A snake glided through the wilderness.
Though winter's peak had yet to arrive, successive heavy snows had already blanketed the region. Even after the snowfall ceased, the thick layer showed no signs of melting. In such weather, snakes of any species should have begun hibernating. Yet this serpent seemed remarkably adapted to the cold, gliding with such swiftness it resembled a stream flowing down an incline.
The current wound its way to a gentle slope, suddenly seeping into the crevices between rocks.
Its scaled body spread out like spilled mercury, flowing into the crevices. This creature, resembling a snake at first glance, was neither a reptile nor a native of the Material Plane. In the year of rampant demonic calamity, the Abyssal Passage opened, and Archdevils led countless fiends to the surface. No one knew how this particular creature had escaped the main battlefields to reach this rear area, temporarily enjoying peace.
What was it?
Its ability to seep into shadows resembled that of an Abyssal Shadow, yet upon closer inspection, it did not dissolve into the shadows: the creature retained a complete physical form, merely flattening its body like paper and clinging to the ground like a lizard.
A dogmatic demonology apprentice witnessing this would likely be utterly perplexed, racking their brains in vain to classify this creature. Its features were too ambiguous and contradictory. Even seasoned demonologists couldn't name it, though those versed in demonology knew one truth: most of the time, you simply couldn't argue with the Abyss.
Beyond the classifications established by Abyss researchers, the Abyss harbors countless anomalous species. They occupy no branch of the mainstream evolutionary tree, possessing unique traits and appearances. These are the scattered debris of unconventional evolutionary paths—distinct, rare, and seldom glimpsed by creatures of the Material Plane.
This does not imply such creatures are stronger than their kin.
Rarity does not equate to superiority. These peculiar branches are likely scarce because creatures evolving into them struggle to survive their homeland. The Abyss is no paradise—it's a crucible where the weak perish and the strong thrive, where survival of the fittest is taken to its extreme. A species' prevalence at least indicates formidable resilience. Those evolutionary branches numerous enough to be classified as a species by researchers in the Material Plane are, in a sense, the safe, if unremarkable, choices.
The creature before them, however, had taken a more unconventional path.
A winter rabbit emerged from a snowdrift, twitching its nose as it scampered past a crevice. The slender, elongated creature remained utterly still. It observed the rabbit's leaps, its turning head, and its grooming motions. Patiently lurking in the shadows, the creature silently followed the winter rabbit for over half an hour. After confirming the rabbit possessed no other abilities, it sprang from the crevice.
The winter rabbit fell before it even spotted the enemy. A sharp, needle-thin tail sprang from the crevice like a triggered mechanism. It pierced the rabbit's eyeball, exiting through the back of its skull, nearly shattering half its skull. Crawling out of the crack, the creature flickered its tongue, smacking its lips at its own excessive force.
It always forgot how fragile ordinary creatures of the Material Plane were.
The creature glided toward the rabbit's carcass, its body shifting from flat to slender, like a finger-thick rope, slowly burrowing into the pierced hole. The long cord pulsed rhythmically, devouring as it advanced.
Abyssal creatures were fundamentally different from Planeswalkers. Their digestive capabilities were terrifying, capable of swiftly destroying anything consumed. Some mages believed demons possessed a magical void within their stomachs, allowing them to ingest food many times their own size. This creature was no exception. It rapidly devoured the rabbit, then burrowed completely inside, slipping into the winter hare's skin.
The scene was utterly horrifying.
The dead rabbit staggered to its feet. The empty eye sockets were filled with dark yellow eyeballs. It surveyed its surroundings with a gaze utterly unlike that of a rabbit, then began grooming its fur with the exact same posture as a rabbit. Its paws dug into the snow, flinging white flakes over its head. The snow wiped away bloodstains from its fur and covered the gaping hole at the back of its skull.
The creature began to leap.
Though less robust than its kin due to its peculiar evolutionary path, this creature was undeniably more cunning, skilled in observation and disguise. This wasn't its first attempt at such deception. Since the demonic calamity began, it had tried on numerous shells like a hermit crab, quickly learning the Material Plane's creatures favored their own kind over outsiders: warm-blooded beings clearly inspired far less suspicion than demons or scaled reptiles.
This fiend now faced one of the most crucial evolutions in a demon's existence: the leap from mindless creature to a mid-tier demon possessing a soul and self-awareness. Yet for now, it remained an instinct-driven, ignorant beast—frighteningly clever for a fiend.
