Hell lives up to its name: no green hills, no clear waters, just a world scorched to ash like a dead hearth.

Its sky is an endless dusk drowned in fog, a damp shroud sagging forever. The ground is ruins and scars—corpse-mountains, magma like open veins, cities hollowed like shells.

According to the three-headed hellhound, Hell’s done for, like a candle guttered in wind. Millennia ago, when devils and angels clashed at the Sealed Land, they stirred a sleeping ancient like thunder waking a mountain.

Sensing the tremor, Hell’s denizens slammed the gate shut like an iron lid, but they never knew the horror had already slipped in like a shadow under a door.

“Hell’s creatures are almost all dead, bled like a sea turned red,” the hellhound whimpered. “That thing is a True God. He came in wounded, then butchered Hell to feed on it—souls as fuel, bones as mortar. A few centuries back, the twelve Hell Lords fought him anyway; only one crawled home.”

The hellhound hid behind Ouyang like a trembling shadow. A True God is the kind who can set the world’s hymn ringing, like striking a bell in the bones of creation. Names vary for such beings, masks over the same face.

In the Other Shore’s terms, they’re called Tiered Beings, rungs on a ladder into the void. In common speech, people call them gods above gods, like stars above stars.

In Ouyang’s memory, a magitech empire once forged engines to touch the constellations; they called Tiered Beings Overlords of the Starry Sky, crowns hung in the dark.

Ancient realms like the Divine Realm and the Demon World, with lineages deep as roots, call them True Gods, a thunder-name in a temple.

The twelve Hell Lords were Primordial Deities, mountains with old snow. But even maimed, the camel is larger than the horse: that dying True God crushed eleven of them and swept Hell clean, leaving only scattered embers of life.

“The last Hell Lord said the True God fell below his realm when he was wounded,” the hellhound added, voice thin as smoke. “He wants the endless lives of Hell as sacrifices, to make the world’s hymn ring again.”

From the hellhound, Ouyang learned the lone survivor hid with Hell’s last elites, a lantern in a cave. The hellhound served by her side, living through that age of despair like a dog in winter rain.

But this three-dog had ideals like a spark cupped in paws. He wouldn’t cower forever under a lord’s cloak, heart pounding like a trapped bird.

There was no hope left inside Hell; that truth sat like ice in the gut. If the True God recovered, despair would fall like night. So their only hope lay outside, like a light past the wall.

Through perils like cliffs and fires, the hellhound never turned aside. Scarred paws and stubborn breath carried him to the Gate of Hell that had once opened.

And then the wall hit back: he couldn’t open it, like teeth biting iron.

That door, which led to the underground of the Source World, had been torn open by twelve Hell Lords together, like giants hewing a tunnel. They’d barely sniffed fresh air when the crisis rolled in like black tide, so the twelve slammed it shut again, locked tight as a tomb.

Sealed by the Hell Lords themselves, the door was an anvil. A scrawny three-dog like him couldn’t pry it with claws like needles.

So he squatted by that gate and scratched, rain on iron, for two hundred and fifty years—an endless winter of patience. One day a whisper bled through from the other side, a thread of light in the seam.

Gripping that thread, he finally worked the gate open, like easing a rusted hinge.

He burst into the world and ran for the strongest nearby—Ouyang—like a starving wolf scenting fire, begging for reinforcements. There was that whole business of Ouyang tossing him a bone to tease him, a quick comedy under a dark sky.

Then he laid out the story, roots and branches, and Ouyang rallied a crowd like banners in wind. For his own hide, the hellhound even bribed Moer with a hill of cotton candy, sweet fog piled high, to borrow the other two Dark Trinity Artifacts from Little Night.

With the Dark Trinity Artifacts in hand, his black-and-white twin wings unfurled like night and frost, and a cadre of allies fell in step like blades in a rack.

Ouyang led them through the Hell Gate, a plunge into smoke like diving into dusk.

—

“This… this is the Hell Lord you meant?” The words dropped like a stone into a still pool.

Led by the hellhound, Ouyang and company reached Hell’s last refuge, a “Hell Refugee Camp” raised like a lone lantern in fog.

“Meow. Outsiders, welcome to Hell’s last camp, meow.” A cat-eared girl, cute as a porcelain figure, wagged her tail like a metronome when she saw them.

Yes—this adorable cat-eared loli was the last surviving Hell Lord, the final ember in a snowfield.

She came to greet them herself, tail swaying like a willow switch; where was a Hell Lord’s dignity in that? Ouyang’s hand moved on instinct and stroked her head, fingers combing soft hair like warm silk.

The cat-eared girl closed her eyes, pleased as a sunlit cat, tail swishing left and right like a pendulum.

