“The Demon Race is flimsy as molted shell now—why should we bend the knee?” A purple-haired Fallen Angel stood, frost glazing her face, gaze sweeping the remaining eleven like winter wind.

“Yeah, yeah,” said the man beside her, rough-hewn as quarry stone, hard to imagine him an Angel at all.

“Shut up. Don’t speak.” Her glare sliced like sleet.

He slouched against the stone seat, insolence sprawled like a lazy cat in sunlight.

“I’m serious, Alisa. Don’t get so worked up.” Across from her, a young man cradled a teacup, his warmth like spring sunlight after snow. “The Demon Race once burned bright. Now it’s nursing its wounds. Don’t rush a verdict.”

It was hard to believe a Fallen Angel could feel so gentle, like a breeze through new leaves.

“And we know too little about the outside,” he added, smile bending like a reed on quiet water. “Almost nothing. In that fog, any conclusion is premature. That’s a habit you’ve got to drop, Alisa.”

“Keep on like this, and someday you’ll get buried alive in the Abyss.” He shrugged, casual as falling ash. (Among the Demon Race’s vassals, when they recover a soul, they guide it into the Abyss to sleep until the Netherworld ferries it on.)

Alisa’s face never thawed. Ice stayed ice.

Only her eyes changed: a surge of killing intent and disgust, sharp as iron in the air.

“That’s still better than a coward who wants to kneel to the weak.” Alisa’s voice was cold as blade-ice.

The boy shrugged again. “Oh? So you think we should trumpet our resurrection, then grab land on the continent by force?” His tone snapped like dry twigs. “Use your head, Alisa. Wishful thinking doesn’t solve real storms.”

He let out a thin laugh. “We Fallen Angels aren’t the strongest among the Demon Race’s vassals. We don’t breed fastest either. If you walk out alone, you think the Celestial Realm won’t send an envoy?”

He sipped his tea. Calm returned like a lake after rain, but the mockery stayed. “Use. Your. Head.”

“Bort, I hope you stay that calm when you lose.” Alisa slammed the table. Power surged off her like a thunderhead breaking, a Transcender’s pressure roaring at Bort.

Bort drank his tea. His body didn’t so much as twitch, still as a rooted cliff.

A matching force burst from him, no weaker than hers. Two storms collided, pressure slamming like waves against a reef.

The tea in his cup rippled, a ringed moon on dark water. Nothing else broke.

Alisa, though, skidded back a step or two, her face shifting a shade, like ice cracking.

Bort, this bastard—somehow his control had slipped past hers without a sound.

“What? Out of words, so you throw punches?” He turned the cup in his fingers and drank, a smile hooking like a knife. “A woman like you never thinks. You polish ‘honor’ on your tongue, but when we bent to the Demon Race back then, you didn’t stand up either.”

“You—!” Alisa’s tone finally cracked, anger flaring like sparks.

“What about me?!” He glared back, meeting fire with fire, not yielding an inch of ground.

The man at the head yawned, a lion bored at noon, and waved them down. “Enough. What’s the point? You’ve bickered for centuries. Has it ever helped?”

“Clan Chief! I’m speaking truth here, it’s this woman—” Bort shrugged, kept sipping, the cup a quiet moon in his hand.

“You! Bort! If I don’t kill you, I’ll abolish my own magic!” Alisa’s fury rang like steel on anvil.

“See?” Bort spread his hands, helpless as wind.

The leader’s fingers tapped the table, quiet as rain on eaves. “I said the farce ends here.”

Alisa bit her lip, unwillingness a dark tide behind her eyes.

The man stood. “If we keep debating, no one convinces anyone. Let the one who knows the outside speak. Then we decide.”

He glanced at Hilda. “Hilda, where is Era?”

Hilda sighed like an old door. She went behind the chamber door and pulled Era out by the wrist. “Clan Chief, here.”

His lashes lowered like a curtain. “Mm. Long time, Era.”

Era’s gaze tangled, like vines on old stone. “Clan Chief Nophiel, long time.”

“I know you’ve got a mountain to say,” Nophiel said, voice flat as still water. “Leave it for later. First tell everyone here what the outside looks like.”

“Mm… Elders, do you still remember me?” Era bowed, a brown-feathered wing folding open behind her like earth in flight.

Bort hugged his tea and smiled, gentle as a soft lamp. “Of course. Our Fallen Angels’ first special recruit into the Demon King’s Guard. How could I forget?”

