Ars Daemonica

Until
The alarm pulls me back into the real,
Letting me step from the dream for just a breath-
Only to forget, all at once,
That gentle promise to keep you safe.

- "Verdure", by The Sweetest Bane

....

How long had it been...

From the fathomless abyss of silence, he heard a voice, fragile as a dry leaf scraping against cold stone:

"He's about to wake."

...

"..."

Ten thousand lifetimes, ten thousand agonies from dreams crashed down into Sevran's fragile cranium. He screamed--a sound that belonged to no mortal tongue, but the rending shriek of a soul torn across countless realities.

He collapsed, blood seeping from the rims of his ears, the crimson tears of a mind driven past the threshold of madness. For a brief, merciful instant, his brain went dead, surrendering to the great silence of the cosmos.

...

"Tch, I'm only lending a hand this once, mind you."

"..."

"Chief... do you still remember me? It's Lugn."

That voice was like an anchor cast into the heart of a tempest. Slowly, the shattered fragments of memory began to synchronize, mending his fractured mind.

...

So... even the demons here possess a civilization of their own?

...

Why... why is there a desert here?

...

You bastard... Just how many demons have you deceived with that silver tongue of yours?

...

Good night, Sevran.

...

...

"Ah..." He opened his eyes and looked around.

Beside him stood a demon, along with a ragged youth trembling as he gripped a weapon, eyes wide with the raw terror of someone who had never tasted the sulfur of hell.

"Impressive, human. To think you'd make it this far--not only striking a pact with the ancient demon Barlahut, but slaughtering your way straight into the Demon Realm..."

"In those dreams, you came within an inch of having it all, only to lose everything in the final one. Haha, you must care an awful lot about that little girl, don't you?"

"Ah, you must be wondering why your brain ruptured like that, even though you were perfectly fine in the previous dreams?"

...

"...Because this is reality, kid."

The demon continued to babble, but Sevran's mind was dragged backward into that final dream. The warmth of that small hand, the stillness of the dark...

"Ah... Ah... AH!"

"Kau'i.. Kau'i... Don't go... AHHHHH!"

He pounded the earth frantically, driving his fists down until blood splattered, jagged pebbles embedding into torn skin.

Ah...

Sevran suddenly froze, as if struck by a realization. His eyes, once ablaze with the fire of defiance and ambition, were now hollow and dead--like the unblinking gaze of a corpse that had peered straight through heaven.

"So that's how it is..."

"Hahaha... hahahahah..." Sevran laughed maniacally.

"Haha... Hey, Lugn... tell me..."

"When I die in a dream... I wake up, don't I?" Sevran pressed on. "Then what if I die here, and wake up in another reality... believing this entire place was merely another dream?"

Lugn remained frozen in silence, but the demon spoke:

"A splendid question. Would you like me to help you find out?" it drawled. "Though never mind that--having witnessed your potential within those dreams, would you care to sign a contract with me?"

...

Sevran no longer cared to think.


...

He was far too exhausted.

"What... do you even know?"

"You think you could have done what I did? In those dreams, I tried every avenue, deceived even the gods just to scrounge for a single chance... and yet, no matter what, every damn dream dropped me at some random point after she was already dead! An hour late. A day late. Ten years late, standing atop a mountain of corpses  while her bones had long turned to ash in the mud!"

His fists shook, nails carving bloody half-moons into his palms:

"Not once... not a single time did it ever let me go back to before that ninth morning! There was never a way back! How the hell was I supposed to save her?!"

"Did you think... I didn't recognize you back then?"

"...It was all... fake. Even the story she told me, even that farewell... all of it was fake."

The demon stayed quiet, waiting for Sevran to vent every last word.

...

"Are you finished?"

"..."

"You truly believe... it was all a lie?"


The archdemon tilted its porcelain mask, its colossal eye contracting slightly as if confronted by an inexplicable paradox.

