"Wake up, sleepyhead!"
I didn't even open my eyes before processing that nobody on this site was so obnoxious and loud at what couldn't possibly be later than 5AM.
"Kaelis," I managed to squeeze out of my throat, my tiredness still evident from how busy I had been the night before. "What on earth do you want?"
"Today's the big day, boss!" I felt my leg slowly but surely shift. Then not so slowly. And then I was flung into the tent wall. Great.
"What do you mea—" I started, increasingly ready to fight Kaelis for her nonsense. "Ah. Damn. Today actually is the big day, huh."
Woohoo, we're fighting the literal embodiment of all evil and sorrow in the world today, how jolly!
Is what I would say if I was out of my goddamn mind.
Demon King. Some poor, poor bastard was going to have to deal with that today.
Did I mention that my name is 'poor, poor bastard'?
Preventing me from mentally wailing on myself for any longer, Kaelis effectively picked me up by the legs, which was mildly impressive for the fact she did it without me noticing, and then walked me outside. Upside down. Half asleep.
Deeply disrespectful, but honestly, I had gotten too used to it to care.
The others didn't even attempt to defend me, my honour, or my dignity.
"I see you've acquired a new accessory." Volund, resident dwarf, and the supposed-to-be actual blacksmith, who decides that spending 80% of the time who-knows-where is appropriate, tried to reason the fact that I had been not-so-subtlely shifted from being held by my ankles upside down to being draped over her shoulder. Backwards. Not even draped over her shoulder the right was round, so I looked stiff and unbendy. Why? Because my bones, as a 'measly' human, don't bend that way.
Lysandrias doubled over in laughter, before realising that as a dragon, there is some baseline level of decorum.
"Obviously a bat to thunk people with. What else would we do with him? He's so thick and ignor—" Before Lysandrias could even finish it, I physically vanished from Kaelis's grip, Kaelis's eyes widening as she failed to process where I was, and manifested infront of Lysandrias to punch her.
Unfortunately, as the entire party was used to... well, the entire party, I was parried by an already-set-up defensive spell.
"So, ignoring the treason against the monarch—"
"You aren't a monarch." I cut Lysandrias off, not even allowing her to finish her sentence in peace as I pouted.
"I'm close enough, and as I was saying, ignoring the treason, are you going to do anything about the forest? That's more forest missing than I'd like to explain to the royal family after we kill the Demon King, and I don't think saying 'We needed sawdust' is going to work anymore."
"You deal with it, 'monarch.'" If there's anything in life I will always enjoy, it will always be using Lysandrias's words against her.
The thing I don't enjoy, however, is what comes next after Lysandrias's dysfunctional ego comes into play.
"Ow!" I shouted as my arm suddenly crumpled into what can only be described as... a shape.
I then had to spend a few moments pathetically healing my arm as I muttered words that I don't want to repeat.
"Okay, firstly, I'm not having that—" I turned back to Lysandrias. Let me correct myself. Where Lysandrias had been, only to find her missing.
As per usual, I looked upwards.
And there, a tiny dot in the distance, was the unmistakeable sight of a petty, ego-filled dragon.
"Really?" I shouted upwards, knowing that she could hear me. Of course, she pretended that because of the distance she couldnt.
"Hup." I crouched down, before rocketing off the ground to try and reach her. Obviously, I failed, but in the air, I reached down to my scabbard, unsheathing my sword and sending a slash towards her.
"Count me on all the fun!" Kaelis, the harbinger of all things obnoxious, bellowed at us.
"No!" Lysandrias, me, and Volund shouted in sync.
"No." Isra, ever so composed, stated before muttering 'Rime.'
Unlike last time, the spell was slightly more intricate, and formed a barrier over the camp to prevent Kaelis from getting involved.
Above me, Lysandrias was busy healing her half-missing arm, and shouting obscenities. How vulgar.
As I fell, I hit the weird ice-like barrier, and instead of snapping my spine, I kind of just... bounced.
Ah. That's why the spell was more intricate. Bouncy on the outside, solid on the inside.
"Can we go?" Isra asked. It was seemingly soft-spoken, but me, Lysandrias, Volund, and Kaelis stopped in our tracks. She never asked a question in that tone unless our lives were going to suddenly get much, much more complicated.
