Chapter 415: A True Demon (1)
- Sansa Valerion’s POV -
At first, there was only blood.
How foolish I was to think I had won against Adriana so easily.
It was laughable how she had used my own strategy against me, exploiting the moment I let my guard down, foolishly believing I had already claimed victory.
Her attack was precise .. devastatingly so. There was nothing I could have done to stop it.
My heart was destroyed, along with several other vital organs.
As a result, I lost a tremendous amount of blood, and my consciousness was cast into darkness.
To be honest, I truly believed it was the end. No human could survive such catastrophic damage.
But for some reason, as I slowly sank into that darkness, I could feel the threads tying me to life had not yet been severed.
The deeper I drifted into unconsciousness, the more the darkness felt like a sticky liquid crawling over my skin, clinging to me desperately.
Maybe I was hallucinating .. experiencing my final moments before being dragged somewhere else by the hands of death.
I didn’t have many regrets. I was just a human girl who should have died long ago, only surviving thanks to the efforts of others.
Until now, I thought I had to live to honor their sacrifices...
Uncle Oliver, and Frey...
But I lost. I was defeated by Adriana.
It was pathetic, but I gave everything I had in that battle.
I replicated Seris’ defensive stance, used the shadows even though they refused to submit fully to my control, and came up with the most flawless strategy my mind could conceive.
Yet still, death was the final outcome that awaited me.
If only I could wield my power like that demon did, I would have defeated Adriana easily.
I saw what those shadows were capable of when I fought Frey and Oliver that day. I witnessed their overwhelming power.
But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t replicate it. And as a result, my life ended here, in the darkness.
But as I floated peacefully in this place, a bitter sensation told me I wasn’t alone.
When I opened my eyes, at first, I couldn’t see anything.
But soon, I adjusted to the darkness, and I began to see through its depths.
Here, in this sea of shadows, despite the sticky aura clinging to my skin, I felt at peace, finally at rest.
It was as if I had returned to where I truly belonged.
If death was this peaceful and gentle, then maybe I wouldn’t mind dying this way.
I remained there for what felt like an eternity, losing all sense of time.
But as I lingered in that place, the shadows began to coil more tightly around me, as if they were toying with my soul, keeping me trapped.
And when the pressure reached its peak ..
I finally saw him.
In truth, he had been floating there all along, but for some reason, I hadn’t noticed.
The place was so dark that I couldn’t make out his features, but the long horns adorning his head like a crown were unmistakable, leaving me with only one conclusion.
"A demon..."
When our eyes met, I couldn’t help but remember the entity that once took over my body.
My expression darkened instinctively.
’Is he going to take control of my body again?’
As if reading my mind, the demon burst into laughter, his body trembling with amusement.
"No, I won’t take over your body."
His voice was terrifying, rough and deep—exactly as I imagined a demon’s voice would be.
But more importantly... he had read my thoughts.
"What’s going to happen to me now?"
I had no choice but to ask. I couldn’t do anything else in this place.
I was completely at his mercy.
But the demon simply shook his head.
"I could answer that, but there’s something important you need to understand first."
He paused for a moment of silence.
Then, his violet eyes glowed as he smiled.
"In this dark place, there is only one demon, and that demon is you, Sansa Valerion."
Hearing that...
All I could do was stare at him, unable to process what he had just said.
"Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a real demon. I’m just a fragment of your mind... Kikikiki, you really are insane, Sansa Valerion."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Frowning, I instinctively backed away from the wretched creature.
"You’re the same entity that once tried to take over my body, and now you’re claiming you’re just a figment of my imagination? Who exactly do you think you’re fooling?"
There was no way I could believe anything this thing said. And once again, as if reading my thoughts ..
The demon sighed in irritation...
"There is no such thing, Sansa. The will inside the Demon Seed was destroyed long ago by Frey Starlight."
Circling me, the demon spoke with the same unsettling smile.
"But even though he killed the will trapped inside the Seed, he failed to destroy the Seed itself. That Seed holds a fragment of a far greater power. Some pitiful holy light alone isn’t enough to erase it."
Even though the Demon Seed inside my body was nothing but a failed prototype...
It didn’t change the fact that it still contained a sliver of the King’s shadow power.
"The Seed remained within you, allowing you to continue using your powers. But your human side... your humanity was holding that power back."
With a wide grin, the demon gazed at my body as though I were some rare anomaly waiting to be studied.
"My human side held my power back?" I asked, trying to comprehend his words, and he nodded.
"Exactly. That’s why you couldn’t properly use your abilities."
Without my knowledge, a war had been waging inside my body all along ... between my human side, everything that made me who I was, and the demonic Seed that had taken root deep within.
In other words, as long as I remained human, I would never be able to control that power.
Confirming my thoughts, the demon nodded with a smile.
"But that human side... it’s dead now."
Pointing toward the harsh truth, a sudden realization struck me.
"What do you mean?"
Am I dead? Alive? Or something in between?
What exactly happened to me?
The demon folded his hands, taking a moment before answering.
"The human Sansa is dead. There’s no doubt about it."
"Then what am I?!"
With a long sigh, clearly annoyed that he had to explain further, that thing finally answered me.
"Your human side died the moment your heart was destroyed. But instead of your heart, another organ within your body took over the task of keeping you alive, changing your entire body’s structure in the process. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?"
With that same eerie smile, he asked .. and I realized at once what he meant.
"The Demon Seed..."
"Exactly."
He gestured toward the sea of shadows we were floating in.
"The Seed became your new heart, weaving its threads throughout your body and rebuilding it from the ground up. You’re now something else entirely, capable of wielding the power sealed within it."
"Your blood won’t be red anymore .. it’ll be black and corrupted. Your body won’t remain as it was. You’ll become something else entirely. Something you despise. In other words... a demon."
Pointing his thin finger at me, he said it again:
"You are the only demon here, Sansa Valerion."
"A complete demon. A creature that feeds on life itself, a wicked being who revels in killing, torturing, and destroying. That is what you will become."
Hearing those words...
I felt my body tremble with each syllable he spoke. But there was no heartbeat in my chest anymore, confirming what I feared most.
The human Sansa was dead.
All that remained now was the demon.
I couldn’t accept that truth. Yet somehow...
Deep down, I knew everything he said was true.
Even as we spoke in this dark place, I could feel that black substance flowing through my body.
I had to accept the truth.
That my human side had already died.
And that led me to ask the question that slipped from my lips without thought:
"What will happen to me now?"
To that, the demon shrugged.
"I don’t know. As I said before... Frey Starlight somehow killed the will inside the Seed, and the human Sansa died in that battle... yet here you are, speaking with me. Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe it means you’ll be the one in control."
It was impossible to tell what the future held. But one thing was clear:
"Whether it’s you or the demon, whoever wakes up in that body won’t be the same person anymore. Sansa Valerion is dead. What lives on will be a mere fragment of her... driven by a violent desire to kill and destroy."
That’s what it meant to live as a demon.
A malicious creature born only to bring death and ruin wherever it walked.
Unlike the hybrid humans allied with the Ultras...
I would become a full demon.
No longer tied to humanity in any way.
Fully aware of all that, I found myself trembling violently as I tried to imagine what would happen next.
Terrified that my hands would commit atrocities far beyond redemption.
I feared life more than I feared death.
And then, in that moment...
As if mocking me ..
The current of darkness dragged me away, signaling that the time had come to lower the curtain on the human who had stumbled through the shadows of her life...
And shine the spotlight on the demon destined to stumble through a reality darker than darkness itself.
Just like that, I was swept away from reality, while that demon kept laughing until the very end.