Demon Lord: Erotic Adventure in Another World-Chapter 501: Interlude: Within the Snow

Asmodeus gazed up at the frozen citadel, feeling Reil's body shifting, whispering and breathing heavier in his arms. The howling winds wrapped around the massive white citadel. Chunks of ice fell, revealing a black stone wall, darkness and a sense of solitude.

"Something isn't right..." He muttered.

——

Meanwhile, fighting a battle of her own in her mind.

Riel, the succubus empress, faced the demon empress after her loss to Asmodeus.

It began with white.

Not a place. Not a dream.

A blankness, without shape or sky, where light had no source and sound dared not form.

Riel stood alone.

The frost beneath her bare feet held no bite, and yet she could feel it sinking into her skin, not as cold, but as stillness. The kind of silence that filled ancient tombs. The kind that wrapped around regrets too deep to name.

Her fingers curled gently against her arms.

She took a breath.

It didn't fog the air.

It simply vanished.

Then—

A figure.

Hunched. Pale. Small.

Curled into herself, halfway sunken into the snow like a little snow bunny.

The figure looked like a statue from far away, but up close, the trembling was visible.Tiny. Isolated. Cold.

A little girl.

She wore no crown. No armour. Her limbs were too thin, knees drawn to her chest. Her eyes were too large for her face — silver, watery, ringed in frost, staring into nothing.

Hair the colour of powdered moonlight fell across her cheeks in tangled sheets.

She didn't look up when Riel approached.

Didn't flinch. Didn't speak.

She just stared at the snow in front of her, as if waiting for it to say something.

Riel knelt slowly, the silence like glass beneath them both.

"Are you alone?" she asked.

The girl's head twitched. Barely.

Then a nod.

A tiny nod.

"I didn't mean to be," the child whispered. Her voice was brittle, soft as ice just beginning to crack. "I woke up and I didn't know where I was. There were voices. But none of them were mine."

Riel said nothing yet.

The girl's fingers dug into the snow.

"I tried to be like them. I copied them. I wore their faces. Their thoughts. But I… I didn't know how to stop."

The wind stirred faintly, though it made no sound.

"They called me queen," she murmured. "Told me I was their hope… it made me feel… nice. Wanted."

She paused, fidgeting with the edge of her sleeve, as if unsure whether she was allowed to feel that.

"I didn't understand what they meant. But when they said I mattered, when they looked at me like I belonged…" the child's voice cracked faintly, "it made the quiet go away."

Riel's expression didn't shift. Her fingers didn't tighten. She remained still, listening — not unsympathetic, but unreadable.

"You took a lot of people," Riel said, at last. Her voice was low, even.

The child nodded slowly.

"I didn't know how to stop. Every time I took someone, I felt… more like someone. It was like they filled holes inside me."

She looked up finally, just a little.

"But it never lasted."

Riel's gaze remained steady.

"I know," the girl whispered. "What I did. It's why I didn't fight you at the end. I… didn't want to fight anymore."

"But I didn't want to vanish either."

The words fell, small and plain, but they struck the stillness like a pebble on glass. Cracks followed in the silence.

Riel didn't speak. Not right away. Her mouth remained closed, watching the childish demon queen fiddling with the snow with her tiny fingers.

"You wanted," she said finally, her voice low and level, "and so you took."

The girl didn't deny it.

"I did."

Her voice was calm now. Not defiant. But hollow, like she'd already decided long ago that guilt was hers to carry.

"I took bodies. Names. Histories. I even pretended their memories were mine. Just to… feel something."

Her small hands lifted. She stared at them as if hoping they would look older than they were.

"But no matter how many I devoured, none of them felt like me. Not even yours."

Riel's eyes narrowed.

"And yet you tried to kill me," she said. "Tried to ruin everything I ever held dear. You would've destroyed entire kingdoms."

"I know."

Still no excuse. No tears. Just a quiet acknowledgement.

