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Chapter 4: The Weight of Shadows
The memory came uninvited, unspooling in Ace's mind like smoke curling from a dying fire.
He remembered the first time he opened his eyes.
The sky above him was not blue, not endless, not soft the way Ari's was,it was cracked and bleeding with red light, stitched together with streaks of black lightning that never ceased. His world was not quiet; it thundered with roars, the clash of steel, the cries of creatures who lived only to fight and devour.
And yet he had smiled.
He remembered being small, running barefoot through obsidian sand, chasing shadows with a laugh that echoed off caverned walls. His horns had been tiny then, no more than nubs curling from his head, and he would bump them against rocks and laugh when it hurt. Other children hissed, clawed, and bared teeth like beasts, but Ace had only wanted to play.
"Too soft," his father used to mutter. A towering demon with jagged horns and ash for eyes, he looked at Ace as if he were a cracked weapon. "He smiles too much. He will not last."
But his mother, her voice lingered even now, faint and warm in his memory ,she would kneel to cup his face. "Let him smile while he can," she whispered. "The world will take it soon enough."
And it did.
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By the time his horns had grown long and sharp, Ace had begun to understand what it meant to be a demon. Mercy was weakness. Compassion was rot. The strong devoured the weak, and those who hesitated got burned.
He remembered training grounds carved from volcanic stone, the air choked with smoke, children pitted against each other while the elders watched. He had fought, clumsy at first, his laughter gone. Each fall drove another splinter of warmth out of him. Each victory demanded he killed, and though he had hesitated the first time, by the third, his hands no longer trembled.
He was still different, though. Smarter. Quieter. While the others snarled and rushed headlong into battle, Ace learned to wait, to read, to strike where it mattered most. His mind was sharper than his blade, and the elders noticed.
"Clever," they hissed. "But still soft. His eyes look away from the kill too quickly."
And perhaps they were right. He began to feel the coldness creep in, but somewhere, deep down, the child who had once laughed in obsidian sands still stirred, restless, refusing to die.
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The turning point came when he was nearly grown.
He remembered the flames that night, the red glow against black skies, the crowd gathered in the pit. A human had been dragged down by a wanderer, lost through some tear between the worlds. Small, fragile and terrified.
The crowd demanded blood. The human's life was meant as a sport, a test of cruelty for the young.
Ace had stood there, the fire painting his skin in flickering crimson. The human's eyes had met his,wide, pleading, trembling. Something stirred in him then, something dangerous. He saw Ari's eyes in that memory now, though she had not yet existed in his world. But Innocent. There was fear and hope
He remembered lowering his blade.
The gasps,the snarls,the silence that followed.
"I will not kill," he had said, voice calm, though his heart pounded like a war drum. "This is no battle. This is slaughter."
The blow came instantly, not from the human, but from behind. His father's strike hurled him to his knees, horned hand gripping his throat.
"Then you are no son of mine," the older demon roared, his voice shaking the pit.
The punishment was swift,no trial, no plea. Mercy had no place among demons.
Lucifer himself had come, vast and terrible, wings blotting out the red sky. His voice had cracked the earth.
"Let the boy learn the cost of weakness."
Ace remembered the fire that wrapped him then, the searing pain of exile, his skin splitting with light. He fell, not through earth but through worlds, through shadows and flame until there was nothing left but silence.
And when he woke, the silence had not been Hell's, but Ari's house.
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The memory was embedded in him. Ace's chest rose and fell slowly as he sat in the dim hallway, the quiet of Ari's world pressing in. It was so different here,no roars, no flames, no endless hunger. Only dust, echoes, and the faint patter of small feet.
"Why are you frowning?"
Her voice broke through the haze. Ari had padded in, her oversized nightgown trailing behind her like a blanket. She tilted her head, green eyes wide, pink hair falling over her face. She squinted up at him, then reached out boldly to poke his cheek with a small finger.
"You look sad," she declared.
Ace blinked, the fire of memory dimming. "I was… remembering."
"Remembering what?" she pressed, bouncing on her toes.
For a moment, he said nothing. The weight of centuries pressed against his chest, heavy and dark. How could he explain a world of fire and cruelty to a child who thought sweets and ice were meals?
"Another place," he said at last, with his voice low.
"Was it fun?"
The question startled him. For the briefest moment, he remembered laughter ,running barefoot, horns still small, his mother's gentle voice.
"…Once," he admitted.
Ari's grin returned. She climbed onto the chair beside him, curling her legs underneath her. "Then you can remember the fun parts. I do that too. Like… when Mama baked me cakes. I don't think about the sad parts. Only the nice ones."
Ace stared at her, words caught in his throat. A child, telling a demon how to carry on with his past.
He almost laughed. Almost.....
Instead, he leaned back, the shadows flickering softly across his horns.
"Perhaps," he murmured.
And for the first time in centuries, the memory of fire did not feel quite so heavyfor him...
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