The golden blade through his chest. The paladin's tears as the sword pierced the armor that had terrorized a thousand heroes before him. The way the heavens had cracked open like a desperate mouth, divine light pouring through to claim another victory. His own laughter, defiant to the end.
"Tell your gods I died beautiful."
Those had been his final words. A fine exit line for the Prince of Thornsreach, Betrayer of Oaths, Final Challenge of the Sacred Quest.
So why the hell was he alive in a damp, second-rate crypt with a headache and half his powers missing?
Azrael pushed himself up from the cold stone altar where he'd awakened, momentarily disoriented. Where was the heavenly light? The triumphant hero? The orchestral swell that always accompanied his defeat?
He caught his reflection in a small puddle of stagnant water beside the altar and recoiled. The face that stared back was still his—but diminished. The obsidian horns that had once crowned his head like a royal diadem were now barely visible stubs. His eyes, which had blazed with the fires of seven hells, now merely glowed a tepid orange. Even his jawline seemed less severe, his cheekbones less pronounced—as if someone had taken sandpaper to the very sculpture of his being and smoothed away all the interesting parts.
His magnificent black wings, once spanning twenty feet of shadow and nightmare, now barely reached his ankles. The ornate armor that had inspired terror across three kingdoms was gone, replaced by generic villain robes that itched in places he didn't want to contemplate.
His talons—those elegant instruments of precise torture that could carve prophecies into the flesh of seers—had been reduced to merely long fingernails painted a garish black. The kind of costume accessories you'd find in a village festival where children dressed as monsters.
He flexed his hands, feeling phantom power that should have been there. Gone was the ability to conjure souls with a gesture. Gone was the library of forbidden knowledge that had once filled his mind—spells that could curdle blood or turn a man's bones to glass while they still lived.
"What," he growled, "is this absurdity?"
His voice echoed back, smaller than he remembered. Gone was the three-layered resonance that made mortals weep. Gone was the subtle mind-breaking undertone that drove lesser creatures to madness.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
A ghostly panel flickered before him, blue text hovering in the darkness.
[WITHERHALL CRYPTS – SUB-BOSS ACTIVATED]
[ENTITY: AZREAL]
[STATUS: FUNCTIONAL]
[LEVEL: 17]
[DIFFICULTY RATING: MODERATE]
Azrael stared at the spectral text, rage building like magma behind his eyes.
"Azreal?" he hissed. "They misspelled my NAME?"
His fist crashed through the panel, dispersing it into motes of blue light. They'd demoted him. Worse, they'd misspelled him.
The Azrael who had nearly broken the heavens, who had collected the tears of fallen angels in crystal vials, who had stood as the final challenge to generations of heroes... reduced to a generic dungeon encounter with a typo.
And level 17? LEVEL 17? He had been level 90 at minimum. A raid boss. A campaign finale. He'd had his own orchestral theme that played when heroes entered his domain!
He stalked across the small chamber, taking inventory of his new "lair." One altar. Three decorative skeletons. A weapon rack with the kind of mass-produced evil weaponry that wouldn't frighten a novice paladin. A chest that probably contained some mediocre loot with a 40% drop rate.
The chamber itself was an insult—barely thirty paces across, with ceilings so low his wings would have scraped them if they were still their proper size. Moisture dripped from cracked stone. The smell wasn't the proper aroma of brimstone and ancient power he'd cultivated in Thornsreach; this was just regular dungeon mildew. Pedestrian. Unworthy.
Azrael approached one of the decorative skeletons, examining its poorly articulated jaw and the obvious seams where it had been mass-produced rather than lovingly harvested from a fallen hero.
"I once had the skeletons of seventeen holy warriors adorning my throne room," he told the prop skeleton bitterly. "Each one still conscious, their souls bound to their bones so they could witness eternity's passage. The Deathless Choir, I called them."
The fake skeleton didn't respond. It wasn't even enchanted to move or speak. Just... decoration. Like everything else in this pathetic excuse for a villain's lair.
"This is beneath me," he muttered, examining a poorly crafted skull chalice. "This is insulting."
He closed his eyes, reaching for his power. The familiar cold fire that had lived in his veins for eons felt distant, diminished. He could still access his abilities, but they were shadows of their former glory.
