My eyes stayed locked on the man who had just stepped inside.
He looked unremarkable—skin tanned by sun and wind, clothes dusty and worn. His frame was lean, almost underfed, and his hands calloused from labor. He should've been another drifter or farmhand like me. But something clung to him. Something that shimmered beneath the skin, just beyond the veil of the visible.
Divinity.
Dulled. Suppressed. But unmistakable.
Even in this weakened shell, I could sense it. The pressure in the air around him shifted the moment he entered the cottage. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lean away from him. The dust hung in the air like it feared settling on his shoulders.
Although his hair was now a dull brown and his features were mortal, I knew what he was.
He was a god.
And gods don't come to this world by accident.
My chest tightened. My grip on the half-eaten crust of stale bread slipped, and it tumbled from my fingers, landing on the dusty floor with a dull thud.
My mind raced.
Why is a god here?
Is it to finish me off?
It had only been four days since I awoke in this mortal form—stripped of magic, status when the forbidden spell activated. I had survived death, but at a cost. My mana was gone, my body was unfamiliar, and I was no longer the towering Demon Lord feared by nations. Just a hungry, hollow man in a creaking shack on the edge of nowhere.
And now, here he stood. The harbinger.
"You... Demon Lord Kana," the man growled, stepping forward.
His voice wasn't just anger—it was desperation. The kind of desperation that turns fanatics into martyrs. The kind that's dangerous.
How did he know?
My disguise wasn't perfect, but it was far from obvious. My once braided, waist-length hair had returned as a short, tousled mess. My crimson eyes, infamous across battlefields, were now a dull shade of mortal blue.
There's no way he could have known—
"Your eyes may have changed. Your hair, your form. But I feel it. That stink of you," he hissed. "Even hiding in that skin... I see the monster beneath."
His hand reached behind the door and seized the hoe—rusty, notched with age, more tool than weapon. But it didn't matter. In his hands, it became an executioner's blade.
I forced myself to stand. Every joint protested. I hadn't eaten properly in days. My body felt like it had been hollowed out, like the fire that once fueled my strength had gone cold.
This was bad.
Very bad.
"Stay back," I warned, voice raspy. Weak. Mortal.
His eyes glinted with fanatic joy.
"If I kill you…" he whispered, stepping closer, raising the hoe. "I can reclaim my status."
There it was.
The truth.
This wasn't just some deranged mortal.
He was one of them.
A fallen god.
"I was once Zenney, the god of luck," he said through clenched teeth. "You took everything from me."
So this was his vengeance.
He lunged.
I dodged—but barely. My legs gave out from under me, and I crashed against the wall. Wood splintered behind me as the hoe struck where my head had been seconds ago. Dust filled the air. I coughed violently, vision swimming.
I had no mana. No shield. No teleportation. Not even a spark of healing magic.
This was survival by instinct alone.
Another swing. This time it clipped my shoulder. Pain exploded across my side. I bit down hard, swallowing the scream, and rolled away. My back hit the foot of the bed.
"You don't belong here," Zenney hissed, raising the hoe again. "This world suffered because of you. Twenty heroes—twenty—dead by your hand. I begged the council for mercy. And then I broke the law for them. I descended. I fought you myself."
I remembered.
That light. That spell. The pain.
So… that was him.
"You broke your own code." I snarled, dragging myself to my feet.
"I had to!" he roared. "You would have burned the world!"
He came again.
This time, I couldn't dodge in time.
The flat end of the hoe struck my ribs with a sickening crunch. Air fled my lungs. I dropped to my knees, gasping. Blood filled my mouth.
He stood over me now, panting.
His eyes wild.
"I was a god!" he spat. "They stripped me of everything. My name. My seat. My divinity. Because I failed to kill you."
He raised the hoe again, both hands gripping it tightly.
"If I end you here… maybe I get a second chance."
I saw the blow coming.
Too slow to move. Too broken to fight back.
Is this how it ends? Again
A mortal tool in the hands of a fallen god.
CRACK!!
The room filled with light.
Then silence.
I don't remember hitting the ground.
I just remember darkness.
A soft, velvet blackness that swallowed everything. No pain. No noise. No breath.
...
..
.
Suddenly, I felt a pull.
Not like gravity. Not like magic. Something deeper. Like my soul was being yanked through the eye of a needle.
