“Of all the stupid, reckless, brain-dead schemes…!”

Glaustro was seething. I couldn’t even flee back into the safety of the station. His hands closed around my shoulders, dragging me away from the blessed sanctity of the Abyss and into the cruel, unforgiving reality of Lagyel.

“What do you think you are doing?!” he demanded.

“Um… Well… I got wings?”

I felt remarkably like a child getting dressed down by their parent for a stunt they pulled during recess, the kind that ended in a bump but could just as easily have ended in a cracked skull and spilled brains.

“Wings?!” Glaustro’s eyes briefly darted to the aforementioned appendages, then snapped back to my face. Really, there was no reason for him to look like he wanted to rip my beautiful wings off, but he absolutely did. “You come here and barter away how many souls, exactly? Right after you and Crewe pulled that little stunt?!”

Not ‘the lieutenant general’, I noticed. Just plain ‘Crewe.’ Considering how careful Glaustro typically was when referring to superior officers, I knew he was absolutely livid.

“Just, you know… seven hundred…”

I knew I should have kept my mouth shut when Glaustro’s eyes narrowed. His hands tightened on my shoulders. The next time he spoke, his voice was eerily calm.

“Do you know what happened back there, with Crewe? What that means for your future? What he carelessly offered, and you even more carelessly decided to accept?”

I cleared my throat, but my reply still came out as a squeak. “No?”

Glaustro managed to glower even more menacingly. This was an achievement to be proud of, but since I was the target of his ire, I couldn’t enjoy it.

“That,” he snapped, forcing me into a walk, “was an Abyssal flame. They are known for their ability to burn a soul, destroying it permanently. Now, that wouldn’t happen to you, but can you guess what would?”

“I would miss out on the rest of the invasion, setting me back by months of progress?”

He scoffed, not even sparing me a glance. “You are a mortal still. All of your progress towards ascension would have been burned away, and your soul reduced to its core alone. All but the purest state of your soul would be gone. The Abyssal mana? The physical mutations you’ve gone through? The… wings? Gone. Your mana core? Gone. Your soul-bonded items? Gone. There’s a reason so many demons fear those flames.”

I had gone quite pale by that point. Maybe I was a reckless idiot, but I doubted I would have taken the chance if I had known the risks. It wasn’t like Crewe had checked in with me before shoving that stuff into my soul.

That did bring up one question, though.

“Then how did I survive? If it’s that potent, I shouldn’t have.”

“You wouldn’t have, if Crewe was intending to kill you,” Glaustro snarled. He didn’t sound happier at all. “He decreased the flames’ power to its lowest point, channeled only their essence, and then fed them to your soul through that demonic blade you own. That meant the flames were partially under your ownership at that point, but you were still far more likely to burst into flames, all your bound items destroyed, than to survive.”

I frowned, and only just fought down the urge to argue that it wasn’t that bad. Then again… the pain did strip away all my senses other than my perception of my own soul, so maybe the argument didn’t hold weight.

“The pain would have rendered you entirely insensate, to the point where you could only twitch on the ground until you went up in flames. Lethal flames, even to demons. Nothing would be left of you except one hell of a stain for Crewe’s servants to clean up. When you collapsed, and I realized what Crewe was doing, I thought that was exactly what was about to happen. I’m still not sure why it didn’t happen. I have some guesses, but… fucking hell, you have to stop pulling this shit.”

I wanted to snap back, reminding him that he looked just as awed as I did when the lieutenant general first started working on my sword’s update, but I held back. This time not out of any fear, but because I detected genuine distress in his voice.

Glaustro cared. He wasn’t dressing me down because he randomly thought I deserved it. He was doing it because he truly didn’t want me to die.

I… when I woke up, he was basically holding me. If I really was about to erupt into flames that would be dangerous even to demons, he should have been on the other side of the room, but he…

My thoughts trailed off, and I was caught up in a storm of embarrassment and confusion I had no clue what to do with.

I would be the first to admit that I wasn’t great at processing what others felt about me. Oh, negative feelings were simple and easy to accept. They were swiftly filed away and cemented in my mind.

Positive feelings, though? Well… no matter how many times I noticed them, no matter how many times it hit me that someone genuinely cared, I was rather good at denial. I could always justify their positive feelings away.

I tried to respond appropriately where I could, and let it never be said I didn’t appreciate friendship and loyalty. Heaven and hell both could testify that I had latched onto Mia, Bronwynn, and Glaustro speedily enough, but still.

Past that step, though, it became fiendishly difficult for me to see myself as holding any importance in other people’s lives. Despite all the proof to the contrary, I still couldn’t help feeling that if I evaporated out of existence, the trio would just continue living their lives as they always did.

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“Sorry.” In the end, that was all I could offer. I couldn’t even meet his eyes when he glanced over at me.

He grumbled several things too quietly for me to hear. But he didn’t call me out on a lie, because it wasn’t one. As a demon, he would be able to tell.

I had no idea what else to say or do, or how to change. What would it take for me to reshape my life in a direction that wouldn’t give an immortal demon gray hairs?

“And then… and then, you go off and immediately end up in an Absorption Station! I did track down Mia and Bronwynn first, hoping you would do the smart thing and get some rest after an experience like that, but no. You went ahead and sacrificed almost as many souls as would cover a basic ascension, just so you could get yourself some new limbs. Honestly, what would Mia do if you died or turned yourself into a mindless monster? If you don’t care about stressing me out, at least keep her in mind!”

I jumped like I had been physically struck. There he went again, assigning romantic feelings where there were none! Still, though, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Mia was in a perilous position only because of me. I had practically dragged her along with me into the general’s strategy for ‘advanced stages of ascension.’ Without me, she would probably be a demoness by now.