"Right." I muttered, the adrenaline wearing off as I realised how immature what I had just done was. I'm an adult now. Which yes, is younger than all of the other guys. Actually, yeah! I'm not at fault. As the junior, immature budding young man, they should be more composed.
I decided to give up on trying to mentally justify what didn't actually need mentally justifying.
"Let's just kill the guy and get this all over with, I'm tired of being outside the city."
***
An awkward amount of hours later, most of which spent bickering incessantly, we arrived at the castle. Pitch black, edgy, excessive. All of us sighed simultaneously as we did.
"What, is the Demon King like 14? This doesn't even look cool, it just looks impractical." Lysandrias muttered, vocalising what all of us were thinking—excluding maybe Isra, I never know what she's thinking.
"14? I'm saying 12, tops." I started laughing before a loud bang stopped me.
They had started fighting in full, huh?
All five of us glanced down, looking towards the distance where the rest of the Vanguard had begun fighting with the demonic generals and their legions.
They even looked like they were winning, which, for a literal war, was pretty impressive this early on.
Must be fun, not having to fight the literal devil.
A single step. One single step stripped all of the humour that had been hovering in the air.
It had started.
"Give up." The voice echoed, heavily layered, vibrating with the mechanical, hollow grind of an enchanted war-helm. It sounded less like a person and more like an iron portcullis slamming shut.
"You give up," I spat back, rolling my shoulders and raising Astrum, refusing to let the bastard have the last word.
A strange, unnatural pause stretched between us. For a fraction of a second, the heavy, suffocating pressure wavered—like a singer missing their cue.
"...No. You give up," the voice rasped back.
The cadence was completely wrong. The words were flat, carrying the faint, defensive petulance of someone who had completely run out of prepared monologues. It sounded less like an immortal tyrant demanding fealty and more like a cornered kid who had spent all morning practicing their tough-guy lines in a mirror, only to get flustered by the opening insult.
Then, so quiet it was nearly drowned out by the wind:
"...Just leave. Please."
I blinked. Behind me, Kaelis paused mid-growl, her ears pinning flat in genuine, bewildered confusion.
Did the literal devil just try to schoolyard-bicker with me? Did he just say please?
"We aren't doing this." Isra sighed, and suddenly, an effective armada of spirits manifested behind her.
So did she never have to chant or what? Could spiritualists even summon spirits without chanting? Then why has she been chanting all this time? To look cool?
There was no time to question it. The opening was there.
I dragged my sword back up from the floor where it had drooped towards as I tried to parse whatever was going on, and my flung my arms forward, my fingers fused to the hilt by sheer, jagged determination.
Masked by Isra's blinding, iridescent storm, I crossed the room in a blur of displaced air.
The Demon King raised a hand—not with the sharp, ruthless command of an executioner, but in an awkward, desperate flinch to cover the eyes. A barrier of roiling black mana snapped into place a fraction of a second too late.
Astrum bit deep.
The edge cleaved straight through the dark aegis, biting through the jagged, towering black steel of the left gauntlet. The metal split, and the enchantment shattered with a sound like ringing glass, peeling away the heavy, spiked iron plating like dried bark.
The blade cut flesh.
A sharp, stifled gasp tore through the helm—high-pitched, choked with pain, and utterly, horrifyingly young.
I barely processed the sound. I followed through on the momentum, ready to sever the limb entirely, but my eyes locked onto what the shattered armor had exposed.
Pale skin. Slender, delicate bone. A wrist so narrow, so terribly frail, that my own calloused fingers could have wrapped around it twice over. Blood welled from the cut—crimson at the core, instantly sizzling into black smoke as the suit's enchantments tried to smother it from wrist to palm.
What...
That wasn't the arm of a monster. It wasn't the hardened, weathered limb of an immortal tyrant.
It was the arm of a kid.
My brain stalled. My grip on Astrum faltered by a microscopic margin.
The Demon King looked down at the bleeding arm, then up at me through the shadowed visor of the helm. A single, shuddering breath escaped the iron.
Then, before I could ask a single question, the world ran out of time.
***
Air hit my throat like crushed glass.
My lungs hitched violently, snapping inward in a dry, rattling spasm as my back arched off a mattress that felt far too soft, far too real.
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't fucking breathe.
