“Let me start from the beginning.” The old dean’s hands, thin as winter twigs, patted the air; a door bloomed midair, and a wooden table fell like a log.

A dry cough ripples from his chest; steam curls from a teapot as he brews, like mist over pine ridges.

“Let me think. When did it begin…”

Li Gongxuan tenses first, words piling like storm clouds, ready to interrupt.

The elder exhales a coil of smoke, a gray dragon drifting and fading.

“Some things knot up when spoken. Better I take you to see.”

“This is for what lies ahead.” The man smiles, and offers Ugillian a soul dim as a guttering ember.

He is the Abyss of old, yet not the Abyss that now reigns.

He is a split-off form, called by Eli—by Zero—and hurled back, a shard that stirred a cascade.

The root of every question, in the end, still hooks back to the Abyss.

“My lord, what do you truly want?” Ugillian’s gaze sweeps him, a tide probing reefs; this body’s power is paper-thin and wind-worn.

It looks like frost that could vanish under dawn.

“For the future. For the day when every fate slips free of the Sky River’s net.” The Abyss smiles, calm as night water.

Ugillian’s brows knot. “The net of the Sky River? Didn’t you prove it doesn’t exist?”

The Abyss shrugs, loose as drifting leaves. “Eh, it’s a figure of speech. What you need, you’ll know.”

“What?” Ugillian’s confusion rises like fog, then stalls.

“Number One, you’re running out of days. Ever think what you’ll do?” The Abyss cuts across his thoughts, like a blade in the rain.

“Uh… not really.” Ugillian shrugs, shoulders the weight, but the weight slides like sand.

This fickle lightness unsettles him.

To him, the Abyss should be stone-faced, a storm of slaughter and the chill of death, a sovereign who forged the Fiends and pointed his blade at the Celestial Realm.

He pulled every life into a grand scheme as vast as a night sea.

This sly young man in front of him scuffs that towering image like mud on a monument.

If not for the tug in his soul, the maker’s mark singing that this really is his creator, the Abyss who once shook the world, he’d have dashed him apart like clay.

“Number One, I’m sorry you aren’t my perfect copy.” The Abyss smiles with a crack in it, and sighs like wind through ruins.

Ugillian blinks, slow as a cat in sun.

Truth is, he can’t read what the Abyss feels now.

But that gentleness lands on him like warm rain.

“My lord, why say that? Being born at all is enough for me.” Ugillian thinks, then answers, steady as a mountain shadow.

“Your life ends in seven hundred years. That won’t bend. Even if you brush the source, you won’t live past it.” The Abyss’s face darkens like an eclipse.

Ugillian smiles, quiet as starlight. “As I said, my lord, being here is enough. Don’t wear yourself out over me.”

“What I’ll do next may be unfair to you.” The Abyss hesitates, a reed in a crosswind, then speaks.

“My lord. You are the Abyss. I am a Fiend. I was born of you. You made me. I am a subject, and you, a king.” Ugillian’s smile is moonlight on steel.

The Abyss pauses, then grins, teeth flashing like frost. “Thank you.”

“So, my lord, what do you want me to do?” Ugillian asks, voice level as a drumbeat.

“I want you to build your own place in this weak country, ruled by you alone. And I want you to raise this soul.” The Abyss flicks his fingers; light ripples like a pond.

A blue soul appears, frail as a flame in rain, trembling between their inhuman gazes.

Ugillian studies it, rubbing his chin as if sifting gravel. “Weaker than a common soul, and even smaller in shape. So what is it…”

“It’s what Birand threw away. Proof he broke out of the Netherworld.” The Abyss weighs the tiny soul, as if feeling starlight in his palm.

“Then we circle back. What do you want to do?” Ugillian’s confusion swirls like smoke and hangs.

“This soul lets me and her slip our fate, and it’s a key to saving this world.” The Abyss laughs, light as drifting snow.

“But it’s only one fragment of Birand. Why not find Birand directly?”

“The rest of Birand’s soul can’t be restored.”

“What?!”

“Right now, he’s turned wholly into the fire of vengeance. Aside from this piece, there’s no soul left.” The Abyss’s face grows heavy, like stone under rain.

He never thought a human could burn every part of his soul into revenge.

“So what use is this one?” Ugillian points, like tapping a quiet drum.

“I’ll borrow the power of the stars, mend him, and fuse him back into what he was. He’s now a pure Star Soul. Pity he’s not grown—he’s like a baby, with no memory, no body.”

