Chapter 1: Prologue

Heavy rain battered the glass walls of a luxurious apartment in Lincoln Park, Chicago, while the east wind whistled through the night like a restless spirit. Seated on the sofa with his legs stretched over the glass table, Damian stared into the storm, watching lightning fracture the sky. The chaos outside felt like a reflection of the turmoil within his chest.

All his life, Damian had feared only one thing.

Not failure. Not defeat. Not even death.

What Damian feared was abandonment.

When he was ten years old, his father left to “buy some milk” and never returned. There was no call, no text, no explanation. Before that day, they had shared a bond Damian had believed unbreakable, which made the silence that followed cut twice as deep.

Years passed, and he watched his mother drift from one abusive man to another as though she were trying on outfits in a boutique, discarding each when the fit displeased her. Eventually, she found someone willing to stay. On Damian’s eighteenth birthday, she decided she would not. With a flimsy speech about starting over and how her happiness mattered, she abandoned him. As if that were not enough, she casually revealed that his father had left because Damian was not his biological child, and therefore he should expect no help from him. Then she pressed a single hundred dollar bill into his palm, wished him luck, and walked away without looking back.

Just like that, both of his parents built new lives with new people, leaving him behind as if he were an inconvenient draft they had chosen not to save.

From that day forward, Damian worked three jobs just to survive.

Life became a grinding hell. The constant mental and emotional strain hollowed him out from the inside, and it showed. His physical appearance suffered under exhaustion and stress, and his love life reflected it. Rejections came easily. Betrayals came easier.

And yet, somehow, he endured.

He graduated with a first class degree in law and secured a position at one of the most prestigious firms in America, now known as the Black Sheep Firm. There, through relentless effort, he distinguished himself and rose to the rank of Associate. Along the way, he gained something he had always craved but never truly possessed. A beautiful paralegal girlfriend who claimed to love him.

When he had still been a rising star at the firm, she approached him. For the first time in his life, he felt wanted. During their year together, Damian spared no effort in giving her the best life he could afford. Designer brands. Fine dining. An upscale apartment in Lincoln Park that consumed most of his paycheck and quietly pushed him deeper into debt. He told himself it was worth it. Love required sacrifice.

Now he sat alone in his bedroom, a bottle of whiskey dangling from one hand and an engagement ring resting in the other. He had planned to propose tomorrow night at the Summer Associate Dinner. On his phone screen, beneath the contact name Candice framed by a ridiculous number of love emojis, was a short breakup message. Clinical. Detached. Final.

She was leaving him for a senior associate at the firm. The same man who had publicly antagonized Damian more than once in the office. She informed him that they would be announcing their relationship at the Summer Associate Dinner and politely asked him not to make a scene. She suggested he move on. She did this while conveniently ignoring the fact that most junior staff already knew about their relationship.

Damian would become the cautionary tale. The man who lost his girl to his superior. The humiliation would cling to him alone.

It clearly did not matter to her.

One year of devotion, of sacrifice, of stretching himself thin in hopes of building something lasting, shattered by a single text. The apartment she had insisted on renting now felt like an empty stage set after the actors had left. As if it had never been theirs at all.

“All those years, and nothing has changed. I’m tired of it,” Damian said, his voice devoid of emotion.

He felt hollow.

He had spent his life trying to become someone worthy of love and commitment, only to be abandoned again and again.

Huff.

A defeated breath escaped him as his gaze shifted to the gun resting beside his phone. It was a black 20 caliber pistol, still new, untouched by use. Living in an affluent neighborhood, he had never felt the need to own a weapon. Until today.

For sixty long seconds, he stared at it.

“I wonder if she will feel guilty when she hears the news…”

The thought tasted bitter. He scoffed at himself the moment the words left his mouth. Candice was cold. Self centered. He had always known. He had simply believed that if he loved her enough, if he proved himself indispensable enough, she would change. For a while, she had convinced him that she had.

