“Mom, Dad, I’m back.” Luxiao smiled, toed off his shoes, and slid into the house slippers, warmth pooling at the entry like lamplight.

“You’re back? How was it today?” His mother peeked from the kitchen, steam wreathing her hair like a soft halo, her smile gentle.

“Not bad. Mom, I’ll eat later. You two go ahead,” Luxiao said, voice easy as a breeze through beaded curtains.

His father lifted his head and waggled his brows at the door, mischief flickering like a sparrow’s wing.

Luxiao chuckled and stepped closer. “Old man, relax. I didn’t forget. I bought it.”

“Haha—watch it, you rascal. What’re you saying?” His father shot a guilty glance toward the kitchen, laughter snagging like a fish on a line.

With a smile still hanging on his lips, Luxiao walked into his room.

He closed the door softly and flipped the lock, the click a lone note in a quiet pond.

Then he let himself fall onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, blank white like a winter sky.

This familiar room called to him, one detail after another tugging memories up from the deep like nets of old shells.

Eli hugged the black-and-white patterned pillow, sinking into thought as if into a moonlit lake.

Peace welled up from within, a still spring at the bottom of his chest.

Little by little, he drifted, and sleep folded over him like a warm quilt.

He didn’t wake until his mother, Luo Wenxiu, knocked, her knuckles tapping like rain on bamboo. He stretched, joints creaking like waking branches.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept this soundly, like a boat in a windless cove.

“Dinner time,” his mother called at the door, her voice fragrant as soup steam.

“Coming.” Luxiao smiled and stood, feet light as if stepping onto dew.

Whatever else, he told himself, let this moment steep—this rare taste of home like tea after a long road.

Days unfurled one by one, like calendar pages carried by wind; Eli lived the life he’d once lost, step by step.

Years later.

Luxiao lounged on the sofa with his phone, scrolling a Q&A app, thumb drifting like a lazy fish.

The TV murmured for company, a window of noise in a quiet house.

He could still wield magic and other unearthly arts, stars under his skin, but he kept his hands still to keep the memory-thread unbroken.

He walked the old track of Luxiao’s life, feet in familiar ruts, eyes on a horizon he’d seen before.

“Hello?” He answered an unmarked call, a knot tightening like a storm rope in his gut.

“Is this Mr. Luxiao Lu?”

“This is he. And you are?”

“Ah… this is S City Airlines. We have… very bad news.”

“Oh?” Luxiao blinked. A tremor went through his soul, like a bell struck far away. He thought he knew.

He didn’t question the call’s truth. He just stood there, silence falling like dust in an empty room.

“The flight your parents were on has gone missing. We’re launching search and rescue, please…” The rest dissolved, words washing away like rain beyond a window.

He knew it already—what had happened then would not be moved by his hands now, like a stone sunk in a riverbed.

It all came back. Every piece he’d misplaced rose, glinting, to the surface.

He stared at the ceiling again, white as frost, cold as silence.

He remembered working in another city; they were flying in to see him, love packed in their suitcases.

The cause? It blurred—mechanical failure, maybe—like ink run by tears.

More years passed. The boy’s green edges wore away; the man looked steady, but the wind had thinned him.

Luxiao lit a cigarette before his parents’ grave. Smoke rose like incense. He smiled. “Mom, Dad. I’ve got so much to tell you. Your son… went to another world. I even became a Hero. I even found you, uh… some good daughters-in-law.”

He scratched his head, embarrassed, like a kid caught stealing fruit.

By sense, Icarina and Edlyn should count.

He held regret for Icarina without love; that love had been locked tight by Birand in the half-soul that wasn’t here. To be exact, he was Eli now, not Birand.

Icarina still… counted.

But he himself had split off from Birand and formed anew; the one he loved was Edlyn, not Icarina.

It was a tangle—hard to explain to parents whose candles were already still.

“In any case… if there’s a chance, I’ll come see you again,” Eli said, a small smile like sun on wet stone.

Soon, this memory would close like a book, and he would go back.

He thought of leaving this world then, of waking in another—sigils wheeling like constellations, magic roaring like waterfalls—and the Demon Race army pressing in like a black tide. The thrill and the fear cracked like lightning through his mind.

He’d always been the open-hearted kind. After walking out of his parents’ shadow, a smile returned to the face that housed the soul called “Luxiao.”

He stepped into his new life.

…

Edlyn sat at the bedside. Eli had been sleeping long enough for dawns to pile up like drifted snow.

She frowned. Three days, and his breathing still rose and fell like the tide, smooth and steady.

It was about six-thirty in the morning, cool light spilling like rice milk over the floor.

Liqianyu was out jogging, feet whispering over the ground like wind over reeds. Only she was bored enough to come watch this guy sleep every day.