The Abyss sighs, a low wind through hollow halls.

Ugillian’s eyes light, sparks in a cave. He takes the soul and studies it, up and down. “So you shaped a new life using Birand’s soul?”

“Uh. More or less.” The Abyss shrugs, like a gull riding waves.

“So you want me… to care for him? To make him the future’s key?”

“Yes.”

“But my future…” Ugillian hesitates; doubt curls like a shadow around his feet.

He knows his span is short now. He wonders if he can last to that day.

The Abyss smiles; even Number One fears. He lifts his hand and rests it on Ugillian’s head, soft as night rain over black stone.

“Let me show you the future I know.”

The girl’s pretty face bunches with grudges, a storm over peach petals. “Dead Hero, stinky Hero, rotten Hero. I’ll hammer you, hammer you, hammer you!”

She swings a wooden mallet at laundry like a thunder drum over waves.

Her grip’s wrong; the mallet slips and smacks her hand. Whoosh—she hops up like a startled sparrow. “Wua! Ow ow ow ow!” Tears shine like dew; she shakes her hand, fuming.

Behind her, a middle-aged woman laughs and rubs her small head, palm warm as a hearth. “You little terror. I told you not to swing that big. Never listen! Looks like someone’s getting less dinner tonight.”

Even with a Grand Magus license in hand, my thoughts hum like bees around honey—money, comfort, not some climb to higher magic or serving the country.

If you think that’s all nonsense, then shake my hand; our aims line up like two stars in one sky.

That’s what I told the dean. He didn’t bother with me; he turned and shut the door, a clean line drawn like a knife on paper.

Maybe it’s because I burned through ten years of someone else’s budget in one, and spent ten years being a walking calamity. No, it’s not that I eat much; all that silver went into repairing the orphanage.

Birand flicks his right hand, and Yiyi flies like a leaf caught by a gust.

She slams into a stone pillar, clutching her avatar-seed; a white flash sweeps, and her body vanishes, whisked away by a hidden gate.

Birand frowns, the wrinkle deep as a cut, and lets her go.

That half-dead avatar-seed is useless to him; he tosses it back to the avatar and tells her to scram, a small return to Eli.

“First Heavenly Zone. Slaughter complete.” He bends and yanks Akenachel up by her golden hair, sunlight stuck in his fist like trapped fire.

Thias’s blade drinks the waning dawn; blood congeals in slow beads, and the whole sword looks scarred like a battlefield.

Akenachel trembles, breath ragged as torn silk.

Birand watches her pale face, her wounds bright as poppies, and a smile cuts across him. “Angels, did you ever imagine a day you’d grovel before a lesser species?”

“Did you ever imagine how precious the lives you took were to those who held them?”

His voice cools like frost creeping over glass; he looks at the holy wings at her back and smiles, cruel as a winter moon.

“These… these are?!” Ugillian’s disbelief flares, like lightning under a black cloud.

“Soon, the flame that Birand is will strike the Celestial Realm. You must protect this Star Soul, and carry him to the future. I’ll handle the rest.” The Abyss smiles, calm as deep sea.

“But… I don’t understand…”

“It’s fine. Just remember your mission. Oh, and to stop the Star Soul from rejecting you while it’s incubating, I blended in a shard of your soul. You could call him your child.” The Abyss laughs softly, like bells in fog.

“Number One, tell me what you think.”

Silence sinks into Ugillian, heavy as snowfall. He looks at the fragile soul in his hands, a spark that feels one breath from ash, and doesn’t know where to start.

In his first half-life, he killed more than he can count; now his hands hesitate, like a blade over water.

He remembers arriving in this empire—fields like scars, warlords flinging armies at each other like dice.

He remembers refugees, lives worn thin like old cloth.

“I think… I’ll build an orphanage.” Ugillian sighs, breath leaving like smoke from a lantern.

His end is near. Maybe minds shift when death walks closer.

Though the god-fiend war is two hundred million years gone, some knots in him won’t loosen.

“Maybe children will ease it.” Ugillian smiles, a small curve, like a leaf boat on a stream.

He hardly believes it himself. A fiend who kills without blinking, running an orphanage well?

The Abyss smiles. “I trust your choice, Ugillian. You’ve wandered alone for so long; it’s time to find troubles that keep you busy. By the name of the Abyss, I give you a supreme command: you are forbidden to harm children truly in suffering.”

Ugillian blinks; it’s the first time the Abyss says his name. He smiles, warm as a coal in winter. “I’ll try my best, my Majesty.”