DEMON KING AZRAEL: REBIRTH OF THE ECLIPSE

Chapter 2

The movement sent a bolt of agony up my spine, but I welcomed it. It reminded me I was alive. It reminded me that I had a debt to pay—not to this petty bully, but to the woman sitting on a throne of stars.

"Senior Li," I said, my voice dropping to a low, melodic thrum that seemed to vibrate the very air in the warehouse. "Do you know what happens to those who touch things that don't belong to them?"

Li’s eyes widened. He tried to scramble away, his heels skidding on the damp stone. "Stay away! I'm a Senior Disciple! The Elders will have your head for this!"

"The Elders aren't here," I said, dragging my broken body forward with a terrifying, predatory slowness. "And the 'trash' you've been playing with... he died an hour ago."

I reached him. Li tried to throw a desperate punch, but I caught his wrist. My grip was weak, but I knew exactly where to press. I squeezed the nerve cluster in his forearm, and his hand went limp. With a sharp twist, I forced him onto his back and planted my knee into his chest, pinning him down.

"Please... Han Xiao... I was joking... it was just a bit of fun..." Li whimpered, the bravado vanishing as he looked into my pupils, which were beginning to bleed into a solid, unnatural black.

"Fun," I repeated, the word tasting like ash. "You broke this boy's spirit for fun. You killed him for a stone he never had. You are a small, pathetic creature, Li. You don't even deserve the honour of my hatred."

I gripped his ankle. Li’s breath hitched.

"Wait—no! Please!"

"I need a message sent to the heavens," I whispered, leaning down so only he could hear. "And you are going to be the messenger."

I didn't hesitate. I threw the entirety of my remaining weight onto his tibia while twisting the foot in the opposite direction.

The sound of the bone snapping was like a dry branch breaking in the dead of winter.

Li’s scream was a piercing, jagged thing that tore through the silence of the night, echoing out of the warehouse and across the slumbering peaks of the Azure Cloud Sect. He collapsed into a fit of sobbing tremors, his leg bent at an impossible, sickening angle.

I stood up, my legs feeling like they were made of lead. My heart was hammering against my bruised ribs, a frantic rhythm that threatened to give out at any moment. I looked down at my hands. They were covered in Li’s blood and my own grime.

This body is a prison, I thought, a bitter laugh bubbling up in my chest. But a prison can be a fortress if you know how to build it.

I turned away from the groaning heap on the floor and walked toward the heavy wooden doors of the warehouse. Every step was a battle. Every breath was a victory. I pushed the doors open, and the cool night air hit me like a physical blow.

I was standing on a high terrace. Below me, the Azure Cloud Sect stretched out in a sea of white stone and blue-tiled roofs, nestled among mountains that pierced the clouds like the teeth of a giant. Above, the sky was a deep, velvet indigo, dominated by a moon so bright it seemed to burn.

I looked up at that moon. It was different than I remembered. It was larger, more oppressive, radiating a cold, silver light that felt like a watchful eye.

Selene, I thought, clutching my chest as Han Xiao's lingering emotions flared—a mixture of agonizing love and soul-crushing betrayal. I can feel you up there. You've forgotten the smell of the earth, haven't you? You've forgotten the weight of a soul that has nothing left to lose.

I raised my chin, my gaze defiant as I stared into the infinite heights of the celestial realm.

"Enjoy your throne while it lasts, my love," I whispered into the wind, my voice a silent vow that seemed to make the shadows around me deepen and stir. "For I have returned from the mud. And I am coming to tear your heaven down, stone by bloody stone."

Far above, in a palace made of solidified light, a woman with hair like spun starlight paused in her meditation. She pressed a hand to her heart, a flicker of an ancient, forgotten fear dancing in her eyes. But the feeling passed as quickly as a shadow in the sun, and she returned to her silence, unaware that the ghost of the man she murdered had just taken his first breath in the world below.

I collapsed against the doorframe, my strength finally spent. I was Han Xiao now. A beggar, a weakling, a victim. But beneath the skin of this broken boy, the Eclipse was beginning to rise.

The hunt had begun.

Sisa-Sisa Jiwa yang Terkoyak

My legs were no longer my own. They were two rods of leaden pain, vibrating with every laboured breath I took as I descended the stone steps from the warehouse. The moon, that bloated silver eye of Selene’s, watched me with a cold, mocking indifference.

"Walk, you pathetic excuse for a vessel," I hissed, the words catching on the dry phlegm in my throat. "Do not dare collapse here. Not in the dirt where they can see you."

I clung to the shadows of the North Peak, moving like a ghost through the winding paths of the Azure Cloud Sect. To any passing disciple, I was just Han Xiao—the shivering wreck, the boy who existed only to be bruised. They didn't see the King. They didn't see the darkness coiled like a dying viper beneath the skin of this teenager.

"Just a little further," I whispered to the empty air. "The shack. Reach the shack."

The structure was barely a building. It was a lean-to made of rotted timber and damp thatch, perched on the edge of a cliff where the wind howled like a banshee. I fumbled with the wooden latch, my fingers slick with a mixture of Li’s blood and my own sweat. The door groaned open, protesting the intrusion, and I stumbled inside.

I didn't light a candle. The darkness was my only true friend in this bright, cursed world. I fell to the floor, the rough wood biting into my knees, and crawled toward the centre of the room.

"Lock it," I commanded myself. "Safe. I must be safe."

With a trembling hand, I slid the bolt home. I was alone. The silence of the shack was heavy, broken only by the frantic, rhythmic thud of a heart that shouldn't be beating. I sat cross-legged, forcing my spine to straighten despite the scream of my cracked ribs.

"Now," I said, my voice a low, melodic rasp. "Let’s see what she left of me."

I closed my eyes and plummeted inward.

The transition from the physical world to the sea of consciousness was usually like diving into a warm, velvet ocean. For Azrael, the Sovereign of the Nine Hells, it had been a place of infinite power. But as I opened my spiritual eyes now, I didn't find an ocean. I found a graveyard.

"Gods above," I breathed, my soul-form hovering over a landscape of jagged glass and grey ash. "What did you do to me, Selene?"

My soul—the core of my very existence—was a shattered mirror. Thousands of fragments lay scattered across the dark expanse of my mind. But it was the pillars that caught my eye. Far off in the distance, spanning across the horizons of my consciousness, were nine towering spears of blinding, celestial light.

"Seals," I realized, the word tasting like copper. "She didn't just kill me. She dismembered my divinity."

I reached out a spectral hand toward the nearest pillar. Even from this distance, the radiance was agonizing. It hummed with the frequency of the stars, a pure, crystalline vibration that made my very essence recoil.

"Nine pillars for nine realms," I whispered, the scale of the betrayal finally sinking in. "You didn't just take my throne, my love. You took my power and used it to anchor the very heavens you now rule."

I focused my will, trying to draw even a single spark of demonic energy from the ruins. The moment I touched the blackened soil of my core, a wave of nausea hit me.

"Argh!"

I was thrown back into my physical body. I gasped for air, my eyes snapping open in the dark shack. My skin felt as if it were being flayed by a thousand tiny razors.

"The Qi..."