My vision was completely blown out—a fractured mosaic of blinding white ceiling tiles and spinning grey shadows that refused to resolve. A high-pitched, deafening whistle tore through the marrow of my skull, drowning out the sound of my own voice as a ragged, choked gasp tore past my teeth.
A kid.
The image was seared into the back of my retinas in scorched, blinding crimson. It wasn't fading. It wasn't dissolving like the dream. It was sitting right behind my eyes, pulsing with every frantic, terrified beat of my heart.
Slender bone. Pale skin. A wrist so thin I could've have snapped it with two fingers.
Nausea surged from the pit of my stomach, violent and acidic. I rolled frantically to the side, my limbs tangling in heavy, suffocating layers of linen, and heaved. Nothing came up except a thin, burning string of bile that splattered against the polished floorboards.
My hands flew to my face, my chest, digging into my own skin, clawing desperately for a purchase on reality. I was trembling so violently that my teeth were clacking together in an agonizing, rhythmic chatter.
No. No, no, no. That's impossible.
The crusade. The vanguard. The hundreds of soldiers who had bled out in the mud, their bodies stacked like cordwood across the foot of the castle. Vane, fighting to hold off a general for even a second longer to try and afford his group a second longer. Kaelis taking direct hits from the Demon King to defend me. Lysandrias burning through centuries of draconic life force just to prevent his blade from ripping through my neck. Isra summoning a localized ice age until her eyes bled silver.
They died for that?!
My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged beast trying to break through the bone. Cold sweat drenched my collar, dripping down my temples, stinging my eyes. The bile rose again, burning the back of my throat.
They threw away their lives... I threw away my life... for a child hiding behind an iron mask?!
"H-ha..." A hysterical, broken sound tore out of my mouth. A laugh that sounded like an animal dying in a snare. "No. No, that's... that's ridiculous."
I pressed the heels of my trembling palms hard into my eye sockets, forcing the sickening, white-hot kaleidoscope away.
Think, Aren. Use your fucking brain.
"It was a trick," I muttered aloud into the empty, sterile silence of the room, my voice a ragged, unrecognizable rasp. "A shapeshifting hex. Demonic illusions. Mind-magic. Demons do that. They manipulate empathy. They prey on human morality. It was an enchantment designed to make the executioner hesitate. That's it. That has to be it."
The rationalization was frantic, pathetic, and paper-thin, but I clung to it like a drowning man grasping at broken glass.
"Or the coma," I wheezed, shaking my head violently, trying to rattle the image loose from my cortex. "Yeah. The coma. I was eight. I had the brain chemistry of an eight-year-old when I collapsed in the training vault. My conscious mind just... it just projected. It mapped the physical weakness of a child onto the memory of the Demon King because my own body was so small and pathetic."
I dragged a ragged breath into my burning lungs.
"Right. That's all it was. A fever dream. A psychological glitch from neural burnout. The real Demon King was a towering, immortal bastard who laughed with iron teeth. I remember the laughter. I remember the black sun. It was just a dream."
The panic began to recede, dampened by the sheer, desperate force of my own denial. The room's ambient noise finally began to filter through the ringing in my ears—the soft hum of modern environmental wards, the faint, rhythmic ticking of a clock, the sterile, unburned air of civilization.
I slowly pulled my hands away from my face, taking a slow, measured breath to center my frantic pulse.
"Just a kid's nightmare," I whispered, wiping the cold sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm. "I'm eight years old. I went into a coma from physical exhaustion. The handler is probably going to give me endless hell about—"
My voice caught. The words died instantly in my throat.
I froze.
Slowly, terrifyingly, my gaze drifted down.
The forearm I had just used to wipe my face wasn't the soft, chubby limb of an eight-year-old child.
The wrist wasn't small. The knuckles weren't rounded.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress were two broad, lean hands, laced with prominent veins and hardened by a dense lattice of pale, faded training scars. Beneath the hem of the hospital tunic, my legs stretched long and heavy, my knees locking straight with the unmistakable, solid density of fully formed, adult bone structure.
I stared at the rough, calloused fingers of a fifteen-year-old.
And right in the center of my chest, behind the rhythmic rise and fall of a matured ribcage, the heavy, iron gate the Principal had locked away my mana with until my fifteenth year gave a single, hollow click.
I was... eight when I went under.
Seven years.
I've been asleep for seven fucking years.