The Vampire, The Demon and The Child.

The darkness around the demon realm was not the ordinary kind. It was… deep and carried a weight only a few could understand.

This corner of the Demon Realm existed between the great fortresses and the outer wastes of the same, a stretch of broken ground where the crimson sky thinned to something closer to pink than blood.

The perfect place to hide in plain sight, which was precisely the reason Zeldris had picked this place.

He stood with his back to a leaning slab of black stone, arms crossed, listening to a silence that would not last, but would forever haunt him. Somewhere far behind them, past the ridges and the dead rivers, the Demon King's power moved through the realm with a sickening pulse, and Zeldris could feel the edge of it even at this distance.

One day, one day he would be strong enough to overcome his father, but not today.

"We have to move," Zeldris said, looking towards the demon realm capital. "Every moment we stand here is one we're gambling with. He won't accept this."

He turned toward her then, and the words that had come out so cold seemed to catch in his chest at the sight of her.

Gelda sat on a fallen length of stone, her pale vampiric skin, nearly luminous against the overwhelming dark around them. She was not looking at Zeldris, she was looking down, into the crook of her own arms, where something small, alive and wrapped in dark cloth lay against her.

A child.

Their child.

The fruit of their love. And, their greatest sin.

The baby was asleep, or near enough to it, one tiny fist curled up against a cheek. His breathing was so slight that a person would have to be watching closely to see it at all, and Gelda had been watching closely for hours, she had memorized the shape of him, the faint dark down on his head.

The way his brow furrowed even in sleep, which reminded her of Zeldris.

She had told herself she would not do this, but how could she not admire her little one, after all, there would be no more chances after tonight.

"I heard you," she said, her voice did not rise.

"Gelda."

"I know." She lifted her head at last, and the light in this place, poor as it was, found the shine along her lashes, showing her tears. "I know this is what we have to do. I know what he'll do if he finds out... We can’t let him find out." Her arms tightened, around the small bundle she carried. "Knowing what we have to do… doesn't make it easier, and you know it."

Zeldris said nothing, and how could he?

There was nothing to say that would not sound like he was trying to make the wound bigger. He understood her pain, because he shared it.

He crossed the short distance between them and lowered himself down, one knee against the cold ground, until his eyes were level with the child between them. Up close, the baby looked even smaller. It did not seem possible that so much of him and so much of her had been folded down into something this fragile.

And most of all… How could he love him so much already?

"You think I want this?" he said, looking at his son.

"No." Gelda shook her head. "No, I don't think that."

"I don't want to leave him." The admission came out of him rough, dragged up from somewhere he did not often let himself go. "I would keep him if I could. I would keep both of you, I would love you both, and I would burn down anyone who came for either of you, and I would call that justice and not care what it cost. That is what I want… But I’m not strong enough to do that, not yet, and because of my weakness, we have to do this. If we keep him, he will die. The only path where our son lives is the one where we are nowhere near him, one where we are strangers to him."

Gelda closed her eyes, and when she opened them again a few tears had already broken loose, each one striking the baby's cheek. The child stirred as the tears hit him, his face crumpling, then smoothing again as he settled back into sleep.

She wiped the drop away with the pad of her thumb, gently, apologizing to him without a word, and for a long moment neither of them spoke.

"He needs a name," Gelda said finally.

Zeldris looked up at her.

"Our first and final act as his parents," she went on, and now her voice steadied, because this at least was something she could hold onto, something that could not be taken. "You can't leave a child somewhere nameless. Whoever raises him will name him, I won't have that; I want the name to be ours...." Her chin lifted. "So, Zeldris… how shall we name our child?"

Zeldris turned his gaze back down to the child.

He had spent his whole life being told what he was, what to do, how to do it, who to kill and who to spare, how to fight, everything. For his father, he was nothing but his executioner, the spare, the lesser to his brother.

Now he looked at this small breathing thing that was half him and half her, this creature that had no idea what it had been born into, and he wanted so much more for him, the freedom he was never allowed to have, the love he was never given, the chance to be whatever he wanted to be.

