The jailbreak in Terracafe that night barely rippled the city’s sleep, the night sealed like a lidded jar as Eika made the building vanish and the wardens warned the lord. The army rolled in like a tide, and the fleeing inmates were netted mid-surge.

On the street, Ouyang and Kooson drifted along like two men walking off a heavy meal, moonlight pooling in every puddle. Ouyang carried a clutch of glass vials, a rainbow caged in crystal, clinking like tiny wind chimes.

“Kooson, do you remember why we first gathered?” Ouyang lifted his eyes to the night, an ink-washed sky, and let out a sigh like wind combing reeds.

Kooson scratched his head, a boulder trying to understand a stream, and his voice came slow, knots in a rope. “Because we wanted to bring fear, so…”

Ouyang snorted a laugh, a spark in the dark, shook his head, and kept his tongue. He swung the vials once, then angled toward the South Prison, drawn by a tug in the air like a hidden compass. He’d marked the minotaur at noon; the mark whispered direction like a thread pulled taut.

Why had they gathered, back then? The thought brushed him, and he cut Kooson another glance, a lantern’s glow on an old wall. Time shears everything thin. Once, Ouyang did everything reckless as wildfire; now, without “them,” a cool stone sat in his chest, and he learned to endure like winter bamboo bent under snow.

Still, whatever the years scrape away, Kooson stays Kooson, mind stubborn as a stump. His presence was a banked ember, warmth that refused to go out. Maybe Kooson just chose not to change, like a mountain refusing the wind.

“We’ll set our footprints on every world and watch the brightest vistas between the stars.” Ouyang had told that to the Demon Kings, voice like a bell across a valley. Boring for mortals, maybe, but to the undying, it was thunder in the blood; lair-life day after day was a stew boiled dry.

His whisper had matched their hunger, spark to dry grass, and so the Demon Kings rose. A storm of demons marched across maps, and several worlds shook in that Demonic Turmoil.

“Our road hasn’t ended. So, soon…” He rattled the bottles again, glass chiming like frost-bitten leaves.

At the South Prison, the place lay hollow, a husk under starlight. The guards and the troops had chased the escapees, and silence perched on the wreckage like crows. Ouyang and Kooson sauntered in, boots gritting over debris, and found ruins but no breath of men.

Ouyang frowned, a crease like a drawn bow. He remembered he’d given a task to that little girl from the Hericot Clan; her name slipped his mind like ash off a wick. Not forgotten—never stored.

It didn’t matter; what mattered was the clean tick it made in his ledger. She’d nailed it.

Following the pulse on his mark, Ouyang found the minotaur sprawled like a felled pillar. He rubbed thumb and forefinger; a moth-tongued flame climbed his fingertip, and by that small sun he took in the scene.

The poor beast was a map of cuts, every line weeping, a red garden in the dust. The minotaur itself was dead, yet its muscles twitched like a net hauled by a stubborn tide, the body still trying to crawl forward. Ouyang stilled, surprise a cold bite at the heart. What kind of obsession drags a carcass toward a goal, even after the last breath?

“Good. This specimen’s perfect.” His smile was a thin knife. “Heh-heh. Soon, an Epic minotaur will step out… Guardian of Terracafe, are you ready?”

He had Kooson pry the jaws wide, teeth like gate-spikes, and poured in the lot, one jeweled vial after another, a liquid serpent sliding down. Seconds later, a ghost-blue halo breathed from the minotaur’s skin. It rose inch by inch, a red dawn swallowing its brown fur. Its horns curled tighter like sickles, and two fleshy bulbs swelled on its back like sleeping fists.

From the distant dead, red orbs lifted like fireflies of blood and streamed toward the beast, a ruddy river folding into it.

“Wrath, one of the Seven Sins,” Ouyang murmured, voice a low drum. “This bitter, unyielding will—perfect stock. Pity Wrath’s thin here; the evolution’s not complete. Let it take a stroll, let the city’s anger catch like brushfire, and it’ll molt into the next stage. If the guardian won’t come out, this city’s done. What’ll he choose? I can’t wait…”

Terracafe isn’t like other cities; it’s the oldest stone in the river, and it keeps a guardian, bound by an oath old as carved tablets. They watch the Prison of Shadows, the true prison, like sentinels watching a well that has no bottom. They stand beyond kingdom and race, lanterns hung above banners. Even if a nation crumbles, they don’t show—because their vow’s a chain: guard Terracafe, guard the Prison of Shadows.

