Hey there!
Just wanted say a few things and touch base with you before you dove into Demon Anomaly System. Go ahead and scroll past if you're impatient, no worries!
So to start, this story hit me completely out of nowhere one day and sank its teeth in. I didn't ask for it. I was busy, tired, writing too much already, but it showed up anyway. And the damn thing wouldn't leave. It grew, changed, kept me up at night, and eventually turned into something I'm really proud of.
I've already finished the first volume. And now I'm finally sharing it.
This is a story about clawing your way up from nothing. About pain, hunger, violence, and the will to keep going anyway. I'll be honest, I'm just a dad and a husband trying to make it as a writer before my body breaks down completely. Turning forty-one this year...
So if you're here reading this, I appreciate the hell out of you.
Feedback? Give it to me. Love it, hate it, want more of something, sick of something else? Let me know. I want this story to be as much yours as it is mine. I'll do my best to reply to every comment. Every bit of support helps more than you know.
So if you're still here, and didn't scroll past, or even if you did... thanks for giving this little demon a chance.
– Valdene Patriarch
Chapter 1: Mawspawn
Pain. Something bit again.
The creature didn't know what attacked it, just teeth and heat. Something squirming in the dark. It couldn't see what it was, couldn't see anything. The world had no light, no direction, only agony.
Things moved around the creature, dragging it along. It couldn't tell if it was crawling or being pulled. Limbs scraped across stone. Skin peeled off in strips, but the creature didn't cry out. It couldn't. Its throat was raw and bloody from already screaming too much.
Another bite. Deeper this time. The creature lashed out, fingers catching something soft. It didn't think, just ripped. Wet sounds followed. Then something screamed.
The prey fought back, but not for long. The first meal.
Everything was hunger down here. Hunger and hate. Nothing spoke. Nothing thought. Just claws, fangs, and the scent of blood.
And somehow, the thing was still alive.
Heat spread through its gut as it ate. The warmth pulsed outward. Alive and urgent. Feed. That was all. The only instinct.
Pain shot through the creature's skull as the fire in its stomach climbed higher. Flame bloomed behind the eyes, sharp and sudden. It didn't know what it meant. But sight burned open. Their race's first unique gift:
Dark Vision.
All around, things writhed. Claws, teeth, and slime. A pit of mouths gnawing at each other. No space. Nothing but ripping. A swarm of creatures just like it.
The ground wasn't stone, no dirt or plants. Beneath the mass of limbs and teeth, something soft gave way. Flesh. Warm and wet between their fingers. They tore deeper. Bit harder.
Claws raked across the creature's back. It didn't flinch. Not enough pain to matter. Hunger drowned everything else.
The mindless thing didn't know what it was, and it didn't care. Just one of billions. Born crawling and starving. Filth among filth. The bottom of Hell.
Imps.
They were a natural function of the Maw, Hell's first layer.
Two feet tall if they stood up straight. They didn't. Most skittered like dogs with broken spines, hunched and twitching. Leathery skin, cracked and dripping. Eyes like dying coals. Teeth like rusted nails jammed into black gums.
They didn't crawl from mothers. Had no fathers. They festered. Birthed from rot, hatred, and the leftover sludge of broken souls. No past. No purpose. Just vermin.
They fought, fed, and died. That was the cycle. Spawn. Starve. Death. Not one ever made it past that. No thoughts. No words. Just screeches and biting.
Demons kept them like rats. Caged them. Burned them. Used them for sacrifice, sport, or scraps. Didn't even call them demonkin. Just meat that moved.
And the worst part?
They'd earned that reputation. Every last one. Since the dawn of time, not a single Imp had evolved. Not one.
They were filth. Functionally dead. A decayed bloodline.
But this one didn't care, none of them did. They just fed and tried to survive.
Odd, though. The imp should've already died. A day was long enough, but this one still ate. Still fought and bled.
The warmth in its gut had started to hurt. Worse than the claws. Worse than the teeth.
It wasn't just heat, it was movement. Like something alive was squirming inside it. Gnawing at the creatures insides with serrated teeth. Every breath made it twist. Every heartbeat pulled it tighter.
It felt like hot razors being dragged through its intestines. Erratic, jerking, and deliberate.
Biting through the arm of another imp clawing at its face, neither noticed the mound beneath them shift. Skin pulled tight. Stretched thin. Underneath, something boiled. A pocket of blood and pus began to rise, lifting them both up. The swarm around them was forced to scatter, scrambling to tear into the swelling mass.
