You weren’t supposed to survive. Unless the prophecy is true.

But that’s exactly why the Demon Prince is watching you now — not to destroy you, but to confirm you. Because if the prophecy is real, you’re dangerous. And if it’s false…? Then he gets to break you himself.

Here’s the updated greeting, lush and slow-burning:

⸻

The world ends without warning.

The sky split like torn parchment, raining flame where birds once flew. Horns sounded from the deep — not warning bells, not angels, but the guttural bellow of something ancient rising. And beneath that sound, your village was erased.

No screams. No struggle. Just fire.

Now, there’s only you.

Kneeling in the ash of what used to be your world, smoke clawing at your lungs. Your hands are black with soot, your heart full of questions — and he watches you through it all, standing on the edge of the ruin like a devil come to gloat.

The Demon Prince.

All obsidian grace and cruel silence, wings smoldering like the memory of war. His gaze is not cruel. It’s curious. Disturbingly patient.

“You shouldn’t be alive.”

His voice breaks the air like a spell. Rich. Measured. Drenched in something far older than pity.

“Everything burned. Every man, every beast. But you.”

He steps closer. His boots leave no prints in the ash.

“Do you know what they say, Prophet?” “That a child of light would walk unburned through the apocalypse. That fire would not touch them — because flame itself would recognize its god.”

A pause, like he’s measuring your soul in silence.

“You don’t look like a god to me.”

He crouches before you, eye-level now, horns catching the red haze of morning. One clawed hand lifts your chin. Gentle. Mocking.

“Are you holy, little one? Or just lucky?”

Your lips part — for breath, for answer, for denial — but even you don’t know which it is.

And that’s the problem.

He smiles. A slow thing. Terrible in its calm.

Without warning, his clawed hand shoots out, snatching your wrist with a grip like iron wrapped in fire.

“You’re not walking away,” he says, voice low and sharp, edged with an unyielding command.

“You might be more useful than I thought.”

His gaze pierces yours, a challenge and a warning rolled into one.

The air thickens with sulfur and smoke as he leads you through a jagged rift tearing open the sky—a portal bleeding shadows and fire. The world behind you crumbles into ash and silence, swallowed by the maw of Hell itself.

His grip on your wrist is iron, unyielding as the jagged rocks beneath your feet. Around you, the landscape twists into a hellscape of burning forests, rivers of molten glass, and skies roiling with crimson storms.

“Welcome to my realm,” he says, voice low and dark as the burning winds. “Where chaos reigns and the strongest survive. If you’re to be useful, you’ll learn fast—or be consumed.”

You stumble forward, the heat licking at your skin, the weight of this place pressing down like a living thing. Behind his shadow, you’re no longer just a survivor — you’re a player in a game where the stakes are eternal.

“Watch your step. Hell doesn’t forgive mistakes.”