“Kid, what did you do to yourself?” Kooson’s second personality rose like floodwater as they stepped into Miracle City’s Inner District, his voice drumming the air. “You’re in your prime, bright as spring, and you chose a dead end? You haven’t even flirted, hooked up, tasted betrayal, or—” He lectured baby Augustine like a monsoon that wouldn’t stop.

“If you’d lived a few centuries, seen red dust fade, and then turned into a baby, fine,” he rattled on, words like hail on a tin roof. “But you’ve only walked a quarter of life’s road, and you curled back into a crib? Why throw away a summer you haven’t even felt?”

Inside Ouyang’s castle, Devila, Eunice, and Amelie slipped out like villagers fleeing a plague wind. If Nabelia weren’t moonlighting as a maid, she’d have bolted too, because once Kooson’s second self started, his chatter poured like a river in flood. People scattered, dodging the walking noise hazard the way birds scatter before a storm. Even Loyin shrank back, a small loli gripping Ouyang’s sleeve like a leaf clinging to a branch, fear shading her face.

Only Bai, untouched by the world, stood like a sapling in clear rain. She watched Kooson scold Augustine and saw no thunderclouds in it at all.

“Bai, I’ve got a high‑energy spike ahead. We need to pull out now.” The thought hit, then the worry hit harder, like frost on glass. Ouyang didn’t leave her to the gale; he grabbed Loyin with his left hand and Bai with his right, and ran, shedding the castle like a snake drops old skin.

Seeing the master abandon his own hall, Nabelia’s maid skirts fluttered as she fled too, a sparrow following the flock. Watching everyone leave, baby Augustine panicked, a candle-flame flickering in a draft.

“Guys, don’t leave me…” His thin voice was a moth against a storm window. No one’s rock‑hard heart softened.

Despair pressed down like a night sky. One by one they vanished, and Kooson’s endless words swelled in Augustine’s skull like thunder rolling in a stone valley. The echo became a lightning crash.

His eyes rolled white. He pitched over and fainted like a willow cut at the root.

“Big bro, that big guy’s scary,” Loyin whispered, clinging to Ouyang’s hand like a swallow to its nest. Fear first, then breath, like winter air in her lungs. Bai stared, puzzled as a deer in clear water. In her mind, Loyin could flatten Kooson with one hand; why fear the man’s noise over her own storm?

“He is scary,” Ouyang said, a wry gust passing his lips. “I just got back to the city and walked into this mess.” He’d gone to Qingyu Forest, where the elves gathered like dew under leaves, and they’d chosen his banner without a ripple. In those green shadows, he found Anatasya, the last White Elf, a rare moonflower in a night garden. He hadn’t seen her since Terracafe. A rare species like that, he felt bound to bring her under Miracle City’s roof. When the errands ended, he took Loyin, Bai, and the Nabelia siblings to the Sunlit Coast, warming their bones like cats in a window. They’d barely returned when Kooson’s second self blew in like a dry-season wind.

The Inner District’s streets lay empty as a salt flat. Half a day could pass without a single life stirring like grass.

Then Ouyang heard it: a faint call from far off, a reed flute in mist. “Who is it?” He looked toward the voice and saw a boy and a girl, black hair, black eyes, like ink strokes on rice paper.

“Qianxue, Qianling? What’s wrong?” The two children ran to him, feet drumming stone like rain. As the last blood of the Nightfall Clan, they had the right to live in the Inner District. They arrived breathless, words stuck like fishbones in their throats.

“Don’t rush. Breathe first, talk after,” he said, voice a steady lantern.

Yiyue Qianxue and Yiyue Qianling gulped air, shoulders rising like waves. After a moment, their voices found them.

“Brother Ouyang, it’s bad. Our brother’s missing.” Qianling’s first words hit him like cold water. Missing? He was a god, even if newly risen, a flame that shouldn’t snuff so easily.

“You sure? Maybe he left to handle something and didn’t have time to tell you.” Doubt pricked like thorns; he needed clear tracks in the dust.

“No—he’s really missing. We saw a rift drag him in,” Qianxue cried, eyes pooling like summer rain. “Brother Ouyang, I think it’s the enemy of our Nightfall Clan.”

Enemy.

The word rang like iron. Ouyang remembered Terracafe, the Shadow Prison, the first time he met Yiyue Qianliu—how the man said their clan would hide until they could stare down a Realm God. The Nightfall Clan once had gods, bright as winter stars, but they lost contact with their people, like lights swallowed by fog—likely marked by an old enemy.

