Chapter 2
At the very bottom of the dungeon, behind layer after layer of dim stone steps, a demon was chained.
A vicious one, people said.
A monster responsible for unspeakable slaughter. The mastermind behind the war. A traitor who had turned on his own allies and risen to become Lord of the Demon Realm.
At least, that was the story everyone told.
The truth was a little different.
Before all of this, Julian Ash had been my childhood friend.
Later, we entered different sects and drifted apart. Then came the years I lost to the system. Then the war. Then Julian’s name exploded across the world in blood and rumor. Then, one month ago, the allied immortal sects finally cornered him.
He blew apart his own core to avoid capture.
Except he hadn’t died.
I knew that because I had picked him up afterward.
There had been a few brief moments over the last three years when I managed to wrest control of my body back from the system for only seconds at a time. One of those times, I found his broken body and hid him away.
Now I stood in front of his cell and looked down at him.
Julian sat with one knee bent, an arm resting lazily across it, black iron binding both wrists. When he heard my footsteps, he lifted his head.
His gaze lingered on me for a few seconds.
Then he smiled.
“Evelyn,” he murmured. “You look beautiful tonight.”
Before I could answer, he vanished.
I frowned and turned—
too late.
An arm wrapped around my waist from behind, and I was pulled flush against a body that was far warmer than it had any right to be for someone half-dead and chained underground.
His fingers tilted my face to the side.
At my ear, he let out a low sigh.
“Did you really come see me on your wedding night?”
I lowered my eyes to his wrists. “Why can’t the black iron hold you?”
Julian raised one hand obligingly.
The iron ring was still locked around his wrist.
It was only the chain attached to it that had snapped in half.
He hooked the broken length around my wrist too, loosely tying us together, then lifted our hands with a pleased little shake.
“There,” he said. “Now it’s holding me.”
I stared at him.
“If you want to imprison a demon,” he went on lazily, “the best way is with your body. If you stayed with me every day, how would I ever escape?”
I slipped free of the chain and gave him a look.
“At that point, I’m not sure which one of us is the prisoner.”
He lowered his chin to my shoulder and studied my face as if he had something important to say.
I waited.
After a long pause, he finally asked, almost thoughtfully, “You came to see me in your wedding clothes… are you trying to seduce me into becoming your groom instead?”
I blinked.
Three years.
I hadn’t seen this man for three years, and somehow the sunny, straightforward sword prodigy I remembered had turned into this.
This damp, dangerous, shameless creature.
I narrowed my eyes and studied him carefully.
No sign of possession.
No foreign soul.
He was definitely himself.
That was almost worse.
Julian noticed my stare and leaned even closer, utterly unembarrassed.
“What is it? Isn’t my face much better than your husband’s?”
I nodded solemnly. “Your skin is definitely thicker.”
He laughed.
I pulled several bottles of pills from my storage ring and shoved them into his hands. “Take these. Heal properly. I’m going back.”
I hadn’t made it two steps before he dragged me right back.
His voice dropped.
“Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”
I considered it and said lightly, “Because it’s my wedding night. Every second is precious.”
Not because I cared about the wedding.
Because I wanted to see whether Kira had successfully broken through.
Julian’s arm tightened around my waist.
He gave a strange little laugh.
“Every second of your wedding night is precious?” His eyes darkened. “Does he deserve that?”
I glanced at him, then frowned.
His irises had begun to redden at the edges.
And at his brow, a dark demonic mark flickered in and out.
I turned my face away.
“Why did you become a demon?”
The hand on my cheek stiffened.
“What?” he asked quietly. “Do you despise me too now?”
“If I did,” I said, “why would I have saved you?”
He let me go.
Then he turned and walked toward the cell door.
The golden seal I’d laid over it glowed to life. He stood before it, one hand raised.
“Do you really think this can hold me?”
He pushed his hand through the seal.
I sighed.
“Julian. Come back.”
His foot, already half raised to step out, slowly settled back onto the floor.
He turned his head.
“You push me away, then stop me from leaving.” His smile was thin. “What exactly do you want, Evelyn?”
I looked at him.
“I want you alive.”
That wiped the smile from his face.
“You can’t leave yet. The sects never found your body. They’re still digging through the battlefield trying to confirm your death.”
I lowered my gaze to his wrists.
“And I’m not disgusted by you. I’m only… sad.”
The sword at my waist trembled.
Julian’s own sword, Drift, had flown to me the day he became a demon. It had fallen into my hands like a living thing in mourning.
I had kept it ever since.
