“Your Excellency, Bishop? What happened? You’re in such a rush.” A higher-ranked attendant slipped Manstein’s coat off like peeling frost from a branch, curiosity bright in his eyes.

Manstein rubbed his sore arm, excitement sparking like flint. “I found a way to reach the Celestial Realm. My Holy Sanctuary will rise again, a mountain all races must bow to.”

The attendant smiled, chest thumping like a drum. “Congratulations, my lord.”

“Mm... Lira, move all my files into the study,” Manstein said, mind already racing like a river after thaw. “My avatar will come soon to start the work.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And contact the high ranks of the Holy Court Church,” he added, voice steady as iron. “Tell them I have an announcement. Assemble in the capital, fast.”

“Understood, my lord.”

“And get me a coffee. No sugar, no fancy junk. Last time you added salt—nearly killed me on the spot.”

“No problem, my lord.”

“That’s all for now. Go.” Manstein stretched like a cat in sunlight, then picked up a book from his desk, eyes sinking into its pages like a stone into a lake.

“At once, my lord.”

Soon, the Holy Sanctuary’s leaders were secretly funneled to the center, moving toward the council hall like shadows converging before a storm.

Not long after, Manstein entered the hall in the Holy Sanctuary’s pontifical robes, crozier in hand, a cold sunrise on his face.

The murmur died like snuffed candles. The hall went so silent even a silver needle falling would ring like a bell.

Manstein’s grip on the crozier tightened like a vice. He frowned, and his voice rose like a trumpet over a battlefield. “After careful thought, I hereby declare: we, the Holy Sanctuary, will erase the Ael royal house from this world, to secure our leadership!”

Eyes widened below like a field of mirrors catching lightning. Disbelief rolled through them like winter wind.

Was this still their wise Bishop?

After his secret talk with Birand, Manstein pulled hidden knights from the dark like knives from sheaths and formally launched his assault on the royal family.

Opposition flared like brushfire, urging him to drop the plan.

He waved it all away like smoke. He wouldn’t waste breath on their drivel.

It was the same old lines—now’s not the time, the sky might fall, the wind’s unlucky.

What he wanted was to stir the Human Race into a storm, the messier the better, like beating a hornet’s nest with a stick.

The Ael royals hadn’t expected him to tear the mask off like that, skin to steel.

They had no choice but to rally under banners like lifted shields—pacify rebels, protect peace, keep the Human Race united—and formally opened war against the Holy Court Church.

Awkward as a blade drawn at a banquet, the palace stood across the street from the Holy Court Church’s grand cathedral.

So the imperial capital fired the first shot, a spark landing in dry grass.

In a breath, the greatest human empire’s brightest city sank into warfire like a painted fan thrown into a brazier.

At the same time, word spread like geese on the wind: the Beastkin had declared a truce and pulled back.

The Holy Paris Empire sits in the mid‑east of the continent, the ocean to its east like a blue wall, and human empires on the other three sides like ringed hills.

That made outside meddling rare. Few non-humans could slip in to skim cream off chaos the way the Elf Race once tried.

Besides, within the elves’ lands, covert struggles kept cracking like ice in spring, leaving both sides bloodied and thin.

Power gaps between the races were narrow as paper, barely worth measuring with a blade of grass.

So most races watched from the ridge, cloaks tight, eyes sharp.

Of course, there are always exceptions.

Like the Seafolk—the resident pot‑stirrers, a school of sharks circling any hint of blood.

They had to make waves wherever they went; unless the water turned to soup, they weren’t happy. With the whole ocean as their cradle, their numbers swelled like tides under a full moon. No one marched into their depths without drowning first.

The seas were theirs, a blue court ruled from kelp to coral.

After all, who chooses to live under the waves if they don’t have gills? Yet the Seafolk had their own cracks. They didn’t dare enter the Sea of Fiends, a black gale on the map, so their eyes slid toward land like gulls drawn to glitter.

This planet’s land holds forty percent of its skin, flat as a table in many places.

Rivers and lakes webbed it like silver veins; the Seafolk’s crooked ideas bubbled up like marsh gas.

Add in Wolred’s old call to revive the Seafolk, a drumbeat rolling under the surf, and boom—they swam out to stir trouble yet again, for the umpteenth time.

How much they could do was another question, a pebble thrown into fog.

But if there was a crown for shit‑stirrer, it fit the Seafolk like a barnacle on iron.

Ahem. I’m drifting like a leaf; back to the river.

Thanks to the royals’ recent moves, many factions got drawn to their side like iron filings to a lodestone.

The Ael royal house had ruled for centuries, a tree with deep roots.

The Holy Sanctuary was still a church in name, a temple against a throne.

Strong hands they had, clouds of power, but on the surface they looked like rebels, banners against a crown.

And the Ael royals spun tales like silk, painting and blackening the Holy Sanctuary in the public square.

They said the church wanted to rule the world, to puppeteer hearts in the dark, to spawn wrongful cases like mold in a cellar.

They said countless families shattered because their children were brainwashed and dragged off as holy knights, homes split like clay pots.

They said wives were torn from husbands, sons from mothers, boys and girls left orphans in the echoing wind.

They even claimed the church corrupted the youth, a snake in the schoolyard.