Ouyang’s aim was never the minotaur; it was the Prison of Shadows. Beast flesh holds like iron hoops and takes drugs better than men, so he let the minotaur out to shake the bell. The guardian would come to the sound, and Ouyang would slip into the dark. That was the real game, a decoy bird for a hidden snare.

The Prison of Shadows, the true lockbox, holds criminals from the old age, not of any one crown or blood, but enemies of the whole world. Ages have passed like sand on a monument, and those once-arrogant names wore down under time’s rain.

Except for the undying, even the long-lived lie down at last. The one Ouyang sought was neither long-lived nor immortal, but his craft could lacquer a life and hold it, letting him weather years another way.

Because he’s a genius. A genius who wore a mortal shell and lived through countless winters; if not for a curse laid by a being whose name can’t be spoken, a bell sealed in wax, he’d have climbed who-knows-what height by now.

He was Ouyang’s chief strategist in name, but in truth they simply made a pact, two knives sheathed together. The man’s pride stood like a spear. If he hadn’t needed the power of the Other Shore to break that curse, he might never have spared Ouyang a glance. In this era, Ouyang had no idea if he’d still accept the favor, a coin tossed back across a river.

Soon, the minotaur’s eyes cracked open, coals flaring under ash. It roared at the night, a drumbeat that kicked the city’s ribs, the sound slamming across Terracafe like thunder on stone. In that beat, countless people felt their gut drop like a bucket in a well.

In the duke’s manor, Xi and Irina snapped to the same thought, worry like a knife-edge, and asked if Ouyang and Kooson were still around. Brell answered without hesitation—he’d been the one to let them go. Hearing the Demon King duo were still in town, both let out a breath, mist in cold air. They had no idea their worry was right on target, only smothered by someone’s hand on the truth.

The roaring minotaur wrenched up a tree, roots like grasping fingers, and used it as a club. Wherever it passed, the street turned to rubble, houses collapsing like sandcastles under a black tide.

Epic—what is Epic? One person who can break a city, that’s Epic. One person who can face an army and stand, that’s Epic.

“Evacuate the civilians, move!” The officer’s shout cracked like a whip in smoke.

“Sir, we can’t hold! That minotaur’s worse than berserk!” The report hit like hail on tin.

“Damn it, what is this? So the wall that fell at noon was its work!” The commander’s chest clenched, night around him thick as spilled ink. It was late; people were home, lights were few, and a panicked crowd could stampede like cattle in a narrow lane. Even if they killed the beast, the dead would stack high. Worst of all—could they even kill it?

Noise flooded the avenues, cries and curses braided together like storm wind through wires. The people’s anger sparked brighter, red embers catching in dry grass.

“The magi are on their way. They want soldiers to delay, buy casting time!” The message came like a knot loosening, and the commander’s shoulders dropped a hair; those raven-cloaked elites were finally moving.

Steel bounced off the minotaur’s hide like rain on a drum, so all hope pinched toward the magi. Then pain hit him, sharp as a nail, as his delaying soldiers got stomped in swaths, wheat under a millstone.

They were his men, his blood, flags he’d counted at roll call. How could his heart not tear?

“Those damned magi are too slow! The few in the city still act high and mighty, saying they won’t act till the last moment. Damn it, I’ve had enough!” He stamped the ground, anger flaring like a spark in dry pine.

Mages are rare birds; the talent gate is a knife-edge, and few make it through. Terracafe, a great city, has fewer than ten. Mid-tier cities clutch two or three; small ones hold none, empty nests under rain.

So the mage lords float above it all, high clouds that won’t stoop to shade the field.

Now, with citizens in danger like ants on a stove and homes cracking like eggshells, they still mutter about the “last moment.” And what is the last moment? When Terracafe lies in ruins and the smoke’s already written the ending?