God-King, Ulaficales!

Snow never imagined that man would leap back into the light; in her memory, he had fallen with the Eighth Epoch like a star swallowed by night. She hadn’t thought he was still not fully dead.

What do we do? Even if he’s not at his peak, we can’t beat him. Her mind whispered in a second voice, a faint bell in mist. Now… only if we fully merge do we have a sliver of chance.

The voice in her head sighed, like wind through bare branches.

Merge? You’ll cooperate? Her tone came cool as frost on glass.

This time, the mind stayed quiet, silence pooling like dark water.

Cracks veined the white space like ice on a winter lake; two-winged angels turned to light-rain and folded into the phantom sun. Everything said the last moment was close, a tide drawing to a cliff. It’s time to decide… princess. The voice returned with a muffled weight.

I hate this… but I have to face it. We’re all illusions, curses given faces, she breathed like snow underfoot. We all want to devour the others and be truly alone. But there’s no time to fight among ourselves. Of all our faces, you hold that power.

So I hope you carry our regrets and become a real person, and taste that many-colored world with our unshed tears.

Her cool voice went still for a beat, a moon behind clouds. Is that your view… or everyone’s?

It’s only mine. The others don’t matter. They don’t get to refuse. With my help, none of them can resist you.

No regrets? A thin warmth trembled under her calm, like dawn under ash.

Regrets? Who doesn’t? I want to see the world’s colors, the blazing lives, she said, yearning as a bird at a window. We all wanted to swallow each other, but you have the best chance. Even if I won and stood alone, I wouldn’t have the strength to face him. Only you can carry my regret and peep at that dazzling world.

Noise rose in her skull like a marketplace on fire—fear, curses, screams, a storm of voices tearing at the sky.

Chaos. Her mind unraveled like a silk scroll tossed to the wind.

Snow shut her eyes, a winter lake going still. Her white staff sang out a shield against the crushing pressure, a ring of frost around a candle. Black energy crawled like ink, wrapped her tight. From that cocoon, black butterflies lifted one by one, wings like midnight petals.

The black energy shrank and thinned, showing her head, her throat, her breath in the cold. It gathered at her back and hardened—two wings of shadow, a butterfly wrought from night.

The Nether-Butterfly wings fanned. Snow split into two selves. On the left stood a princess in black, waist cinched with a vast night-satin bow; behind her, those shadow wings rippled like smoke. Black energy pulsed like a heartbeat, and the wings stayed half-fantasy, half-night.

On the right drifted a girl soaked in blood, hair matted, face streaked, clothes stiff with scarlet. That Snow lay suspended, limp as a dropped rose, unconscious in the white void.

Crack.

The white staff shattered, bone-white dust blowing away in this space on the edge of ruin.

The Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts… I’ve finally slipped this fate. I’m… free.

At that instant, the Sun of Verdict opened its eye. The space collapsed like a castle made of sand. Snow hugged the blood-soaked Snow, and her black butterfly wings wrapped them both, a dusk shelter.

She peeled her wings back to glimpse the outside. Shock flashed over her ice-calm face, a thawed glimmer on marble. She hadn’t fallen into spatial rifts, nor been crushed by that terrible force.

A dream floated before her: rainbow bridges draped across the sky like silk streamers, clouds spun like cotton candy into beasts and palaces. On the ground, seven-colored butterflies wheeled, and a sea of flowers breathed a fragrance new as spring rain. It looked like a fairy tale, a world painted by dawn.

She raised her eyes. The phantom sun hung here too, a giant eye fully open, a lantern on the vault. Yet the force that broke space didn’t bend a blade of grass here; that eye sat on the sky like a jeweled ornament.

Welcome to the Aurora Dreamscape…

Snow turned. Her pupils tightened, frost snapping in winter. You’re… Aurora the Goddess of Aurora! Her breath came ragged, and her body trembled, fear stalking her like a shadow wolf.

