Ouyang’s castle? Irina and Fei stood in fog, minds blank like a field in mist. A castle? What was that supposed to mean, a stone shadow on the horizon? She didn’t catch much, but she heard two syllables roll like thunder—Ouyang. Cold slid down her spine like winter rain, because the man who once threw Terracafe into chaos was about to step onto the stage.

Fei felt a knot tighten first, then thoughts trailed like smoke. Why were Amelie and Kooson, two Demon Kings, wearing fear like frost? A mere castle was just stone and shadow; a Demon King could brush it aside like dust off a sleeve.

They didn’t let the two pactbinders think; Amelie and Kooson whisked them away like hawks snatching chicks. They ran like the wind cutting through reeds; even ever-cold Amelie wore urgency like a flame on ice. Ouyang’s castle… in Amelie’s memory, that black keep had smashed several worlds like clay pots and sent them back into the first-born chaos.

Demon Kings knew how to flee like wolves before a wildfire, and they made distance in a few breaths. In heartbeats, Irina and Fei were set on a lone peak a thousand miles away, like birds clinging to a cliff. They stopped and gulped air in great gasps; speed had wrung the breath from their lungs like a press. Keep this up, and they’d black out in the sky before Ouyang’s castle ever crushed them.

“Do you two really have to—” Irina leaned against a tree like a leaf clinging to bark, ready to speak. A mushroom cloud blossomed on the horizon like a poisoned flower; sound rolled over them like a breaking sea, and the ground shivered like a drumskin.

From the high spur of rock, their eyes swept the Nightfall Forest, a sea of dark leaves now awash in dust. Ash boiled up between the tightly packed trunks like morning fog, and by eye a quarter of the forest lay under that grey veil.

Irina swallowed, throat dry like sand, and wiped cold sweat with a trembling hand. She’d thought, if Ouyang showed up, she’d warn him like a bell against a cliff, to stop him from dragging Kooson into trouble. But look at that entrance—drop it in the capital and it’s an end-of-city rhythm, a scythe through wheat. She didn’t know a city had already fallen to Ouyang’s rampage like a candle to a gale.

If she met Ouyang, who would warn whom—who holds the whip and who the reins?

They stared at the towering mushroom cloud as if it were a black tree, ears ringing like struck metal that wouldn’t stop. Fei had never seen damage like this, a landscape unstitched like fabric; Amelie had the power, yes, but she hugged her sword and solved things with one clean punch, never with this storm-of-worlds destruction.

Kooson glanced at the pair, dazed like deer in torchlight, and his eyes softened like thaw. “As expected of Boss Ouyang,” he murmured, bone spurs sliding back under his skin like thorns into bark. “He shows up and avenges me in one step.” Awe lit his face like a lantern, while Amelie turned away with a huff, a cold wind across stone.

Had Irina and Fei looked closer, they would’ve seen Amelie’s right hand clamp her sword hilt like iron, ready to bare the blade like lightning. Pity—no one saw it, a knife’s breath before the draw.

Time dragged like a long shadow, yet the dust hung stubborn as fog over a marsh. Amelie’s patience thinned like ice in spring; she lifted her left hand and pushed toward the Nightfall Forest, and a gale rose like a river in the sky, sweeping the ash clean as a broom across tile.

The forest’s heart had sunk into a sandy basin, a bowl scooped from the earth; around its rim, every plant lay snapped and strewn like broken spears, tossed west and east.

This level of ruin wouldn’t shock Kooson or Amelie at their peak; with sleeves flicked, they could do the same like rain from eaves. But what froze them was the center of Nightfall Forest—the black castle in the crater, a funeral stele amid dunes. One glance at Ouyang’s keep, and the old shadow rose like nightfall; the fear he once imposed tightened around them like a chain.

“So scary… is the master of that black castle also a Demon King?” Fei’s voice returned like a bird to a branch. She remembered Kooson’s words; if he called the man boss, then yes, nine times out of ten, he was a Demon King.

For once, Amelie—who hated wasting breath—nodded first, a blade acknowledging another blade. “First Seat of the Demon King Council—Lord Void.” Her right hand trembled on the hilt like a bowstring, as if she could barely hold back the sword-flash in her bones.

“First Seat…” The words fell like stones, and Irina and Fei each felt a different tide. Fei had never met Ouyang; the title sounded high as a mountain, cold as starlight. Irina had—she’d seen him bow again and again under Xi’s scolding like bamboo in wind, and she couldn’t fit that bowed figure inside the armor of “First Seat.”

A great Demon King, in Irina’s mind, should be like Amelie—cold, above all, a hawk circling the sun. But Ouyang was different, spring rain in a field of iron, with odd brain-flares and sudden jokes like fireflies. That man—a First Seat?