The rabbit-skinned creature took some time to adjust. Once it could run and leap with ease, it headed toward inhabited areas.
Soon, it encountered its first human—an ordinary hunter. The hunter shot an arrow at the rabbit, which fell to the ground. The hound trotted over, pausing at the strange scent. The hunter called the dog's name, then approached the rabbit himself, puzzled. As he bent to pick it up, a shadow darted into his mouth.
The monster's tail hook pierced the hunter's upper jaw, precisely crushing his brain. The force was measured—just enough to shatter his skull without piercing through the back. The hound only had time to let out a growl before meeting the same fate.
The creature crawled out from beneath the tattered rabbit pelt. Its body, compressed within the tiny shell, suddenly unfurled like a flattened snake skin. A mouth disproportionately large for its frame snapped open, swallowing the hunter whole.
Abyssal creatures inherently craved souls, but this low-level monster hadn't yet mastered soul extraction. It needed to consume its meals whole. The soul from the Material Plane merged into its body, pushing the monster a little closer to its next evolutionary milestone. Still unsatisfied after devouring the hunter, it repeated the tactic, burrowing into the hound's body.
Hours later, the "hunting dog" arrived at a gathering of people. Though unable to see the distant human settlements through its canine husk, the creature "saw" the aura of clustered souls—one of its innate gifts as a soul hunter.
Ahead lay a camp encircled by tents, where voices echoed intermittently and people came and went. Most inhabitants of the Material Plane were weak, but when gathered in large numbers, the trouble they could cause increased exponentially. The creature cautiously hid in the shadows of the tents, observing the bustling camp and pondering how to find someone alone.
It successfully lured out a child. The child tried to chase after it, only to be swallowed whole after straying too far from the crowd. It successfully lured out a drunkard. The drunkard laughed wildly as he chased a one-eyed, lame dog, running too far without realizing it, and thus never made it back.
None of it mattered. Men, women, children—all were meaningless to the monster. Souls of the Material Plane were merely sustenance before it. Even employing clever hunting tactics, an Abyssal creature remained an Abyssal creature. Every action stemmed from desires born of the Abyss. How could a visitor from the Abyss harbor even a shred of goodwill toward this plane?
The third victim was a wounded man with his head bandaged.
"Come here!" he beckoned to the "hounds," waving a piece of jerky. "What happened to your eyes?"
His voice was soft, his manner harmless, leaving him wide open. The monster was puzzled by this man's unusual behavior. Wary of potential traps, it wasted considerable time observing him. Eventually, it realized there was no scheme at play. Sometimes, the inhabitants of the Material Plane were just that superficial, weak, and foolish.
What followed mirrored the earlier sequence.
Upon successfully slaying the man, shifts began to manifest.
Whether due to the digestion of its previous consumption finally concluding, or the Abyss's satisfaction with this string of killings, the reserve for evolution reached its tipping point. This lowly fiend took its final step toward transformation. Its bones and scales began to crackle and pop. Its soul finally coalesced into form. A creature of chaotic mind gave birth to clear consciousness, and the true name bestowed by the Abyss surfaced in its mind. The newly ascended demon tilted its head. It leaned close to the wounded man and extracted the soul from that body.
Then it opened its mouth, preparing to devour the body as well.
At the same moment, within the mist, its consciousness gradually sharpened. The demon began to grasp how perilous its recent actions had been, how fortunate its previous success had been. It realized it shouldn't continue gambling on luck; consuming this one before it and leaving immediately was the correct choice.
But a strange thought suddenly seized the demon, freezing its open jaws mid-air, unable to bite down.
It didn't want to eat.
No, that wasn't quite right. The craving from the Abyss forever coiled around a demon's soul—from the lowest fiends to the great demons at the apex of the food chain, hunger and emptiness knew no end. Yet, within this newborn demon's heart, something else mattered more than devouring this corpse.
Now, after its successful evolution, this unique breed possessed a soul-related innate ability.
It could send its soul into this human corpse, temporarily taking complete control of it.
The moment this thought surfaced, the demon knew it was a bad idea. To abandon its own powerful, repeatedly evolved form and enter the frail body of a primary material plane creature? Near a large human encampment? Where would it hide its own body? What fate awaited it if discovered?
No matter how it considered it, this strange impulse was utterly foolish.
Once its soul entered this body, it would lose its hard shell, unable to continue devouring souls. Worse, it had never done this before—who knew what other side effects might arise? While this frail body would let it get closer to the humans, it couldn't kill or consume. What good would infiltrating them do? There was no benefit whatsoever.
