Did he die today, yesterday, or perhaps tomorrow?
Once, he had been an ordinary human. Now — the Lord of Hell, the one who cast down Lucifer himself.
Thousands of years of battles, countless sacrifices, an army of the fallen… and at the end — silence.
He was called the Lord. He was praised and feared.
But upon the ruins of victory, he remained the last one standing. With a crown in his hands, yet utterly alone.
Thus begins — or perhaps ends — the story of a devil who dared to become human once more.
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In the depths of Hell, where there was no place for the living, stretched the boundless desert of Samatha — once barren, now strewn with heaps of mangled bodies, soaked in the iron stench of blood.
Only recently, these bodies had been an army of merciless devils, instilling unrestrained terror in the heart of anyone who crossed their path.
Now everything had frozen. Only time continued its funeral rite.
Amid the sea of corpses, at the epicenter of the slaughter, a lone male figure knelt. Saturated with an aura of grief, he resembled a shattered statue. A face covered in blood and ash showed no emotion. Only a torn black mantle fluttered in the scorching wind.
His lifeless gaze did not leave the horizon, where ranks of his fallen comrades stretched all the way to the edge of sight. They merged into a single dark mass.
A transparent drop slid down his dust-covered cheek. He could do nothing. He could only watch as the relentless sand formed new dunes, burying the traces of the desperate battle.
He was known by the title “Lord.” His name alone could make devils fall prostrate in reverence and monsters flee with their tails tucked. He was praised and feared. He had subjugated Hell.
But at what cost?
Only recently, his legions had raised their banners in the desert of Samatha. Their target was the invincible army of Lucifer. Every soldier burned with a thirst for blood. Their ferocious aura seemed capable of tearing the heavens apart.
The fallen archangel had ruled Hell since the beginning of existence. He was the embodiment of power, an unattainable peak. No one would even dare to think of challenging him.
No one — except their Lord.
Could he have known that he would remain the sole survivor? Of course he could.
From the very beginning, victory had seemed like a dream. The might of Lucifer was no fabrication. Everyone knew that. And yet they still charged into the attack.
Madmen. Fanatics. Idiots.
They understood that survival was nearly impossible, yet they still rushed into battle. A life for a life — an equal exchange. A life for two — an obvious gain. For them, it was an honor to give their lives for the glory and the goals of their Lord.
And they gave them. They gave their bodies, their blood and sweat, their hearts and their souls. They gave him everything.
And all of them fell.
Only the Lord remained fighting. Alone against countless legions. Like a whirlwind, he tore across the battlefield — fearless and merciless. Relentless, like the very embodiment of death.
Thousands of commanders fell by his hand. Dozens of generals were beheaded. He personally cast down Lucifer. He tore victory from his tenacious grasp! And as proof, he held a black, jagged crown, whose sharp prongs, like fangs, bit into the skin, leaving bloody wounds.
Yes, he achieved his goal. However — at what cost?
His loyal host. His brothers-in-arms. All of them were dead. They fought for him and for his ideals — and what did they receive in return? Only oblivion. They did not even have graves.
For three days already, the Lord had remained on his knees, unable to rise. He thought he had been prepared for such an outcome. He thought he would accept it without hesitation. Yet now, standing amid the ruins of his own victory, he could not stop doubting.
Why did he start all of this? Why did he gather countless armies? Why did he send them to certain death?
He had quite literally sacrificed everything to achieve his goal, and he was completely broken.
Yes, this was Hell. Yes, murder here was a common occurrence, and mercy did not exist. Existence itself here was synonymous with the words “pain,” “despair,” and “fear.”
But even the most merciless devils have limits. Limits that the Lord had crossed.
He had to remember — why.
Mourning, the Lord plunged into the farthest corners of his memory.
He recalled how he had first appeared in Hell, still green by the standards of this ruthless place. He had been a simple mortal. Weak, helpless. Like everyone else, he had begun from the first layer. He could not even imagine that one day he would be able to bring all of Hell to its knees.
Every step across the surface of Hell felt like stepping on shattered glass. With every breath, flames burst into his lungs, causing unimaginable pain to an already scorched body. Thirst and hunger became his faithful companions.
And worst of all — loneliness. For a thousand miles around him, there was not a single soul.
That time was agonizing. Back then, death seemed like a beautiful dream. He could only dream of escaping the endless agony.
At that time, he simply walked, not knowing how long, why, or where, only to find — not knowing what.
He walked, sifting through the happy moments of his past life grain by grain. A life that had ended abruptly.
He walked, mindlessly repeating three words: “Gray,” “Bella,” and “Mom.” Only these three names kept him from losing his mind completely. They became an obsessive mantra, an anchor in a sea of madness.