“Let’s go. We’ll welcome Boss Ouyang!” Kooson missed Irina’s shifting face like clouds; he grabbed her arm and stamped the ground like a catapult. They vaulted high, a dark arc over the pit, as if one leap could carry them into the crater like stones across a pond.

For Kooson, this was a sip of water, a step on a stair; for Irina’s mortal heart, it was thunder in a sparrow’s chest. Her thoughts caught up in midair like a kite tugged by wind, and then weightlessness surged up like a tide. They were falling, belly dropping like a bucket down a well.

“Aaah—” Her scream tore the open sky like a ribbon, while Amelie had already carried Fei to a spot near the crater, light as a swallow’s dive.

Fei drew a deep breath, lungs burning like coals. Only here, in the blast’s eye, could she taste the strength that had torn the world like cloth. The forest center had sunk by meters, a new desert laid over old roots, no trace of the green that once waved like a sea.

Amelie glanced at Fei, reading her thought like script on water, and spoke coolly. “Normal. That castle once smashed several worlds. Everything returned to chaos.” Her voice was flat as a blade’s back, but the words fell like meteors.

“Smashed… worlds…” Fei echoed, the idea like a stone in her mouth. Destroy a world—kill every living thing—that, she believed, was within reach of Demon Kings at the gods’ level. But to smash a world to pieces, to send it back to raw chaos—that was beyond her map, a dragon beyond the edge.

She began to understand why that unseen Ouyang sat the First Seat like a crown on a peak, and why the Divine Realm stayed their hand during the old, storm-shaken Demon-Turmoil era like gods watching from clouds. From another angle, if that terror broke its seal like flood through a dam, wouldn’t their situation be worse than winter?

“It’s useless. Not long ago, the world gate was sealed shut like a locked sky. The Divine Realm lost contact with this world. Our return… you can’t stop it.” Amelie—rare as rain in drought—spoke many words, and each word struck like a knell. If she could choose, Fei would rather not have heard them, not have heard the door close.

No Divine Realm’s hand, and a First Seat who smashed worlds—the future for humans felt like a candle in wind. She’d heard Amelie talk day after day about the return of the Demon Kings’ era; she had smiled like a courtesy and never argued. The Goddess of Light held chains on Demon Kings like moonlight on frost, and Fei couldn’t see where they’d flip the board like a table.

A soft laugh, bitter as tea, slipped out before the words. “I knew too little about Demon Kings,” she thought, fingers knotting her hem like rope. In the blue of her eyes, the black castle was a dark moon reflected in a well. For countless years, scholars had tried to probe that era of violent churn, but it was too far, too chaotic, and the records were as few as stars at dawn.

Three hundred years ago, the appearance of the Goddess of Light, Clafias, made people treat the Demon Kings like jokes, like old tales told by a hearth. To them, Demon Kings were tools, ladders for power and treasure, keys in greedy hands.

With each generation’s twisting, the terror of Demon Kings thinned like watered wine until almost no one cared. Names turned to toys, and wolves were dressed as dogs.

In the whirl of her thoughts, Fei caught a frightening pattern like a net catching a fish. From Amelie and Kooson’s words, true Demon Kings stood eye to eye with gods, mountains facing mountains. But think about it—the pactbinders who stirred storms across the continent summoned Demon Kings who were strong only by mortal measure; compared to what Amelie hinted at, those “kings” were candleflames, not suns.

Can mortals fight gods? The answer was obvious, sharp as a knife.

History had seen a few broken-seal Demon Kings stride the land like giants, and the continent had paid blood and cities to drive them back to the Sealed Land like waves pushing a ship. Yet in this era ruled by pactbinders, how many still remember the taste of that fear? Some do, but not many, only a handful of ancient families and old orders who keep a lamp lit in fog. The rest? In their eyes, Demon Kings are hot iron to grab, symbols of strength and wealth, gold behind a curtain.

The more Fei thought, the colder she grew, fear rising like night across a plain. The Goddess of Light’s intention three hundred years ago wasn’t to make the continent like this field of dry tinder, was it?

Think further, and the picture darkened like storm clouds. The high seats of races, nations, and orders are packed with the era’s darlings—pactbinders on every throne. And behind the pactbinders? Demon Kings, smiling like shadows.

If she could, Fei would shout to every race under the sky—stay away from Demon Kings, flee like deer to the thickets. But it felt too late; the bell had rung. Without the Divine Realm’s hand and without the Goddess’s light, she couldn’t imagine a power on the continent that could stand against the First Seat who smashed worlds like pottery.

Maybe the Demon Kings’ willingness to sign pacts was a long-laid snare, a net spread under calm water. With the Divine Realm present and the Goddess’s power bright, they could only lie low like snakes under stone and wait. Now the world gate was sealed, the sky locked; their chance had come like spring breaking ice.

“Their era will return,” Fei whispered, voice thin as a thread, and the words sounded like a prophecy carried on the wind.