Zagan traveled alone. He had no legion left, only rage and a limp from a wound that never fully healed. Thornwood was a pathetic smear of huts clinging to a hillside. The humans there were not heroes. They were farmers. Grave-robbers. Fools.
He found the mine entrance torn open, the holy seals cracked like eggshells. A strange, pulsing hum resonated from the dark—a sound he had not heard in a decade. It was a heartbeat. His heartbeat.
It was a rib. A single, thirty-foot-long rib of black metal and living sinew. Runes of annihilation pulsed along its length, dying and igniting in a slow, painful rhythm. It was alive. And it was hungry. Demonion Gaiden 01
That word— Before —made Zagan's blood, still thick and hot despite the decade of decay, stir for the first time in years. Before the defeat. Before the seal. Before his shame.
"Drinking again, my lord?" a soft, chittering voice whispered. Zagan traveled alone
And then he saw the truth the Fragment showed him. The Liberators had not won through strength. They had cheated. They had used a stolen piece of the Demonion—a heart-shard —to forge a cage for his power. That cage was still intact. And it was hidden.
Zagan didn't turn. "Vizier Kael. I thought you’d abandoned me for the goblin courts." The humans there were not heroes
Below, the city of Malachar sprawled in ruin. Where once legions of demons marched in perfect terror, now only ragged ghouls and orphaned imps scavenged. The human heroes—the so-called "Liberators"—had won a decade ago. They had sealed the Hell Gates, shattered his generals, and driven the remnants of his army into the deep places of the world.
"What kind of something?"
And they had left him alive.