NOVPUBIn the deepest recesses of Debranlith, where light cowered and hope withered, the Demon Realm sprawled like a festering wound across the void. It was not chaos incarnate, as mortals often feared, but a realm of rigid structure—order built on the bones of the damned and the will of monstrous sovereigns. At its core stood four thrones, each carved from ancient dominion and eternal cruelty. Together, they kept the infernal balance. Barely.
Geraldine, the Paragon of Sins, sat upon the highest of those thrones. Her skin was blacker than the abyss itself, absorbing even the flames that danced around her court. Long crimson hair spilled over her shoulders like blood over obsidian. Her eyes were deep pools of red, old and wise, endlessly patient—until she chose not to be. Coiling black horns spiraled from her head, etched with glowing red designs—sigils of control, conquest, and cursed lineage. Glowing tattoos, infernal and intricate, covered her arms, her legs, her back. They were not decoration—they were law. She was not merely a ruler of sin; she was its architect. Her word bent the urges of demons and mortals alike. Lust, Wrath, Greed, Envy, Gluttony, Sloth, and Pride—each bowed to her call.
But she was not alone.
Malgarius the Black Maw ruled the Chained Pits—a nightmarish realm of decay and consumption. His body, if it could be called such, was a cathedral of mouths and claws and hunger. He devoured without end, swallowing entire legions, cities, or truths if they offended his appetite. He did not speak. His existence was an endless scream of starvation.
Serakira, the Pale Flame, once stood amongst the seraphim before her fall. She ruled the Ashen Choir, her domain a cold, beautiful hell of silence and judgment. Her followers were the whispering dead, her laws flawless, merciless. She burned not with fire, but with conviction sharpened into cruelty.
And Drexion, the Lord of Chains—master of the Iron Crucible—believed only in strength and submission. His kingdom was a forge that never cooled, where demons were beaten into tools of war. He bent armies through pain and pride, building order on broken backs.
They were the Demon Lords—four mighty pillars that held the Infernal Court aloft. But none dared to look too long at the empty throne above them.
The Demon King.
His name had been lost, or erased. He had not been seen in an age. His silence was heavier than any decree. And yet every command the Lords gave was a shadow of his authority. Every rebellion hesitated, wondering if he watched from beyond the veil.
Now, something stirred.
Geraldine sat upon her throne in the Obsidian Spire, surrounded by the echoes of a thousand whispered prayers and curses. A mirror hovered before her—a soul-mirror, veined in ruby, crackling with infernal threads. The reflection it showed was not of a soul in her realm—but of one in the Mortal Plane. The land the higher demons referred to as the lowlands, the soil of lesser kin—imperfect, unbound, impure.
Yet this soul pulsed with ancient power.
She saw him.
The boy.
Xander.
His body writhed in transformation, and with it, a surge of something primal, potent, and familiar.
Lust.
The Sin had awakened.
No ritual. No summoning. It was not pulled from her dominion—it was reborn, far from her grasp.
The mirror flickered as if resisting her gaze.
Geraldine narrowed her eyes.
If the other Lords discovered this, they would move. Drexion would enslave the boy. Malgarius would swallow him whole. Serakira would dissect him until the sin within was a diagram of divine error.
But Lust was hers.
It had always been hers.
The infernal floor beneath her throne began to vibrate. Glyphs flared to life, older than the Mortal Sun. Her tattoos burned brighter, the intricate markings spiraling and shifting like living flame across her skin.
She rose.
No fanfare. No heralds.
She raised a hand. The air tore apart, screaming like a dying god.
A descent gate unfolded at her feet—a crimson spiral etched in suffering and blood oath. A column of red fire surged up around her, forming a vortex of seduction and doom.
She whispered one word.
"Open."
And then, she was gone.
The Mortal Plane had not seen her in an age. The sky did not know how to respond. So it tore itself open.
A crimson rift split the heavens above a vast wasteland of broken stone and scattered tribes of lesser demons. Lightning shaped like runes slashed across the sky, etching her arrival into the bones of the earth.
The ground erupted.
Demons—half-feral, malformed, worshipping scraps and whispers—were thrown back as a blazing infernal pillar struck the wasteland like divine wrath. Craters formed. Fire licked the clouds.
And then came silence.
She stepped forward from the fire, her bare feet burning glyphs into the soil. Her long crimson hair fluttered with each breath. Her glowing red tattoos pulsed in rhythm with the heartbeat of the realm. The air trembled. Even the strongest lesser demons fell to one knee, some weeping, others trembling.
Geraldine did not look at them. They were not her purpose.
Her voice was low, honeyed, and cold as truth.
"I seek the one born of Lust."
None answered.
None needed to.
The earth split further at her feet, and her smile curved like a blade.
The hunt had begun.
The mortal sky bled crimson.