It was merely a sudden pang of curiosity.
The yellow-eyed demon couldn't grasp the meaning of "curiosity." It simply felt restless, unwilling to return to the Abyss just yet. It vaguely sensed a driving force—perhaps a whisper from the Abyss, a mysterious call of fate, or an intuition hinting at some advantage. At least, that's how it convinced itself, much like those thieves in the Material Plane who claimed they were tempted by demons to steal. The fiend paced restlessly, leaving and returning, scattering snow everywhere. Finally, it steeled itself and shed its body.
The hound concealing the demonic form collapsed abruptly. The lifeless human corpse gasped sharply, coughing as if awakening from a deep slumber. The demon's soul entered the human form at that moment. Unlike the previous sensation of slipping into rabbit or hyena skins, this soul transfer felt as intense as dying and being reborn.
The demon opened its eyes, seeing the world through the eyes of a creature of the Material Plane for the first time.
It was an overcast day, the sun hidden, yet the snow blanketing the ground reflected light so brightly it illuminated everything around. The human corpse had fallen backward moments ago. Now, with eyes open, the demon gazed at the sky—a grayish-blue expanse devoid of meteors or hail, occasionally crossed by birds that seemed weak no matter how one looked at them. One such bird bore bright yellow feathers, so vivid they startled the demon. Stumbling to its feet, the demon scanned its surroundings with wide eyes.
The soul spectrum that had been clearly visible to its eyes vanished. Human souls in the distance disappeared, obscured by tents and their physical forms—not a single one remained visible. It felt as though the infrared vision device it had always worn had been knocked off. The demon was momentarily disoriented, yet couldn't discern whether its senses had truly weakened. When it lost the ability to see through objects to locate food, it was met with a flood of colors.
Its monochrome world of black, gray, and white suddenly burst into countless layers of color—blue skies, white snow, yellow birds, red tents, green evergreens... Each defied simple categorization. The sky overhead was azure, yet the horizon's hue grew faintly dark; snowdrifts on branches glowed blindingly white, while trampled patches beneath its feet turned blackish-yellow; The tail feathers of yellow birds glowed with streaks of orange-red; the stretched sections of red tents appeared lighter than their wrinkled folds; the tips of pine needles on green fir trees revealed a hint of tender green. These dazzling colors exploded within the demon's mind, leaving it dizzy and nearly unable to stand.
Its nose couldn't detect the scent of blood kilometers away, but it caught the fresh fragrance of pine and cedar, the distant waft of meat and spices. Its ears couldn't filter out the meaningless noise; a cacophony of sounds mingled in its ears, both near and far, leaving it utterly disoriented. It sneezed. This body was so weak—such a temperature could actually make it feel cold. Snow melted beneath its palms. It withdrew its hands and saw five indentations left behind.
The demon felt bewildered. It sensed itself growing dull yet simultaneously becoming acutely perceptive. A vague longing stirred within it—a desire for this strange new world. It felt unlike any craving it had known before: not the urge to devour, not the thirst for killing, not the drive of malice. Thus, the demon was utterly perplexed by it.
"Hey, there you are!"
Someone tapped the demon on the shoulder.
Had the demon remained in its own body, this person would already be dead. But now the demon was trapped in a human form, tailless and awkward—rushing into a human body had indeed been a poor idea. Despite observing humans, choosing such a sentient being for its first soul transfer had been reckless. Its gaze lingered on the vital points of the human before it, who appeared heavily intoxicated and oblivious to the killing intent directed at him.
"There you are!" the man dressed as a minstrel slurred again. "Stop hiding, Victor! There's beautiful scenery, fine wine, and lovely girls over there!"
Victor. The demon belatedly realized that was the name of the corpse it now inhabited. How fitting—the pronunciation bore an uncanny resemblance to the first few letters of its true name. It began dissecting the man's speech. Eavesdropping and devouring souls had granted the demon a rudimentary grasp of the common tongue, but true mastery remained elusive.
"Beauty?" It awkwardly repeated the word that had been echoed so many times.
There was no equivalent term in demonic, nor anything close in meaning. How could one expect inhabitants of the Abyss, struggling daily for survival, to find time cultivating aesthetic sensibilities? Its pronunciation was severely twisted, as if its tongue refused to straighten—no wonder, for its own tongue was not only supple but forked. The drunken bard missed the nuance, merely grimacing and yelping, "Seriously? My Common isn't this bad!"
The demon stared at him, cautiously silent.
