I cannot lose. Impossible! Hero, I… won’t yield!
The young man with a handsome face knelt on one knee, coughing blood like dark petals spilling into dust. His body was a map of wounds, each cut burning like winter frost.
Hero Birand smiled at him, voice light as wind skimming a lake. Demon King, war loves cunning; however you slice it, this time, the victory’s mine.
He eyed the Demon King’s horn, half-hewn like a broken crescent moon. Birand whistled, a thin reed note in the smoke. Don’t think a straight fight beats me; these traps were just to keep my side’s losses lean.
The Demon Race youth who bore the title Demon King lifted his chin, mockery cold as iron under snow. Shameless.
Birand looked up at the sky, blue like a quiet blade, and thought a moment. From where I stand, your Demon Race isn’t that wrong; we all claw for life, just on different shores. I’m human, and they summoned me as a Hero. Drawing on you with a sword was forced by the tide.
He met the Demon King’s eyes, his smile a lamp behind gauze. As a man, I admire you. Your Demon Race is ruled with real order, like a city laid out by steady hands.
The Demon King scoffed, disdain sharp as a hawk’s cry over cliffs. I need no praise from you. In our sight, your allied armies are ants beneath a boot. My Demon Race once stood equal to a Celestial God, bright as twin stars in the firmament. How could ants ever be our peer?
Birand chuckled, easy as rain tapping bamboo. Oh, sure—then you got gnawed to death by ants, huh? Tell me, Lord Pandora, wouldn’t a temper change help? You’ve got a face prettier than a maiden’s; if your personality were—
He saw the Demon King’s look sharpen, like claws flexing in velvet, and lifted his shoulders with a helpless shrug. Well, right—winner takes the crown, loser eats dirt. You’re not in a good mood.
The Demon King glared, contempt a blade laid across his tongue. Shameless Hero, think your words can crack me?
Birand’s smile thinned, like a veil in a rising breeze. Enough chatter. Any last words worth carving in stone?
The Hero drew his sword, each step falling like drumbeats across the broken ground.
Agony prickled the Demon King’s flesh like a thousand needles in winter rain; he couldn’t move. Unwilling, hateful, he locked his eyes on the Hero, a wolf at the pit’s edge. Hero, I will not die! Wait and see—I’ll have my revenge, and I’ll make you kneel under my heel!
Birand nodded with a calm grin, a lantern steady in a storm. All right. I’ll wait for you.
He raised the Holy Sword, its light like dawn over a battlefield. The Demon King watched Birand’s face, remembered those earlier words, and something struck his heart like a black bell. He roused the last ember of his life-source, and traded it for a single word-curse. He laughed with that curse, a wind that smelled of ash. Hero. I curse you. I curse you to become a woman, and to serve me, loyal across generations like a shadow bound to dusk. Lowly Hero, I’ll make you the finest slave of my Demon Race!
As long as the Hero killed him. As long as the blade fell like thunder.
No matter Birand’s power, the curse would catch like brambles. Even if it failed, it would leave him neither man nor ghost, a smudge on the world.
The Demon King smiled coldly inside, a winter river under ice. Hero, come meet your fate.
Birand, our transmigrant, heard that line, stupid as a dull knife thudding bark, and couldn’t help but laugh. You know, back in my world, the old me wouldn’t bother with a grade-schooler like you. But I’m in a great mood, so I’ll talk.
He leaned in, and the Demon King frowned, a storm-wrinkle deepening like clouds piling over a ridge.
Birand’s smile went bright, sunlight breaking reeds after rain. In the name of the Celestial God, he invoked a word-curse, breathing the syllables onto that beautiful face. Rebound.
The Demon King blinked, shock sour as bile. What! Y-you—you— I— you— uwaa!!
Great Demon King Pandora died on the spot, like a candle snuffed by a sudden gust.
Birand stared for a beat, brows lifting like birds from a branch. Seriously? That big a reaction?
He scratched his head, puzzled, his hand making small circles like a leaf bobbing on current. Word-curses are weak here. Why the drama?
No helping it. Birand swung and took the Demon King’s head, the strike clean as silk tearing. His face stayed composed, a lake without ripples. He watched the soul float from the body, a pale moth drifting, then fading like mist at sunrise.
A thread of black light slipped from the corpse, and whisked away, quiet as a shadow under pine. Birand saw it, of course.
He paused, then smiled oddly, a fox in moonlight. Demonic Lord, you’re not very clever. Want to reincarnate? I can help.
He blew a breath, light as dandelion seeds, and followed that black radiance into the far blue.
Birand swaggered, voice playful as bells. Hey, don’t hate me later, little girl.
The Hero lifted the Holy Sword with his left hand, and dangled the Demon King’s head in his right, declaring victory to the battlefield below like thunder rolling down a valley.
Years passed. The Demon Race surrendered completely, and the allied armies claimed triumph, banners like autumn geese flocking home. Yet the Hero vanished from the world because of “a certain incident,” like a stone cast into deep water.
Generations turned like prayer wheels.
Two hundred years later, that Holy War stood inked in the annals of every race, retold like wine warming winter nights. Strangely, the high seats of each race stayed silent, year after year, on the incident that erased the Hero, and they muzzled the common folk as well, silence thick as wax over a mouth. Fewer and fewer remembered, like stars eaten by dawn.
The Prophet Yuris returned to the temple with a newborn, a bundle small as a moon in a sleeve. He named him Eli Aestor, meaning the one who has lost and forgotten all things, a name like frost over a field.
Soon after, Yuris died of age on his three-hundredth birthday, a long-held candle finally guttering in the wind. Twenty-eight years more drifted by, like petals carried downstream.
In a little mountain village, a girl of about fifteen carried a wooden bucket to the river, its surface a silver ribbon winding past reeds. She fetched water and began washing her family’s clothes, hands beating cloth like soft drums under clouded light.
But her pretty, delicate face brimmed with fierce resentment, storm-dark as a summer squall. Damn Hero, stinking Hero, rotten Hero! I’ll pound you flat—pound you, pound you, pound you!