Was he sinful? Perhaps. However, he did not believe he deserved such suffering.
Endless days of pain and loneliness dulled all his senses. Driven by instinct alone, he was turning into a soulless puppet. Without purpose, without hope, accompanied only by three names.
And then — that encounter. A strange, casual creature, furious and hungry, lunged at him with the clear intent to tear him apart. Its disgusting dark tentacles lashed like whips, and its maw, like crushing jaws, dripped with vile saliva.
At that very moment, a full fireworks display of emotions ignited in the young Lord’s soul. Fear — sharp, piercing, forcing his blood to race faster through his veins. But alongside it came something else — joy. Paradoxical, insane joy at no longer being alone. At the realization that in this merciless world, something still lived, even if hostile and grotesque.
This palette of contradictory emotions was so powerful that even now, after millennia of battles and struggles, the memory of it made the Lord shiver slightly.
The memories kept replaying…
Years merged into decades, decades into centuries, and he still wandered across the first layer. Alone and purposeless. His path had become an endless succession of battles with monsters whose forms could only be called nightmares, the twisted fantasies of deranged souls.
He fought and hid. He did everything to survive.
Hunger never left him for a moment. Insatiable and burning, it drove him to tear flesh and drink the blood of his enemies, just to feel alive for a fleeting instant.
It was an endless journey, with no room for mercy. Every strike, every movement, aimed to consume, destroy, obliterate all that was living.
And so, step by step, drop by drop, the inexperienced youth vanished. The most ordinary mortal slowly transformed into a ruthless killer, worthy of the title “Lord.”
His body became covered with scars. Eyes that had once been innocent and full of life now burned with red fire, revealing his inner essence — the essence of a predator.
In this world, ruled by darkness, death, and pain, there was no place for the weak. Only the strongest survived, and he became the embodiment of that principle. He was willing to do anything to satisfy his insatiable desires, knowing neither fatigue nor mercy.
He had completely become a predator, consumed by a thirst for blood and flesh. He became a part of this world, a part of Hell and its endless struggle.
This predator desperately repeated:
“GRAY, BELLA, MOM”
“Mommy, Gray, Bella”
“Bella, Mother, Gray”
“Gray — Mom”
“Gray — Bella”
“GRAY, GRAY, GRAY, GRAY, GRAY, GRAY”
And then, after years of aimless wandering, he encountered another sentient being — one as lost as he himself was.
A humanoid towering nearly three meters high. Horns crowned its head, and its limbs were covered in scales. It moved slowly, yet every step shook the ground beneath it. It repeated monotonously, stubbornly, “Palloc,” much like he himself had chanted, “GRAY, BELLA, MOM.”
This strange call of pain ignited a spark in the Lord’s tortured mind. Beneath the layers of rage, pain, and hunger, something long forgotten stirred.
The predator stopped.
Eyes blazing red narrowed — not in anger, but in attention. He looked — for the first time in centuries, he simply looked, rather than lunged.
Instinct screamed: tear apart, drink the blood, absorb the power. But another, quiet shadow within whispered: wait…
The gazes of the two mad beings met like two wild flames. Two fading memories of a past life. A life when they had been human, not devils.
Finally, unable to contain his thirst for blood, the young Lord leaped at the humanoid. His teeth shot toward the enemy’s throat, but in this strike there was a strange, almost childish playfulness — a glimmer of curiosity he had not known for an eternity.
He did not want to kill immediately. He wanted to understand…
The creature growled, catching his body in massive hands. Dust and shards of bone erupted around them.
“Gray?” — the rasp came almost instinctively, like an echo of pain, meaningless to the one who heard it.
The creature responded with a flash of its eyes: “Palloc.”
A strike. Another.
Their movements were sharp, hungry, bestial — but without hatred.
The young Lord’s needle-like teeth sank into the humanoid’s shoulder.
“Mom?” — he rasped, loosening his grip for a moment.
“PALLOC!” — came the thunderous reply, almost a protective cry.
The Lord recoiled, jerking back, as if remembering himself.
“Bella…”
“PALLOC, PALLOC, PALLOC!!!” — the creature screamed frenziedly in response.
The struggle resumed, but in a different way. Slower. Harsh shoves, attempts to hold rather than to kill. As if two beings, long forgotten what companionship meant, were rediscovering it. From their battle emerged something new — a flicker of recognition, an echo of a long-lost sense of connection.
After a prolonged struggle, when strength had left them both, they remained lying side by side, breathing heavily, endlessly repeating now four words.
Again and again.
Two devils. Four names. Two sparks of memory.
Thus began the shared journey of two “highly evolved” predators.
