe me or not. You will know, in due time. Now, you are in for some dire assistance. Since you have released me from my accursed prison, I will grant you a single wish, such as restoring you to the prime of your health. Would you like that?”

“No…”

“No? You don’t have any wish you want to be granted?”

“A wish… I do but just not what you suggest…” Damien decided to entertain this voice he was hearing from the effigy.

“Then what is your wish? Speak quickly, Damien. Once you’re dead, I can no longer grant it.”

“A fresh start would be nice… A new life away from all this shitstorm… A completely clean slate. I wish to live a life like those hundreds of rich bastards that I have killed. God, I envy them...  Even though I have killed a lot of those sons of bitches, I will admit... the way they lived their lives, thinking they have the whole world in their hands and doing anything they wished without fearing the consequences...” Damien laughed. “How nice would that be… Living like royalty… Do you know, when I was young... I actually thought being a killer and instilling fear would make me a king... How naive and foolish I was back then. If only right that stupid thinking of mine from the past... God, I'm talking to myself now... I'm really losing my nerves here.”

“Very well, Damien, and so you shall receive this wish of yours.”

Damien let out one last chuckle as his eyes closed for good and his consciousness left his body. His world fell into absolute darkness. The weight of his body began to lighten and the pain of his wound began to fade. His exhaustion was also leaving him and gradually, he started to feel vigorous and energetic, quite the opposite of what he expected of death. If anything, it did not feel like he was dying. It felt like he was recovering from a terrible illness at a very rapid pace.

When the weight of his body was halved, the pain of his wound was gone, and his exhaustion had been dispelled, he suddenly heard a thunder of voices and noise. He opened his eyes and he was surprised that he could. He expected to see a dirty brick wall but instead, he saw a huge crowd before him. As he squinted his eyes to get a closer view of the crowd, he realised the crowd wasn’t composed of humans. They were monsters… creatures… They were humanoids, some of them at least, but they weren’t humans. Their skins weren’t the colours a human was supposed to have and they have wings behind their back, horns on their head, an extra pair of arms, appendages sprouting from somewhere on their bodies, those kinds of oddities could be seen everywhere in the crowd and that was just the humanoid creatures.

As for himself, he was somehow now standing atop of an altar on the edge of a cliff. He was standing above the crowd and the crowd was chanting a word of a language he did not recognise. Though he wasn’t savvy in all languages from the earth, he did know which language was which even without knowing the meanings and these creatures were not speaking a language he was aware of having existed. Though he didn’t understand what they were saying, he knew they were chanting for him. They were worshipping him like some sort of idol. As he gazed up to the night sky that barely looked dark to him, he saw stars that did not form any of the constellations one could see from earth. The moon was red, or at least he assumed that was the moon. 

“The prince has been born!” someone bellowed in great volume behind him. The voice was firm and sharp but held a lot of elegance and femininity. 

He turned around and saw a woman of great beauty with a pair of clear amethyst eyes, prettier than any girls or ladies he had ever seen, standing before a throne in an incredibly refined and dignified posture. The woman looked to be around her mid-thirties. Her skin was incredibly tanned and it was complemented well by her waist-length lustrous magenta-coloured hair and lips. She was donned in some sort of black and gold armoured gown that wouldn’t look out of place in a ball or a battlefield. The most glaring feature of the woman wasn’t her beauty but her ears, they were long and pointy, and her fangs that were slightly showing through her lips.

“My son has been born!” cried the woman joyfully. The words took him by surprise. He nearly tripped in his unmoving steps. The voice couldn’t be referring to anyone but him. However, what surprised him the most was that the words spoken weren’t English or any language he had learned but he understood every word. 

As if those words were the trigger, his head began to hurt tremendously. He fell to his knees and clutched at his head with both of his hands. His face warped into an expression of agony as the pain only soared as time went by.

“The transference has begun,” the woman muttered with a voice that was silent but also booming.

As the pain grew more and more, a trove of knowledge and memories flooded into his brain. These memories were completely familiar and it felt like they were overriding or pushing out the memories that he had. He fought back against the torrent but the pain increased. He tossed his head back and screamed out the overwhelming pain encroaching his mind.

“Don’t fight it, my son,” the woman said. “Accept them. Only by accepting them will the pain be gone. They are yours, by right and fate,”

The pain was unlike any other kind of pain he had ever felt and he just wanted it to end. Adhering to the woman’s advice, he let the memories and knowledge flow into his brain without resisting. Already, he could feel the pain beginning to lessen.

“What is this…?” he groaned, in the language of Demons. “I-I am… the prince? My name is… Augrun.”

