Calm came first, settling over him like dusk; then he walked on through the desert in a traveler’s garb, footsteps trailing the wind like brushstrokes on sand.

No trace of his usual hatred or rage, only a stillness like stone cooling under moonlight.

A prickle moved through him like a fish beneath ice; he raised his right hand and gently closed his fingers.

From far away, a crimson energy, vapor-thin like hot breath, flew back like a homing comet.

It carried a thread of pale blue, which slowly pooled atop his palm like dew finding a leaf.

Birand half-closed his eyes, and with a surgeon’s patience, he teased the blue out of the red, like drawing a vein from marble.

He lifted his right forefinger and tugged on that blue, letting it follow his will like ink to a calligrapher.

Stroke by stroke in the open air, he painted a face that was Eli’s—no, that was his own—mirrored on sky like water holds a reflection.

As the face set, faint strands of pale-blue energy drifted down from the heavens like shed feathers, and melted into the sketch like rain into soil.

Birand opened his eyes and smiled, a crescent under a vast sky.

“So that’s how it is. Power from the cosmos, huh?”

He wiped the painting from the air like rubbing frost from glass.

Hands behind his back, he walked on, voice even as a level horizon.

“Nothing to make a fuss about.”

His true body had entered this empty desert weeks ago, and the journey had been a blind pilgrimage through wind and glare.

Inside him, the riotous force ebbed like a storm pouring itself out, eased by a heart turning clear as a still pond.

Now his emotions held steady like a steady flame, and his power climbed like dawn over a ridge.

Normal measures couldn’t pin him anymore, like trying to weigh a cloud on a scale.

He kept walking through glare and grit.

Who knew how long, until Birand finally lifted his head to the boundless firmament, a cold ocean inverted.

A sigh left him like heat leaving stone at twilight, and he sank onto a nearby rock as if it were a moored boat.

He showed a relaxed smile, a lantern lit in fog.

“I’ve hunted you for so long. Finally found your true body.”

No one answered; only the wind combed the sand like fingers through hair.

Birand tilted his mouth, careless as a cat stretching. “Say nothing then. Netherworld. Weren’t you itching to burst out and wreak havoc?”

“Birand! What are you doing?! It’s not time yet. Are we breaking the plan?!” The voice cracked like thunder behind clouds as Birand’s aura climbed like a tide.

“I just feel,” his mood chilled first, words following like sleet, “you don’t treat me as a partner.”

“Why would you say that?” Netherworld was startled inside like a deer at a twig snap, yet its tone stayed smooth as glass.

Birand stepped in as if greeting an old friend, his hand hooking its neck like a yoke.

His eyes looked far, where heat-haze makes mountains float. “You didn’t tell me your might got reclaimed by your creator.”

“You didn’t tell me I’m just helping you seize back the authority of the Three Primordial Ancestors.”

“You didn’t tell me that once you had it, I’d be scoured clean by the backlash of the Celestial God.”

“You… you know?” Netherworld’s doubt shivered like a harp string. “How did you know?”

Birand smiled, a knife kept in velvet. “It’s nothing. I think I don’t have to trade with only you.”

“So… you’ll betray me?” Netherworld’s face tightened like ice over a river.

“Hey. I didn’t say that.” Birand’s voice drifted light as dust. “I’m thinking, if I were you, I wouldn’t have so many limits.”

“Oh?” The air perked up like a fox scenting meat. “You agree to fuse with me?”

Birand opened his arms, a harbor welcoming the storm. “Of course. Come, Netherworld.”

“Heh.” Netherworld’s expression curdled, a shadow thick with thorns.

Once inside, with a soul as vast as one of the first three beings, he would anchor everything like a mountain in flood.

Whatever trick Birand had, it would drown like a spark in rain.

He sneered that thought like a blade kept behind the tongue.

“Last time I ask,” his voice warped with mirth like smoke around a flame. “Will you really fuse with me? Will you offer me everything?”

Birand’s eyes were winter, the answer a falling icicle. “What do you think? If not, forget it.”

“W-wait. No. I’ll take it.” Netherworld rushed the words like a river breaking a dam.

A small regret gnawed like a moth in silk—no spoken geas to bind him.

Still, he chuckled inside; confidence coiled like a serpent on warm rock.

Netherworld turned into a mass of blue mist, a tide of frost-smoke, and hurled himself at Birand like a storm swallowing a candle.

Birand kept a thin, cold smile, a knife under snow, as the blue struck and seeped through every pore like winter rain through moss.

“Careful! Don’t resist,” Netherworld warned, thought touching thought like sparks across a gap.

“Or the fusion’ll flaw, and you’ll be squeezed apart like clay in a press.”

Birand didn’t answer; his defenses opened like gates unbarred.

Netherworld exhaled relief like a bellows, and began to fuse with Birand like two flames twining.

In mere seconds, the cloud—once five or six times his size—sank into him like a lake into dry ground.

Birand’s body rose from the earth like a leaf caught by an updraft.

