Night Clan?!

A strange sorrow pricked Ouyang’s chest, like winter wind slipping through his ribs. Shattered images flickered in his mind, faces he’d never met stirring the urge to cry.

The old records were clear: Night Clan and the Other Shore—war without end, no truce but death.

He didn’t know the details. Yet a tide of broken scenes rose anyway.

A sky in shards, a barren earth. Weeping. Despair. A chorus of howls swallowed by wind.

“If you’ve forgotten, let me wake it for you,” Cataclysm said, voice cold as frost. “Back then, the Night King broke into the Origin. In your Epoch calendar, he ended the so‑called deathless era.”

“The deathless era…” The word rang, and Ouyang remembered. That first era. People drifted in fog, trying to laugh and live hollow. Then, that day...

A peculiar winter. Snowflakes. Clocks. Wind chimes. Dusk like a blade laid across the horizon.

A rule-breaking lifeform shattered the peace. Infinite revivals ended like a candle pinched between fingers.

“I did everything I could. Even reversing the river with the City of Time couldn’t bring them back. Once a higher‑rung lifeform strikes, it erases utterly. Maybe all this world keeps is despair.”

He couldn’t place the speaker. Only the helplessness lingered, a sigh that kept circling his ear like a cold draft in an empty hall.

That quiet, that goodness—ruined, all ruined. Beauty burned to smoke and grit. Only a broken sky and a blood‑soaked earth remained. Hatred flared. Why break that peace? Why?

“Seems you remember. Then it’s my time to withdraw.”

Cataclysm bent at the waist, a polite knife of a bow, and slipped into space like water, gone. Ouyang stood rooted. His eyes went glassy. His mouth worked, fighting some buried storm.

Without knowing, tears pooled at his lashes and slid down, salty as sea fog. He hadn’t lived those memories—so why couldn’t he stop? Who was he crying for?

Bartley and Eunice saw something was wrong and moved to shake him awake. A purple sword‑light flashed. In that breath, Ouyang’s heart was pierced through.

“Third Seat, Sword Demon!”

“First Seat, the Void. After all these years, your vigilance still hasn’t grown.” Cloaked in deep violet glow, the Sword Demon’s voice was a knife with a smirk. He’d expected walls around this kill. Cataclysm’s little speech had made the walls fall.

Neither Sword Demon nor Cataclysm had planned on that. They’d remembered Ouyang as strong, so they’d built an assassination like clockwork. It worked. Ouyang didn’t lift a finger.

A hole gaped in his chest, wet and red where a heart should be. And he smiled—ragged, like a crack in ice.

“So‑called friends… I never had any. It was all betrayal and lies. A world of one doesn’t need bonds.”

His pupils went dull. Then a blue cross‑star bloomed in each eye, as clear as noon sky.

He tipped backward. A force caught him, held him weightless. Behind him, a blurred silhouette rose. A pair of silver wings wrapped him with the hush of falling snow.

An angel.

“This is… the legendary Guardian Angel!” Cataclysm blinked into being beside the Sword Demon, voice knotted with alarm. “Everyone, retreat!”

He vanished on the last syllable. The Sword Demon didn’t ask why. He saw the fear and left like a shadow before dawn.

They were gone, but the square still crawled with people. This was the heart of a capital, a plaza built for crowds.

The angel cradling Ouyang opened silver eyes, cold as moonwater. Its wings unfurled slow, petal by petal. Silver starlight poured over the city, a snowfall of dream and mercy.

Everything that drank that light sifted to powder. Stone. Trees. People. No exceptions. The city ebbed away grain by grain.

When Devila, Bartley, Eunice, and Valiant jolted back to themselves, the world had been erased. Only a field of gray ash breathed under a wind without sound. The capital was gone, like a mirage blown out.

They stared at Ouyang lying there, life or death a coin on its edge. Devila swallowed hard and wiped a cold sweat that wouldn’t stop. His gut had been right. If he’d picked a duel outside the castle just because Ouyang looked weaker, his share of powder would be here too.

Angel? Guardian Angel? Devila replayed Cataclysm’s words, confusion stacking like stones. Weren’t angels just bird‑men whose power rose with their wing count? This one had a single pair, and the color was wrong. Yet Cataclysm and the Sword Demon had fled like whipped dogs.

The more he thought, the more the thorns dug in. He chose not to think, the way you step around a sinkhole at dusk.

“Vice‑captain, why does your face scream, ‘being tied to me is trouble’?”

Ouyang bolted upright like a corpse sitting up, and Devila almost jumped out of his skin. He’d suspected it more than once—could the guy read minds? Then he noticed the ruin in Ouyang’s chest was gone. Without the sticky blood, it was hard to link this lively man to the dying one from moments ago.

“Captain, what’s a Guardian Angel?” In the end, Devila swallowed his pride and asked. Ouyang sat in the ash like it was a beach, stretched, yawned, as if the last ten minutes were a dream he’d rolled away from.

“Guardian Angel? That thing…”

He didn’t know why Devila asked, but the phrase tugged a thread. In the Other Shore’s records, angels split into two kinds. One is the common kind, like Ruola.

They have male and female. Their strength ties to their wings.

The second kind are Guardian Angels. They have no gender. Only one pair of wings. Each one is one‑of‑one, unique, and rare as a star falling into your hands.

“But you’re saying I summoned a Guardian Angel?” Ouyang scratched his head, eyes clouded. “So what happened? I remember stepping through that door, and then—blank.”

Selective amnesia. He’d picked the darkness over the light.

“Looks like after your men betrayed you, this is the only way you could dodge it.” Devila wiped sweat that wasn’t there, either out of habit or shock.

With the trio and Devila filling in the blanks, Ouyang pieced together what he’d missed.

“Sigh. A man this strong, with no friends, walks with loneliness for life.” He stared up, a peacock and a winter knife in the same glance. “Boys, move. We’re freeing the remaining Demon Kings. Then we strike the Demon World.”

The Night King—records said he fell, a line lost in fog. No one recorded how. No one expected the clan to still cast shadows.

Devila eyed Ouyang’s calm. Did he really forget? Hearing their story, Ouyang watched it like a stranger’s film, heart like still water.

Bro, your men betrayed you. You say amnesia, fine. But we tell you, and you act like it’s someone else’s mess? Is that okay? Does that mean I could also—

Ouyang turned. A dangerous glint cut sideways. “Vice‑captain, you won’t betray me, will you?”

“Heh… heh…” Devila laughed, stiff as old leather. He was sure now. The bastard read minds. How else did he always know?

“You idiot bat spirit. With a face like yours, your thoughts are billboards. Even if I don’t want to know, I know.” Ouyang looked at him like medicine wouldn’t help. Even Valiant, honest as a plowhorse, rumbled, “Even I can tell. Lord Devila wears his thoughts right on his face.”

Devila almost spat blood. So it wasn’t that the other was too strong. It was that he was too weak.

An eternal dusk. A sun that refuses to fall. Grass dyed red gleaming with an eerie sheen. An angel with silver wings floating silent in high air. An ancient stele bleeding a crimson aura.

Time stretched thin. The stele trembled, as if it would tear free of the earth. In the end, stillness dropped like a curtain.

“How is it?” A voice rose from the stone.

The angel bowed, a ritual as old as dust. “Your Majesty, all is as you wished.”