My Wives are Beautiful Demons

The silence of the morning was broken by a restrained sigh. An almost imperceptible sound, but one that traveled through the air like a spark in a dry field. Vergil opened his eyes with difficulty, the soft light of the room as heavy a burden as the pain in his head.

The pain was absurd. Not just physical—it was as if his mind was trying to reenter his own body, colliding with walls that shouldn't be there. A pulsing pressure between his eyes, throbbing with echoes that seemed to come from other planes of existence.

He tried to move.

He couldn't.

His body seemed trapped—not by chains or magical restraints, but by... something warm. Soft. Weight... human?

His gaze fell, and he saw.

There were bodies on top of him. Several. Sleeping.

Raphaeline's head rested on his chest, one of her arms possessively wrapped around his abdomen.

Sapphire — curled up like an ice cat — was closer to the side, holding his hand with both of hers.

Stella slept face down on his right leg, her golden hair spread out like a halo of sunshine.

Katharina, elegant even in unconsciousness, rested with her head close to his shoulder, her long hair intertwined with the sheets.

Ada, always restless, seemed to have fallen there out of sheer exhaustion, a dagger stuck in the mattress beside her as if she were ready to defend something even in her sleep.

And Roxanne, with a light, charming snore, was sprawled between them, her subtle breathing vibrating against Vergil's collarbone.

Vergil blinked.

The pain in his head increased.

"W-what..." he tried to say, but only a hoarse murmur came out.

Even so, it was enough.

Six pairs of eyes opened as if they had been programmed to do so.

Sapphire was the first to react.

"Vergil?!"

The chaos that followed was immediate.

They all moved at the same time, with muffled exclamations, expressions of relief and shock. Raphaeline almost fell out of bed, trying to get up too quickly. Stella rolled to the side with a groan of pain. Katharina composed herself with the grace of a lady, but her expression was distorted with emotion. Roxanne yawned, but her eyes were alert, searching for signs of danger. Ada just jumped back with the agility of a panther, her fists already clenched.

Vergil blinked again, stunned.

"...I... what...?" He tried to sit up, but his body immediately gave way, falling back onto the pillows.

"Calm down!" Sapphire approached, placing a hand on his forehead. Her eyes were shining with relief, but also with doubts—many doubts. "You have a fever... your soul is still... fluctuating."

Raphaeline held his hand tightly. "You scared us, idiot. You were unconscious for a whole day. We almost couldn't stabilize you!"

"You... slept on top of me?" he asked in a slurred, confused voice.

"Securing your soul through emotional bonds. It's not just affection—it's spiritual technique," Katharina replied in a serious tone, but her eyes were red as if she had been crying. "And yes. We slept on top of you."

Vergil groaned softly, massaging his temple. "What... happened? I remember... the empresses. Crimsarya and Nivara. They were going to collide. I saw it. And then... then..."

"Then... everything disappeared," Sapphire finished, her expression turning serious. "It was a lapse. A space of time so small we couldn't even measure it. A blink. A breath. And they both disappeared. Literally vanished from existence."

Roxanne crossed her arms. "Not evaporated. Not destroyed. Erased. As if they had been removed from the tapestry of the world with cosmic tweezers."

Vergil frowned, closing his eyes for a moment. He tried to pull the memories. Force the echoes. But all he found was a black abyss.

"...I don't remember anything."

Stella, sitting at the foot of the bed, nodded slowly. "That's the strangest thing. Not even Amon and Astaroth could find any traces of what happened there. It's as if something had enveloped that moment in a kind of absolute veil."

Ada narrowed her eyes. "And not just any force. We're talking about a force that, by all accounts, rewrote the entire space-time continuum without causing any measurable distortions. That's not sealing. That's... reality replacement."

Vergil took a deep breath. The pain in his head was still throbbing, but a new sensation was beginning to emerge. A void.

The absence of the empresses didn't just feel like relief... it felt like a gap, as if a piece of the puzzle had been torn out and the picture was still trying to pretend it was complete.

"I remember wanting to do something," he murmured. "I wanted to prevent... something inevitable. But after that... only darkness."

Sapphire placed her hand on his chest. "Your soul was bent. Not burned, not cut... bent. As if it had served as a vessel. But we don't know for what."

Raphaeline hesitated, then said in a low voice, "Whatever it was... it's silent now."

Everyone was silent for a moment. The mood in the room seemed to have changed—something tenuous and uncomfortable, like the last breeze before a distant storm.

Vergil looked at all of them. He saw the exhaustion, the tension, the fear they didn't want to admit. And he felt, deep in his chest, that something much bigger had happened. Something that was not yet possible to understand... but that had left its mark.

"I need some time alone..." he murmured. The silence that followed Vergil's words was thick. None of them moved immediately. It was as if his request had been a sharp blade slowly sliding between the bonds that united them there — not cutting, but straining.

Sapphire was the first to react, swallowing hard before nodding slightly. There was something in her eyes — not hurt, but understanding. She turned to the others and said in a low but firm voice:

"Let's... let's give him a moment."

Raphaeline didn't answer. Her gaze was fixed on Vergil's face, as if looking for a sign that this was really necessary. Finally, she just let go of his hand carefully, as if releasing a piece of crystal that could break at any touch.

"Don't take too long, please," she whispered, almost inaudibly.

Stella got up with a stifled yawn, stretching her arms before picking up a sheet that had slipped off the mattress. Her blue eyes met his, and she forced a faint smile.

"If you start hearing voices or seeing weird lights, scream, okay? No more silently sacrificing yourself."

Ada snorted, turning her back, but her stiffness betrayed that she was as affected as the others. "Five minutes. Ten, tops. I won't give you more than that before I invade this room again."

"You don't know me very well if you think I'm going to leave you alone for that long," Roxanne added with a mischievous smile—but her eyes didn't laugh.

Katharina was the last to leave the mattress. She calmly smoothed her hair, as if trying to hide the way her hands were shaking. She approached the headboard and leaned in to whisper something close to his ear: "When you get better, we'll have our moment alone..."

With light steps, they left one by one, crossing the bedroom door. The air seemed colder as the room emptied, as if the warmth their presence had provided had been carefully removed—but still left a trace.

The door closed softly with a click.

And then, finally, Vergil was alone.

The silence was different now.

Vergil pressed his fingers against his temples, the hissing in his mind growing clearer—like static from an old radio tuning into a forbidden channel. It was a sound that vibrated deep inside his skull, sharp and wet, almost like a whisper coming from underwater.

He arched his eyebrows, squinting for a moment.

"What's... happening to me...?"

"You're hearing it too, aren't you?" said a familiar voice, emerging like a breath coming from all directions.

He raised his eyes, staring at the elongated shadow around him, which began to distort, undulate, as if the laws of light had ceased to function. From the floor rose the form of Itharine—his shadow guardian—in her smallest form: a tiny black dragon made of smoke, with deep amber eyes and a tail that flickered like a burning wick.

She landed softly on the headboard, her wings fluttering slightly.

"Itharine...? What was that? That... hissing sound?" he asked, his voice low and drawn out. Al@w%ays r$ead fro&m the s-o%u%r&ce: M^|@V|-L#E4*MP*YR.^

The creature shook her head.

"I don't know," she said in a somber tone, unlike her usual calmness. "But I think it's best if you see for yourself."

Vergil frowned. "See what?"

"You know what," she replied, tilting her head slightly. "Close your eyes. Go inside. Into your Mental World."

There was a moment of hesitation. He didn't know if he wanted to see. If he was ready for it. But he took a deep breath... and obeyed. His eyes closed. And the world changed.

The warmth of the bed disappeared. The room dissolved like smoke blown away by the wind. Vergil opened his eyes in the plane of his own soul—his inner dimension. His Mental World.

The ground was a dark sea of spider lilies, red as coagulated blood, stretching as far as the eye could see, swaying in the wind that did not exist. The sky above, eternally crimson, was now different. Wrong.

There was black thunder crossing the clouds. A stormy veil covered the skies, but it was not natural—it was as if the very soul of the world was screaming.

And then he saw it.

In the skies of his inner world... two colossal forms collided with divine fury.

Crymsaria, the Crimson Dragon Empress, enveloped in scarlet flames and crimson lightning, roared like a living storm. Her wings seemed to be made of incandescent crystal, and her presence made the lilies below tremble.

Nivara, the Platinum Dragon Empress, was a specter of icy splendor. Her body was shrouded in white mists and ethereal ice thorns. Where she passed, the air froze, and shards of her essence fell like cutting snow upon the fields.

They were fighting.

Here. Inside him.

"No..." Vergil took a step forward, his eyes wide. "This... This isn't possible... They... They're gone! They've been erased!"

Itharine appeared at his side, now in her humanoid form, her gray skin and golden eyes reflecting the sparks of the battle above.

"They weren't destroyed, Vergil. They were... absorbed. By you."