The jewel box, studded with diamonds like cold stars, clicked open in the king’s hands. From a distance, people watched, breath held. Nothing sprang out. No explosion. Only silence, heavy as velvet.
Curiosity surged like a tide. They pressed closer, eager to glimpse what the mysterious lord of Miracle City had sent.
The king stood beside the box, eyes shadowed in thought. His pose screamed dilemma. What lay inside to trouble him so?
That tension snapped the ministers’ restraint. They surged in, eyes bright with hope, hearts tight with dread. At last, they saw what sat in the box. A head. A severed head. And everyone knew the face.
“This… isn’t this the angel’s…” The Treasurer’s voice quavered. They had heard Angel Daniel had fallen. Hearing was one thing. Seeing was another. The angel’s head left every tongue numb. Not long ago he had led them in purging monsters in the capital—divine wrath sweeping, the dark-stained slums erased like soot under rain.
Yet the angel who dispelled evil with a wave had been decapitated. Packed like a relic in a box.
Legend said fallen angels left no corpse. They turned to a rain of light and vanished, their souls reborn in the Divine Realm. So when the rumor first spread, it hadn’t cracked their hearts. Now, dread sank in. This death was true. No rebirth waiting above.
The Divine Bloom had withered. The head hadn’t dissolved into light. Everything pointed to an angel’s final end.
Faces froze, stiff as clay masks. The room felt like a mausoleum.
“Your Majesty, we must inform the Church. Have them reach the goddess.” The matter was too grave. Without an answer from the Divine Realm, no one in the Land of Light would dare move against Miracle City.
Days later, a vast golden passage unfurled above the capital like a sunlit river. Golden rain drifted across the roofs. Angels poured from the gleaming corridor, wings cutting the light.
Same council room. The king and his ministers met again.
“Your Majesty, good news. After hearing of the angel’s fall, the Upper Realm sent down an Angel Commander, and he brought an Archangel squad. Ha! Miracle City is finished!”
The Treasurer nearly ran out to shout it to the streets. He swallowed it back. This was a sacred hall.
Angels: four wings, called Archangels; six wings, the Angel Commander. This time, a six-winged leader descended with a cadre of four-wing Archangels, plus a spread of two-wing cannon fodder. A rare muster. By the Other Shore’s tiers, two wings are sub-divine, four wings mid-divine, six wings supra-divine.
Do the math: one supra-divine leading a mid-divine squad, backed by sub-divine fodder. Enough force to conquer many low-tier worlds. No wonder the ministers thrilled. In their eyes, Miracle City had at most one newly ascended god, maybe its lord wielding divine power. Against a Seraph with an Archangel squad, their fall was only a matter of time.
Everything looked bright. The king’s gut said otherwise. If Rex had spoken true, then…
“Enough. We’ll go and welcome the Angel Commander. The rest later.”
—
Miracle City—rumored to hold nine hundred and ninety-nine miracles—became a sanctum in people’s hearts. Pilgrims came in waves. Sightseeing was fine; residency was another mountain.
Elsewhere, after hearing of the Land of Light’s “sign,” Jelinka hurried aboard a skyship, heading for Miracle City. She didn’t know the full depths of those Demon Kings. She only knew they were god-tier. Angels sent by the Divine Realm were gods too. Her stomach knotted. She needed to tell Ouyang and the others at once, so she pushed through the night.
“Your Highness, you don’t need to worry,” Kuiyas said, reading her tight breath before her words. “In the Era of Demon Turmoil, even the Divine Realm didn’t dare intervene. That means the Demon Kings’ power made heaven flinch. There are fewer now, but survivors are all elite. They can handle an Angel Commander.”
Kuiyas’s calm loosened Jelinka’s chest a notch. Their agents in the Land of Light had reported: a Seraph stepped from the golden passage. That tier of god chilled her first. But Kuiyas had a point: once upon a time, even heaven feared them; they could face a Seraph now.
When the skyship drifted over Nightfall Forest, Jelinka, Kuiyas, and the crew felt a jarring wrongness.
On the map, this was Nightfall Forest. A shadowed maze of venom and rot, marsh gas swaddling the ground, black plants clawing for prey. That was the story in their minds. But beneath them, the forest was carpeted in green. Meadows bloomed with riotous flowers. Clear rivers stitched the woods with silver threads.
“Nightfall” had been a curse on that land. Now it looked dream-bright. What had it become?
“R-report, Your Highness— we need to clear the forest’s airspace.” A crewman rushed up, pulse stuttering. Danger clung to his voice.
“What happened?” Jelinka frowned. Miracle City sat ahead. Half an hour more, and they’d be there. Retreat now?
“Your Highness, the magic tester shows… Nightfall Forest is packed with Tier Three and Tier Four life—”
He didn’t finish. A towering tree strode toward them, roots flexing like muscles, branches whipping to swat the skyship from the air. The forest roared alive. A tiger with blood-red bat wings. A monkey standing on air, toes on invisible steps. A pegasus, wings pure white, mane frothing like surf. Plants and beasts, countless, surged up to seal the sky like a living wall.
“Retreat!”
Jelinka didn’t need to say it. The pilot had already spun the ship. The strange host didn’t give chase. One by one, they folded back into the green.
Safe at the forest’s edge, everyone felt the ache of survival, knees jelly-soft. Even Kuiyas had gone pale. “Your Highness, we just bought our lives back. From my read, most of them were Tier Four. We were being hemmed in by a swarm of Demigods.”
They anchored at the edge. Legs kept shaking. Breaths came back slow.
“What is going on? Those things are terrifying…” A guard leaned against a rock, staring at Nightfall Forest. Everything had changed. There were old tales about this place, but today had split their world. A swarm of Demigods—what had they done to earn that siege?
“I’m not sure,” the captain said, a wanderer who hoarded gossip like coins. “But it should tie to Miracle City’s ‘Miracle Rain.’ They say, not long ago, when crimson phantom petals fell for a full day and night…” He began unraveling what he’d heard.
“So Miracle Rain mutated the forest’s beasts and plants?” Jelinka felt the logic snag. “But after the divine war, everything outside Miracle City turned to desert. Nothing lived.”
The old captain pulled a notebook, lines crowded with small script. Memory frayed; ink helped. “Here’s how it went. Miracle Rain woke life from wasteland. Plants sprang up. Many mutated… But the rulers of the forest came from Miracle City. Under the rain, the plants already preserved inside changed first. Same for the odd beasts. Rumor says most were the residents’ pets…”
Everyone stared like their eyes had failed them. Pets? Those nightmare beasts were pets? Mouths went slack. The captain kept talking, oblivious.
“The mutated animals and plants were too destructive, so people released them into the forest to free-range. To be precise, the forest’s a pasture now— a roaming ground for the altered life.”
He droned on. The crowd nearly unraveled. Residents of Miracle City, you’re brutal beyond belief. Those terrors, set loose without a god’s descent, could erase any nation. And the worst part? They’re your pets.