Left unanswered, the bard predictably launched into a monologue.
"Beauty, loveliness, deliciousness, perfection." He swayed his head as he spoke. "Ah, fair maiden, with skin as white as snow, lips as red as cherries, breasts full and round, a voice sweeter than honey, a smile like aged wine..."
Had the minstrel simply described the beauty in his heart, the demon might have associated it with a succubus and understood his meaning. But with all these metaphors piling up, the demon felt only deeper confusion.
"Wine is 'beautiful'?" it asked.
"Poor Victor, have you cracked your skull?" the minstrel roared with laughter.
The demon sensed he should stop. Continuing risked exposure. The drunken bard leaned against a tree, nearly sliding to the ground. As the demon flexed his wrists to adjust to this body, he began muttering to himself.
"Of course wine is beautiful. All things that bring joy are beautiful. " he said, with a strange sadness, "Dancing is beautiful, singing is beautiful, the sun is beautiful, the moon is beautiful... Everything was beautiful before the demonic disaster destroyed it all."
Suddenly, the bard found strength he hadn't known he possessed. He leapt to his feet, his intact left hand and his right hand, severed at the wrist, forming the posture of a lyre player. He began to sing a jumbled hymn of praise.
"Praise our moon! Silver moonlight like your eyes! Praise our sun! Erian's sun like your smile!" he belted out.
The demon gazed toward the horizon.
The clouds parted slightly, revealing the early moon peeking through the gaps—pale and gentle. Ah, night was already approaching.
If this were the Abyss, any single purple sun could blind creatures of the Material Plane. When they appeared together, even the skin of weaker demons might blister and char. The Abyss's equivalent of the moon was called the Tyrant's Eye. When that cruel eye opened, the land it gazed upon froze in vast swathes. Yellow-eyed demons never truly observed the Tyrant's Eye—what fiend could? Archdevils might have the leisure; they scorned the moon that could no longer harm them, occasionally crushing ants beneath its light to watch them shatter into ice fragments.
When the shadow of the Abyssal Moon draws near, all creatures lacking sufficient power must desperately hide. If they cannot find a region close to lava before the moon arrives, their only recourse is to slaughter one another, burrowing into the corpses of warm-blooded fiends, hoping this brief respite will sustain them until the moonlight departs. Now, the demon stood upon the earth clad in human flesh, gazing up at the moonlight of the Material Plane and sensing something faintly.
Human songs drifted from nearby, their voices rising and falling into a peculiar rhythm. Plucked instruments played—how astonishing! Merely the vibration of a few strings produced a melody that seemed like magical resonance. Those frail creatures ran and leaped about, as if performing some ritual. Yet no gods or demons participated—they merely sought their own amusement. The glow of campfires illuminated their bodies, some whole, some broken; some healthy, some scarred. It illuminated every face.
It could recognize "that" face in the crowd—the kind belonging to beings born for battle and destined to perish in it. The souls of warriors held such fury, bitterness, and bloodlust; the souls of recruits were vibrant and full of life; the souls of veterans were numb and shattered—each had its own flavor. But at this very moment, only varying degrees of joy lit their faces, not a trace of gloom.
What flavor would such souls possess?
The sky darkened, making the bonfires lit by humans shine all the brighter. Their light pierced the heavens like a sword cleaving through the clouds. The moon vanished behind thick clouds once more. No wind stirred, but a light snow began to fall. Not sharp icicles, not heavy hailstones, but only fine snowflakes, like powdered sugar shaken from a sieve. They fell upon the surrounding trees, upon the flat earth, upon the minstrel's head, and upon the demon. This gentle, fine snow treated all equally, without distinction, crowning the stowaway from the abyss with a pure white wreath.
The demon gazed at its own palm. Before the snowflake melted, it marveled at its hexagonal shape.
"To beautiful Erian! Our poor, beloved homeland!" The bard continued singing, his voice unexpectedly melodious. "May our blood flow through your veins, keeping your face rosy and bright tomorrow..."
In that instant, the demon understood.
Beauty—it grasped it. That luxury absent from the Abyss. Beyond scheming and slaughter, something else existed worth experiencing. Merely standing here, merely watching, merely listening, merely acknowledging the presence of certain things—it felt the exhilaration of soul and blood surging through its throat. It felt a joy that made its bones tremble, an unfamiliar emotion rising within its heart—facing this soft and gentle plane, facing these fragile and beautiful creatures.
"Beauty..." it—he murmured, "truly beautiful."