Other elders nodded. Some eyes held regret, some appreciation, some disgust, some frost. The frost was Alisa’s, of course.

Back then, she and Era had stood shoulder to shoulder like twin peaks.

“Elders. The outside world has changed beyond recognition. Our old ways are dead wood.” Era let a breath go, steady as smoke. “So I think our clan should keep following the Demon Race and start again.”

“Give us facts, not that,” rasped an old woman, her voice worn thin, wind-sanded till genderless.

“Yes.” Era lowered her head, shadow falling like a veil.

If it were the old her… she would never have let anyone bark at her like a cur.

“Since the Demon Race was defeated, the Hero has also passed.”

“The Hero died? Hahaha! Excellent. Our Fallen Angels can rise again.” The old woman laughed loud, like crows scattering.

“The Hero seems to have fought the Celestial Realm. The result: the Hero was beheaded. So the continent outside has no Hero’s shelter now.” Era’s eyes flicked, wary as a deer at a stream, across every face.

She etched their stances into memory, like marks in stone. When the Demonic Lord returned, she wouldn’t let them harm him.

“With the Celestial Realm around, little changes. Continue,” Nophiel said, voice light and straight, cutting her unease like a knife.

“Yes… To be precise… the Celestial Realm has closed as well.” Era hesitated, a leaf caught in wind.

“Oh?” Surprise touched Nophiel’s face like dawn.

So the fight wasn’t one-sided. The Hero had struck hard enough to make the heavens shutter their gates and nurse their wounds.

He’d thought the Hero at most equal to the Demon King. The Demon King then was strong, yet under the Celestial Gods, his resistance hadn’t been so fierce.

And the Hero…

“But before he died, the Hero released a terrifying surge. It knocked every high-tier existence down, like a storm flattening ancient trees,” Era said.

Nophiel frowned, a mountain line drawing tight. “What power is that? I’ve never heard of it.”

“My power has been capped since then.” Era bit her lip. “My Divinity is full, yet I remain just below a Transcender.”

Nophiel stepped forward and took Era’s right hand, his energy pouring in like a river in flood.

Era blanched, teeth clenched, holding like a sapling in wind.

The moment his power entered her, he met a strange resistance, a net of force barring the way like ice under skin.

His brows knit. He almost forced more in. Then he saw her paling snow-face, paused, and pulled back the stream.

As he withdrew the thread of soul, a massive tug seized it, like a deep sea current catching an ankle.

He glimpsed chains inside her, everywhere, binding something unseen, iron lianas in the dark.

Then the world lurched. Nophiel’s self was dragged into a warped space, cold as a starless night.

Birand stood in the high sky, his Holy Sword shattered like glass. Countless chains uncoiled from his back like serpents. He swept Thias across the world with cold indifference, a grim dawn scything fields.

“Mm!” Nophiel ripped free of the vision and staggered, blood coughing out in a dark arc.

“Clan Chief!” x12

Nophiel raised a hand. “Easy… I’m fine…”

He gave Era—no, Era’s body—a careful look, eyes like flint. “The Hero’s tricks are real.”

“Clan Chief, are you alright?” Era asked, awkward as rain on a closed window.

“I’m fine,” Nophiel sighed, like bellows easing. “Go on. What happened after.”

“Yes…” Era bit down, then let the breath out, a cloud fading.

She told them, piece by piece, what had happened over the centuries, laying stones into a long road.

She hid a few stones, though. The Hero had already resurrected. And his ties with the Demon King ran deep.

Thinking of that, Era’s expression went odd, like tasting sweet and bitter at once. What a mess.

“So, the Elf Race that imprisoned us is now raiding with the Beastkin—their old allies—back and forth?” Nophiel chuckled, a knife’s edge under silk.

“Yes.”

“No wonder the air is thick with blood. I’d thought…” Nophiel’s thought trailed like smoke.

“That means our Fallen Angels can join the dance as well.” He smiled and looked at the eleven. “You get five minutes. Then give me your choice. Submit to the Demon Race, or develop on our own.”

He paused, then spoke like a bell. “Minority obeys majority.”

Era bit her lip and watched, heart tight as a drum.

Whether she could fulfill the Demonic Lord’s purpose… it came down to now.

If the Fallen Angels wavered like this, other races might as well…

Era sighed, troubled as clouds before rain. “The road ahead looks bleak.”