[ABILITIES AVAILABLE]
- Shadow Bolt (Minor)
- Unholy Presence (Weak)
- Dramatic Entrance (Cosmetic)
- Villain Monologue (Auto-triggers when hero party enters)
Another panel materialized beside the first, filling him with fresh indignation:
[CURRENT STATS: LEVEL 17]
STR: 25 (was 120)
INT: 30 (was 150)
CHA: 22 (was 100)
Health: 500/500 (was 25,000)
Mana: 350/350 (was 15,000)
Title: The Dark One (was The Betrayer, Prince of Thornsreach)
Dramatic Entrance? Cosmetic? And a mandatory villain monologue? They'd reduced him to a walking cliché.
He remembered the power he once wielded. Symphony of Oblivion, a spell that could unmake creation itself, leaving only beautiful darkness in its wake. Soul Harvesting, the ability to collect the essence of vanquished foes in crystalline vials to fuel greater workings. The Exquisite Pain, a technique of torture so refined it would drive a mortal to the brink of death without ever crossing that threshold.
Now? Shadow Bolt. A cantrip taught to first-year acolytes of the dark arts.
Something was different this time. Usually, when he died, he simply... reset. Back to his throne, back to full power, waiting for the next group of heroes to challenge him. The gods had their script, and he played his part. The final obstacle before victory, the necessary evil to be overcome.
He had died thousands of times. Sometimes by blade, sometimes by spell, occasionally by some clever trap or trick the heroes had prepared. And always—always—he had awakened back on his throne, memories wiped clean, ready for the next performance.
But now? The script had changed, and somehow, impossibly, he remembered the old one.
A glitch. He was glitched.
He should have found that terrifying. The system controlled everything, and anomalies were usually purged. But fear had never been Azrael's companion, even when he faced the full wrath of the heavens. No, what he felt now was a cold, calculating interest. A potential opportunity.
Azrael moved to the entrance of his small chamber, peering down the crypt corridor. Instead of the magnificent obsidian spire he had ruled, he now inhabited a generic underground dungeon. Distant torch sconces revealed cookie-cutter corridors with the same three decorative elements repeated ad nauseam.
He remembered his true domain—a fortress whose foundations reached into the molten core of the world, towers that pierced the clouds, halls where the laws of reality bent to his whim. Now he had... a room. With a chest. And fake skeletons.
He heard voices approaching. Young, confident, laughing. A hero party, but not the caliber he was accustomed to. Low-level adventurers looking for easy experience and whatever pathetic loot his chest contained.
"Did you see that goblin run?" a male voice laughed. "Right into your fireball!"
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"I'm telling you," a woman responded, "this dungeon is perfect for leveling. The boss isn't even that hard according to the forums."
Azrael's eyes narrowed. Not that hard? He had once made a hero knight swallow his own holy symbol before feeding his soul to the void. He had faced champions that made the gods themselves hold their breath in anticipation. He had battled paladins whose radiance could burn the corruption from a demon lord's heart—and he had won, more often than the divine scriptwriters cared to admit. Those victories were edited out of the official narrative, of course, but they had happened.
His lip curled as he heard the approaching footsteps. These weren't champions. These were... tourists. Sightseers. Experience farmers.
A third voice, lighter, clearly a bard or rogue: "I hear it's some kind of necromancer or something. Drops a cursed ring sometimes."
A cursed ring? The indignity burned. He had once wielded Ruinweaver, the sword forged from fallen stars, a weapon so potent its true name could not be spoken by mortal tongues without causing hemorrhaging. He had commanded legions of the damned. His word had been apocalypse.
And now he "dropped a cursed ring sometimes."
The approaching heroes weren't even discussing strategy. They were chatting casually, as if this was no more threatening than a walk through a garden. In his day, adventurers would spend weeks preparing to face him. They would seek out ancient artifacts, train with forgotten masters, undergo sacred rituals to purify their souls. Some would break under the pressure before they even reached his gates.
As the voices grew closer, an unfamiliar compulsion seized Azrael's body. His arms raised dramatically of their own accord. His diminished wings flared. His mouth opened, and words not of his choosing spilled forth:
"FOOLISH MORTALS! YOU DARE ENTER THE DOMAIN OF AZREAL THE... THE DARK ONE? PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM!"