"I hated your face," Riel said, voice colder now. "I hated waking up in a dream with my mouth, my voice, and nothing inside."

The girl flinched, just slightly — but she nodded.

"I didn't know what else to be. I thought… if I looked like you, talked like you, slept beside him like you…"

Her voice broke.

"…maybe I could be loved the same."

Riel turned her face—she tried to contain her anger and frustration.

"I wanted to be seen," the girl whispered. "...seen by the light."

"The light?"

She nodded.

"It was always just out of reach. No matter how many people I became, no matter how strong I got… he was always there."

She didn't say his name.

She didn't have to.

Her fingers tightened in the snow.

That's when Riel noticed that the girl wasn't playing, but drawing a picture... a stick figure with a strangely shaped weapon. An Axe. His Axe.

"He glowed, you know. Like a fire I couldn't warm myself by. But I still reached. Because I thought… maybe that light would show me what I was."

The girl smiled, her face different from Riel's... more like Sariel, innocent and empty. "He was warm, kind... and always smiled back at me."

Riel's chest felt tight.

She didn't want to feel sympathy. Not for this thing that stole her life.

But it was there.

A quiet, bitter ache — because she remembered that light too.She remembered chasing it.

Not for power.

But for that same light...

A foolish boy at first.

She couldn't believe it was he who was chosen.

The man she would love. Adore. Chase.

It felt like for the first time… Riel could feel something in common with this creature, and it caused her—

—to hesitate.

Not out of pity.

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But recognition.

A sliver of something sharp and familiar lodged behind her ribs, like a buried shard of her past. She, too, had stared at him from a distance, unsure if that warmth could ever be hers. She, too, had once stood on the edge of a path she didn't feel worthy to walk.

And like this little girl in the snow, she had once mistaken proximity for belonging.

The pain didn't fade.

But it changed shape.

She exhaled slowly.

"You don't even know what he is to you," she said at last.

The girl looked up, startled—not by the harshness, but by the truth in it.

"No," she admitted. "But I wanted him to look at me like he looked at you."

Her fingers moved again, brushing away the crude snow drawing. As if ashamed.

"I thought if I made myself into what he needed… I could matter."

Riel watched her for a long moment.

Then, finally stood, brushing the frost from her knees.

Her voice, when it came again, was still cold.

But no longer cutting.

"You matter."

She looked down at the child.

The pale skin.

The trembling hands.

The desperate need is buried under layers of imitation.

"But you don't matter because he looked at you."

"You matter because you're still here."

The little girl blinked.

Her mouth parted, but no words came.

Riel turned, just slightly, facing the empty white above them both.

"You said you didn't want to vanish," she said.

The girl nodded again.

Slower this time.

Riel's eyes narrowed, as if testing the thought aloud.

"Then don't."

The wind stirred again.

Softer now.

Like something breathing.

"Not yet."

The child didn't speak after that.

She stared at the fading lines in the snow where her drawing had been, the outline of the axe swept away by her own hand. Her shoulders sank, not in shame, but in something deeper.

Acceptance.

The silence stretched again — no longer tense, but watchful.

And above them, for the first time, the blank white sky… shifted.

It began as a ripple.

Not sound.

Not light.

Just a thinning — like silk stretched over glass.

A veil parting. A breath held for too long, finally released.

Then the moon rose, slowly, not sudden or dramatic. But slow and steady, a peaceful glimmering silver appeared in the sky. Its pale silver light poured across the white horizon, cool and gentle, casting long shadows behind the two figures in the snow.

The child looked up and her mouth fell open; she hadn't seen something like this before.

Like the sun, but different... silver... gentle. Its light didn't burn or blind, but welcomed.

A soft, constant, silent light, more of a mirror than a flame.

"I've seen light before," the small demon whispered. "But not like this…"

Riel didn't move.

Her eyes fixed on the rising orb.

"He once told me I was like the moon, and she was the sun," she murmured. "That I guided him when things became dark, and he felt alone.

"So, why can't I become your moon?"