 "Across countless cycles, not a single speck of dust has ever slipped past my perception," it murmured, a rare trace of perplexity lacing its hollow voice. "Yet even I have no idea where this thing came from. No spatial wake. No mana residue. No causal footprint in this realm. It simply... appeared out of thin air the moment your consciousness fractured."

With that, it pointed down at the ground, a short distance from where Sevran lay.

There, resting in stillness, lay a gray paper-wrapped candy--having materialized from who knows when. Its wrapper was creased and crumpled, as though someone had once clutched it with desperate force.

Sevran's breath caught hard in his throat.

A sound tore from his cracked lips, not a word, just a hollow, fractured gasp:

"...Ah."

His eyes refused to process what lay before him.

There, in the dead dirt between blood and jagged stone, rested a tiny candy wrapped in faded gray paper. It was grotesquely out of place--so small, so profoundly fragile, like a dried flower petal fallen into the belly of an active furnace. In a realm drowning in the rot, it belonged nowhere.

For three whole heartbeats, Sevran didn't dare breathe.

He stayed frozen, pinned by sheer terror. A trick, his mind screamed. Another phantom. If he blinked, it would disintegrate. If he reached out, it would dissolve into black smoke, just like the corridor, just like the ruined church, just like her silhouette.

Yet his broken body betrayed his intellect.

His knees buckled, crashing hard into the grit. Gritting his teeth against the agony of cracked ribs and shredded palms, he dropped to all fours.

He didn't walk; he dragged himself across the freezing gravel, centimeter by agonizing centimeter, leaving a smeared trail of blood in his wake.

His eyes remained locked onto that solitary speck of gray, terrified that looking away for even a fraction of a second would allow reality to snatch it back.

When his hand finally hovered over it, his fingers shuddered so violently he couldn't close his grip.

Slowly... he let the pads of his calloused fingers graze the paper.

Crinkle.

It didn't turn to ash. It didn't dissolve into void.

It was real.

The wrapper was soft and creased, bearing the unmistakable dents of tiny, anxious fingers that had clutched it tight in the dark, desperate to keep it safe.

Ah...

The sound broke inside his chest like a snapped bone.

Sevran scooped the candy into his palm, pulling it flush against his sternum, and collapsed face-down into the dirt. Everything he had suffered across those lifetimes, the betrayals, the severed windpipes, the mountains of corpses he had climbed just to scrounge for a future, seemed to collapse inward, crushed beneath the unbearable weight of this single, crumpled scrap of paper.

Hot tears soaked through the soot on his cheeks, washing into the earth. He curled his spine like a wounded beast, weeping without shame, weeping like a broken child who had finally, impossibly, been given a reason to believe.

"Chief..." Lugn had no words, not daring to shift so much as a muscle.

...

...

Roughly ten minutes slipped by. He held the same posture until his tears ran dry.

Suddenly, he sat upright, as though he had finally found his answer.

He looked at the demon. He had summoned this creature once before in a dream, after leading the dregs of the lower class to butcher the heretics he had first encountered upon arriving in this world.

This was... Lucidas. Sevran took in its bizarrely slender silhouette, clad in an immaculate, pitch-black suit devoid of a single crease.

It had no nose, no mouth; its entire visage was obscured by a dead-white porcelain mask. Dead center on the porcelain sat a single, colossal eye, staring as if piercing straight into the soul.

After that summoning, Sevran had remembered nothing.

...

Sevran took measure of the present situation, then said to the demon:

"Hold that offer. I need to verify something first."

"Splendid, human." The demon tilted its head. "Lest you forget the terms, allow me to reiterate."



...

"One-third of your lifespan."

"A fair bargain; you will not regret it," the demon continued. "You are exceptionally fortunate, you know. Who would have thought the summoning index of those backwater heretics would list both an ancient demon and an archdemon?"

Recalling something, he reached into his trouser pocket and drew out a scrap of parchment. Text covered only a single side; he reviewed the entries once more:





...

Ars Daemonica

Index #2050
Archdemon of Mind, Lucidas
Sacrifice Required: 1/3 of total lifespan.
Ability: Mental control / Psionic domination
Note: This demon will obey your directives, but exercise extreme caution.