No, I couldn’t argue with his concerns about Mia. But I didn’t apologize again.

Not that he gave me much chance to get a word in.

“I mean, really! I just wanted to snag a promising subordinate, some mortal I owed a favor and kind of liked. I only chose to accept Mia too in the hopes that she would keep you more stable until you finally became a demon. So, how in the world is she turning out to be the more promising recruit? No fuss, no stress, she just does her job and does it well!”.

Now that was hurtful, in my humble opinion.

“And most importantly!” The demon paused, poking a finger roughly into my chest. “Why. Do. I. Care?!” He snarled in frustration, then continued to drag me along. “Because I do, and I can’t even fucking figure out why. Is this what having kids is like? Watching them implode and being unable to do anything? Because I am far too young to be a father. Ask me again in a couple thousand years, and maybe I’ll adopt you or something!”

By this time, we had reached a decently high part of the tree. Not quite back on the palace level, but not too far off either. It didn’t take much longer for him to drag me into one of the large manor-like houses on the street.

He pushed the front door open roughly, revealing a large foyer. Three familiar figures were sitting in armchairs in the corner of the room. Graighast just swept his eyes over me, letting them linger on my wings, but the other two immediately shot up and charged.

I couldn’t even get a word out before Mia was on me, arms locked around my neck and face buried in my chest. Bronwynn just glared at me as he approached, though his stormy gaze did soften a little at the sight of my shocked, chastised expression.

I didn’t hesitate to close my arms around Mia, who was squeezing harder and harder. The sensation would become unpleasant quickly, but I didn’t make a move to dislodge her or complain. I just stood there, eyes going from person to person, wondering when and how I managed to make such genuine connections in an Abyssal army, of all places.

“I’m sorry for worrying you, but I’m fine, really —” I began, then had to let out a strangled yelp when Mia squeezed harder in retaliation.

“Glaustro said you could have incinerated your own soul,” she growled, raising her head. I wasn't expecting her to be teary-eyed on anything, but I was still startled to see the amount of frustration and anger burning behind her molten-gold eyes.

I gulped. “But I didn’t! And really, I didn’t choose to do the whole Abyssal flame soul-invasion thing! I could feel it happening, and I just reacted.”

“And yet, you could have fought to snuff the flame out, or briefly smothered the connection between you and your sword,” Graighast mused from his seat, cementing his position as my least favorite of the two brothers. “Instead, you absorbed the flame into your soul, and it is still there.”

The comment made Mia’s eyes flare. Did I already mention they looked like orbs of swirling gold suspended in a black abyss?

It was hard to form words as the sole focus of all that golden attention, but I tried.

“Really?” I stammered to Graighast over Mia’s head. “No one told me that! I was passed out, fighting for my life. It doesn’t come with an instruction manual. What—” I paused, wondering if I would like the answer to this question. Regardless, I needed to ask. “Having the flame inside of me. What does that even mean?”

Glaustro sigh-grunted, then clapped one of his hands onto my shoulder. He sent a pulse of mana into me.

All of a sudden, I was shoved back into that same void where I claimed the flame in the first place.

“Observe carefully.” Glaustro’s voice echoed from everywhere around me in a distinctly unnerving way. “Can you see the difference in your soul, around the spot where you’re keeping the flame?”

Turning my gaze inwards, I focused on the sphere of flickering emerald fire. It took me several seconds to notice something odd. Just in the area around the sphere, the intangible matter of my soul seemed to be… solidifying? That was the best word I could come up with. The transparent substance was getting thicker, transforming into something different, something more grounded in the physical and not nearly as see-through.

“What is happening?” I asked, caught between panic and awe.

“The flame is refining your soul. Its influence will gradually grow, until the entirety of your soul has been transformed. This is admittedly not a bad thing, but it does mean you’ll need to speed up your mana accumulation. If you don’t, the consequences would be tricky to resolve before you become a demon.”

Glaustro withdrew his hand, pulling me violently out of that world. I swayed a little, then flapped my wings on instinct. That, combined with Mia’s grip on me, helped me keep my balance.

“So… overall, everything worked out?” I asked, affecting a chipper tone, which earned me more glares.

“You lucked into survival, kid.” Bronwynn’s scowl deepened. “Nothing worked out. You just happened not to die! I’m going to need to tie you up and just cart you around until you learn how to behave. Mia will help me out, won’t you?” He turned towards the cat girl, whose contemplative look I didn’t like. “You can feed him and whatever for a little while, right?”

“I don’t need anyone to feed me, because I don’t need to be tied up!” I protested, trying to wiggle my way out of Mia’s hold in case she decided to follow through with Bronwynn’s threat. My efforts were useless. And I really didn’t want to pull mana techniques on her, even though I suspected she had already used strengthening on me.

Glaustro just sighed at our antics. His shoulders slumped. Out of nowhere, he suddenly looked more weary than I had ever seen him.

“Is everything okay?” I asked tentatively, giving up my struggles for the moment. “You look… tired.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot to tell you,” my commander mumbled, sounding more tired still. “We have been rewarded.”

“Um… isn’t that… a good thing?”

Glaustro shot me a look, then cleared his throat. In a faux-official voice, he declared: “For their excellent performance and crucial information gathering, our unit has been recognized as one of the most important contributors to the invasion of Lagyel. As such, we have been rewarded with placement directly under the good lieutenant general, and given a unique task: we are to track down and locate other golems like the one he fought to claim this city, so we may break the jinn hold on this world.”

Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound fun. Or very safe.

From the look on Glaustro’s face, I knew he shared my opinion.