They say demons are born with power in their veins and fire in their breath. That their very presence bends the world and shakes the skies.
Zyrha had… none of that.
She had coughs that sounded like broken flutes, a pair of stubby horns that looked like sad question marks, and a growling stomach that could be heard echoing across half the ruined canyon she called home.
To be fair, she did try to live up to her race's once-proud legacy. Every morning, she stood in front of a cracked mirror (which doubled as a shield on bad days), adjusted her ragged tunic, pushed her too-long red hair out of her face, and said with complete seriousness:
"I am a fearsome demon."
Then she tripped over a rock, slammed into the cave wall, and promptly sneezed from the dust explosion she'd just caused.
Heroic.
She lived in the last habitable stretch of the Obsidian Blight, a scorched wasteland where most demons either died, migrated, or were smart enough not to be born in the first place. Zyrha's parents had perished long ago her mother by fever, her father by some magical mishap involving a cursed spoon. She didn't remember them well, just vague warmth and the scent of something burnt.
Now, at seventeen, Zyrha had perfected the fine art of surviving on bitterness, moss, and disappointment.
Breakfast was usually a handful of dried bark soaked in sour rainwater. Lunch? A nap, to forget about being hungry. Dinner? Occasionally half a root, if she was lucky, or something that looked like a root but bit her back.
The locals if one could call them that weren't particularly welcoming. Demons these days were meaner, leaner, and far more stylish. Zyrha was neither. Her boots were secondhand (and third-legged), her tunic patched with spider silk and hope, and her coat… well, it technically wasn't a coat. It was an old tapestry she'd stolen from an abandoned shrine and wrapped around herself like a sad burrito.
Every day, she walked to the ruins of a long-forgotten demon academy to scavenge scraps. That's where the harassment began.
There were three of them. She didn't know their names because they never gave her the chance to ask before shoving her into a thorn bush.
"Aw, the little cockroach is back," one sneered last week, flicking her forehead so hard her vision blinked sideways.
"Trying to learn magic from rubble again?" another mocked, holding up a crumbling book like it was a dead rat.
Zyrha didn't respond. Words were wasted on people who never listened.
Instead, she laughed because if you couldn't eat, fight, or escape, the next best weapon was delusion.
"I'm going to build a kingdom one day," she said once, to nobody in particular. "With golden towers. Maybe lava pits. Definitely a throne made of regrets."
They laughed so hard one of them actually sprained something. Worth it.
By the end of the day, Zyrha would drag her bruised body back to her cave, crawl under her blanket (which was actually just an old curtain), and stare at the ceiling.
The ceiling stared back. It was a bat. His name was Jeremy. He judged her constantly.
"You think I'm pathetic," she mumbled one night.
Jeremy blinked. The silence was damning.
The day it happened, it was hot. Unreasonably hot. The sun felt like a personal insult.
Zyrha hadn't eaten in two days, and the world had begun to flicker around the edges like bad parchment on fire. She staggered toward a stream she knew was nearby, hoping to scoop up something vaguely wet and not entirely lethal.
That's when she heard it.
A low growl.
She froze. Her demon instincts, underdeveloped as they were, whispered something in her gut.
Run.
Which was helpful, except her legs didn't get the memo. They trembled and gave out with all the loyalty of damp spaghetti. She collapsed near a rock, eyes wide as something emerged from the brush.
A leopard.
A real one. Not magical, not cursed. Just muscle, fangs, and very bad intentions.
Its coat shimmered like gold dipped in nightmare. Its eyes were intelligent, cruel. It moved with the grace of a predator that had never been refused anything in its life.
"Well," Zyrha said faintly. "At least it's pretty."
The leopard growled again and crept forward.
She tried to crawl, but her body protested with every nerve. Her vision blurred. Her hand reached for a stick that snapped in half as soon as she gripped it.
She tried to laugh. The sound came out broken.
"So this is it," she whispered. "After everything… Not even a dramatic explosion? No betrayal? No secret prophecy? Just death by jungle cat?"
The leopard leapt.
Time slowed.
She watched claws gleam. The sky blazed overhead. And all she could think was—
I hope it's quick.
Then everything froze.
Literally. The air shimmered. The leopard halted mid-air like someone had paused reality.
And a strange, metallic voice echoed in her skull:
[INITIATING BOOT-UP… DETECTED: PATHETIC DEMON LIFEFORM. SCANNING.]
Zyrha blinked.
"Excuse me?"
[ERROR: LEVEL TOO LOW FOR DIGNITY. INSTALLING 'DREADCORE.EXE' SYSTEM PACKAGE.]
"What is happening?"
The leopard slowly floated backward in space, like time itself was embarrassed and trying to undo the moment.
[INSTALLATION COMPLETE. WELCOME, USER ZYRHA. YOU'RE LATE. ALSO, YOU'RE EMBARRASSING.]
Zyrha, bleeding, starving, possibly hallucinating, whispered, "You're in my head."
[CORRECT. I AM DREADCORE.EXE, A MULTI-REALITY GROWTH SYSTEM. I SELECTED YOU OUT OF PITY AND MORBID CURIOSITY.]
She stared up at the sky, which looked very smug about this whole thing.
"Am I dead?"
[NOT YET. BUT HONESTLY, THAT WAS A CLOSE CALL.]
"Can I opt out of this?"
[DENIED. YOU'RE UNDER CONTRACT NOW. WE'RE GOING TO FIX YOU.]
"Fix?"
[Yes. You will become powerful. Unstoppable. Sexy, even.]
Zyrha coughed. "Sexy?"
[IT'S A PACKAGE DEAL. YOU'LL CONQUER A KINGDOM, GET REVENGE, PROBABLY GLOW A LITTLE.]
The leopard, meanwhile, blinked back into motion but this time, it yelped in confusion and bolted, like even it knew not to mess with this madness.
Zyrha slumped back into the dirt. "Am I dreaming?"
[NOPE. WELCOME TO YOUR VILLAIN ORIGIN STORY, LOSER.]
She couldn't help it. She laughed. It started small, then bubbled out into something wild and shaky.
Maybe she was dying.
Maybe this was all one last hallucination from her starving brain.
Or maybe her pathetic little life was about to get very, very interesting.