Years of blood spill and the cries of war ended with the last of the throat cut and the rise of a new empire. A thousand years passed, civilization has progressed but no one has ever moved on from the hierarchy carved ever since the last war. The thousand years after an era where humans and demons used to live in peace, one becomes the slave of the other and revolution is only a myth, a forbidden bedtime story.

In this world where demons reign, humans are inferior. They stoop low on the pyramid, bowing to the highest demons sitting at the peak. But everyone knows who lurk at the lowest steps, the tainted bloods, the half-demons. Neither truly human nor a complete demon, they are the taboo children of forbidden love and no one could ever be more detested than these lost souls.

The peak of the pyramid sits the supreme family in their thrones, bloodline strictly pure, this rule abided like a ritual and a law. They hold the world in one hand and watch their riches build with eyes so cold no human dares look into. Be careful for when their eyes turn a colour so piercing, your soul is about to be dug out of your core.

“Did I ask you to speak?”

He picks himself up from the ground and kneels in silence, head held low in repent as the blood trickles from the gashes on his left cheek. He knows he’ll have to clean it up, they wouldn’t like to have his dirty blood soil their pristine marble.

“Filthy blood.”

There’s a glow in his eyes but he hides it well. He hides it well, his mother taught him so. Never anger them. When they all leave, Daehyun picks up the rag he has and cleans up the blood red on the white marble but however he wipes, on his hands and knees, the shine in his eyes, it never seems to end, for the ground is still soiled, still filthy, still blood red.

There’s a scar on his cheek and his master tells him it’s better that way for it mars the ugly marks of his tainted blood.

“What happened to your face?”

He holds back the wince when a slender hand lifts his chin and runs a long finger over his wounds. The emotionless face turns up a corner of those lips and smirks at the bloody gashes.

“Have she slapped you into permanent silence?”

Daehyun forces out an answer, a mere croak through his chapped lips and there was all the sound he made until the slender hand pushes his face away in near disgust. He falls from his kneel in the pain seeping into his skin through the thick gashes, about to regain his posture until his master leaves and tells him, “It’s better that way, covers up that ugly mark of yours.”

Marks of a demon line the skin like a tattoo, elegant and mythical but they look all the same to Daehyun, a symbol of evil and vanity. Those who have it wear it like a medal, a symbol of excellence for they have done well.

Done well for being born in the correct race.

Half-demons have the lines of a demon as well, but they stand as a mark of taboo, the mark of a taboo-child. Those in-born tattoo come out jagged and blurred, an ugly mark on their skin that invites detest. Daehyun’s mark runs on his left cheek, jagged maroon marks that his master hates so much. But it’s all covered up good now. It’ll all be just an ugly scar after a while.

Daehyun follows his master everywhere he goes for that is his duty, his only purpose is to serve and that is the only reason he is alive. Daehyun knows not very well how his master looks like for it is forbidden to look into the eyes of a demon as a lowly slave. He only knows that the first time his master took the shape of a primal form, there were wings on his master’s back so black it ate up most of the moon that night and it frightened him. The markings on his master’s back swirls like mists of smoke and they rise up to the back of his master’s neck—that’s when Daehyun first saw the col