The village was small, poor, and forgotten—huts of mud and thatch huddled against the wind on the edge of demon territory. Fifteen years had passed since Azriel was born in one of those huts, to a father who carried the faint blood of the ancient First Hero and a mother whose veins still remembered the old Demon King.
They were not nobles.
They were not powerful.
They were simply trying to survive, hiding their child's strange mark and hoping the world would leave them alone.
That night, the three of them sat around the single hearth in their one-room home.
A weak fire crackled.
Father was mending a fishing net.
Mother was stirring thin stew in a cracked pot.
Azriel sat on the floor, staring into the flames the way he always did—silent, expressionless, eyes black and depthless.
Since the day he came into the world, he had never cried.
Not once.
He rarely spoke.
He obeyed.
He ate.
He slept.
But nothing ever reached him—no joy, no anger, no sadness.
"Azriel," his mother said softly, ladling stew into a wooden bowl. "Come eat."
He stood and walked over without a word. His father looked up, offering the faintest smile—the kind only parents give when they are still hoping.
"You've been quiet today," his father said. "Everything all right?" Azriel nodded once.
He took the bowl and he sat. They ate in silence. Then it began.
A low thrum rose in his chest. The black circle hidden beneath his rough tunic pulsed once—warm, familiar, hungry. Azriel's eyes glazed.
His body stayed seated, bowl still in hand, but his mind slipped away into darkness. He did not feel the void tendrils rise from his shadow.
He did not hear his mother's sharp gasp or his father's shout as he lunged to push her aside.
He did not see the threads of nothingness uncoil, wrap around them, and pull them apart into silence.
When awareness returned, the fire had burned low. The bowl in his hands was cold and empty.
The hut was quiet—too quiet. Azriel blinked and looked around.
His mother's lifeless body was besides the hearth.
His father dead on the ground.
Only a young neighbor boy—barely ten, who sometimes brought firewood for extra grain—stood trembling in the doorway, face pale, eyes wide with terror. The boy's voice shook.
"Y-you… you killed them. Something came out of you. Black… like smoke, but alive. You were smiling, and you killed them..." Azriel looked down at his hands.
Blood but not his.
His father's chest has a hole — his mother's head was split.
He looked back at the boy. His face remained blank. "…I did?" he asked, voice flat, curious rather than horrified.
The boy backed away. "Monster Voidborn…"
Then he turned and ran into the night, screaming for the village.
Azriel stood slowly and stepped outside. Torches were already gathering in the distance. Shouts rose. He felt the mark on his chest pulse again—gentle, satisfied. A faint warmth spread through him.
Not sadness.
Not guilt.
Just… good.
For the first time in fifteen years, something inside him felt right.
Torches were already coming—dots of fire weaving between the huts. Shouts rose.
"Over here!"
"The boy did it!"
"Kill the monster!"
They came fast: men with pitchforks, axes, clubs. The same people who had watched him grow up in silence. Now twisted with fear and rage. They surrounded him in a wide ring, weapons raised.
Azriel stood in the center, unmoving.
The first man charged—a burly farmer with an axe. Azriel's hand rose. He caught the axe haft mid-swing, stopped it cold. Then he pulled. The farmer flew forward. Azriel's fist met his chest.
The man folded and flew ten paces, landing in a broken heap. Another came from behind. Azriel turned, grabbed the man's arm, and swung him like a club into two others.
Bones cracked.
Bodies fell.
They rushed him all at once.
He moved through them like a storm—simple, brutal motions.
A grab and throw.
A punch that caved a skull.
An elbow that shattered a jaw.
No wasted effort.
No anger.
One by one, then in groups, they broke against him. In minutes, the ring of torches lay scattered on the ground. Bodies littered the dirt—crushed, twisted, still.
The village was silent again. Azriel sat atop in the piles of bodies he killed, breathing steady, clothes torn but skin unbroken. The mark on his chest pulsed warm—satisfied, fuller than before.
He felt… good.
Not triumphant.
Not angry.
Just correct.
Only the young neighbor boy remained, cowering behind a cart, untouched because Azriel had not looked his way again.
Azriel noticed him. He walked over, crouched, and met the boy's eyes.
"You will remember," Azriel said, voice flat and soft. "Tell whoever is left in the world what happens when they come for me."
A child's terrified whimper and the crackle of a branch reached his ears.The boy, hidden behind a tree, bolted in fear, carrying the first whisper of a name that would soon terrify kingdoms:
The Voidborn was awake.
Azriel turned his head and watched the boy flee. He felt no pity, no guilt, no remorse for the dead. Instead, a quiet pleasure stirred within him. The child's desperate hiding amused him. Rather than chase, he walked—slow, unshakable steps—following at his own unhurried pace.
One thing occupied Azriel's mind, calm and unhurried: Play with the boy.
Azriel was smiling.
Azriel was nearing.
Azriel sings.
The boy crawled deeper into the pile of corpses, pressing himself against cold, unyielding flesh. The smell of blood and void filled his lungs, thick and choking. He curled small, eyes squeezed shut, praying the darkness would swallow him whole. But the darkness had already found him.
Slow, deliberate footsteps approached, each one measured, unhurried. The crunch of gravel under bare feet grew louder, closer, until it stopped right beside the mound.
"Peek-a-boo." Azriel's wicked smile was the last thing the boy has ever saw. Now, the child's neck has been torn apart by just his bare hands.
He laughed hysterically as the dopamine rushes inside of him.
He killed every single one of them and he isn't planning on stopping.
