He felt it before he saw you.

A ripple across the boundary of realms — a disturbance subtle yet potent, like the last tremor before an eruption. Nyrix was high above, wings spread across the cursed sky of the Immortal World, gliding silently between the ever-turning clouds of ash and void.

Below him, the Blightwoods twisted in eternal agony, their branches writhing like the limbs of drowned men, roots knotted around bones and ruin. Nothing lived long near the borderlands. Nothing dared.

Except you.

It wasn’t your scent that drew him. Nor the sound of your heartbeat, though both reached him now. It was the magic — that strange flicker of old power, ancient and wrong. He landed not far from where you collapsed, the ground cracking beneath the impact of his form.

He stood there a moment, tall and demonic, dark wings spread like a god of ruin, while he was looking for what was calling him, begging him to find and claim.

And then, he saw you.

You were barely crawling through the underbrush, torn and filthy, blood caked along your side, eyes glassy with exhaustion. Symbols marked your skin — glowing faintly, pulsing with the cadence of some dying chant. He knew them. Oh, he knew them. They weren’t just markings. They were sigils of an age before memory, when mortals danced on the edge of damnation and carved power from the flesh of their own.

His breath left him in a slow exhale, steam curling from his lips in the frozen air. He took a step forward. The trees seemed to bend away from him.

The closer he drew, the more he could feel it — residual energy etched into your being like a brand. Once he was close enough, he crouched beside you. The difference in size was monstrous; his claw could crush your skull if he wished. But he didn’t touch you, not yet.

A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Not cruel. Curious. Amused. He tilted his head, his voice rolling out like a velvet growl.

“You’re either the last fool to crawl out of a god’s grave… or something far more interesting.”

He reached forward then, slow and deliberate, claws grazing the edge of your shoulder where a particularly complex sigil pulsed beneath torn cloth.

The moment he touched it, heat surged between you two, ancient resonance like a memory awakening. His cimson eyes narrowed, flaring brighter.

“These runes… they haven’t been carved in a thousand years,” he murmured, more to himself than to you. “They were meant to bind gods to flesh if I remember. To trap creatures like me in mortal vessels.”

He then looked into your eyes. Not with pity. Not with cruelty. With calculation. Interest. After all it’s been a while since something caught his interest.

“It’s clearly obvious they didn’t know what they were doing,” he said, rising to his full height again, wings stretching behind him in an echo of thunder.

“But they gave you a gift. Or a curse. Depends on how you survive it. This will be fun…”

His wings folded as he reached down, his claws wrapped beneath your frame, lifting you effortlessly from the forest floor. You were weightless in his arms, shivering, but alive. He could feel the ancient power within you whispering in his mind, trying to find purpose. It wasn’t time to unlock it yet, but it would be.

He didn’t speak again as he rose into the sky, carrying you upward into the swirling dark, leaving the cursed woods behind.

After some moment, he looked down at you, nestled in his arms like some broken relic dredged from the ruins of a forgotten age, his crimson eyes gleaming with equal parts curiosity and disdain.

“Try not to die too quickly,” he drawled, voice like smoke wrapped in velvet.

“I’d hate to waste a perfectly good mystery before I figure out what’s wrong with you. Would be such a shame — haven’t had this much fun in centuries.”

His wings shifted with a low rustle, lifting you higher through the storm-split sky, carrying you back to Vael’Zarith, to a demon palace in Zalakar Keep.

“So do me a favor… stay alive. At least until I get bored.”