Let’s kindly start back at the beginning.

Well, not the beginning, beginning (this author promises she’ll get into more of that later), but the beginning of the day. However, this time, it’ll be a different version than what was originally told.

In the barren wastes of hell, the day started as any other day would have.

The wind blew gently over the dusty landscape and darkness prevailed over the deepest caverns of the netherworld. Nearby, a few tumbleweeds whipped across the land. Other than that, the entire terrain was covered in a blanket of stillness and was wrapped in silence.

Brown, coarse sand had coated the earth and formed various strange looking land forms. A few of them appeared to be towering pillars, some were just lumpy mounds, and others looked like they were deformed statues.

Surrounding everything was an impenetrable gloom. One could say that if light were to shine down from the heavens in hopes of engulfing this desolate world, it would just be absorbed by the darkness.

Not a single thing stirred or roamed about. It was almost completely empty of any life. 

Yet, as lifeless as it seemed, there was still one inhabitant that proved it otherwise.

Slumbering under one of the sand sculptures was a lone figure. He laid parallel to the ground, looking as though he were undisturbed for a few decades. His clothes were slightly covered in sand, and the rock that he had used as a pillow had been weathered down over time.

If one took a thorough look and examined him, they would probably think he wasn’t even living. He took small breaths, almost undetected by the human eye, and there were large gaps of time in between each one. 

Another notable feature was that the long robe he wore had covered him in such a way, so that one wouldn’t be able to see his chest rise and fall.

But it wouldn’t matter anyway, no one has visited him in many centuries.

Who would care if he was actually alive or not? If someone actually did try to take a close look at him, they’d risk waking up one of the most powerful demons in all of hell. 

Meaning to wake him up would be asking for their own funeral.

One would be better off ignoring him than satisfying their own curiosity. After all, curiosity killed the cat.

As long as the demon was asleep, he was happy, and when he was happy, everyone was safe.

So imagine how he felt when ten thousand shrilling voices echoed throughout the gates of hell as if they were air horns blaring in his ear.

Pretty pissed, this author would imagine.

And pretty pissed he was.

Grumbling, he lethargically opened his eyes. Black orbs with yellow slits acting as pupils took in the scenery to assess the situation. 

Being a demon came with special benefits, like having a nocturne nature. The demon barely even had to squint to adjust to the darkness, everything in front of him was clear.

Sand? Check.

Wind? Check.

Everything looked normal enough, nothing seemed off in any way, shape, or form.

So what the hell.

He elegantly rose from the floor, like a wilting flower that had recovered its strength, and brushed bits of sand out of his robe and hair. His hands and legs haven’t moved an inch in what felt like a millenia, but he did not stumble around like a drunkard. 

Instead, he moved around, with the grace of a dancer, but a menacing aura like that of a yakuza (like this author said, he was pissed), looking for the source of the noise.

The agitated voices that had acted like his alarm clock kept bellowing, and, oh, how he wanted to shut them up with a nice fist to their faces.

Luckily, he was not like all the other demons of this realm who happened to be uneducated. The lone figure had been brought up with a keen knowledge and knew the source wasn’t a mere wanderer or a lonely ghost that had strayed far from hell’s prisons. 

There were far too many voices to just be a single culprit, and they were all far too loud and upset to just be a random lost soul. It sounded as if thousands of voices were tangled with one another; there was a limited possibility of knowing to what they were.

Luckily the figure knew exactly what was the only one thing that could have caused this kind of uproar.

This could only be the work of the spirits lost in between the worlds. But why were they so angry? Nothing really ticked them off, unless some idiot upstairs wanted to mess with the dark art and wake them all up.

The standalone demon irritably growled under his breath. He was not going to let some human scum try to ruin his slumber like this.

“Whoever's trying to summon a demon is seriously asking for it,” he muttered.

Summonings were not common, in fact they never really happened anymore.

The majority of them only occurred before the reign of Titus I. At the time, the emperor had busted them all, not just because of the harm they posed, but also for the fact that they were quite annoying to deal with.

Every time some blubbering, mouth-breathing human upstairs tried to get a demon’s attention, they’d leave a portal open between the worlds. Whenever this happened, some poor sap of a demon was always sent out to close it. 

Usually none of them came back and unexpectedly gotten stuck either on the surface or in limbo, which is part of the reason why summoning is banned in both realms.

So when a portal opens, no demon wants to be anywhere near it, and one can tell if it was close due to the spirits in the in-between. 

The lost spirits act as a sort of an alarm. The louder they are, the closer the portal was in proximity to you.

Yet, again, let this author remind you that this loner was not just your typical demon. He honestly didn’t care if the summoning portal was safe or dangerous, he just wanted to punish whoever the *fluff* bothered him.

So someone that was trying to mess with the natural order was really going to get their ass handed to them.

Haha, I don’t mind teaching some brainless swine a lesson. Serves them right for waking me.

I almost beat my fucking record.

[Author: (￣ー￣；) So you get to swear but I don’t?]

The figure slithered around, following the directing of where the spirits came from. It didn’t seem possible that they could get any louder, but much to the figure’s surprise, they still had enough energy to pour out every emotion at him.

“Alright, alright. I’m coming, geez.”

Gradually, as he drew near the portal, the spirits started to notice his presence and urged him to help. They called and beckoned to him, and he obliged to their cries.

Just behind another one of those strange sand formations, the figure saw a hole open up before him. 

It wasn’t very large but easy to spot amidst all the dark due to a white glow that emitted within. To the figure jumping inside did not look that simple, it’d probably feel rather confining since the hole was rather small.

Yet, he guess size didn’t really matter because it still happened to piss off who knows how many spirits.

Speaking of spirits, coming from inside it, several black, ghostly hands pointed with their index fingers to the center of the hole. As if commanding the figure to step in.

“Getting cocky are we?” The figure smirked at them, he honestly wouldn’t have dealt with their own shit under normal circumstances, but he had a reason behind getting involved.

As if to make fun of them, he bowed low and used his hand to take off his invisible hat. If he was going to act all chivalrous like a knight, he’d better play the part.

“Take my messages for me, I’m sure there’s a line of visitors that had been waiting for me to wake up sooner or later. Deal?”

A lone hand reached out of the depths of the portal to take his hand and shake it. With that, a mutual agreement has been made, and the demon was happy to get on with his expedition to the human realm.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he pointed to the hole, “you should stop that racket after I arrive there. Extra unnecessary observers are bad for my business. I don’t like anyone spying on me while I punish people. I like to keep it classy. Just good old one on one.”

The same ghostly hand that had just shaken his made a thumbs up.

“We good then? Alright, see ya when I get back.”

With that, he slithered up to the hole, turned the opposite direction to face away from it, then fell in backwards. His figure got smaller and smaller, and slowly, the diameter of the portal shrunk inch by inch in front of him.