I floated in the cold air above the endless battlefield of corpses.

An unseen pull kept me frozen in place.

Azrael stood right in front of me.

He reached his pale hand forward, plunging his fingers straight through my chest.

The exact moment his hand gripped my heart, the boundaries of our minds broke open.

A rush of foreign memories flooded my brain.

I saw the hidden truth of this broken timeline.

A being that never existed in my original past was pulling the strings from the very start.

The world was supposedly dominated by the demon king, posing a threat that even the gods would fear.

But the heavens were not actually afraid of him.

They were terrified of her.

Hiding quietly in the shadows, controlling every single event without taking a moment to rest.

Making the king strong was actually the hardest part of the plan.

And Raviel did it better than anyone else.

When she saw Azrael being slashed down by a mere human in the old world, she could not handle the grief.

Only later did she realise she didn’t exist in that specific place or time.

A timeline where she was absent made her true love die horribly.

She refused to accept that fate.

Extracting the remaining soul from the dying demon king, she sent his spirit back in time.

But jumping timelines requires fuel.

She used her own soul as collateral, but she needed an anchor to complete the ritual.

Then her eyes turned to the side.

She saw me, the human who survived the final battle, bleeding on the dirt.

Raviel hated my survival.

She bound my soul directly to hers, dragging me across the void to a different timeline where she actually existed alongside him.

The moment she landed in this new world, she murdered a young academy student named Melissa and took over her life.

But her plan was not foolproof. Her king had a fractured soul.

My final attack had ruined his original body, and now it needed a strong, perfect vessel to survive.

Regressed body of mine was perfect for that.

Raviel plotted everything from the very beginning.

Every single moment Melissa spent with me, bothering me in the library or smiling at me in class, made her reaffirm her dark decision.

She chose the right person for the slaughter.

But she developed a sick obsession over me along the way.

The idea of a demon queen liking a human was absurd.

Raviel liked me, and she wanted me.

But to suit her twisted taste, she needed to break my mind first.

The memories shifted deeper.

I saw the true history of the Whispering Village flash behind my eyes.

Why are the dead so angry?

It is a question priests have debated for centuries.

They speak of unfinished business, or the longing for loved ones, or the refusal to accept their cruel fate.

But for this village, the answer was much simpler.

It was a matter of culinary taste.

"Master," a young initiate asked in the vision.

His hands trembled as he scrubbed fresh blood from the stone floor.

"Why must we torture them for weeks? The ritual only requires a soul. Would it not be faster to just slit their throats?"

The High Priest, a man hiding behind a red mask, laughed.

It was a disgusting sound.

"You are thinking like a common butcher, boy," the Priest scolded gently, as if teaching a child how to hold a spoon.

"Our Lord is a king. A happy soul is light. It is sweet, airy, and dissolves in mere seconds to attain peace. It is a mere snack. But a soul steeped in agony? A soul that has been stretched by fear, marinated in hopelessness, and tenderised by days of physical torment?"

He took a deep breath, savouring the smell of suffering.

"That, my boy, is a meal. The king does not want fast food. He wants a royal feast. The pain anchors the soul to the flesh, making it dense. Heavy. Potent."

So the initiate whispered, looking at the crying people in the cages.

"We are not just killing them."

"No," the Priest smiled behind his mask.

"We are preparing a feast."

Raviel directed the massacre of Whispering Village.

It was a past event, but she trapped those souls here, saving them in a jar for when her love finally descends.

He would not wake up hungry.

Everything was a ploy, and I played right into her hands.

The terrible visions ended.

I was back in the grey illusion.

Azrael’s cold hand was still buried deep inside my chest.

"My queen rarely finds a mortal amusing," Azrael said, squeezing my heart in his palm just enough to let me feel the pain.

"And when she finally does, it happens to be my greatest enemy. A strange irony, is it not?"

"GAHHHHHH," I screamed, my vision fading black at the edges.

"Your stolen time has come to its end," the demon king whispered.

He pulled his hand back, ripping my heart right out of my chest.

It wasn’t supposed to be real.

I knew it was an illusion.

But the hollow emptiness inside my ribs felt terrifyingly real.

"Truly a pity," his other hand reached out, patting the top of my head like a dying dog.

"A soul with no true origin, fighting a war that was lost before it began. I will take the burden of this body now. Sleep for eternity."

My physical form in the illusion scattered into dust, blowing away across the endless battlefield.

I was trapped behind my own eyes, a helpless prisoner inside my own skull.

I watched through my own eyes as they opened.

There was no white left in them.

The reflection in the cave puddle showed eyes filled with pitch black.

My body moved without my permission.

The chair smashed to the stone floor, breaking into splinters as my arms snapped the ropes easily.

He stood my body up slowly, raised my hands up and down, flexing the fingers to test the muscle tension, getting used to the new vessel.

Then, my black eyes moved toward Melissa.

She was standing to the side, her cheeks flushing red with a shy blush.

My body stepped forward, pulled her in, and kissed her deeply.

My arms hugged her tight.

"How have you been, my love?" my mouth spoke, but it was Azrael’s smooth voice echoing from my throat.

She cried soft, happy tears, hugging my stolen body with everything she had.

Azrael turned his head toward the surrounding cultists.

He just waved my hand lazily through the air.

Slash.

An invisible blade of raw energy swept through the cavern.

It smoothly beheaded every single robed figure standing in the room, dropping their bodies to the floor.

Everyone died instantly, except Anasthesia.

"Welcome, My Lord," the old woman sobbed, shaking hard as she pressed her forehead to the bloody stone ground.

Azrael walked my body up the tunnel and out of the cave.

The night air hit my skin.

Looking down at the ruined village square, I saw a terrible sight.

Ray’s severed head was lying in the dirt near the campfire.

He was killed the moment Melissa entered the village.

Zephyr was still standing a few feet away, trapped in a mental trance, totally unable to move or defend himself.

"Should we kill him too?" Melissa asked, leaning her head on my shoulder.

"Let him be," Azrael replied using my voice.

"The game is boring without pieces on the board. We shall see how far he can walk before he breaks."

Azrael walked out into the world again, feeling the wind and the dirt through my stolen senses.

It started to rain.

Melissa leaned against my side as they walked away, leaving the slaughter behind.

Down in the dark abyss of my mind, a blue window flickered one last time.

[Goddess of Life had given up on your life]

A sharp gasp tore through my lungs.

I woke up with a sudden jolt.

The hard, hot ground burned my bare hands.

I pushed myself up, coughing out ash.

I was in a place I could not remember ever seeing before.

The sky was red, the landscape was filled with erupting volcanoes and rivers of bubbling lava.

Terrifying demons with giant wings flew in circles high above the smoke.

’Where am I?’ I thought, panic gripping my chest.

Then the realisation settled in.

This place.

The seventh layer.

The deepest pit of the Demon Realm.

My soul was stuck in the pits of hell.

[End of Volume 1: No Rest For The Dead]