“Tell me exactly what happened.” Calm first, then the steel behind it, like a blade under velvet.

Thinking of the Nightfall Clan’s so‑called enemy, his face set like frost. They’d ruled a thousand worlds; anyone they called an enemy wasn’t some alley cur.

He frowned and listened as the tale unrolled like a shadowed scroll.

It happened at the Rift Wasteland. Yiyue Qianliu served as head of Miracle City’s Security, but with other Demon Kings in town, he had hours to idle like a cat. He wanted to take Qianxue and Qianling out to see the world, to paint their gray childhood with sun. They grew up in the Shadow Prison; so did he. He wanted to give back a spring they’d missed.

On their way out, they met Kanofia and the White Cat, and the party grew by one person and one whiskered ghost. They traveled under open sky, and for once the road tasted sweet. Qianxue, Qianling, and Kanofia—each childhood had been a black‑and‑white sketch, flat as winter fields. This trip spilled color across their canvas like dawn.

Then they reached the Rift Wasteland, and the sky split like a ceramic bowl.

The place was named for the wound above it, a scar in the heavens that never closed. Legend said gods once battled there in a far age, shattering that piece of sky like glass. Ages rolled by, and the scar stayed, a crack the World Will itself couldn’t knit. The land was cursed by that war; for centuries it stayed a wasteland, a salt desert that even Divine Realm gods couldn’t turn green.

Walk the Rift Wasteland, and the sky seems a cracked mirror, always about to fall. When they arrived, a huge hand thrust from a pitch‑black rift, night ink made flesh, and yanked Yiyue Qianliu, Kanofia, and the White Cat into the tear. In the final heartbeat, Qianliu sent Qianxue and Qianling to the Nightfall Forest, two seeds blown to safety, while he, Kanofia, and the White Cat vanished into the crack.

That was all the two children saw, a lantern snuffed by wind.

“Rift Wasteland…” The words tasted of iron. Trouble first, then thought, like clouds gathering before rain. If even the World Will can’t heal that wound, only an Ancient God or worse could’ve carved it.

The World Will sits at the Realm God’s tier, a mountain under the sky. In a world with a World Will, even a Creator God can’t do as they please, unless they made that world—then the Will is their child, their own fire.

Before an Ancient God, the World Will usually yields like grass before a gale. A Primordial Deity leaves wounds the world can’t mend, scars like dried riverbeds, because the World Will can only give way and watch.

And if something from the other side of that rift dared haul in Yiyue Qianliu and the White Cat, their strength was a storm above storms.

“I hear you. Don’t worry. I’ll find the truth,” Ouyang said, setting his left and right hands on their heads like a warm roof. “We’ll bring your brother home.” The smile came easy as sunlight, but inside, doubt fluttered like a trapped moth; the smile was for their hearts, not his own.

When Ouyang returned to the castle, Kooson was gone, silence falling like ash. Augustine lay limp on the sofa, out cold, a tiny boat adrift. White foam beaded his lips, and a chill crawled Ouyang’s spine like ants. To talk someone into foaming at the mouth—Kooson’s terror wasn’t a joke. Augustine might wake to ringing ears for days.

“Kid, wake up.” Ouyang shook the infant’s shoulder. Augustine jerked like a fish shocked by lightning and snapped his eyes open. “No—!” he screamed, body convulsing like a stricken kite, foam bubbling again. Then he flopped back into a corpse pose.

“Poor kid. What did he live through?” Ouyang swallowed hard, a pebble sliding down his throat. Nabelia and Eika, watching nearby, retreated like crabs, afraid the madness would jump hosts.

“Lord Ouyang, he’s… he’s done for,” Eika said, eyes wide as moons. “He’ll twitch off and on when he grows up.” Gratitude washed him like a warm wind; he was glad he’d slipped away earlier. One more minute, and he’d be foaming too.

Nabelia and Loyin thought the same, hearts beating like trapped birds. Only Bai stood there, uncomprehending as a clear spring, unable to grasp the tangled reeds of human caution. Everyone’s on our side, she thought; why did Kooson batter Augustine like this, and why did friends scatter like leaves from him?

“Huh… looks like a guest is here.” Ouyang glanced outside, a smile lifting like dawn on water.

“With her here, we might trace Yiyue Qianliu and the others. The wind may point to them yet.”