Instead of overriding his present memories and knowledge like he had feared, the new ones fused with the ones he already had. These new memories and knowledge were all about the circumstances of his birth and rebirth. He had truly died and he had been reincarnated into a Demon and a Prince, a Demon Prince. He had no father, only a mother, Nephilia. That was who the woman in front of her was, his sole birth parent. She gave birth to him by amassing a great deal of power over the course of hundreds of years. He was initially given birth inside of an egg. The egg slowly grew to the appropriate size over twenty years of continuous fertilisation. He broke free of the egg on this very night, the first night of the crimson moon. This place was the Abyss Valley, a den of Demons, a region located in the west of this strange new world where magic, monsters, heroes, and various other fantasy elements existed. This was truly no longer earth.

When the storm in his mind had settled, the pain dispersed and the aching stopped. A wave of relief washed over him. He heaved a huge sigh as he slowly stood to his feet with his back straightened. The crowd had turned silent while he was going through all that suffering. They were all bearing

“Augrun?” the woman, his mother, Nephilia, called out to him. 

Damien, now Augrun, languidly turned her way.

“Do you know who I am?” Nephilia asked.

“I do, mother.”

She beamed into a smile of great joy and relief. “Yes, I am your mother, Augrun. Do you know who you are?”

Augrun nodded. “I am the prince, Prince Augrun.”

The crowd below, the Demons, erupted into a thunderous cheer and a jubilant clamour. “Prince! Prince! Prince!” was what they had all been shouting.

This was real… Augrun told himself. This was all real. He wasn’t just dreaming a lucid dream. The effigy’s voice was real. It granted his wish, or did it? Augrun couldn’t help but wonder. What if there was a catch? There was always one. Too good to be true, words to live by, especially for his former line of work. Nevertheless, this was truly a fresh start. A clean slate. Whatever the catch was underneath this wish of his, he would surely learn of it in due time and he would rather enjoy it as much as he can before the catch presents itself, if there was indeed a catch. There was also the possibility, albeit small, that the effigy truly granted him his wish without any catch. Regardless, he had his wish. He wasn’t even the same race as he was before. He was reincarnated as a whole new individual that had just been born. Or rather, hatched from an egg but the Demon Queen was bellowing it as “born”, Augrun just rolled with it. Though he had just been born, he wasn’t a toddler. Just from touching himself and looking at his own body, he could tell his appearance was around the age of a young adult.

Conveniently, there was a body-length mirror nearby, most likely prepared by his mother of this life. From the mirror, he realised something about himself that he should have realised from the beginning but didn’t due to the shock of the entirely new environment he was in. He was naked. Nephilia tittered when he came to that realisation and gestured for the Demon maids to give him garments. Going by the blush of the human-looking Demon maids, being naked was not commonplace in the culture of Demons either. After getting himself dressed in garments that could only be described as princely, Augrun looked at himself in the mirror. He could see that he was truly around the age of a young adult. He had lost most of the muscles he had when he was Damien but contrary to that, he felt stronger than he was. As for his height, he couldn’t judge it properly but he looked tall, taller than the maids and servants near him. His mother shared his height, which mildly astounded him. Unlike his mother, his skin wasn’t tanned but neither was it fair. His hair was short and shared the colour of dark red with his eyes. He had a short pair of horns jutting out from his forehead and his ears were long and pointy like his mother and the maid and the servants. 

“Is there something wrong, my child?” his mother asked.

“Nothing’s wrong, mother. It’s just… I look… a lot like you.”

The maids and the servants were blushing from hearing that line but Augrun wasn’t. It was the truth. He imagined this was how his mother would look if she was a man. He was devilishly handsome. If he went back to earth, he would surely become a top model in a short amount of time.

Nephilia chuckled gleefully. “Of course, you do, my child. You are my son after all. I’ll be suspicious if you looked like anyone else. So, how are you feeling? Do you still feel any pain or discomfort anywhere on your body?”

“No, mother,” Augrun answered truthfully. There was a slight pause in between his words. It felt weird for him to be calling the woman in front of him, who he just met, as “mother”. But not calling her “mother” would be weird for everyone else. Demons were rarely born as infants or toddlers. They were straight away adults the moment they were born. It really reminded Augrun that he was no longer in the world that he had known for fifty years and more. Though a lot of common sense was shared with humans, the Demons did have a lot of their own unique logic and common sense. And it was something that he knew he would need a lot of time to adjust to. He had a mother in his past life and he loved her dearly. She had passed away just ten years ago due to old age, something he was incredibly thankful for.

“Truly, Augrun?” The Demon Queen peered at him with her eyes glowing.

“Yes, mother.” Though he didn’t know what it was called, he knew those glowing eyes meant she was using magic to discern whether he was telling the truth.

“Splendid,” the Demon Queen exclaimed. “Since you are in good health, we can begin the rite immediately.”

