Re:Demon - Reborn as a Demon Book 1

2

Near the end of her fifth year, the most exciting thing since she'd come to the new world happened. All of the children got tested for magic.

She'd known this was coming, she'd heard hints about it since shortly after she'd been born, not to mention that the previous year, some of the other kids had been tested, though none of them had talked about what had happened, mostly because they were all disappointed that they'd failed.

It seemed that only about a third of the demon population could use magic and while many of them wouldn't use it in their careers, something that seemed to be decided for them by the gods in a way she didn't yet understand, every child was still tested to see if they could use magic, mostly to prevent them from accidentally exploding if they lost control of whatever power allowed them to manifest said ability.

To her knowledge, she hadn't seen anyone use magic, which made her all the more excited to go to the test, after all, even if she wasn't able to use magic, she might be able to see some first-hand, so on the morning of the test, she was up and ready to go even before her parents were awake, nearly bouncing up and down in her eagerness to leave.

Her parents seemed to find that amusing and just shook their heads, obviously anticipating that she'd be disappointed come evening, but maybe they still remembered how excited they'd been when they were her age, so they got their things and headed out.

Her mother, unfortunately, had to work, so after making sure that her daughter was wrapped up in her winter clothes, since it was still cold out, she waved them goodbye as they headed towards the central plaza. Rather than heading to her uncles' store, they turned and headed up the hill to where the nicer building was, which had turned out not to be the lords' house, but the communal meeting area, where important city events were held and visiting dignitaries stayed. Since this was the former, they were to gather there.

The town had turned out to be called Lorath and was bigger than her initial impression, with a couple of hundred families living there and even more in the surrounding farms, making it one of the bigger settlements in the area, which meant there were quite a number of children around her age. She didn't have an accurate count, since a number of them were on the other side of town or outside of it, but when she went through the open door to the meeting hall, she found herself looking at a room filled with almost thirty other kids around her age.

Ignoring them, she spotted an adult she didn't recognize, who was standing next to the door with a large book standing on the table in front of them, which caused her to nearly do a double take, since it was the first book that she'd seen since she got here.

Part of her had been wondering if there simply weren't any books here or if they were just prohibitively expensive, but at last she knew that at least there were books in the world.

Her dad seemed to think she was having second thoughts, since she was just standing there, staring, so he gave her a small push, getting her to step forward.

The demon behind the book was thin and wrinkled and looked down at her, reminding her of something she'd seen in her previous life, all that was missing was the red light behind him and him handing a feathered quill over telling her to sign her soul away.

Instead of doing that, he cocked an eyebrow and waited. Remembering what she was supposed to do, she clasped her hands behind her and looked him in the eyes.

"Nagi," she said, which caused him to nod and in his elegant hand add her name to his book under her parents' names.

This was one of the other important parts of the ritual, adding the child's name to the town's registry. Even though the death rate of children wasn't as high as she'd feared, it seemed that it was traditional to wait until they were tested before adding them, which was when they became officially registered as a member of the town, though it wasn't until they were twelve that they became citizens, which she didn't know any more about what that entailed, except that it was when your future was revealed to you.