Fire. That was all Leon could see. A great red-orange blaze consuming everything within its path.

But Leon couldn’t see what it was consuming. The fire itself was all he could focus on.

As time passed, the flames that surrounded him grew darker. For a moment, the few strands of logic that Leon could muster sent the name ‘demonfire’ ringing through his head, but it soon disappeared as the flames continued to darken. This wasn’t demonfire.

Soon enough, the flames were black as night. They shrouded everything around Leon in darkness, blocking out all other light. And yet, Leon could still perceive the pitch-black flames. Each lick of fire seemed to have a hazy white border around it, though when Leon tried to concentrate on it, this ‘light’ would vanish.

For how long Leon was like this, he had no idea. He couldn’t see or move his body, and his mind was too foggy to count time.

After a minute—or a year, for all Leon knew—something in the flames changed. He saw a red-orange glow, but it wasn’t the light emitted by fire. He had no idea what it was, but it filled him with a deep sense of dread. The light grew in intensity, and the black fire around Leon grew with it.

There was something around that light or something behind it, Leon couldn’t tell. He could perceive no details, and even if he were clear-minded, he wouldn’t have been able to even hazard a guess as to what he was seeing. All he knew was that whatever was behind or around that light was enormous.

Leon was transfixed by the light. He stared into it, unable to turn away, and the light seemed to flicker just a bit. Despite the ominous surroundings, Leon felt no fear, like there was some primal instinct within him telling him that neither the light nor the flames could harm him. In fact, he felt like if he could only reach out and touch the light, he could make it his, that he could claim it in its entirety.

But when he tried to lift his arms to seize this light, he felt nothing. For the first time, Leon had a moment of sudden clarity and looked downward to see what was wrong, to see why he couldn’t feel let alone lift his arms. But when he cast his eyes down, he saw nothing but more black fire; his body wasn’t there. It then occurred to him that he couldn’t even see his own nose or eyebrows, it was like he was nothing more than a pair of eyes floating in a void.

Leon glanced up in panic, the reality of his situation piercing through his clouded mind. But then, the light pulsed, Leon felt a sharp pain in his apparently nonexistent head, and then everything went dark.

---

“…an you hear me, boy?”

Leon felt like his head was about to explode. He could barely remember what just happened, mostly just a blur of black fire and red-orange light.

“You don’t seem dead, that’s a good sign, I think…”

He could feel his face pressed up against cold stone. It felt familiar, it soothed his aching head, but he still had no idea where he was.

“Are you really not awake yet? You’ve been lying there for hours! How long does it take humans to come to their senses?!”

The buzzing in his ears slowly began to die down, and Leon thought for a moment that he heard someone talking. Their voice was familiar, a deep, gravelly tone that sounded almost like the crackling of flames. Or maybe he just heard crackling flames, Leon honestly couldn’t tell.

He wanted to open his eyes and look, but it just felt so good to lay where he was, his headache killing any motivation he tried to muster to fully wake up.

“Is this all you’re capable of, human? Have I partnered myself to a powerless child who slips into oblivion after every damn close encounter? This is the second time it’s happened, after all!”

‘Xaphan,’ Leon thought. It was strange hearing the demon with his ears rather than echoing through his head, but it was easy enough to recognize the tones of his partner’s voice.

Summoning a titanic amount of energy and willpower, Leon managed to crack open one of his eyes. His vision was blurry, but he could make out that he was lying down on polished stone tiles in a checkerboard pattern of white marble and some other kind of shiny red stone. Just beyond the edges of the tiles was what looked like green grass, but everything beyond that faded away into gray.

Or rather, as Leon’s vision began to clear up and he started fully waking up, he realized that there simply wasn’t anything beyond the grass, the ground just stopped and dropped off into a great gray void full of nothing but bright mist. This mist seemed to emit a soft white light that gave a feeling of being outside around noon on a cloudy day.

Leon recognized these surroundings. He hadn’t truly seen them in person since the day he awakened his Inherited Bloodline. There had been a brief few seconds after driving away Bran’s darkness magic where Leon had seen his soul realm, but that had been so quick that Leon barely even had time to look at Xaphan, let alone examine the island he now found himself upon.

“Oh? Are those the movements of a boy who’s regained consciousness?” came Xaphan’s voice that Leon had been hearing—whether he realized it or not—for a while.