Augrun felt a headache coming at the mention of the rite. He knew what it was as it was one of the pieces of knowledge he was imparted. The rite was essentially a test for newborn Demons to ascertain the level of their strength. While it was optional for all other Demons, it was mandatory for the Demon Prince, especially the one who would be succeeding the throne in the future. Augrun had the memories of the past rites partook by the previous Demons. Through these memories, he knew the rite was not something he could breeze through. 

Following behind his mother, the queen, and the maidservants, they came to an arena with a large round stone stage that was engraved with a myriad of runes on the surface and carved murals on the side. The Demons had gathered around the arena before Augrun had even arrived. Now that he had a much closer look at his subjects, he could truly appreciate how diverse the Demons were. They literally came in all shapes and sizes. He even recognised a few of these Demons as they looked like orcs, goblins, ogres, werewolves, and many more, though they were more hideous than how they were portrayed in the media of his former world.

“You know what to do, I trust?” the queen asked.

“I do, mother,” Augrun answered and stepped onto the stage.

“Good luck, Your Highness,” muttered one of the maids in a voice that was so soft and could barely be heard over all the cheers and clamour but Augrun caught it. It came from the stoic-looking maid with pink hair and curved horns but Augrun said nothing of it and simply acted like he didn’t hear anything.

The crowds’ cheer and clamour became even louder once Augrun was inside the ring. He looked around him, taking in the view. Everything still felt so surreal but it was definitely real. He was sure of that after experiencing that degree of pain with the memories and knowledge surging into his mind. As a hitman, pain was both an enemy and an ally. Pain lets you know if you’re alive or if you’re stuck in a dream or hallucination. Pain was one’s grasp on reality. But of course, too much pain would also lead to detachment from reality. He was feeling a large array of emotions but fear was not one of them. He didn’t have the constant need to look behind his shoulders every once in a while. He didn’t have the need to gauge the ulterior motives of everyone he spoke to, not that he had spoken to anyone but the Demon Queen, though the point still stood. He was the Prince and this was his dominion. He knew it in his heart that he was, at long last, safe, relatively. What he was about to face in this rite, was nothing compared to what he had experienced for the past thirty years and more of his old life. There won't be a sniper taking aim at him, that was for certain.

Augrun’s nails grew into claws at his will and that was the least he could do, for now. He had to admit, he was excited and extremely eager to test out everything that he could do as a Demon Prince but he would have to wait. He would have to go through this rite first. He drew a single tiny drop of blood from his fingers, finding it to be red, and let it drip onto the centre of the stage. The runes absorbed his blood and responded with a dazzling red glow. From a yard away in front of him, the small drop of blood turned into a large puddle. From the puddle, something was emerging from it as if it was climbing out of a pit. The thing that climbed out of the puddle was a humanoid. Its skin was pale with a slight shade of grey. It was completely hairless and also naked. It didn’t have a breeding organ. It had thews. Its eyes were completely black. Its pointy ears were longer than Augrun’s. Its mouth was wide and it spanned nearly a hundred-eighty as it opened its mouth and screeched.

The creature in front of him was his trial. If he couldn’t defeat it, his status would be mocked and scorned. He had to win but that was easier said than done. The creature was an Ashen Vampire, an ancient subspecies of the Vampires that had gone extinct after being completely wiped out by the current Demon Queen five hundred years ago. Of course, the Ashen Vampire before Augrun was only a pale imitation, a temporary manifestation of the rite’s will. The rite deemed this creature to be the most appropriate measure of Augrun’s strength. 

The audience’s cheers and clamour were dying down at the appearance of the Ashen Vampire. A lot of the Demons snuck a glance at the Demon Queen to see her reaction but they saw only a smile on Her Majesty, a smile of amusement and anticipation.

There was little information about the Ashen Vampire among the knowledge and memories he was imparted. He could not find any details regarding the weakness or vulnerability of the Ashen Vampire. The absence of such information felt almost deliberate. No, Augrun was sure it was deliberate. He was given only the basic knowledge and memories of the basic. He was spoonfed but the spoon was neither gold nor silver. Figuring out the how was also part of the rite and most likely, also the Demon Queen's intention. He had no weapons on him but as a Demon, he didn’t need one. A Demon's body itself could already be considered a weapon with its extraordinary durability and strength. Also, Augrun still had memories of the martial arts he learned in his past life. Just as he was about to take the first step, the Vampire disappeared from his view.

Before he could look around, a fist crashed into his face from beside him. There was so much force packed into that punch and he was sent tumbling and sprawling across the stage, nearly falling off but he stopped right at the edge.

The audience uttered a loud gasp in tandem. The smile of the Demon Queen had also disappeared.

“Surreal, my ass,” he groaned, wincing as he tried to get up. “This is real. This is definitely real. But… this isn’t so bad.” Despite that powerful punch that caught him square across the cheek, he still felt no fear. There was only zeal and anticipation. His second life had only just begun.