The shrieking cries of wind and flame magic sliced through the air.
A figure dashed through the primeval forest, crashing through underbrush like a wounded beast.
Blood streamed down his left cheek, but he didn't stop—he didn't even glance back.
"I wasn't born to be pointed at and called a demon... So why does everyone treat me like one?"
Yao—a lone wanderer of the lowborn caste—gritted his teeth and repeated the thought in his mind.
The thunder of pursuing footsteps from cultivators above echoed like the heavens were collapsing.
"He's over there! Stop him before he awakens Ryu to level six!"
"Kill him! Don't even leave a corpse to bury!"
"Heaven's Demon Butterfly—if it reaches level seven, even the heavens will tremble!"
Yao clenched his fists.
On his right shoulder, a glowing blue silhouette of butterfly wings radiated an eerie cold magic.
It was breathtakingly beautiful—yet to cultivators, it was catastrophe incarnate.
The Heaven's Demon Butterfly—a Ryu-class creature, stage five.
Ever since Yao was a starving boy on the city outskirts,
only it... had stood beside him.
Not a mentor, nor kin, nor the heavens themselves had shown him mercy.
Only this cursed creature that the cultivation world called "inauspicious."
"You're raising that thing? Are you insane?"
"It will devour you whole one day!"
"Raising a stage one beast was forgivable... but stage five? You've defied fate itself!"
I've raised it in secret... for over a thousand years.
Those words still echoed in Yao's mind like a nightmare.
Yet he had smiled back then...
When it wrapped its azure wings around him on a freezing night.
He once believed—it was the last family he had.
But now...
Fwoosh! Boom!
"Blood-Sealing Array! Surround him!"
Yao barely burst through the magic veil before the seal could enclose him.
He coughed up more blood, yet a faint smile remained on his lips.
He rose to his feet and faced the countless enemies before him.
Above, the sky teemed with cultivators from every sect.
Robes of gold, frost, flame, and shadow—all had joined forces like never before.
And for what? For him... alone.
"Yao. So you truly walk the path of demons?"
"If you take one more step, that butterfly will become more than a disaster—it will be the end of the path itself!"
"Sacrifice yourself here... for the sake of the heavens!"
Yao let out a low chuckle, his smile cold as midwinter.
"A demon's path... or just the path the world rejects?"
"Tell me—who carved the word 'justice' into a stone drenched in blood?"
"I only wished to live... Is that truly so wrong?"
Silence fell, if only briefly.
The butterfly perched on his shoulder began to radiate a strange aura.
Its wings darkened to violet-black, ancient runes flickering in their depths.
Then—it spoke.
For the first time in fifteen years.
"Yao... you are the one I chose."
"Now... return my power to me."
Yao froze.
The eyes that once gleamed with sharpness and worldly insight
were now wide with incomprehension.
"You... want to devour me?"
"I am heir to Devouring."
"I grew from our bond... and I shall be complete in your despair."
Dark energy surged from the butterfly.
It spread its wings—and dove into Yao's body.
The cry of sorcery echoed across the sky.
"AAARGHHHH!!"
He collapsed...
His body quaking from within.
His blood twisted into arcane silk that carved runes across his flesh.
The one he had raised with love—had betrayed him.
"You... you were just another beast, weren't you?"
He clenched his teeth. No tears fell.
Only the light in his eyes faded quietly.
The cultivators remained in formation,
unaware of what had transpired within that body.
But the energy of "level six" began to rise...
Only to flicker—and vanish.
Yao fell, lifeless.
His final silhouette was devoured by the butterfly's wings that unfurled across the sky.
Then they curled inward—vanishing into a pitch-black veil of magic.
No one knew where it had gone.
Silence.
No cheers. No triumph.
The cultivators could only stare at the lifeless corpse... and the void it left behind.
One voice echoed from Yao's soul, in that final moment:
"Now... I understand."
"It was never that I was weak... but that this world has no place for those who don't belong."
"Even shadows abandon you in lightless dark."
"Love is a chain. Hope, a snare. And bonds... a blade with no hilt."
"If there truly is justice in this world...
why then, does a demon have a heart?"
And then, all faded to black.
---
High above, tens of thousands of cultivators and sect leaders stood surrounding Yao's body—
devoured by the Heaven's Demon Butterfly.
"The prophecy of the Celestial Palace... was true," murmured the Sect Master of the Skywing Sect,
as he summoned his own Ryu—Skywing Ryu, stage six,
a golden avian spirit that hovered beside him.
"Demon... what exactly are you?" he said, his voice trembling.
"So this is the disaster of prophecy...
Even your master, who loved you like family—"
The demon butterfly, now fused with Yao, grinned wickedly.
Then spoke, voice hardened like iron:
"Everything I did... was for my master."
"If not for the Celestial Palace and you Nine Emperor Sects,
declaring me a calamity from some foolish prophecy you spun yourselves—"
Upon hearing this, the Nine Emperor Sects exploded in outrage.
"You accursed demon! How dare you slander the Celestial Palace!" bellowed the Sword God Sect Master.
"So what if I did? Do you truly believe your sacred Celestial Palace is worth believing in?!"
"Silence, you—!"
---