They were no longer merely beasts. They had taken the first step back — toward themselves, toward humanity. And that step led them to power.
Year after year, century after century, they fought side by side — shoulder to shoulder, claw to claw, name to name. Their fame spread throughout Hell. They were feared. They were revered.
Yet every path has its end.
Now, amid the dead winds of the desert of Samatha, stood the Lord, holding in his hands the crown of dominion over this cursed world. Alone…
He rose slowly from his knees. A hollow silence pulsed in his temples. His legs felt heavy, as if filled with lead, each step echoing with pain — not in his body, but in his heart.
Before him lay Palloc.
His loyal friend and comrade-in-arms. His first general, his instrument of destruction. The very one who had once spoken his name, awakening him from madness. The one who had stayed beside him. The one who remained until the end.
Palloc’s corpse resembled a sculpture of an ancient demon: dark skin the color of charred iron, a back cleft with massive bony spikes, growths along his arms and chest like frozen drops of lava.
The Lord knelt beside him, gently touching the rough, scaly skin. His forehead pressed against the giant’s cold one.
“Farewell, my first general. Farewell, my friend… Farewell, Palloc…” — his voice trembled. Each word came with difficulty.
“Rest in peace. I hope that where you have gone, there is no more pain.”
The Lord felt his resolve waver. Part of him wanted to stay here, to mourn the fallen, to sink into grief and regret. But another part — selfish and merciless, the part that had carried him through thousands of years of suffering — whispered insistently:
‘Do not falter.’
‘Do not look back.
‘Keep moving.”
‘You chose your path. You must not regret it. Death is no escape for us. The opportunity has presented itself. You had to seize it. Grab it with both hands and keep walking.’
‘We have no time for sorrow or regret. You always knew the road to our goal was paved with mountains of corpses and sacrifices.’
‘We are almost there. Only one final step remains!’
The Lord turned away.
His gaze regained its steel. Grief and doubt were left behind. He had to move forward. For himself, for the fallen. He could not retreat when the goal was so near.
He picked up the dagger and katana, their blades etched with cracks and nicks from countless battles. Then he lifted the bloodied crown onto his head.
For a moment, his eyes lingered on Lucifer’s mutilated body. Then — without a word, without emotion — he shifted his weight and slowly crushed the fallen archangel’s face under his heel. The sand drank the blood greedily, just as it had countless times before.
The scorching wind whipped up dust, but the Lord walked steadily. He crossed several dunes without ever diverting his gaze from the target.
Here, amid the dead sands, a tree grew — no taller than a bonsai.
Its thick trunk was parched, yet alive. The branches, like tongues of flame, stretched upward, glowing from within with a warm amber fire. Sparse green leaves seemed almost illusory, like mirages hovering above the scorching sand. They quivered in the lifeless wind, as if struggling to hold on to a world that rejected their very existence.
The tree clearly did not belong in the grim landscape of Samatha. Its mere presence defied the logic of Hell, like a bone piercing through skin.
The Tree of Reincarnation. A tree sprouted from the phoenix’s flames. A tree that had managed to bear the Fruit of Life in the Realm of Death.
In a single word — contradiction.
Its sole fruit, the size of a plum, swayed gently on a thick branch. It resembled a shard of crystal, radiating a warm, inner glow. A barely perceptible LIVING aroma wafted from it.
The scent drove devils insane. It made their hearts pound faster, their mouths fill with saliva. It awakened that which, in Hell, was thought long dead — hope.
All of Hell trembled because of this fruit. It had destroyed millions. It had been the cause of Lucifer’s fall. And it was so close.
The Lord raised his hand. His fingers trembled. The broken katana vibrated slightly as he drew it along the branch. One smooth motion—and the coveted fruit rested in his palm.
“I did it… I did it!” His voice cracked with excitement and insatiable greed, hoarse and barely coherent.
“Bella, Mother, can you see this? Years of struggle and suffering. Centuries of solitude and deprivation. Millennia of battles. I gave everything to reach this goal. And now, here I am…”
“Everything else I leave to fate. I hope it all works out, and I will see you again…”
His voice shifted once more, ringing clear, filled with authority and power:
“By the power granted to me by the Biblical Hell. I, GREY, called the Lord, current rightful master of dimension 169,563,271,458, hereby declare my immediate resignation and proceed to reincarnation!”
The black crown flared with a brilliant light. The entire dimension trembled.
Without hesitation, the Lord devoured the fruit with greedy determination.
With a single decisive motion, he drove the broken katana into his own heart, and the dagger—between his eyes. And… in the blink of an eye, he vanished from the blood-soaked desert, leaving only the echo of his final words resonating across the endless Samatha.