Every bit of mud, every blame, they slapped onto the Holy Sanctuary’s face like wet clay. Didn’t matter if it stuck; making you gag was enough.

The royals leaned on their long‑nursed kingly image like a staff, stoking commoners to brim with hate like a kettle left to boil.

The Holy Sanctuary had no clean way to answer. Their own Pontiff had raised the revolt; on paper, they were on the back foot like a runner on gravel.

Many of the charges were smoke without fire, impossible to disprove under a moonless sky.

In public opinion, the Ael royal house climbed the ridge and waved, holding the high ground.

Inside the church, everyone but the thirteen high ranks seethed like wasps in a jar.

Manstein, though, stayed calm as a lake at dawn. He waited.

He waited for Birand to return, and for his people to wheel out the Godslayer Weapon like a cannon under a tarp.

That would be the hour to wipe the Ael royals away like footprints in surf.

In the face of absolute power, why bother with smoke and mirrors? One shot, and you’re done, like thunder splitting a dead tree.

So the Bishop was calm, a stone in the river.

Then a tremor big enough to rattle the continent hit.

The long‑sealed Miter Empire opened like a rusted gate, and what stepped out weren’t human merchants or dusty caravans.

It was the Demon Race, gone for centuries, back like a shadow at noon.

They announced they’d seized Miter and declared war on the Human Race, a black banner raised in daylight.

The old patriarchs and matriarchs of each race couldn’t sit still, like coals stirred with a poker. They mustered troops and paid the nearby human empires with favors like stacked ingots, then surged into human lands under the banner of “crusade against the Demon Race.”

The world’s lower tiers exploded into chaos like a nest kicked open.

Most of the true ancients stayed in their caves, calm as mountains.

But the young poured out, shouting slogans about exterminating the Demon Race, marching like waves into human domains.

Where there are crowds, trouble sprouts like weeds.

Petty theft and sly scams multiplied like rats in the grain.

Human lands turned into a boiling stew, colors and voices mixing until nothing was clear.

Truthfully, humans became the rarest faces on their own streets—stalls brimmed with non‑humans, calls rising like gulls over a dock.

For letting wolves in through the gate, Holy Paris had no time to care.

Two great forces wrestled at home like dragons in a well; who had hands to spare for neighbors’ fires?

The imperial capital was split down the middle, a scar cut with stone.

A thick wall cleaved the street between the palace gate and the cathedral, dividing the chaos into two sealed bowls.

And the culprit behind it all?

The Hero Birand was out bargaining with the high echelons of every race, running himself ragged like a courier between lonely towers. The thrones lay far apart like islands at sea.

He’d arrive, kill swaths like a scythe through wheat, then accept surrenders with a steady hand. He’d done it more times than he could count.

Troops already dispatched wouldn’t be recalled; those arrows had flown.

Birand let the races flood into human territory like rivers after rain.

He had a plan in the back of his blade.

He’d borrow the blood‑qi of the greatest experts from every race and, at first sight, hammer the Celestial God with a heavy blow, like a meteor striking a lake.

He knew the Demon Race still existed; Eli’s memories and Edlyn’s presence were cold proof, stones in his pocket.

He guessed the demons that remained weren’t just a couple of kittens—more like a pack of wolves in fog.

What shocked him was that the Demon Race had the gall and muscle to seize an empire.

Fine. All the better. In the end, they’d all die, a field cut flat.

More bodies, more blood‑qi, more ways to wound.

Birand smiled, cold as frost on steel, and hurried on.

Eli staggered back to his snow hut, each step dragging like an anchor through slush.

He pushed the door open and called, voice trembling like a kite in wind, “I’m back.”

Inside, two little girls were cheering over a game, joy popping like firecrackers. Hearing Eli, they jolted, dropped their controllers, and rushed at him like sparrows to a branch.

“What happened to you?”

“Did you find the snow sprite?”

“Why are you like this?”

“Who hurt you?”

“Wanna play?”

A hail of questions thumped him like peas against a drum.

He stared, stunned for a heartbeat as long as a held breath.

He reached out and ruffled the hair of his two future daughters, fingers light as falling snow, then straightened.

He stepped in, shut the door like drawing a curtain, shook the snowmelt from his clothes, and hung them by the stove like damp flags.

In a thin undershirt, he fell onto the bed like a felled tree.

The warmth inside was rich as soup; judging by the stacked wood outside, the two girls kept the stove piled high at all hours like a little volcano.

“Dad?”

“Papa?”

The older and the younger came closer, eyes glimmering like lanterns.

Eli waved weakly and sighed, breath like mist. “Let me sleep a bit. We’ll talk when I wake. I need to... rest. Really rest.”

He mumbled, eyes drifting shut like petals, and soon his snoring rose, steady as a winter brook.

Anna counted on her fingers, then clapped, turning to her big sis with stars in her eyes. “Sis! Dad fell asleep in three seconds! So badass!”

Alice’s mouth twitched like a pulled thread. She palmed her forehead, headache blooming like a knot. “That’s what you focus on?”

Anna rubbed her chin, thought for a beat, then shook her head, dead serious as a monk. “Not just that. I’m kinda hungry.”

“...”