“So, we have a deal, yeah?” Eli shrugged, flicking tension from his shoulders like dust off a cloak.

The Abyss hummed, voice like a sinkhole in the sky. “Since you came seeking cooperation, am I not owed the tale of what happened while I slept? I want to know.”

The colossal red eye in the heavens shrank like a dying ember, then winked out like a star at dawn.

Below the high dais, the crowd watched, faces tilting like a field of reeds in a shifting wind.

When the eye vanished, Eli and Edlyn became a crimson streak, a comet-stroke that dropped onto the stone platform.

Blood-red light trembled like a struck drum, then knit into a human-shaped phantom standing before them.

Eli and Edlyn squinted, eyes narrowed like drawn blades; the blood-hued silhouette was clearly the Abyss, a will cast like a shadow.

The Abyss seemed to weigh thoughts like stones on a scale. “Human, since you want cooperation, you’ll pay with sincerity. You don’t agree?”

Eli shook his head, a calm ripple across still water. “No, I agree. I’m just asking—how will you learn what happened back then?”

“Let my soul touch my creation’s soul, and I can read a portion of memory,” he said, gaze sliding to Edlyn like a knife to its sheath. “Creation, will you let me see your past?”

Edlyn said nothing, silence pressing like snow, her brow knit toward her maker like a tightened bowstring.

“What can you guarantee?” Eli stepped into the line of sight like a wall. Emotion first, steel after. “You know how badly this can scar a soul?”

“Of course. Are you doubting my strength?” The Abyss’s tone was level, cold as deep water.

“Oh? Got any strength left?” Eli’s laugh scraped like flint.

“She is made from my own body, a super-being carved to my template,” the Abyss sighed, breath like wind through old pillars. “I’m reclaiming my own house’s goods—why would I harm her? I know you fear for her. So do I. She’s a perfect artwork, chiseled by my hands. As the maker—could I bear to smash it?”

Eli frowned, thoughts circling like crows. Before he found a line, Edlyn tugged his sleeve like a leaf catching his hand. Her voice was soft rain. “Hero, I’m not worried.”

A small smile lit her eyes like a candle behind paper. “I know you want to protect me. This time, there’s no danger.”

Eli sighed, breath misting like a cloud. “You sure?”

“I’m certain,” the Abyss cut in, confidence flat as stone.

Eli shot him a glare, sharp as a thrown knife. “I’m talking to my wife. None of your damn business.”

The Abyss blinked, a brief pause like a missed heartbeat, then only watched Edlyn with a tangled gaze. “Creation. Do you acknowledge me?”

“Of course, Father.” Edlyn smiled, spring thaw in a winter grove.

Something in the Demonic Lord’s heart seemed to step forward, like a bud pushing through frost after all that had just passed.

“Good. Rest against him and be at ease. Release your soul’s guard. I won’t hurt you.”

“Yes, Father,” Edlyn said, her smile a warm lantern.

The Abyss’s eyes grew more complex, shadows braided like roots. Each time she called him Father, something inside him stirred, like wind moving through an old temple from a thousand millennia before he discarded most of his feelings.

That tremor made him hesitate, a foot over a cliff that wasn’t all fall.

Eli gathered himself, resolve hard as iron from the forge. “If anything happens to her, count on this—I’ll keep you locked in that seal forever. Eternity means never, and never means you.”

“Relax, mortal. You should shut up now.” The Abyss frowned, a crease like a crack in stone.

“Heh.” Eli held Edlyn tight, his eyes cold as winter rivers on the Abyss.

...

A world-tilting lurch swallowed the senses, and Edlyn fell into unconsciousness like a candle snuffed by wind.

The Abyss vanished where he stood, gone like a ripple smoothed by night.

Below the dais, the onlookers traded whispers, voices buzzing like bees in a thicket.

“What do you think happened to those two lords up there?”

“Who knows? That thing just now, though—it hit our kind like a hammer to the blood.”

“Yeah. The moment it showed, my blood boiled like a pot, but something else pressed down, like a mountain on my chest.”

“Uh, maybe that’s the pressure he released when he came out.”

“Pressure like that? Besides the Demonic Lord, who could slam us highborn Fiends that hard, soul and bloodline both?”

“Yeah, true, but I still feel that thing’s tied to us.”

“No kidding. Who said it wasn’t?”

“Oh. Right.”

“What are you chatting about?”

“That big eye in the sky, and those two lords.”

“What about them? They’re just taking a while up there. Why all the fuss?”

“We’re talking about the eye, actually.”

“Oh. Got it.”

Talk like this drifted everywhere like smoke, and the Miter Empire—already the foremost refuge of the Demon Race—swelled even fuller, streets flooding like a river at thaw.

Era watched the swell and frowned, a crease like a drawn bow. “Keep this up, and it’ll hurt the altar’s summoning and the rite.”

“How would it?” Reni sat beside her, chewing a chicken leg like a happy bandit. “This is great. Let the Demon Race remember our two backers.”