"Malakar," he said.

Gelda blinked, and then despite everything that was happening, she laughed. It was a quiet laugh and it cracked in the middle, but it was a laugh nevertheless, and the sound of it was so unexpected that Zeldris almost flinched.

"Of course," she said.

"What?"

"Malakar." She shook her head, wiping her tears. "Not a bad name."

"He'll grow into it," Zeldris said.

"I don't doubt it." Her thumb traced the curve of the baby's cheek. "The great Zeldris, picking a soft name? Not for a heartbeat, right?"

The corner of Zeldris's mouth moved. "He’s my son, his name should reflect his power and status, even if he won’t know it," he said. "Besides, I'd rather he has a name that makes people hesitate."

"Malakar it is, then." Gelda pressed the name into the air like a seal on wax, making it real by saying it back to him. "My little fledgling, Malakar."

They let the moment sit with them for a while, this one thing they had made together that no one could take, because it lived now in the both of them and would go on living whether or not the child ever learned it. Their Son, Malakar.

Gelda's smile faded, as she looked past Zeldris, up the slope of dead ground toward the low dark shape she had been avoiding looking at since they arrived.

A house. Not a fortress, not a stronghold, a plain, crooked house, its windows dim with the orange glow of a banked fire, smoke rising thin and steady from a leaning chimney. There was something almost obscene about how ordinary it was, considering the place where it was.

"You're certain," she said. "About this place, about… well, her?."

"As certain as I can be about anyone."

"I need more than that, Zeldris."

He rose, and offered her his arm to help her stand without waking the child.

"Her name is Melanthe," he said. "She's a low-tier demon. The kind my father doesn't even notice." His eyes drifted toward the house. "When the war began, as you know… it left more orphans than anyone could care to count… Most of them died in the wastes, and they were the lucky ones" A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "That was until she came… She took them in, raised them. She's been doing it for a long time... She doesn't care whether a child is red, grey, or anything in between. To her, they're all worth loving." He let the silence linger for a moment. "Everyone in the realm knows who she is, some laugh at her for it… call her soft, but even they respect her. Most demons would protect her without a second thought."

Gelda looked at the house and nodded.

"She sounds like a good woman," she said slowly.

“She is…" Zeldris replied, looking at the house. "This is the one place in the whole of the Demon King's domain where our son can simply vanish into a somewhat ordinary life, because he will become one child among dozens.”

Gelda nodded, though her arms had gone tight again around the bundle she carried. She turned her face down to her son one last time. This feeling, this overwhelming, all-consuming feeling. It would always be there now, she understood that. It would follow her back to whatever life she returned to and it would never fully leave. But under this pain, this sorrow, there was something fiercer, stronger, love, and she poured all of it into the boy in her arms while she still could hold him.

This was her greatest act of love, of sacrifice, giving her child away, so that he might live.

Taking a deep breath, she bent her head and pressed her lips to his forehead, slow, so that she would remember exactly how it felt.

"Grow strong, my little fledgling," she whispered.

The baby moved, not knowing the two that loved him the most, were saying their goodbyes, and that was perhaps a mercy.

"He will," Zeldris said.

Malakar

I opened my eyes to darkness, though it wasn’t a normal kind of darkness, I could see very well in it, almost as if there was no darkness at all.

I tried to look around, to get my bearings, but there was nothing around that looked even remotely familiar. Not only that, but I couldn’t remember what had happened to me… the last thing I remembered was getting in my car, some flashing lights… and then nothing.

Had I died?

If so, was this the afterlife?

It didn’t look like heaven, nor it looked tortuous enough to be hell…

As I pondered about this, I became aware of a red haired woman, gazing at me. By appearance alone, she looked to be around her forties. But what really caught my attention was the… thing at her side…

It looks like every nightmare I had ever had, stuffed into the proportions of a human toddler.