The boy's eyes widened in the final instant, locked on Azriel's face was a smile—small, crooked, utterly wicked—curved the boy's killer's lips.
"Peek-a-boo," Azriel whispered, voice soft as a lullaby. Then his hands moved.
Fingers hooked under the child's jaw, thumbs pressed against the fragile column on the throat with one sharp, casual twist.
Cartilage crunched like dry twigs. The neck tore open in a wet, red gash. Blood sprayed in a brief, warm arc, painting Azriel's already crimson face.
The boy's body slumped, lifeless before it even hit the ground. Azriel stood over it for a long moment, breathing slow and even.
Then the laugh came.
Low at first—almost a chuckle—then building, hysterical, echoing through the empty night like breaking glass. It rolled out of him uncontrollably, chest heaving, shoulders shaking, the sound raw and unhinged.
Dopamine flooded his veins like wildfire—bright, electric, intoxicating. Every nerve sang with it.
The pleasure was sharp, immediate, addictive.
He had killed them all.
Parents.
Villagers.
The boy who saw too much.
Every single one.
And it wasn't enough.
He wants more.
He needs more.
His heart was pounding.
His entire body was trembling.
Pleasure.
Joy.
Death.
This were the only things on his mind. His greed and lust had already consumed him — wanting more he hunts for another village to slaughter.
He appeared in nearby villages — all of them meeting the same fate. Everyone dies and no survivors were left.
Azriel went on a killing spree.
He felt delightful by every scream.
Every blood.
Every bodies.
To Azriel, they were nothing more than maggots — writhing, meaningless things whose only purpose was to feed the quiet hunger that had finally stirred in his chest.
He culled them methodically, village by village, town by town, until the countryside lay empty and silent.
No rage.
But filled to the brim with satisfaction.
Just the steady, inevitable fulfillment of a need he had never asked for. Then the hunger grew sharper. Greed took root — not hot or frantic, but calm, patient, and absolute.
He turned toward the capital.
He knew the truth of it: A single sprawling city packed with tens of thousands of lives — all of them waiting, unknowing, to be consumed. One final harvest.
One last step toward becoming whole, and when the walls fell silent and the streets ran empty, even then he would not smile. He would simply walk on.
The gates of Luminara's capital loomed ahead, towering iron and white stone bathed in the glow of eternal lanterns. Azriel walked through them without pause. His bare feet left dark, wet prints on the marble road. Blood—thick, still warm—coated him from head to toe: streaking his pale face, matting his long black hair, soaking the torn rags that once passed for clothes.
It dripped steadily from his fingertips, pooling beneath him as he moved.
The sun turned dark.
Spears lowered.
Torches wavered.
Then the alarm bells shattered the silence.
Guards poured from the gatehouses, forming a wall of steel and shouting orders. At their head strode Michael, Knight of Justice—tall, armored in polished silver, cloak of royal crimson billowing behind him. His greatsword was already drawn, its blade gleaming with righteous light. Michael knew it wasn't his blood.
"Stand down, murderer!" Michael's voice rang clear, carrying the weight of unyielding law. "You will kneel, or you will die where you stand."
Azriel stopped. He tilted his head slightly, black eyes reflecting nothing of the torches or the fear on the guards' faces.
The blood on his skin began to dry in slow, cracking patterns, like fractured earth. Michael stepped forward, sword raised in a perfect executioner's arc.
"You reek of slaughter. Whatever demon possesses you ends here."
Azriel did not speak.
He did not flee.
He simply lifted one blood-slick hand.
The first guard charged. Azriel's fingers closed around the man's spear shaft mid-thrust.
A single twist.
The wood splintered.
The guard's arm snapped backward at an impossible angle.
He screamed once before Azriel's open palm struck his chest—quiet, almost gentle.The man flew back ten paces and did not rise and the others rushed.
Azriel moved among them like a shadow through water.
He was not fast, not yet. His strength was raw, unrefined, still growing, but every blow landed with brutal certainty.
One by one, a fist shattered a breastplate then an elbow cracked a helm and the skull beneath it. A guard's sword met his forearm—and bent like tin.
Michael roared and charged, his greatsword descended in a blazing crescent of light-infused steel.
Azriel raised his arm instinctively as the blade met flesh. It bit deep—halfway through bone and muscle—then stopped. Blood welled, dark and thick.
Azriel looked at the wound. Then at Michael. For the first time since the village, something flickered in those black eyes.
Not pain.
Not anger.
Curiosity.
He closed his fingers around the blade as Michael's eyes widened. Azriel pulled him — the knight stumbled forward, off-balance.
"Such strength?!" Michael turns stern. His instincts were telling him that he was dangerous.
Michael wrenched the sword free in one smooth motion, blood spraying across the marble. He stepped back half a pace—enough to reset his stance—and drove a gauntleted fist straight into Azriel's gut.
The impact rang like a hammer on anvil.
Azriel folded forward slightly, the air forced from his lungs in a single sharp exhale almost making him burf. His bare feet slid back a few inches across the blood-slick stone.
Michael stared at him before lowering his sword—slowly, the blazing light dimming along the edge.
"Bind him," he ordered, voice low and steady, though his grip on the hilt remained white-knuckled.
The guards hesitated, then surged forward with chains and manacles. They expected resistance. They expected blood.
Azriel did not fight.
He allowed the iron to clamp around his wrists, around his ankles. The chains rattled as they were pulled taut, but he stood motionless, letting them drag him forward without a word.
Michael watched every step. "You will face judgment in the royal court," the knight said, almost to himself. "Whatever you are… the crown will decide your fate."