Before the war had a name, before blades were sanctified and pyres were made holy, the world learned to fear a thing it could not burn.
Desire.
Not hunger. Not ambition. Desire—the quiet, aching pull toward something forbidden, the instinct to reach for what should not be touched. It was desire that unsettled the gods. Desire that bent laws, softened vows, and made monsters out of saints.
And so, when demons first walked the earth openly, humanity did not fear their claws or their magic.
They feared how easily they understood them.
The Demonfolk did not conquer kingdoms. They did not drown cities in blood. They lived among humans in the early centuries—beautiful, terrible mirrors—feeding not on flesh, but on longing. On the truths people whispered only to themselves in the dark.
Succubi were the most reviled among them.
They did not force. They invited.
They did not steal hearts. They revealed them.
And for that, they were declared an abomination.
The first holy fires were lit not to destroy demons—but to erase the evidence that humans had ever wanted them.
—
History would later claim the war began with an atrocity.
A Demon court seducing a royal bloodline.
A kingdom collapsing into decadence.
A god offended.
The truth was quieter.
The truth was that a priest once looked into the eyes of a succubus and saw love staring back.
And he burned her for it.
From that night onward, desire became a crime.
Temples were raised where pleasure houses once stood. Confession replaced intimacy. Longing was renamed temptation, temptation was renamed corruption, and corruption was blamed on demons.
It was easier that way.
The Demonfolk were driven from cities, then from lands, then from memory. Their names struck from records. Their languages forbidden. Their children hunted before they could grow into monsters.
And every generation produced heroes to do the hunting.
—
Akira was not born a hero.
He was born to a village too small to matter, nestled between river reeds and cedar trees, where stories were told softly and the world felt far away. Desire there was simple—warm bread, laughter, the promise of tomorrow.
Then demons came.
Not the elegant myths sung in temples. Not creatures of beauty or seduction.
Just fire.
Just screams.
Just the sound of something laughing while the world ended.
By dawn, Akira was alone.
By dusk, hatred had found him.
Hatred is a patient teacher. It sharpens memory. It simplifies morality. It offers purpose to the broken and calls it justice.
When the Holy Kingdom found him, bloodied and silent by the riverbank, they did not see a child.
They saw a weapon waiting to be forged.
They fed his hatred with scripture. Gave his grief a direction. Placed a blade in his hands and told him the truth of the world:
Demons are desire made flesh. Desire is the enemy. Kill them, and humanity will be pure.
Akira learned quickly.
He learned how to kill without trembling. How to pray without believing. How to stand amid burning settlements and feel nothing at all.
By the time he was crowned Hero, the war no longer shocked him.
It made sense.
—
Far beyond the reach of human banners, beneath a sky that never knew dawn, the Queen of the Succubi listened as her world died.
Astarielle had ruled since before the holy fires. Before the gods turned their gaze away. Before desire was named a sin.
She remembered when succubi were not queens or weapons, but keepers—of longing, of balance, of truths mortals were too afraid to face alone.
She remembered lovers who wept when they left her arms, not because they were enslaved, but because they had been seen.
Those memories were now relics.
Her throne stood in Noctyra, the last city carved from shadow and living stone, hidden behind veils of ancient magic and despair. It was a kingdom built not on conquest, but refuge—a place where the remaining Demonfolk fled as humanity closed its fist around the world.
Astarielle did not rule by seduction.
She ruled by endurance.
Every day brought new reports. Another enclave burned. Another bloodline ended. Another god invoked to justify the cleansing.
She felt each death like a fracture along her spine.
Succubi were bound to emotion—not just feeding on it, but resonating with it. As her people dwindled, the ache inside her grew heavier, duller, harder to breathe through.
Extinction was not loud.
It was quiet.
It was watching the world forget you ever mattered.
To humans, Astarielle was a nightmare—a demon queen who enthralled kings and toppled empires. To her people, she was the last impossible thing standing between them and oblivion.
She had made bargains with gods.
She had bent laws older than the stars.
And still, the fire crept closer.
—
There existed, buried beneath ruins and forbidden texts, a pact older than the holy wars.
It was not a treaty between kingdoms.
It was not a covenant between gods.
It was a promise between opposites.
When the world was young and desire still walked freely, a bond was forged to prevent annihilation—not of demons, but of balance itself. A safeguard written into existence, ensuring that neither devotion nor longing could ever fully erase the other.
The pact did not choose sides.
It chose people.
It bound two souls across impossible lines, ensuring that when hatred reached its peak, understanding would be forced into being.
Over time, the pact shattered.
Not broken—buried.
Forgotten.
But forgotten things do not cease to exist.
They wait.
—
On the eve of the final holy campaign, as kingdoms gathered their armies and priests sharpened their prayers, the world trembled—not with fear, but anticipation.
Akira stood alone in a cathedral of white stone, his sword planted before him, its edge gleaming with runes meant to burn demon flesh on contact. The air smelled of incense and cold iron.
He felt hollow.
Not doubt. Not regret.
Just an absence where something else should have been.
Far away, Astarielle knelt in a chamber of living shadow, her hands pressed to the floor as ancient wards flared around her. Her heart raced with a sensation she had no name for—something pulling, aching, wrong.
Two lives moving toward the same fracture in the world.
Two enemies sculpted by loss.
Two beings who should never, under any law of god or reason, come to love one another.
And yet.
The pact stirred.
Threads long severed began to tighten.
Fate did not smile.
Fate never does.
It only watches as the spark is struck—knowing full well that when love blooms in a world built on hatred, it does not bring peace.
It brings fire.
Because if the Hero and the Queen were ever to choose each other over their worlds—
The war would not end.
The world would.