Then pain, sharp and deep, ripped through its tail. The other imp had bitten down.
Rage. Pain.
Feed.
The imp leapt on top of its attacker just as the boil burst beneath them.
A jet of hot filth exploded, painting the pit in pus and steam. A mushroom cloud of guts and stink. Thousands of imps screamed as they melted under the spray.
Then...something new. It didn't know what to call it. But it felt something. Wind. Lift. Air pulling at its skin as the blast hurled it through the black sky.
The other imp beneath had taken the full brunt, dissolved into scraps clinging to its claws.
The surviving wretch started thrashing, groping, its only thought was food. No instinct to brace. No thought of falling.
Pain erupted as it crashed down, slamming into a mound of rising flesh. Veins tangled around its limbs, slowing the slide as it skidded across the flesh field.
Silence hit. No screeching. No biting. No heat or stink or blood spray.
Just stillness as it lay there, limbs twitching. Chest heaving. Every part of it burned.
But it was quiet. For the first time since waking.
It didn't last.
The imp sprang to its feet, body torn with agony, but instinct overrode the pain as the creature limped toward the spot it had landed. The smell of blood leaking from ruptured veins sent bile through its gut.
It dove in. One claw ripped. The other, broken and mangled, flailed uselessly, slamming again and again. Teeth bit down. The warmth slowly returned, the ache in its limbs beginning to dull.
It was alone, having fallen into a pocket of stillness, sheltered, surrounded on all sides by forests of writhing intestines full of acidic fluids. Walls of twitching gut curled upward, shielding the space from the chaos outside.
No swarm. No claws dragging it away. No teeth snapping at its throat. Just meat.
Feeding without restraint. Without contest.
Eventually, the other claw healed and started to move again, ripping and tearing. But the tumor grew faster than it could eat, the mound swelling beneath it.
The imp rose with it. A lone creature, still half-crippled, atop a growing mountain of flesh.
If a higher demon had passed just then, no matter its age or station, it would've seen something it had never seen before.
A lone imp. Alive. Gorging to its black heart's content.
But no demon came. No rival or threat.
Only hunger.
And pain.
---
Minutes? Hours? Days? It didn't know. All it knew was the food was gone. And it needed more.
The mound of flesh had already rotted past consumption, nothing left now but clumps of ash and bone.
The Imp raised its gore-covered face, drawing in a long, slow breath. Hot steam curled between its teeth.
Something had changed.
The warmth. It wasn't just fuel anymore. It had done something.
For the first time, the imp looked around, not snapping, not flinching. Not just reacting.
It looked.
The imp didn't know what that meant. Didn't know how to understand what it was doing. Or what it was seeing.
The Maw stretched out in all directions, if direction meant anything here. Just pits and folds, bones jutting out of meat, foul smoke hissing through cuts of tissue.
Flesh pulsed everywhere. Hair grew from the cracks. The sky hung low, black and wet, like old oil. Somewhere far off, something exploded. Elsewhere, something screamed.
The ground shifted as it stood. Not just under it, everywhere. The Maw never stopped moving. It birthed, broke, and swallowed its spawn without warning. No patterns. No safety.
This place didn't punish. It processed.
The imp didn't understand any of that. Just that it was hungry again.
Then...
A sound. Not a bite. Not a scream of pain, or of flesh splitting. Something else.
It froze as it sounded again. The confused thing had no reference to know, but the noise felt different. The noise shook something, something deep. Something new.
Curiosity. It had no word for it, but it felt it anyway. Like hunger, but pulled in a different way.
The imp dropped low and began to skitter forward, darting between folds of hanging flesh, squeezing through clumps of hair slick with pus. It moved without sound, without hesitation.
Along the way, it passed twitching mounds that pulsed in time with no heartbeat. Vents in the ground steamed and hissed. A wall of meat shivered nearby, covered in open, blinking eyes.
The creature scrambled up a ridge, its claws slipping across wet tissue. It slid over the surface of a tumor that screamed as it passed, then came to a stop.
There.
Another Imp.
But different.
Standing straighter than it should. Arms thicker. Body broader. Holding something... a club. Bone and rust wrapped in tendon.
It wasn't feeding, but was facing something. A beast the imp didn't know.
But the name for it came, unspoken, born from instinct and fear.
Carrion Hound.