Then—
Thud.
I hit the floor.
Same creaking wooden floorboards, same dusty scent of rot and desperation. Pain exploded across my skull like I'd been slapped by fate itself.
I lay there, disoriented, for half a breath.
Then I heard it.
A wet squelch.
I looked up. A few steps away stood Zenney—still holding the hoe—looming over a mangled corpse. My corpse. The skull was bashed in like a melon dropped from a roof. The body was mine—same too-thin frame, same ragged clothes, same pathetic aura of desperation and week-old sweat.
And yet, here I was.
Alive.
Breathing.
"What the…" I muttered.
Zenney turned his head slowly, as if unsure of what he was hearing. His eyes found me. For a moment, confusion reigned behind them. Then horror. Then fury.
His grip tightened on the hoe. "What magic is this?!"
I scrambled backward, my limbs still unsteady. "I was about to ask the same thing!"
He took a step toward me.
I bolted.
Straight into the side of the bed.
"GAH—!"
Pain flared through my ribs again. Apparently, this resurrection didn't come with a full-body rejuvenation.
Zenney glared at me with all the righteous indignation of a priest catching someone urinating on an altar. "I killed you."
"No argument there," I gasped.
His eyes darted to the corpse, then back to me. He looked like he wanted to scream but was too confused to decide which emotion deserved the honor first.
"I saw the light leave your eyes," he growled. "I ended your wretched life!"
"Believe me," I coughed, "it was mutual."
"Then how—?!"
"I. Don't. Know."
I hadn't finished the forbidden spell. The last thing I remembered before blacking out was… pain. Lots of it. The searing kind that burns into your soul.
I wasn't supposed to live. I definitely wasn't supposed to get up again like a necromancer's mistake.
Zenney's brow twitched. "Some kind of contingency? Soul anchor? Time rewind?!"
"Do I look like I had time to set up a time loop spell?! I've been eating rats and moldy bread for four days!"
He wasn't listening. He looked at the hoe like it had betrayed him. Like maybe it hadn't hit hard enough.
Then he lunged again.
And—
Crack.
Darkness swallowed me a second time.
...
..
.
Then I was breathing again.
This time, I woke on the bed.
No movement, no struggle. Just… blink, and I was back.
And now there were two corpses in the room.
One slumped near the foot of the bed, neck twisted. The other still had a hole in its face the size of a cantaloupe.
My stomach twisted at the sight. Not from fear. From sheer absurdity.
"What. The." I whispered.
Zenney was across the room, panting like a beast. He looked like a man whose dog had suddenly learned to speak Latin and insult his haircut.
He didn't even raise the hoe this time. He just stared at me.
"You… What are you?"
I coughed, sat up, rubbed my face. "I'm just as confused as you, imbecile."
"I should've known," he muttered. "You performed a resurrection spell."
"I tried I didn't finish it."
"Then how—"
"I don't know!" I barked.
He stepped forward again. I instinctively flinched, which he seemed to enjoy.
"I don't know what this is," he said, eyes narrowing. "But I'll find a way to end it."
"Yeah? Well, until then, maybe stop killing me."
"Not yet."
He raised the hoe again.
Smash.
I woke up in the chair.
Three bodies now. This one was face-down on the rug with a broken arm.
Zenney was pacing now. Muttering to himself. Running his hands through his hair like he was the one being terrorized.
I coughed loudly to get his attention.
He didn't flinch.
Silence.
Then he actually—very quietly—laughed.
A single, sharp exhale through his nose.
Not friendly. Not amused. Just… disbelief.
"You know what the worst part is?" he said, voice low. "I used to pity you."
I blinked. "Pardon?"
"You were a force of destruction. But I thought—maybe—you were just a product of your birth. A being forged in fire and rage. I thought, if you died, your soul would return to the cycle and maybe… maybe something better would be born."
"But now?" he sneered. "Now I see what you are. A mistake."
He raised the hoe again.
And for a moment—just a moment—I let myself grin.
"Do your worst, fallen god."
Smash!
This time, I woke standing.
Which was new.
Zenney froze mid-sentence. He'd apparently started monologuing while I was dead.
I waved.
He dropped the hoe.
Just… dropped it.
Then he turned and walked outside without a word.
"Where are you going?"
"To scream," he said flatly.