Everyone Has Their Reverse Scale

When Ian stepped onto the first level.

A bone-chilling cold rushed over him.

Eerie green magical lamps hung overhead, while the walls were built from obsidian and carved with anti-magic runes. Iron cages lined both sides of the corridor. The prisoners within wore vacant expressions and hollow eyes, as though their souls had been sucked away.

Amid that deathly silence, Dementors drifted slowly through the air.

They wore tattered black robes, their hunched forms featureless beneath their hoods, where there was only a bottomless black void. They should have been terrifying creatures—devourers of souls, bringers of joy's end.

Yet the moment Ian appeared, they froze.

They did not attack immediately.

That was within Ian's expectations.

Yes.

Ian was the Dementor Lord, the one with the highest authority to command Dementors.

These creatures had originally escaped from Limbo before humans "reassigned" them by various means into prison guards. In the past, they had merely been a group of laborers serving Raven.

Ian possessed an innate suppressive force over such creatures. Whether they were diligently patrolling or, as now, lazily floating in a corner, they were practically defenseless before him. More than that, as their higher sovereign, they could even be called "helpers" of great use to him at this moment.

Then—

With a thought, Ian shed his Raven form and returned to human shape, standing in the dim, damp prison passageway.

"Come here." Without hesitation, he casually beckoned to the nearest Dementor, which was curled up in the shadows as if dozing.

Ian's voice was calm and quiet, yet it carried an indescribable pressure, as though it originated from the soul itself. More precisely, an exceedingly subtle yet incomparably pure aura spread outward from him in ripples—that was a trace of the essence possessed by the "true" Raven, the being embodying