Smoke curled through the shattered bones of an ancient city—one of the outer settlements near the edge of the demon-controlled wildlands. Stone was scorched, trees burned to glass, and what once stood proud had been reduced to a wasteland of ruin and ash. The scent of fear lingered like perfume, and the very earth recoiled beneath every pulse of chaotic, lust-ridden power.
Geraldine moved with measured grace, the wind parting in reverence around her. With every step, the glowing tattoos along her body brightened, reacting to the surges ahead. The Sin of Lust was near, and it was not dormant. It was unleashed.
She crested a blackened hill and paused.
Below her, amid the carnage, stood the boy—Xander.
His shirt was torn away, exposing veins of red lightning coursing through his skin. His body hovered inches above the ground, twitching violently as the ambient sin spilled outward in intoxicating waves. Lust had escaped its ancient moorings and now surged like a tidal force around him. The very air shimmered with its presence. Two lesser demons, bloated with borrowed arrogance, leapt at him from the ruins. They didn't make it halfway.
With a single, unhinged scream, a ring of crimson energy erupted from Xander's core, vaporizing the attackers mid-air. Their bones turned to ash, their souls dissolved in a haze of pleasure and terror. Nearby, another building buckled and collapsed from the sheer pressure of the aura he radiated.
He was beautiful and monstrous—a being caught between awakening and oblivion. And he didn't even realize it.
His breath was ragged. His eyes, glowing a sickly carnal red, were wide and wild. He clawed at his own chest as if trying to tear the sin out. His mouth was open in a soundless cry. Emotions surged around him—desire, rage, hunger, loneliness—each battling for dominion.
He was a child, drowning in the ocean of his own rebirth.
Geraldine stepped forward.
The air obeyed. The winds stilled. Even the infernal haze recoiled from her presence.
She walked into the radius of his power without flinching. His aura of lust—crushing, suffocating to anything nearby—brushed against her and yielded, like a predator recognizing a greater beast. Her tattoos glowed hotter. Sin did not control her. She was Sin.
Xander's head jerked toward her, and he screamed, throwing both hands forward in instinct. A spear of compressed desire, raw and lethal, hurtled toward her chest.
She didn't dodge.
The attack struck her squarely—and disintegrated on contact.
Geraldine didn't blink.
Xander shrieked again, writhing backward in the air, limbs contorting as another pulse of red lightning surged from his spine. The ground cracked beneath him. His mind was fracturing, consciousness buckling under the endless barrage of temptation, memory, and primal hunger.
She saw it now. He wasn't simply manifesting the Sin.
He was becoming it.
Too fast.
Too violently.
If he wasn't anchored soon, he would either implode… or turn into a mindless avatar of destruction, driven only by the base desires he couldn't control.
Geraldine closed her eyes.
Then she sang.
A single note—low, ancient, layered in untranslatable tongues. It was a lullaby for demons, a binding hymn from before recorded sin. The note spiraled through the chaos like a silver blade, cleaving through the waves of uncontrolled Lust and striking deep into Xander's core.
He screamed again—but this time in confusion, not rage. His body twitched violently, then began to fall.
Geraldine caught him.
He collapsed into her arms, drenched in sweat, glowing red cracks still running along his skin. His heartbeat raced. He mumbled broken words.
"I… I didn't… want this… I didn't mean to—"
"Shh," she whispered, brushing his damp hair away from his forehead. "You were not meant to bear it alone."
Xander trembled like a fevered animal, too weak to move, too strong to die.
Geraldine sat with him amidst the ruins, letting his head rest against her shoulder. She pressed a clawed hand to his chest, and the tattoos on her arms surged, wrapping him in warmth. The power didn't vanish—but it obeyed. It curled inward like a serpent soothed by its master.
He cried then—quietly, without dignity. She said nothing. Let him weep.
He was young.
Younger than he should've been to carry such a burden.
His spirit was cracked, but not broken.
She stared up at the bleeding sky, her mind racing. She knew what the other Lords would do if they sensed what she had just found. They would seek to claim him. Break him. Mold him into a tool. Or worse, destroy him out of fear.
But they would not have him.
He is mine now.
Not as a puppet. Not as a weapon.
She had seen something in him beyond the fire, beyond the lust. A soul trying to claw its way back to sanity. A heart that had not yet surrendered to the Sin that threatened to consume it.
She looked down at his face. The boy had fallen unconscious now, but even asleep, the glowing lines of red danced along his arms and neck.
No. Not just a bearer of Lust.
He was something new.
Something dangerous.
And precious.
Geraldine stood, carrying him effortlessly in her arms. The wind picked up once more, swirling around her with reverence.
"I will raise you, Xander," she whispered into the hollow world. "Not as a beast. Not as a slave. But as my son."
And across the planes—deep in the folds of shadow where whispers ruled—something stirred.
Something older than Sin.
Because for the first time in ages… a Paragon had chosen an Heir.