Edlyn sighed. The pressure from the sky grew heavier, like a mountain settling on the clouds.

It meant the channel forged by the Celestial God would soon punch through to the lower realm, iron through silk.

Envoys from every race had come to the human stronghold—she skimmed them and felt a prick of envy like a thorn through glove.

The Hero’s name still rang, a bell that refused to stop.

Aside from the races once attached to the Demon Race and the Elf Race, most others had shown up with banners in the wind.

As for the Demon Race’s old vassals, they’d vanished like birds before a storm; only a few stray Bloodkin could be found, and those fence-sitting Fallen Angels.

That left her a little hollow; then she thought again.

The Demon Race had always been a lone peak anyway, one tree against the sky.

So she shrugged it off, tossing the thought like a pebble into a stream.

She held a tome of ancient black magic, page after page of forbidden curses, and leaned against the headboard, eyes gone distant like stars behind mist.

Something stirred beside her.

She turned her head.

The someone she’d stared at for three days was staring back, eyes keen as a hawk’s in winter air.

Edlyn flushed with sudden embarrassment and scratched her head. “Uh… you finally woke up.”

Eli snorted a laugh, pushed himself up, and pinned the little Demonic Lord beneath him, playfulness bright as firelight.

They looked into each other’s eyes, two still pools disturbed by one pebble.

Edlyn panicked. “You—what are you doing? Get off. Move.”

Eli only smiled and layered the space around them with wards and bans, circles like ripples stitched into water. Edlyn had set plenty up herself, once upon a worry.

Then he lowered his head and claimed the cherry-soft lips below, a summer fruit bitten by moonlight.

“Mmph!” Edlyn’s eyes went wide, startled like a deer in a glade.

After a long while, they parted, breath painting the air like fog.

Eli looked down at the small Demonic Lord beneath him—clothes rumpled, eyes misted like rain—and smiled.

“Ah, Ai-chan. I love you so much.”

Edlyn turned her head, not daring to meet his gaze, fingers fidgeting in her white hair like anxious birds.

A blush climbed her face; summer wind carried a piece of red cloud, pressed it to her brows, brushed her eyes, and stamped a faint rose on jade-pale cheeks.

Eli swallowed, the sound loud as a drop in a silent well, and chanted in his heart again and again: Not now. Not now. Not now.

Her look set kittens scratching in his chest, sweet and unbearable.

He lifted the little Demonic Lord, straightened her clothes, and folded her into his arms with a deep embrace. “I’m back, Ai-chan.”

“Mm… oh.” She blinked, then buried her face in his shoulder, cheeks button-bright, mind drifting like petals in a bowl.

“All right, everyone, our main act has arrived.” Giant Squid lifted a goblet and sipped red wine, gaze sliding over the chattering crowd like a knife over silk.

The representatives of every race turned toward the doors, whispers falling like leaves.

Birand walked in first. To his right, Bishop Manstein; to his left, Eli, Edlyn, and Liqianyu.

Birand bowed. “Everyone, you still remember me, don’t you?”

“Hero, spare us the pleasantries. You sent your avatar to invite us just days ago. If we didn’t recognize you, would we be here?” the dwarf leader said, voice cold as iron. Paria’s beard bristled like wire.

“Heh. Paria, you’ve still got that same temper.” Birand smiled, then let it fade like a lantern lowering its wick.

“Hmph. Get to the point,” Dwarf Paria snorted, words like hammer blows.

Manstein lifted a hand. A few paladins stepped in, drew back chairs with quiet care, then retreated and sealed the doors, ward on ward like frost on glass.

A sweep followed for foreign eyes and ears; only when the room rang clean did the meeting truly begin.

“Birand. You said you have a weapon that can kill a Celestial God. We’ve sent our representatives here. You won’t give us a shot of courage first?” Giant Squid set down his goblet, a playful smile curling like smoke.

“That’s right. We dwarves are master craftsmen, but we’ve never heard of a god-slaying weapon,” Paria said with a cold laugh, skepticism hard as an anvil.

Birand paused, felt the leaders’ gazes settle on him like arrows in a target, then smiled. “Since you want to see it, I won’t refuse.” He nodded to Manstein to bring up a sample.

“I’m sure our cooperation will go very smoothly,” Birand said, tipping his head to the gathered.

“Before the weapon is carried in, I want to introduce someone—the keystone of this campaign,” Birand went on.

The leaders frowned, eyes fixed on him, waiting like hunters in brush.

A teasing smile tugged at Birand’s mouth. He pointed to Edlyn, seated beside Eli. “Everyone, behold our Demonic Lord: Pandora!”

Bang!

Palms slammed onto the tables in a storm of sound, shock cracking the room like thunder over a lake.

Then came the stares, wide and disbelieving, a field of stone statues under sudden lightning.