Azrael snapped his eyes open in the dark of the dorm room.

His breathing was rapid and shallow.

A strange wetness coated his cheeks.

He reached up with a shaking hand and touched his face.

Tears.

’What is this sick joke?’ Azrael thought to himself, wiping his face in disgust.

Two days had passed since the ritual in the underground cave.

Two days of wearing this stolen human skin and pretending to be a simple academy student.

But the vessel was leaking.

When he slept, he did not sink into the quiet void of the Abyss like he usually did.

Instead, he drowned in fragmented nightmares that did not belong to him at all.

He felt grief for a sick sister. He felt heavy guilt over a dead hero whose face he could not even recognise. He felt the specific, bone-deep exhaustion of fighting a losing war for ten straight years.

These were Shane’s memories, bleeding right through the magical barriers of the core and dripping directly into Azrael’s divine consciousness.

Melissa stirred beside him on the large bed.

She sat up, letting the soft sheets fall to her waist.

"My lord," Melissa whispered, her voice full of soft concern.

"You are crying. Did you have a bad vision?"

"It’s nothing," Azrael replied, his voice harsh as he pushed himself out of the bed.

"Just a minor reaction to this fragile flesh. Mortal bodies carry too much useless water."

"But your breathing was uneven," she pressed softly, tilting her head.

"You spoke a name. You apologised to someone called Chris."

Azrael turned sharply, glaring at her.

"I said it is nothing. The human’s leftover thoughts are just dissolving in my presence. Do not speak of it again."

He walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He stared at the red eyes in the mirror. He was a demon king used to a purpose-built demonic body.

His original form never questioned his commands.

It never held onto weak emotions.

But he was slowly beginning to understand that long-term possession of a human vessel with this level of extreme combat conditioning was much more complicated than he initially anticipated.

The real trouble started later that afternoon during practical combat training.

Instructor Grace had paired the students up for weapon drills in the outdoor dirt yard. Azrael stood across from a tall, noble senior. The senior held a training broadsword and looked highly confident in his stance.

"Begin," Grace shouted across the yard. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

The senior rushed forward, swinging the broadsword in a wide arc aimed directly at Azrael’s ribs.

Azrael decided to end the duel in a single second.

He gathered a small amount of mana in his palm, planning to form a precise spear of energy to knock the weapon away and break the senior’s wrist.

He sent the strict mental command to his right arm.

But his arm flatly refused the order.

Instead of raising his palm to fire the spear, the muscles in his right shoulder tensed up on their own.

His hips twisted sharply to the side, and his wrist flicked the practice sword he was holding.

Without a single conscious command from the king, the physical body executed a highly familiar technique.

It was Shane’s delayed mana slash.

The sword brimmed with sudden power. The heavy swing bypassed the senior’s guard entirely as an invisible wave of force hit the noble square in the chest, lifting the older boy clean off his feet and throwing him backwards into the dirt.

Azrael just stood there, frozen in his follow-through stance.

He stared down at his own right hand, his red eyes wide with shock.

’My body just ignored my command,’ he thought, a chill running down his spine.

’The muscles moved before my mind could even stop them.’

It was not the Soul-Stitcher artefact causing the freeze this time.

It was the physical flesh fighting back on a deep biological level.

Shane had drilled that specific sword technique into his muscle memory so many thousands of times that the body just reacted automatically to the threat, totally bypassing Azrael’s demonic authority.

The human body had its own opinions about how to survive a fight.

Melissa hurried over from the sidelines, holding a clean white towel. She handed it to him, her eyes scanning his rigid posture.

"That was a very human sword technique, my lord," Melissa noted softly, her brow furrowed in confusion.

"You usually prefer to crush them with aura. Are you just playing a game with the instructors?"

"Yes," Azrael lied smoothly, taking the towel and wiping the dust from his hands.

"I am just putting on a convincing show for the mortals. We cannot let them see my true arts yet."

"You seem distracted today," Melissa pushed gently, walking beside him toward the weapon racks.

"Is the shell causing you unexpected problems? We can try to brew a suppression potion tonight if his lingering habits are getting annoying."

"I said it is fine," Azrael snapped, his patience wearing dangerously thin.

"Do not question my control over this pathetic vessel."

Melissa bowed her head quickly, stepping back to give him space.

But privately, as he walked back to the rankers’ lodge alone, Azrael was highly disturbed.

The line between him and the human boy was starting to blur in ways he could not easily cut with a sword.

The vessel was a cage, and the cage was actively shrinking.

That night, the silence of the dorm room offered no peace.

Azrael sat on the edge of a chair, staring out the window at the academy grounds.

He was trying to meditate, trying to forcefully separate dark mana from the human blood pumping through his veins.

He needed to establish absolute dominance over the nervous system before the cave excavation.

[System Alert]

[Soul-Stitcher Protocol Active]

Azrael immediately tried to stand up, preparing to fight the magical paralysis that usually followed the artefact’s activation.

But the paralysis did not spread through his entire body this time.

Only his left arm went numb.

Azrael looked down.

The fingers on his left hand twitched.

Then, very slowly and deliberately, his own hand began to rise into the air.

’Stop,’ Azrael commanded in his mind, throwing all his willpower against the rogue limb.

’Put the hand down right now.’

The arm did not stop.

It pushed right through his mental resistance.

The elbow bent, bringing the hand up to his collarbone.

Azrael could only watch in fury as his own fingers reached up to the side of his neck.

The soft fingertips pressed directly against the scar left behind by the Soul-Stitcher artefact.

The audacity of the gesture made his blood boil.

It was a direct message sent straight from the locked secondary core, bypassing the brain and using the physical nerves to speak.

He could not misread the clear meaning behind the deliberate touch.

’I am still here,’ the boy was saying from the dark.

’This is my body. And I am taking it back.’