If Leticia had followed, she’d have known this place. Back when Xi chased the Azure Bird’s trail, they reached here. Ouyang was still lost in a chaos current, and the Demon World’s army rolled over the continent like a dark tide. In this dreamlike land, Ouyang’s castle fell from the heavens, and Xi brought her sister back from the brink.

You should be glad you didn’t try to swallow Snow’s soul. Otherwise… Her pale-yellow dress lifted on a wind, a sunset of hair spilling like light, and a beauty shimmered with a feeling words couldn’t hold.

Prismatic light flowered behind Xi, a rainbow crest. Soon, a two-winged angel stepped into the world, the same one who had called herself Rola, the one Ouyang carried out of the Mist Illusion.

Master, Ulaficales abandoned this projection. His true body’s whereabouts are unknown. The angel bent with a smile, snow-bright feet sinking into flowers like pearls in velvet.

Xi looked up at the sky’s giant eye, a trinket hung in the dome.

Heh… he ran fast. Mockery curved her flawless face; to her, the former king of the Divine Realm was just a stray dog fleeing rain.

Snow laid the blood-smeared Snow on the ground. Her wings breathed a slow beat, and she offered Xi an ancient bow, a ritual old as moonlight. Your Grace, Aurora, may the aurora be with you.

Xi watched her with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, a crescent hiding its light.

I didn’t expect it… Of the things those problem children made, you’re the first to slip the chain of the Divine Demon Artifacts. From today, you’ll no longer be bound. You can watch this many-colored world to your heart’s content. Congratulations. You no longer exist as an artifact.

From start to end, Snow kept her head lowered, like a child caught and scolded, chin tucked, shame a soft rain.

I have to say, you’re clever. You used Snow’s bloodline and stepped out of the trap. But if my feeling’s right, that crow showed up in the Origin World not long ago. The blood in Snow’s body traces back to its kin, and you’ve been using its power. I was curious how the crow would react. Pity—things went wrong beyond the Gate, and they pulled all their projections back.

Xi’s words made Snow’s heart pound, a drum on a cliff. That crow is said to be death and calamity made wing; its blood can free the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts from fate’s curse. The crow itself is immune to all curses, a shadow untouched by chains.

Snow’s ancestors once married into the crow’s kin, leaving a thin black thread in their descendants. Since coming to the Origin World, as one of the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts, she—no, they—had schemed to find even that near-imperceptible trace. Age after age, they nearly succeeded, but when the continent turned foul with the artifacts’ chaos, the Aurora Goddess couldn’t bear it and sealed them all.

Then… what should I call you? One of the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts, the one named the Holy Revelation…

The Holy Revelation is dream and real, false love born of delusion. Its bearer falls into endless daydreams and sinks in sugar and mist. Sweet words, warm embraces, childhood sweethearts, lovers bound by trial… the bearer basks in a golden fiction, and when they wake, they find it was all their own desire painted on air.

Family who walked with them for years were only self-wrought ghosts; all along, they spoke to themselves, a soliloquy in an empty house. Lovers whose marks felt indelible were also only their own longing; when the false love shatters, the host who cannot face the bare world splits apart.

Quiet pooled. Snow kept her head bowed, lips sealed like a locked box.

She didn’t know how long passed before courage rose like a lantern, and she looked Xi in the eyes. I… I just want to be a traveler who watches the world, to carry her regret and see this bright world.

Like the Nether Butterfly, I’ll watch life and death, and guide lost souls across worlds, and take in every country’s scenery. So… Your Grace, Aurora, you can call me Black Butterfly.

Black Butterfly bowed again, no longer timid, only serene. The elegant princess returned, and in front of Xi she wore a thread of humble grace.

Black Butterfly… you’ll drift like a black Nether-Butterfly from world to world. I’ll remember you, Black Butterfly.

Xi turned to the phantom sun. She lifted a pale hand and drew a line in air. Night fell like a velvet curtain, and auroras filled the sky like rivers of silk. In that dancing light, the phantom sun thinned, then faded away.