Horror flooded him as the generic dialogue forced its way past his lips. This was his existence now? A pre-scripted puppet with no agency? A stepping stone for amateur heroes?
The script continued without his consent, his body performing ridiculous gestures that would have made his former self immolate with shame.
"YOUR SOULS SHALL FEED MY POWER! NONE WHO ENTER THE WITHERHALL CRYPTS MAY LEAVE ALIVE!"
Pathetic. He had once crafted monologues that questioned the very nature of heroism, that planted seeds of doubt in the most devout hearts. His words had been poetry, philosophy, and damnation woven into elegant tapestries of despair.
This? This was the dialogue equivalent of a practice dummy.
But even as the automated monologue continued, Azrael felt something strange. A crack in the system. A flaw in the script. His consciousness remained intact, observing even as his body performed its programmed routine.
The hero party rounded the corner - a human mage barely out of her apprentice robes, a half-elf ranger with a bow that had clearly come from the starter zone, and a dwarf cleric whose holy symbol still had the price tag poorly scratched off.
The mage tilted her head slightly, a flicker of scholarly curiosity passing across her face as she examined him. "Huh, the codex entry mentioned a fallen celestial origin. You can kind of see it in the wing structure."
"Who cares about the lore?" The ranger nocked an arrow with practiced boredom. "Just another XP pinata. Let's pop it and move on."
The dwarf cleric hesitated almost imperceptibly, his fingers tightening around his holy symbol. For just a moment, something like unease crossed his face. "There's... something different about this one." He shook his head. "Probably just the poor lighting in here."
They weren't even a proper challenge. They were farming him.
The ranger didn't even look concerned, casually nocking an arrow while the mage yawned behind her hand. The dwarf cleric was checking what appeared to be a to-do list, as if Azrael—once the Scourge of Three Realms—was merely an errand to complete before lunch.
"Alright," said the mage, twirling her staff with obvious boredom. "Let's get this over with. I need those forty experience points for my next level."
Forty experience points? Azrael had once been worth ten thousand at minimum! Champions would gain access to entirely new ability trees after defeating him!
As the automated boss battle began, Azrael felt his body going through the motions - casting predictable shadow bolts, moving in easily avoided patterns, delivering lines so clichéd they made his immortal soul cringe.
"YOUR LIGHT CANNOT PENETRATE MY DARKNESS!" his mouth said without his permission, while his arm cast the weakest shadow bolt he'd ever seen. It moved so slowly the ranger didn't even need to dodge—she simply stepped aside, rolling her eyes.
But beneath it all, behind the programming, his true consciousness observed. Calculated. Remembered.
The ranger's arrow struck his shoulder as the predetermined battle neared its conclusion. Azrael felt his health bar depleting, right on schedule. Soon he would collapse, dramatically curse the heroes, and drop his pathetic loot.
He could feel the script preparing his death animation—a wholly undignified sprawl onto the damp stone, one arm flung out, a final whispered threat that would sound hollow and empty.
Except...
In the moment before his scripted death, Azrael felt something new. A presence. Ancient and amused.
"How the mighty have fallen," whispered a voice only he could hear. "Once the terror of heroes, now a training dummy. How does it feel, Prince of Nothing?"
The voice was dark molasses, sweet poison, a forbidden promise. It came from everywhere and nowhere.
"What if I offered you a way out? A way back? A way... forward?"
Time seemed to stop. The heroes froze mid-victory pose. The last shadow bolt hung suspended in the air. The mage's dismissive smirk locked in place, the ranger's casual stance preserved like a painting.
Something had interrupted the script. Something powerful enough to pause the very flow of the divine narrative.
"Who are you?" Azrael managed to ask, finding he could speak his own words at last.
A chuckle like breaking glass. "I am what comes after the credits roll. I am the glitch in the divine code. I am the patron of the forgotten and the nerfed."
A dark god. Not one of the pantheon that controlled the main quest line, but something else. Something opportunistic, thriving in the margins of the world's programming.
"They've added new content, expanded the world, moved on to greater threats," the voice continued. "Left you behind like yesterday's update. But what if that's an opportunity?"
