The Boy Who Refused to Break
After an unknown amount of time passed, beneath layers of dirt and broken branches, the figure of a little boy suddenly rose — like an undead climbing out of a grave.
Mud slid from his hair. Air burned in his lungs.
For a few heartbeats, everything spun.
Then, as his senses returned, the boy staggered to his feet — and ran.
He stumbled. Fell. Scraped his palms raw.
But he got up again, as if something was dragging him forward by sheer will.
This boy was Lucien — black hair hanging to his shoulders, crimson eyes dim with shock, small horns curving back from his skull.
And pain was crawling through every inch of his body.
Once he fully woke, it hit him all at once. His muscles screamed. Burn marks charred patches across his clothes. Every breath burned.
But there were no fatal wounds.
And then — the memory crashed in.
Evelyn.
Her standing between him and the Griffin.
Her back straight. Her expression steady.
Her eyes soft — even when facing death.
He jerked upright as if struck by lightning and started sprinting toward the place they had been before everything exploded.
Move…
His jaw clenched so hard it ached.
Move, damn it. Even if I die… it will only be after I find her.
Blood dripped from the corner of his lips. His chest heaved. His legs buckled more than once — but he forced them to obey, dragging himself forward through stone, ash, and broken earth.
And finally…
He reached the place.
Reality struck.
There was nothing left.
The mountain ridge had been torn apart. The forest was gone. The ground was scorched black. Even the stones had melted into twisted shapes.
Smoke curled upward into the sky, thick enough to become low, smothering clouds. Rain began to fall again — a bleak curtain drawn over ruin.
Lucien dropped to his knees.
He didn't scream.
At first, he simply… sat there, letting the cold sink into his bones.
Then the memories surfaced — not of magic, not of bloodlines, not of clans.
But of the woman who had held him from the day he was born into this world.
Tears blurred his vision.
Back on Earth… his story had not started with warmth.
He remembered the narrow apartment filled with silence. A mother who worked three jobs until her lungs collapsed. A boy who sat beside a hospital bed, fingers clutching fabric too tightly.
"Mom… I'll study hard. I'll get us out of here. Just… stay."
She had smiled — tired, fragile.
"I'm proud of you, sweetheart."
She didn't wake the next morning.
After that, he lived with relatives who saw him as a burden. Cold dinners. Harsh words. Doors shutting in his face. He carried everything alone — school, part-time work, nights that felt endless.
Once, while walking home through the rain, he had whispered to himself:
"It'll get better. Just endure."
Then the accident came.
A crowded subway platform. A man pushing past a woman with a child. The woman stumbled forward — toward the tracks.
Lucien didn't think.
He grabbed her. Pulled.
She and the child rolled back onto the platform.
He didn't.
The train's lights swallowed everything.
And when he opened his eyes again… he was a baby in unfamiliar arms.
Demons surrounded him — horns, scarlet eyes, strange markings — terrifying at first.
Until those arms tightened gently.
Until that soft voice whispered to him.
Until he saw her.
Evelyn — long black hair flowing down her back, deep red eyes, two long, elegant horns curving from her head, and two small fangs peeking from her lips. Tired, yes — but filled with love warmer than anything he had known.
He couldn't understand her words then — until the strange, searing pain hit his infant mind and language began to unravel itself inside him.
"It's okay, my dear son. Mommy is here."
He thought he was hallucinating at first. Reincarnation? Demon world? It sounded insane.
But time proved it real.
Lucien Avaritia.
Youngest son of the Avaritia clan — one of the Seven Demon Clans ruling the Demon Continent, each named after sins whispered in ancient demon tongue:
Superbia. Invidia. Ira. Avaritia. Luxuria. Gula. Acedia.
Seven powers. Seven bloodlines. Seven thrones of cruelty.
All this time, only Evelyn cared for him.
Damion Avaritia — his father — barely looked his way. Not a word. Not a glance. As if Lucien did not exist.
Then, when Lucien turned seven, he was brought into a grand hall — elders watching him, eyes sharp as knives.
His aptitude test.
His shame.
And everything began to crumble from there.
The way people looked at him with dislike is still fresh in his mind. He also remembers how his father was really cold to him. This makes him really angry. It mixes with the sadness that he is feeling inside. The anger and sadness are, like two things that are fighting inside of him.
Luciens hands curled into fists. They were so tight that his nails dug into his skin. This really hurt Lucien. Luciens nails were sharp. They pierced his skin.
Blood was sliding down his fingers. This was a scary sight. The blood just kept going down his fingers.
My face is all wet, with tears. They are stained red. The tears are really red.
He lifted his head up to the sky that was full of clouds. And then the sound of his voice came out really loud, from his chest. The sky was really dark. He was looking at the sky. The sound of his voice was loud.
"Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"
The man. Screamed until his throat was really sore and hurt a lot. He just kept screaming. It made his throat feel like it was torn and raw. The mans throat was very painful, from all the screaming he did.
The man was talking until his voice stopped because he started coughing a lot.
Then—
A sound.
Movement.
The man just stopped moving all of a. He froze.
When the man turned around he saw the thing that was, in front of him. The thing was the reason he had turned around in the place. He was looking at the thing. The thing was what he saw.
The Griffin.