The creature is about the size of a large dog, but its skin was a shocking, unnatural shade of raw crimson red. Its body was wildly disproportionate—a grotesque, beach-ball-shaped mass of blubber resting on short, stubby legs that look too weak to carry it, yet it waddles forward, despite it. Thick, ropy veins pulse visibly beneath the smooth, tight skin of its neck.

Its face was the most unsettling part. It looks like a twisted caricature of a circus clown. A permanent, wide, skin-stretching grin splits its face from ear to ear, showcasing rows of sharp, tiny teeth, and above the grin, two wide, completely blank eyes.

‘Oh fuck, I’m in hell…’

In fear, I tried to run, but I couldn’t move. My body refused to obey me, and that only made the fear worse. The red-haired woman noticed and quickly moved, picking me up into her arms as she gave me a warm smile. Beside her, the red aberration merely tilted its head, as if... beguiled by the sight of me.

And it was here when I realized, through fear and confusion, that I was… unimaginably small.

I had been reborn.

It took me a month to fully comprehend and accept this fact, perhaps it was because of the sudden awakening, and big scare I had right afterwards, that it took me so long to accept this.

But, it was the truth.

I had… humored the idea this was hell, the creatures around certainly looked to fit the part, but it wasn’t before long that I began to recognize these creatures, and well, I realized I was kind of… right?

This was hell, in a way. The Demon Realm, from the anime, the Seven Deadly Sins, I hardly doubt anyone could blame me for my reaction upon seeing the Red Demon, even if the former was an infant… or a very small variation of the same.

I could only assume I had been reborn as a demon. What kind of demon, I wasn’t entirely sure, but at least I looked humanoid enough, I hadn’t seen my face yet, but my hands and legs look human enough.

As for the woman, she seemed to be some kind of… matron of an orphanage. She was undeniably nice… and the demons within her care truly and wholeheartedly loved her, and I couldn’t deny that she loved them back as well, she would shower them in love, regardless of their status, and I knew that, because she treated me with the same amount of care and love she gave the others.

As for the demon children in her care, well, they seemed to be innocent enough, appearances aside… and very interested in me, but not in a malicious kind of way, more… like childlike wonder, like a kid desperately wanting their sibling to grow, so that they could play.

All that said, I was just speculating based on what I could observe. The language barrier left a lot of things to the imagination, but I had a good feeling I was right on my discoveries thus far.

As for… well, how I felt about this entire thing. I wasn’t sure, I was glad I had been given a second chance, even if I couldn’t remember how I lost the first one. Not only that, but I was still… grasping with the fact, this world was real… which was on itself a hard task for me.

It was a hell of a thing to accept isekais as something that… actually happens. And… it was even harder to accept that, not only did it happen, but it happened in an anime I had seen.

The days blurred together after that.

Mostly because I had no frame of reference for time itself. There was no sun here, not in any way I could see or at the very least perceive. The sky shifted in slow gradients, deep crimson fading to a bruised purple and then back again, and that was the closest thing to a clock I had, so instead of the normal circle of day and night, it was like… night to night, shades of night?

Eventually, and thankfully… I learned to count the cycles; using the routine of the orphanage as a blueprint, before marking them in my head like scratches on a cell wall.

It wasn’t before long that I could hold my own head up without it wobbling, or that I had figured out how to roll onto my side, which felt like a massive accomplishment until I rolled myself straight into the wall and bruised my shoulder.

Demon baby or not, I was squishy.

Melanthe, I had learned her name by listening, even if I still couldn't understand most things being said, had picked me up, checked me over with careful hands, and said something soft that made the red demon child and another demon, I think it was grey, chitter in what I could only describe as laughter.

It was as creepy as I imagined it would be, seeing them laugh, but it was also… weirdly adorable.

The orphanage itself was larger than it looked from the outside, which I had seen once, when accompanying Melanthe to buy food. The crooked house was just the main building, and attached to it were a series of additions that looked like they had been built over centuries by people who had no interest in learning how to build or any sort of codes for construction.