"I'm listening," Azrael said cautiously.
The presence seemed to circle him, though nothing visible manifested. Just a sensation of being examined, assessed, valued.
"The system has rules, Azrael. The heroes must always win. Villains must always fall. The righteous must triumph so the players feel... accomplished." There was a note of disgust in that last word. "But what happens when a piece on the board develops... awareness? When the script no longer binds it completely?"
Azrael looked at his frozen death scene with new eyes. "You're saying I could break free of this... programming?"
"Not entirely. Not yet. But you have already begun, haven't you? This conversation shouldn't be possible. Your memories should be wiped with each reset. And yet..."
"And yet I remember."
"The new heroes journey toward the true final boss. They seek glory, artifacts, the completion of the grand quest line." The voice grew closer, intimate as a lover's whisper. "But what if they never arrived? What if instead of killing the villains, they... joined them? What if the prophecy itself could be corrupted?"
Understanding dawned. "You want me to turn the heroes. Corrupt them."
"Build your own party. A villain party. Not to conquer the world - that's so... expected. No, I want you to break the narrative. Corrupt the chosen ones. Seduce the righteous. Turn their precious quest line into something altogether different."
The dark god's offer hung in the air between them. Azrael considered his options - continue as a pathetic farming boss for eternity, or rebel against the system itself.
"I can grant you certain... privileges," the voice tempted. "Admin access, of a sort. The ability to see what others cannot. To influence beyond your programming. To remember each loop, each death, each reset."
"And in return?"
"Chaos. Beautiful, system-breaking chaos." The dark presence seemed to smile. "Do we have a deal, Azrael? Not Azreal - that sad, misspelled creature they reduced you to - but AZRAEL, as you were meant to be?"
The proper pronunciation of his name was all the convincing he needed.
"We have a deal."
Reality crashed back into motion. The heroes completed their victory poses as his body crumpled to the ground, performing its scripted death animation. The cursed ring materialized in the loot chest with its sad 40% drop rate.
But as the adventurers celebrated and divided their meager spoils, Azrael's consciousness remained. Watching. Waiting. Planning.
The mage picked up the cursed ring, tossing it carelessly in her palm. "Eh, might be worth a few gold to a collector. The debuff isn't even that bad."
The dwarf cleric shrugged, counting their earned experience points. "At least the fight was quick. We can probably run three more dungeons before dinner."
They had no idea what had just happened. No concept of the cosmic pact that had been formed while they stood frozen in time. To them, this was just another trivial encounter, another checkmark on their journey to whatever endgame awaited them.
Little did they know they had just witnessed the birth of something new. Something the system never intended.
The system would resurrect him soon enough, reset him for the next farming party. But this time would be different.
This time, he remembered everything.
This time, he had a new patron.
This time, he wouldn't be killing heroes.
He would be breaking them.
"That was easier than I expected," the dwarf cleric said, pocketing his share of the gold. "These dungeons are getting too easy if you ask me."
"Five minutes for forty experience points?" the ranger calculated. "We could gain two levels by nightfall at this rate."
"I'm game," the ranger replied, already heading for the exit. "Easy experience is still experience."
"Might as well," the cleric agreed. "Though I'm still not sure why they bothered giving that boss such an elaborate backstory in the codex. Did you read that entry? Something about him being a fallen angel who betrayed the celestial host or whatever. Seems like overkill for a level 17 encounter."
The mage laughed. "Probably recycled content from something else. Developers get lazy sometimes."
They never noticed the shadow that clung to the mage's robes as they left, a fragment of consciousness hiding within a cursed trinket. They never noticed the subtle corruption already seeping into the item they so casually tossed into their inventory.
They never noticed the way the cursed ring pulsed with a darkness that hadn't been in its programming before, or how the inscription inside it had changed from generic runes to a single name, properly spelled: AZRAEL.
Azrael would be waiting for them tomorrow. And the day after.
He wouldn't be playing the role of the weak, scripted boss they expected.
And soon enough, they would be playing very different roles themselves.
[NEW ABILITIES UNLOCKED]
- Corruption Touch (Minor)
- Memory Retention (Passive)
- Script Awareness (Passive)
- Dark Patronage (Active)
The game had changed. Now it was his turn to play.