This thing was not the animal that people talked about. It was actually a hurt and scary creature that had been through a lot. The body of the creature. It looked like a lion. It had wings like a bat. They were all torn and black. There were plates, on its back but they were broken. Poison was coming out of the place where its tail used to be. A tail that looked like a scorpions tail.
It moved forward slowly leaving behind footprints. The thing limped forward. It left bloody prints on the ground. The bloody prints were, from it.
Luciens lungs filled up. They felt really tight, with a lot of fury. Lucien was so angry that his lungs felt like they were going to burst. The fury that Lucien felt was very strong.
"How dare you still be alive!"
He yelled it out without thinking about it. He was not scared all. The man completely forgot that the animal was still very dangerous even though it was hurt. The beast could easily hurt him badly like he was a tiny bug.
The Griffin let out a roar. It was a bad sound. The Griffin made this noise because it was hurt. The sound of the Griffin was very painful to hear.
Lucien looked around fast trying to find something, like a rock or a stick or just anything at all that he could use.
I did not have the choice to run. Running was not something that I could do at that moment. The option of running simply did not exist for me.
I get ready to fight. Then the fight. I am fighting. The fight is what I am doing.
The mans fingers brushed against something that was in the pocket of his pants. His fingers brushed something in his pocket. It was a surprise, to him. The man wondered what the thing was that his fingers brushed.
He pulled it out. The breath just left his body.
His mother's storage ring.
Of course.
When Evelyn kissed his forehead she did something sneaky. She had slipped something into his clothes when she did that. Evelyn had put something in his clothes when she kissed him on the forehead.
She had already made up her mind. Decided what she was going to do. The decision was already done. She decided.
The woman had made the decision to end her life. She had chosen to die to give up and let go. The woman had decided that death was what she wanted that it was better, than living.
She had a lot of things that were very special, to her. Everything she owned every treasure she gave all of it to him.
The man felt his throat get really tight. His throat was tightening up. It was, like something was squeezing his throat. The mans throat tightened.
The man reached into the ring. He called out for a weapon. He wanted a weapon to appear in the ring. The man was waiting for the weapon to show up in the ring. The ring was where the man would find his weapon.
Not a sword this time — but a spear.
Cold. Balanced. Heavy with memory.
He held on tight his knuckles turned white. The sky got clear for a second. You could see three moons just hanging there in the air not making a sound.
A world that was not the ash-gray continent.
A world unknown.
"I don't care," he thought, shaking his head.
None of that mattered.
He turned to face the Griffin, levelled the spear, and said —
"Even if it costs me my life, I will take you down."
The Griffin twitched — as if understanding — and forced its broken body to move faster.
Lucien quickly studied it.
One front leg gone.
Half its face melted, left eye destroyed.
Burns all along its side.
Tail missing.
Evelyn's self-detonating magic core should have erased it completely — but too much of her power had leaked out earlier when she forced the forbidden escape spell. The Griffin had survived.
Barely.
Lucien knew he had one chance.
He scooped dirt into his hand and sprinted. The Griffin gathered what strength it had left, charging.
His heart hammered.
His mind sharpened into terrifying focus.
At the last moment — he flung the dirt into the beast's remaining eye, then let his body fall backward, bracing the spear upright toward the sky.
The Griffin, blinded, didn't stop.
"Grrrraaaaahhhh!"
The spear punched through flesh.
Momentum did the rest.
Its own weight tore open its stomach — a wet sound splitting the silence. Organs spilled out, steaming in the cold air.
The Griffin collapsed with a heavy thud.
Lucien pushed himself to his feet. His palms bled around the shaft of the spear. Only now did he realize —
This was the same spear Evelyn had wielded when defending him from Damion.
His eyes blurred.
He swallowed it down.
Not now. Move.
Blood would attract beasts.
He turned to run.
Then — something slammed into him.
Like being hit by a runaway carriage.
His body flew — smashed into a tree nearly a hundred meters away. Pain erupted everywhere. His ribs felt shattered. Breath refused to come.
He forced his eyes open.
Forced himself to stand.
"Ahhhhhh!"
He lost control entirely.
He charged the Griffin again — the creature had managed one last twitch of movement before finally going still.
Seeing the monster that had taken his mother away —
His vision went red.
Hunger. Rage. Hatred.
He stabbed the Griffin.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He didn't know how long he screamed — how long he tore into flesh — until the creature's head was nothing more than blood and pulp.
Then the adrenaline drained.
He collapsed onto his back, chest heaving, world spinning.
After a few seconds — tears slid silently down his temples.
"Kuhh… give her back… give me back my mother!!! You freaking monster!!!"
He sobbed — forgetting danger, forgetting the world — not knowing the Griffin had been the overlord of the entire region, keeping other beasts away.
And while he lay there trying to gather himself—
A sound rang in the air.
Ding.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed inside his mind.
"Congratulations, the host has fulfilled the requirements to—"
The voice paused.
Silence.
Then… it changed. Softer. Feminine.
"What the hell? This body is too shitty. How is someone supposed to fight like this? The system will perform a free physical reformation as… uhh, a welcome gift. Yes. A one-time welcome gift. Ahem — host, please nod if you accept it."
Lucien stared blankly.
His mind swam.
What the hell is happening…?
He was in awe.
And the world seemed to shift again.