Turning his head in its direction, Leon saw the huge blaze of bright orange flame that surrounded Xaphan, and within he could see the barest hint of a shadow, the only suggestion of the demon’s true body that was visible. In the head of the shadow were a pair of bright yellow eyes, like hot coals in the center of a raging bonfire.

Leon groaned as he struggled to move. He wasn’t quite ready to speak yet, but he could move his limbs, though his arms and legs were stiff and didn’t readily respond to his will. Still, after a few minutes of pained fighting with his own body, Leon managed to flop onto his back and rise into a sitting position. Not too far behind him was the white marble platform in the center of his soul realm, upon which sat his humble throne of black granite.

The last time he had been within his soul realm for any meaningful length of time, he had left it by sitting upon his throne. It made some degree of sense to him, then, that he remained upon that throne while he was conscious in the physical realm, and from his position at the bottom of the six-step-high platform, Leon guessed that something must have knocked him off of it and he’d rolled down the stairs and onto the tiled floor.

Leon made to pull himself closer to the platform so that he could lean against it and not have to hold himself upright, but as he began to move, he realized that his legs weren’t responding quite as he wanted them to. When he glanced down, he froze in panic as he realized that everything below his right knee and almost the entirety of his left leg was missing.

Instantly, Xaphan sarcastically chided Leon by saying, “Oh, don’t look so surprised, boy. You knew your magic body wasn’t completed!”

With the demon’s admonishment plus a few seconds to collect his thoughts, Leon got a grip on himself. He wasn’t in his soul realm as the complete pseudo-magic body that the Thunderbird had created for him, as he had been every time he had come to his soul realm previously. Instead, he was present in his own magic body that he had yet to finish. It was now more apparent than ever how much work remained, as he was able to see how much of his legs remained.

After taking a few breaths to calm himself, Leon asked, “What happened?”

“You used my power to fatally wound that vampire is what happened,” Xaphan said with a hint of pride in his voice, but whether that was pride in Leon or pride in his own power, Leon couldn’t say. But he definitely figured that it was the latter. “Also, your arm didn’t explode, so I guess you’re more durable than I gave you credit for. Well done.”

“Not sure if I should take that as sarcastic or not…” Leon muttered.

“Take it however you like,” Xaphan responded with an indifferent tone.

“By the way, demon, did you happen to see what happened to the vampire?” Leon asked as he settled into a more comfortable sitting position on the steps to his throne, which wasn’t easy given he was missing about one and a half legs.

“I did,” the demon replied.

“So, this is the second time a vampire serving Amon has turned up,” Leon said.

“It was,” Xaphan confirmed.

“What are the chances?” Leon inquired.

“Slim to none,” Xaphan said. “Few demons, even Lords and Princes, have multiple followers in a single plane. There are so many planes out there, and so many people on each, that the chances are almost nonexistent for a demon of that rank to have multiple followers in any one plane… I suppose it isn’t impossible, but given who it is we’re dealing with, I would hazard a guess and say that Amon somehow found out where I was summoned to, and made a concerted effort to infiltrate and watch for my return.”

Leon nodded in agreement. “It’s a story that doesn’t sound too unfamiliar. I guess that means we’re in the same boat in more ways than one.”

“Hmph. We each have powerful enemies, but at least we know who wants me dead, which is more than we can say for you.”

“I would disagree,” Leon said. “If you’re right and Amon has been making vampires on this plane, then it would stand to reason that the two we’ve found so far aren’t the only ones. I mean, Lewis was powerful, but that other one wasn’t, which means that Amon isn’t being too discerning in who he grants power to. Personally, I’m going to be keeping an eye out for any more vampires from now on. Especially given how much trouble they’ve been giving me of late.”

“Not an unwise decision,” Xaphan conceded.

“I’ve already got so many enemies to watch out for, that adding vampires to the list isn’t too much skin off my back,” Leon said.

“That attitude is hardly filling me with confidence,” the demon retorted. Leon hadn’t exactly been advertising who he was to all passersby, but his actions hadn’t been too subtle, either. “Prepare yourself as best you can, after this failure, Amon may take a more active role in hunting me down. So far, he’s been quite passive, we’ve yet to see him truly go on the offensive.”

“I hear you,” Leon replied. His face then twisted in thought as something occurred to him. “Hey, demon… why is it that Amon can grant power to those vampires, and they aren’t completely obliterated by it? I mean, I can barely handle your power, and you’re only three tiers above me. I can’t even guess how much stronger Amon is compared to those vampires…”

“That has to do with our contract,” Xaphan said. “I promised you my power without qualification. I am physically unable to hold any of my power back from you, so long as the terms of our contract are being fulfilled. I grant you power in exchange for safe harbor. So long as that harbor remains safe, then you will have all of my power. That is simply how it is. Those vampires specifically make pacts for a portion of Amon’s power, which is generally a necessary clause in all contracts signed by demons with their inferior humans.”

