"This bastard is obviously the product of some affair with a low-ranking demon guard. And you have the audacity to pass it off as the Demon Sovereign's heir? The nerve."
They weren't entirely wrong. The gap between a mortal and a demon was vast beyond reckoning.
The Demon Sovereign, above all, was a being no mortal should have been able to touch, let alone conceive a child with.
That was why he had fed me his heart's blood, day after day.
It kept me ageless and undying, and it tempered my mortal body until the barrier between us slowly dissolved.
Even so, it had taken us hundreds of thousands of years to conceive this child.
"Everything I've said is true. If anything happens to this child, no one here will survive the Demon Sovereign's wrath. He will reduce the Six Realms to ash and ruin!"
Under the Demon Sovereign's nourishment, my body had long surpassed anything human.
But now, broken and bleeding, I could feel my life draining away with terrifying speed.
I poured every last scrap of strength into those words, praying Seraphina would spare my child.
She only gave a cold, thin smile.
"The harder you beg for this bastard's life, the more I want to kill him."
She raised my son high and hurled him at the ground.
"No!"
The scream ripped from my throat. It changed nothing.
All I could do was watch as my son slammed into the stone.
"He's still alive?"
Seraphina stared at the infant still squirming on the ground, murmuring to herself.
"Let's see just how hard this little mongrel is to kill."
She lifted her foot and brought it down on him.
The impact shook the ground.
The blow carried her full, devastating force.
It cratered the floor beneath him.
Every maiden there was certain the child was dead.
But his tiny hands still moved, waving as though nothing had happened.
"I refuse to believe I can't kill one worthless mongrel!"
Seraphina's composure shattered. She summoned Celestial Hellfire and sent it crashing down on my son.
White-hot flames engulfed him in an instant.
I was close enough to feel the searing heat scorch my skin.
Fear and anguish devoured me from the inside out.
My child was not just the future sovereign of the Six Realms.
He was the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of hope between the Demon Sovereign and me.
Three years I had carried him. My own flesh and blood.
All those years, the Demon Sovereign and I had treasured him more than our own lives.