Index #2051
Lesser Demonic Cat, Dancote
Sacrifice Required: Anything.
Ability: Unknown
Note: A rare male calico feline bearing demonic wings and a stubby horn; remarkably adorable.
Note 2: It only lies around or trails behind you; appears entirely devoid of power.

Index #2052
Ancient Demon, Barlahut
Sacrifice Required: Organisms, living or just died recently.
Ability: Unknown
Note: A formidable entity whose might scales with the volume of your sacrifices.

Index #2053
Lesser Demon, Vabel
Sacrifice Required: Magical entities.
Ability: Possesses no physical form.
Note: Capable of attaining archdemon-grade power under requisite conditions.
Note 2: May be summoned preliminarily without an upfront sacrifice; however, the toll must be settled upon the conclusion of the contract.

[!ND3X: #2054]

Three Methods of Demonic Summoning:

Direct presentation of the sacrifice.

Inscribing the ritual array onto the sacrifice, or situating the sacrifice within the array; requires the sacrifice to be either unconscious or entirely deceased.

Employing an esoteric, individualized method.

Conditions for Sealing a Demonic Contract:

Only a being that surrenders everything or secures the demon's personal acknowledgment is eligible to execute a pact.

A living entity may only enter into an alliance with a single demon at a time until the contract reaches its expiration. 
Note: Entity invocation remains permissible; secondary covenant execution is strictly forbidden

Should the contracting entity perish or suffer an incapacitating event while the contract remains active, the demon is still bound to carry out the entire terms of the contract and execute one contingency wish or alternative plan designated by said entity (to be established prior to sealing the contract).

- Exercise caution when summoning demons -

Index #2052: Barlahut.

Index #2053: Vabel.

In those bygone cycles, he had known nothing of escrow covenants or psionic misdirection; he had relied solely on Vabel's choking purple mist and Barlahut's bottomless appetite for slaughter. He had turned continents into ash and rivers into rotting gore, only to awaken each time with empty hands and Kau'i's blood still freezing in the dirt. Pure violence had bought him nothing but an eternity of curses.

His gaze dropped further, lingering on the clause inscribed in faded, archaic runes.


Only a being that surrenders everything or secures the demon's personal acknowledgment is eligible to execute a pact.


A cold, mocking clarity clicked into place.

He finally understood why the cultists had never conquered this continent.

For centuries, they were cowards hiding behind cloaks, groveling for power while hoarding their own wretched lives. Not a single one had ever conquered the land, because not a single one had ever passed the demon's trial.

None of them possessed the terrifying resolve to wager their own marrow. None of them had ever earned a demon's true acknowledgment, for entities that outlived the stars felt no kinship with beggars offering scraps of stolen flesh. To high demons, the cultists were never masters; they were merely noisy insects offering snacks before being swatted into the dirt.

To bind a demon, one could not come as a supplicant. One had to descend into the abyss, strip away every shred of fear and humanity, and become a monster of equal caliber.

Sevran's eyes grazed over the word Archdemon. A faint flicker of mockery stirred beneath his gaze.

These backwater heretics had no idea what they had toyed with. The ledger itself had been duped. Across ten thousand bygone dreams, Sevran knew all too well that the entity in the tailored black suit standing before him was never merely an Archdemon.

It was an Ancient Demon of Lower First, wearing that modest title just as it wore its crease-free wool, a deliberate disguise to walk the boundary lines as an aloof observer without sending tremors through the strata.

Looking further down, he had never laid eyes upon the final entity on this ledger. It looked profoundly aberrant; a dreadful premonition warned him never to disturb such a thing.

"...All right, Lugn. Let us regroup with the others."

"Understood, Chief."

...

Only when that gaze pulls him into the dark,
Leaving no time to refuse,
Does he realize what he had forgotten-
The quiet places where we sheltered, across all those years.

 - "Verdure", by The Sweetest Bane

......