“… Did you forget to add that clause in our contract?” Leon asked with a tone of both irritation and mockery.

“… No!” Xaphan unconvincingly retorted.

Leon almost pressed further to bask in the knowledge that Xaphan had made a mistake, but since it negatively impacted him, he decided to refrain, much to the demon’s surprise and quiet appreciation.

“Anyway, how long was I out for?” Leon asked.

“About two days,” Xaphan answered.

“Two days?”

“Maybe a little more.”

“Why was I out for that long?”

Xaphan paused for a moment, before slowly saying, “The last time you accessed your soul realm was when you were attacked by a shadow demon’s magic power. It wound its way through your body and assaulted your soul realm, which jostled your magic body. This rendered you unconscious.”

“How does that work?” Leon asked.

“Your physical body and your magic body are connected, or at least, that’s the way it works for demons. To my limited understanding of humanity, magic bodies were once mistaken for souls, which makes a degree of sense given their abilities and their importance. While your magic body is upon your throne, then you will be conscious. If, however, it is thrown off by, say, a powerful magic attack, then you will fall unconscious.”

“Was it Lewis who knocked me out, then?”

“Uhh, no,” Xaphan admitted. “That… that was me. You couldn’t handle my power, and it wound up throwing you off your throne. Were you a sixth-tier mage with a completed magic body and absolute control over it, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but since your magic body isn’t complete, you were knocked out. You couldn’t wake until you recovered, and even then, your physical body is still unconscious.”

Leon sighed in mild irritation. This wouldn’t have been a problem if Xaphan had just remembered the clause that would allow him to limit his power, but Leon also couldn’t give him too much grief, since he could understand that Xaphan wasn’t in the best frame of mind after almost eighty thousand years in confinement. Besides, Leon was alive, and he had been the one to invoke Xaphan’s power. This was simply the consequence of using eighth-tier power that was far beyond his control.

“Any way we can get that clause into our contract?” Leon asked, not putting too much hope in the possibility.

“… A contract of magic isn’t the same as ink and paper,” Xaphan hesitantly explained. “What’s done is done. There is nothing more we can add unless we bring our contract to an end. If that were to happen, I would be forced from your soul realm and my power would be laid bare for all the Bull Kingdom to see. I wouldn’t recommend that, given how the Kingdom reacts to demons under normal circumstances…”

Leon couldn’t argue with that logic, but he was still disappointed.

“On the bright side of all this, the fact that you were able to wake up at all means you’re close to ascension, not that you need that as a sign, given how close to completion your magic body is,” Xaphan said with a didactic tone, as if he were a superior lecturing a junior. Any trace of embarrassment at the reveal of his oversight was gone, forcibly suppressed by Xaphan’s ego.

“Mm,” Leon mumbled. “Is the Thunderbird around?”

“Haven’t seen that guy in months,” Xaphan replied.

Leon nodded, then turned back to look at his throne. “I should wake up properly, then. The last thing I remember was passing out after the fight, I want to know what happened after.”

“I understand, I’ll return to healing, then,” Xaphan whispered as he nodded in agreement. For a moment, Leon thought his tone sounded a bit sad, but he dismissed it as a figment of his imagination and started crawling up the steps.

It took more time than Leon cared to admit, but he eventually managed to wrangle himself onto the throne. He quickly got himself as situated as he could, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

Instantly, he felt some kind of shift, as if he were suddenly sent flying through the sky at a mind-bending speed, but the sensation was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and Leon could feel sheets pressed against his body.

He opened his eyes, revealing a room shrouded in darkness, lit only by a crack in the curtains by the one window in the room. Moonlight poured in through that crack, but even this small amount of light was more than enough for Leon to survey his surroundings.

He guessed he was in some kind of hospital, but his bed was too large and comfortable for a Legion-run facility, the walls were covered in murals, and the floor was richly carpeted. However, when Leon started trying to push himself up into a sitting position, he felt something strange, something important enough to distract him from examining the room: he couldn’t feel his left arm.

After shifting the bed sheets and glancing down at himself, Leon was horrified to discover that his left arm was gone, amputated at the shoulder.