In the air, his head trembled, a cup rattling on a table, and the tremor rolled through his limbs like ripples across a pond.

He shook as if seized by a black wind, convulsions battering him like waves against a cliff.

With every wrench of muscle, faint mist leaked from him like breath on cold glass.

The strange state held for hours, time grinding like a millstone.

At dusk, when the sky bruised purple, he stilled like a string finally slackening.

Then he fell from the sky like a broken star.

“Birand” curled on the ground, pain knotting him like roots.

He lifted his head toward the sky, jaw opening like a cave, energy crashing through him like thunder through mountains, and he roared.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

The roar was a hammer; the Gobi around him shattered like brittle pottery.

Yellow earth webbed with cracks, spider-silk spreading from him as the center.

Clouds ripped apart like torn sails under that shout.

Then gales spun up by the dozens, whirling toward him like rivers to a sea.

He stood, hood whipped back by the wind like a banner, revealing a face reshaped by storm.

The left half looked like a dried riverbed split to the core, with deep-blue energy shining from its fissures like starlight in canyons.

The right half stayed nearly whole, an island in flood.

No pupils sat in his sockets; instead, two blue light-hollows burned, spilling radiance like twin beacons.

“Birand” lifted his left sleeve.

The hand matched the face, a cracked earth lit by sapphire fire.

He weighed it, then nodded, a judge tapping the gavel. “Seems the left half really fractured from power too vast.”

He looked up, excitement rising like a sun through mist.

The voice that came was Netherworld’s, male and female braided like river and reed—only the male thread now wore Birand’s tone.

“Now this is a true return.”

“All factions. Time for a cleansing.”

“Otherwise… heh heh.”

His body thinned into nothing, vanishing like fog at noon.

Only a scarred earth remained, a battlefield’s aftertaste left to the wind.

Who won, Netherworld or Birand?

Maybe only they knew, like secrets buried under dunes.

…

The five elders of the Elf Race stared at the sealed sky Birand had locked down, their silence heavy as snow on boughs.

Elf Queen Elavis picked up the scepter like a branch of winter light and accepted Yor’s crown like a moon passed hand to hand.

At once, the Elf Race sank into alert like a forest drawing in its scent at night.

Yiyi watched Elavis with a tangle of feelings, like rain tangled in vines.

“You Elves could’ve stayed safe here,” she sighed, breath a cloud in cold air. “Why wade into muddy water?”

Elavis fixed the ornaments on her ears, silver leaves settling like birds, and didn’t answer.

When her attire fell into place like dew on petals, she smiled at Yiyi, and in an emerald gown, she turned once like a willow in spring wind.

“Does it look good?” Her smile held a thin sadness, beautiful as frost on blossoms.

Yiyi sighed and nodded, like a reed bowing to a passing wave.

The Elf before her had a beauty words couldn’t net, a moon too bright to paint.

Gold hair poured down her back like sunlight over wheat; the pointed ears peeked through like clever sparrows.

When Yiyi’s gaze fell there, they twitched, quick as a ripple.

Her eyes were bright green, clear as lakewater; her brows knit slightly, a distant mountain under cloud.

It said her peerless heart was troubled, a pearl under storm-tide.

“You zoned out,” Elavis covered her mouth and laughed, a bell among leaves.

Yiyi dragged her gaze back, a little embarrassed, coughs popping like small stones in a stream. “Well… my main body’s a guy. Cough, cough. Cut me some slack.”

Elavis said nothing; her smile thinned like a crescent.

“I can feel it,” she said, voice soft as falling ash. “The end of the world is close. How could the Elf Race stand aside?”

Yiyi blinked, realization dawning like light through fog.

It was her answer to that earlier question.

She sighed, a leaf turning in wind. “Are you sure? Maybe… there won’t be an Elf Race later.”

“Our Elf Race—men or women—are all beautiful, like flowers in a valley,” Elavis said, gentle as rain. “But not strong.”

“If not for where we live being too special, we’d have been enslaved by other races long ago, broken up like scattered petals.”

“When the Demon Race appeared, the Tree of Life’s special space felt heavy pressure, like a bough bowed by snow.”

“We had to appear in the mortal world, and then every race pressed us down like stones on a lid.”

“If not for the Hero, we might’ve been wiped out, a forest cut at the root.”

“Now we have the chance to rebuild the Ancient Tree’s barrier, to drift from this place of strife like a grove moving to higher ground.”

“Why would we abandon it?”

“When the Elf Race neared extinction back then, Sister Icarina brought the Hero and saved us, a lantern brought into a winter cave.”

“Now it’s my turn to shoulder the weight,” she said, like a trunk taking the wind.

“You are another Hero. You’re his purest side,” she added, voice tender as moss.

At that, Yiyi thought of her own shameless streak and felt her heart wobble like a boat in chop.

Pure? That word pricked like a thorn. Cough, cough…

“I believe you’ll support me,” Elavis said, gaze lingering, a moon caught in water. “Right?”