“It came to me,” I said softly. “Your sword. On the day it happened. It said you didn’t want it anymore. But I remember how much you loved it. You used to run to me every time you learned a new move just so you could show off.”
Julian looked at his hands.
“Demonic energy and sword intent repel each other,” he said. “I can’t wield it anymore.”
Silence stretched.
Then I asked the question that had been sitting in my chest for a month.
“Why?”
His expression went flat.
“Was someone behind it?”
He looked at me for a very long time.
Then he said, “Do you remember Skyreach Sect?”
Of course I did.
That sect had once stood at the height of its glory before collapsing almost overnight three years ago. People said Julian had slaughtered nearly the whole place himself. After that, the sect faded into obscurity.
Julian looked away.
“Skyreach was built atop a spirit vein. That’s why it rose so fast. Then one day, the spirit vein began to dry up. They tried everything. Nothing worked. Then the Eye Demon they kept sealed beneath the sect claimed it knew a way to nourish the vein again.”
I felt my brow tighten at once.
“The Eye Demon specializes in manipulation. They trusted it?”
“At first, no,” Julian said. “Then the spirit vein really did improve under its guidance.”
I had a terrible feeling.
“So what was the price?”
He laughed once.
“No immortal sect would dare sacrifice its own. So they took what they needed from ordinary people instead.”
I went still.
Julian’s voice remained calm.
“The day I went home during my trial training, the whole village was silent. Dust coated everything.”
He paused.
“It wasn’t dust.”
My throat tightened.
“It was ash.”
His face didn’t move when he said it.
“The fire had already burned out. The people were gone. Everyone. Under the ash, I found traces of Skyreach’s techniques. Then my master walked out from the center of the village, splashing demon beast blood around to frame the demon race for the massacre.”
Julian smiled, but there was nothing human in it.
“When I questioned him, he talked to me about the future of the sect. About sacrifice. About the greater good.”
His eyes met mine.
“So I drew my sword and killed him.”
I could barely breathe.
“I went back to the sect for answers. The elders locked me in the dungeon instead. They put me in the same cell as the Eye Demon.”
His voice roughened slightly.
“That thing tried to assimilate me. Day after day. Experiments. Humiliation. Pain. It wore me down, little by little.”
He fell quiet for a moment.
Then, very softly, “I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”
His hand reached for mine. His expression—so often mocking now—had cracked somewhere I hadn’t noticed.
“I was in so much pain, Evelyn.”
Something warm fell onto the back of his hand.
He looked down sharply.
Then panicked.
“No. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Don’t cry. I’m fine now. Really. I got out. I killed everyone who hurt me. Don’t cry.”
He cupped my face with both hands, wiping at my tears with shaking fingers.
But I could hardly see him through them.
When Drift flew to me that day, when Julian became a demon, that had been him.
Calling for help.
And I had not come.
Because that was exactly when my body had been stolen.
He tilted my chin up again, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’m strong now. If you can’t survive in the immortal world anymore, come to the Demon Realm. I’m in charge there.”
Despite myself, I let out a wet laugh.
“Right. Demon Lord.”
Then I drew a breath.
“There’s something you should know. For the past three years, what you saw… that wasn’t me.”
His expression changed instantly.
“I figured,” he said in a low voice.
“A foreign soul took my body. It controlled me. The things it did. The marriage. None of that was my choice.”
Julian’s face turned cold.
“Is it dead?”
“Very.”
He relaxed a fraction.
“Good,” he said. “Otherwise I would’ve killed it myself.”
My chest felt lighter after that.
As if some knot I had been carrying for years had finally loosened.
I patted the front of his robe and stepped back.
“Rest. I still have to clean up the mess it left behind.”
Dawn was beginning to break by the time I left the dungeon.
My next stop was Kira’s cave residence.
And because some foolish part of me still remembered the way she used to smile over the smallest things, I stopped on the way to dig up a jar of fruit wine I had brewed three years ago.
She used to love it.
I hoped maybe—just maybe—one sip of it might soften the last three years between us.
I had barely reached the entrance when a man’s scream split the air.
“Kira! You psychopath!”
I stopped in my tracks.
That was Shane.
Last night he’d said he was going to guard her while she broke through.
I frowned.
If he liked her that much, why was he yelling like that?
Then I heard Kira’s voice float out, cold and clear.
“I really don’t understand what he sees in you. Maybe if I peel off this face and give it to him as a gift, he’ll forgive me.”
I stood frozen.
Then slowly looked up at the cave entrance.
Either I had misheard—
or my sweet, polite, adorable junior sister had just threatened to skin my husband alive.