Era’s frustration sparked like sparks on damp wood. “Use your head. Is that what I’m talking about?”

“Huh? Then… what?”

“You know why your Demon Race builds altars that high?”

“Yeah. To cut down on interference.”

“Right. We raise them to thin the world’s noise, to keep living auras from muddying the altar,” Era said, brows tight as stitches. “And now we’ve crammed the area with bodies. You think that won’t mess with them?”

“Ah… uh. I’ll go clear the crowd.” Reni thought once, tossed the drumstick like a bone to a hound, grabbed her spear, and dashed for the altar like a gust.

“Hey! Fiend brats, listen up! For a few hundred meters around the altar, no one crosses the line! You hear me?”

...

“This memory—you hid it deep,” the Abyss murmured, drifting through an endless dark like a ghostfish in a trench. He seemed to find a thread, rose slowly, then walked forward with hands clasped behind his back like an ancient sovereign.

“Demonic Lord, I failed. I beg your punishment!” Before Pandora, a man with a battered helm and shattered plates knelt, face pale as ash, voice rough with pain.

Pandora’s face was a mask, blank as a stone idol. He ignored the plea and raised his eyes to the far sky like a hunter to a ridge.

His mortal foe, the Hero Birand Aste, stood not far away, arranging his lines like chess on cold slate.

Was he supposed to rage over a scout who found nothing, now?

The Demon King’s army had always been a scythe through wheat. Scouts were needless. Then the Hero appeared, and the front rolled back like a tide, catching him off balance.

The scout corps, thrown together in a rush, had blades blunted by haste.

There was no point to punishment now, only waste like spilling wine.

“Get out of my sight. For a month, don’t appear before me,” Pandora said, voice heavy as thunder behind mountains.

“Thanks for sparing me, Your Majesty.” The scout’s relief flashed like sudden sun.

It didn’t last. Another figure at the Demon King’s side—horns curled like a ram’s—kicked him away, boot sharp as a cudgel. “His Majesty said a month. Don’t show your face. Understand?”

“Y-yes.” The scout trembled like a leaf.

“Then get out!”

“Y-yes, sir.” He saluted and fled, footsteps scattering like pebbles.

Pandora left the command tent, waved away all who would follow, and walked alone to a cliff’s edge like a black banner to the wind.

Across the gulf, dwarves swarmed the stone, raising walls and bastions like ants building a fortress. He frowned, annoyance coiling like smoke.

Since when did these creatures dare lift their heads against him?

Hero. Hero. Always the Hero.

The Hero gave them courage like fire, backbone like iron, knowledge like gears, and odds like loaded dice.

“Damn,” Pandora murmured, eyes narrowing like a hunter’s slit.

He hadn’t burned this hot in ages, not since old scars still bled.

This assault on a dwarf city had started as an avalanche. Then the Hero arrived with his guard, and the fight turned into a tug-of-war, rope grinding palms for days.

Pandora clenched his teeth, strangling the urge to fly over and shatter the fortress like clay. He sighed, a deep bell in a deep hall. “I can’t carry all of it. If I don’t harden those soldiers in real war, we’ll bleed out later.”

Not far away, Birand raised a crystal spyglass, the lens a clear lake. He watched Pandora and smiled, thin as a knife. “That one’s the Demon King?”

Behind him, a dwarf came up with a blueprint like a map to a mountain. “Hero sir, about the god-slaying ballista on the peak, we need you to take a look. It’s our first time with such a super fortress tool.”

Birand shrugged, casual as rain on stone. “Sure. By the way, Tino, what’s your king saying? Why hasn’t he shipped supplies? Your brothers can’t hold much longer.”

Tino’s brow furrowed, a canyon cut deep. “We were in steady contact, then it cut off midline, and I heard broken screaming through the crackle.”

He sighed, breath heavy as a forge bellows. “Looks like the palace isn’t calm. Otherwise…”

“Relax, Master Tino,” Birand said, unconcerned as a cat. “You dwarves are master craftsmen. The capital’s defense contraptions sprout like springs. They’ll be fine.”

He didn’t believe the capital had fallen; he’d placed three Divine Envoys there. No black news had flown back, which meant the sky was clear.

Besides, the Demon King himself was here. What could slip past to strike the dwarven palace?

More likely, they heard the Hero was on-site and wanted to cut their own costs, letting Birand foot the war’s bill like a mule.

Birand sighed, the sound a weary wind. With allies like this, it was hard to picture victory against the Demon King’s elite.

Another dwarf came puffing up, eyes bright as coals. “Hero! Hero! We’ve gathered all the base materials for the god-slaying ballista’s bolts. Should we—”

Birand was about to brush him off, then remembered his enemy watching from the opposite cliff like a hawk.

His eyes rolled, a stone set suddenly in motion, and a crooked grin cut his face. “Yeah. Come with me. I’ll give you a demonstration.”

“Huh?”