Then she remembered herself like waking from a dream. She was a Hell Lord, after all. Realizing how she’d just acted, the dignified ruler froze like a statue dusted in frost.

“Meow, don’t treat me like a cat-eared maid, meow!” She slapped Ouyang’s right hand aside, a little paw batting rain away. It didn’t help; the next beat, his left hand came down just as naturally, a second breeze on the fur.

“Meow!”

A sharp smack dropped Ouyang’s head like a felled reed. “Ouyang, you’re making trouble for others,” Xi scolded, voice cool as moonlight. “That’s very rude.”

Heat rose in his face first, embarrassment like a blush of fire. He turned slowly and realized his wife was right behind him, shadow soft as silk.

“Ahem… sorry, sorry—habit, you know… I didn’t mean it.” Xi tugged him back like a hand on a kite string, and Ouyang apologized to the cat-eared girl, words bent like a bow. He wouldn’t admit a sudden weakness for cute things; anyone would want to pet something that adorable.

After a bit of talk, Ouyang finally understood why Hell Lord Christo had become a loli—Christo Clavi Corneliafil, a name long as a banner.

She’d been grievously wounded when she fought that True God, breath like a candle in wind. To hold her form at all, she’d shrunk into this loli shape; in her prime, by her own proud claim, she’d been a statuesque queen, a blade in velvet.

None of that was the point, though, not today.

The point was the pressure in the air—Ouyang had felt the Tiered Being’s aura from far off, a storm-bell tolling through bone. They marched openly toward the refuge, and if that wounded Tiered Being didn’t notice, he was blind as a mole.

The eternal dusk sky twisted into a vast vortex, fog torn like wet cloth. A demon flickered within, half-hidden: blood-red bat wings, curved bull horns, pupils like a snake’s, a body stitched from beasts into a human shape like a chimera.

“The Demon Monarch!” Xi’s eyes tightened, sharp as drawn steel.

In Ouyang’s memory, the Abyss had only one Monarch left, Safix, a skeleton king like a crown of bone. This creature looked like a menagerie in boots, a collage that didn’t match.

Seeing his doubt, Xi explained, voice steady as a plucked string: “He was once a Demon Monarch.”

Once, the Abyss had many Monarchs, banners like a forest. Then the Other Shore invaded; the rest either fell like stars or vanished like smoke, leaving only one.

If Xi remembered right, the Monarch before them had been the strongest, the only one among them who’d ever set the world’s hymn ringing, a king who’d climbed the Tier.

“Later, that strongest Monarch disappeared,” she added, words like snow on a grave. “No one knew where he went, until now.”

This called for the Other Shore’s archivist with the fullest records: Azure Bird. “Saya, pull the file,” Ouyang said, gaze cutting like a knife. “What’s his deal, popping up like this?”

Head bowed, Saya searched like a diver in a black sea.

Seconds crawled by, ticks like drips in a cave.

“Found it—eleven-star clearance,” Saya said, her voice a cool bell.

Eleven-star clearance: in the Other Shore, only the seven former Watchers had that. Twelve stars belonged to one alone—Azure Bird, a crown above crowns.

The Demon Monarch before them… a pitiful tale, a banner dragged in mud. In the Sixth Epoch, the Abyss was invaded by a squad from the Other Shore. As the strongest Monarch, he was captured alive by several captains of the Crimson Night Star, a net hauled tight.

They flayed him with experiments—dissection like knives on ice, soul-splitting like mirrors shattered—every cruelty written into a body that wouldn’t die.

To catch a Tiered Being alive is rare as a blue comet; they used him like prime material, no scrap wasted on the table of horrors.

His misery limped on into the early Eighth Epoch, when at the Sealed Land the God Emperor and the Dominator ran the “Return” Plan—words like iron on parchment. Countless Primordial Deities and several Tiered Beings were trapped there like moths in amber.

The God Emperor and the Dominator vanished the whole Seventh Epoch, hunting Tiered Beings like wolves chasing stags.

They drained the captured powers dry to fuel “Return,” a forge fed with stars. Most creatures died there, husks like burnt leaves. The strongest Demon Monarch survived, but he played dead—still as stone—hoarding strength and ducking the Other Shore’s checks like a fish in weeds.

Azure Bird’s files even note the feigned death, ink like a lifted brow. Those people knew he was pretending, but a mere First Tier wasn’t a priority; after “Return,” they had heavier mountains to move.

Hearing Saya out, Ouyang couldn’t help wiping cold sweat for the guy, sympathy like a cloak thrown over a shivering back. Brother, you’ve had it rough.

The sky roared in answer, clouds like beasts bellowing, as if the Demon Monarch had heard the report and flew into a shamefury, a storm breaking its leash.