Gulp. Gulp.

Whiskey spilled down the corners of his lips as he drank recklessly, swallowing until his throat burned and his lungs protested. The bottle slipped from his grasp when he coughed, shattering against the floor and soaking his clothes in alcohol. He did not move. He did not care. Even as the amber liquid spread across the hardwood, he remained still.

With bloodshot eyes and trembling resolve, Damian lifted the gun and forced the barrel into his mouth.

Lightning cracked across the sky.

He pulled the trigger.

The gunshot was swallowed by thunder, and for a split second the flash illuminated his body slumped against the sofa, blood splattered across the wall, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle.

Damian was dead.

Damian’s eyes fluttered open.

He stood before a steel black door wrapped in heavy chains, an insignia of a fox embedded at its center. Red light from chandeliers overhead painted the corridor in a hellish glow. The architecture reminded him of nineteenth century Europe, grand and oppressive in equal measure.

’Is this hell for lonely people or something?’

The thought surfaced instinctively. He stood in a long corridor lined with seven identical doors, each radiating an unsettling presence.

’So why am I standing in front of this one?’

He attempted to move, but his body refused to obey. Only his head responded, allowing him to survey his surroundings. A cold realization settled over him.

Reluctantly, he reached for the chained door. Strangely, this time his body complied.

The instant his fingers brushed the cold metal, the corridor vanished.

He stood in the middle of an endless grassland beneath a vast moonlit sky. Silver light washed over the world in an ethereal glow. The air was heavy, charged with something ancient and incomprehensible.

Before him towered a fox of impossible proportions. Its white fur gleamed under the moon, streaked with intricate purple patterns that pulsed faintly with power. It rose over a hundred meters tall, its head brushing the clouds. The moon itself seemed to reflect its figure, and behind it swayed nine enormous tails, each one radiating quiet dominance.

It was a nine tailed fox.

’What the hell is that?!’

He screamed internally, yet his body remained rooted to the ground. This was not paralysis imposed by some external force. This was fear. Pure, suffocating fear.

The colossal creature slowly shifted its gaze downward. Its eyes settled on him, a speck beneath its shadow.

“A human is my new successor? An interesting turn of events…”

Its voice was light, almost playful, yet it reverberated like thunder across the heavens, echoing to the very edge of the world.

And then it was over.

Damian found himself back in his apartment, the gun still in his hand, liquor pooling on the floor.

How?

He stared at the broken bottle. Then at the pistol.

Lightning struck again.

Bang.

The shot rang out in perfect synchrony with the thunder, but this time the flash revealed more than his own bloodied silhouette. Looming behind him, cast against the wall, was the massive shadow of a nine tailed fox demon.

“How am I still alive? I killed myself.”

He was certain of it. He remembered the pressure of the trigger. He could still taste metal and blood.

Yet somehow, after that encounter, he had returned to the precise moment before his death.

Why?

Before he could articulate the question, luminous panels materialized in front of him, their glow cutting through the darkness.

[Congratulations, you have been chosen to be the bearer of the Sin of Lust]

[Rejoice, you have been chosen to become one of the seven potential successors of the Demon Lord!]

[Do you accept this responsibility?]

“What?!”

The gun slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. He stared at the glowing words in disbelief. The language was alien, utterly unfamiliar, and yet he understood every character perfectly.

“Do I accept? I shouldn’t even be here in the first place!”

His voice trembled between anger and confusion. He waited for a response, some clarification, some sign that this was a mistake.

Nothing came.

The panels remained suspended before him, silent and expectant.

A minute passed.

Then the text shifted on its own.

[Congratulations on accepting this extremely heavy responsibility.]

[Good luck. You will need it…]

“Wait… What?! I never agreed!”

His protest echoed uselessly through the room.

Only one final line appeared.

[No takebacks!]

The system’s shameless reply hung in the air as the storm raged on outside.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep