Distorted

Definition | Development

Darkness flooded his senses as the terror of his deeds became clear to his mind.
Dullness spread trough his limbs and took over every current feeling.

After the fight in that arena, it became clear to him of how this world really worked, and what it demanded of him. Fundamentally, the stronger in either mind or body wins. That was beat into his head ever since that fight occurred. Once he got something wrong or failed ones expectations, a punishment was in order. It varied from light penalties like doing extra task which partly required hard physical work, to middle penalisations which included from additional missions and work, to whippings or as such. The worse punishment methods however started at simple whips to isolation, and even any kind of physical and mental torture.

Over the time Rin realised just how rarely the demons judged in half measures. Mostly they went for absolutes, never stopping at his cries for mercy or screams of agony. And so with the flow of time Rin made many acquaintances with the dark, barely lit prison cells that reeked of blood and rotten gore. Torture chambers, he remembered. Concluding that out of the various tools not just being brought every time to the cell on purpose, but that they were neatly ordered on the dirty splattered sidewalls. Every time he received such punishment, terror willed his mind whilst mad afterwards. The pain was unbearable sometimes.

However it was better than the mental pain inflicted on him prior in Assiah, much better. And to his luck every time afterwards, his wounds healed depending on their gravity in mostly 12 to 54 hours, leaving not even traces of a scar behind. The deep scared lines of his past trauma however still remained, and he didn't know why. His regenerative abilities were more than capable of fixing such scars, but still without any sign of improvement they remained.

And the most weirdest thing of them all was the fact that, no matter how many times Rin tried, new deep lines inflicted on his arms and general body would completely vanish within hours, even minutes. It confused and at the same time horrified him. Maybe it was the fact that his tools weren't as efficient anymore, or that his body had improved. Still when his one of the demon kings, namely Azazel educated him about the close connection of demons to emotions of any kind, a vague suspicion creeped through Rin's mind for a second.

Not only did demons partly feed off emotions, usually those of humans, higher ranked demons, such as the demon kings were required to learn how to control their own feelings as well. Not only were they playing a leading role for their kin, but also for all of Gehenna as well. They needed to decipher how their individual emotions worked together and must be able to call or hide every single emotion on its own. Not only for the sake of their public image, but also to make greater progress and to control their powers easier.

And in the beginning, Rin on that part was far from reaching a point of locking up emotions or as such. Maybe his scars remaining had something to do with his emotions. Because still, to control a demons emotions was the key to control its mind and body, even though mind was partly true for high ranked ones.

Over the time as Rin realised an escape was more than impossible, but even foolish, he worked on loosening the emotional ties to his past self. His friends, his family. Even if it hurt, he saw that if one day he would get the chance to meet Shi- his dad and Yukio, as much as he hated him for what he did to him the days before his disappearance, he still loved his brother dearly, Rin would need to survive this hell and to fit in.

All in all it wasn't as difficult to integrate yourself into demon society. Although the young prince needed to learn a whole new language as well as multiple dialects, cultures and political systems, it still was comfortable that demons completely dismissed any sort of appearance standards. Their hierarchy system was simple and Rin liked it. He wasn't judged by his appearance or flaws anymore, at least not as much as prior. And he felt more and more included in an actual life he never thought he would get here.