Rooms branched off from hallways that branched off from other hallways, it was a… very confusing place, it was built more like a maze than an actual orphanage, and the whole thing sat on a foundation of black stone that had been there long before anyone thought to build walls on top of it.

There were children everywhere. Demon children. They came in all shapes and sizes, some of which I had to work hard not to stare at. Some looked almost human, the way I seemed to… I think, with only small tells giving them away, like… a discoloration of the skin, eyes that caught light wrong, no eyes… teeth that were just slightly too numerous.

Others were harder to look at without your brain rejecting the image. There was one child, a quiet girl who kept to the corners, whose lower half was, well a snake, her scales the color of rust coiling beneath her as she read from tablets Melanthe gave her. Another boy had four arms, and two heads, all of them seemingly equally clumsy, which led to a lot of knocked-over cups and very sincere apologies.

But, despite… well, their particular looks, they were, against every expectation, gentle with each other. They were… just children.

I had expected violence. A lot of it. The demon realm, as I remembered it from the anime, even though it was never shown in detail, was described as a place that didn’t coddle the weak. Power was everything, hierarchy was absolute, and the idea of an orphanage run by a demon who loved unconditionally would have sounded like something out of the realm of possibilities for this place.

But this place existed outside of that, and not secretly, from what I could tell, this woman, Melanthe didn't hide what she was doing, in fact, the demons seemed to love her for it.

The children fought sometimes, yes. They were still children. But the fights were loud and brief and almost always ended with someone being dragged off by one of the older kids to explain why biting and injecting your venom into someone else was not an acceptable conflict resolution strategy, even if you had fangs for it and the venom for it.

By the second month, I was crawling. Another big achievement, if you ask me.

By the third, I was pulling myself up on furniture and terrifying Melanthe on a near-daily basis by teetering on the edge of things I had no business being on top of, I know that as a former adult, I should know better… but these things call to me.

And by the fourth month, I had started picking up the language more deeply.

It wasn't deliberate, mind you. I couldn't exactly sit down with a textbook and study. But when you are surrounded by a language twenty-four hours a day, with no other input, your brain does what it does best, it finds patterns, which made my world a little easier to digest.

Still… It was frustrating, being trapped in a body that couldn't do what my mind wanted. I had the thoughts of an adult, and I was living inside a tiny container that couldn't walk, couldn't talk, couldn't feed itself, couldn't do anything except exist and observe.

There were moments… where I felt a rage that scared me. Not at anyone else. At the situation. At the helplessness.

I learned to swallow it.

What else was I going to do?

The red demon child, the one that had been my introduction to this world, had attached himself to me in a way I hadn't expected, nor wanted to, it still looked like a walking talking nightmare, even if I knew he was a kid, it still… terrified a little part of my human self. He was bigger than me, significantly so, his round body towering over my comparatively tiny frame whenever he waddled over to investigate whatever I was doing.

He would sit next to me and just… watch. Those blank eyes tracking my movements with an intensity that would have been unsettling, or rather… more unsettling, if I didn't know, by then, that it was just his version of curiosity.

One of the older children, a grey-skinned boy with heavy brows and a mouth full of too many teeth, had taken to calling the red demon "Chuba." I didn't know if that was his actual name or just a nickname, but it stuck in my head and became the label I used for him in my thoughts, hopefully, it wasn’t a slur.

Chuba followed me everywhere.

If I crawled into a room, Chuba waddled in after me. If Melanthe set me down somewhere, Chuba would position himself nearby like a guard dog. And when the other children got too rough or too loud around me, Chuba would plant himself between us and just grin that permanent grin until they backed off.

I didn't know why. I wasn't anything special, I think. I was the smallest child in the orphanage by a wide margin, and as far as I could tell, I looked the most human of all of them. If anything, that should have made me the odd one out.

But Chuba didn't seem to care about any of that.

And… slowly, but surely, little Chuba started to grow on me.