They drifted outside all night, and when dawn lifted like a pale coin, the world stayed the same rock—no cracks, no change.

On the roof, Sarayka the Flame Lizard yawned like a small furnace, rubbed her eyes, and squinted at Ouyang. “Boss, I’m starving. Shouldn’t we head back for breakfast?”

She didn’t understand why they’d stood in the northwest wind that gnawed like wolves; she didn’t understand his cryptic words. Her mind was a still pond—she just followed the boss.

Ouyang coughed, heat flushing his face like embers. “Damn it. Miscalculated. Tried to show off and faceplanted.”

He paced the tiles, his boots tapping like rain. Relief lapped in, cold as tidewater, yet annoyance gnawed like a rat: if Sarayka didn’t get the act, who was he performing for? He’d played to an empty stage.

He sighed, feelings tangled like wet rope. He stared into the brightening sky and made a choice.

“Hey, runt. If I’m your boss, doesn’t that mean you’ll back whatever I do?”

“Not a chance. Boss, you think I’m dumb? If you want to kill me, am I supposed to cheer you on?”

He’d prepared a heartfelt speech like lantern light, but her words cut like broken glass and left him speechless. It wasn’t fair—this goofy lizard he’d lured into the human world had teeth-sharp logic.

In the end, Ouyang conned the lizard again, like a street magician palming a coin.

“First, kid: phase one—level this city. Go full Godzilla and wipe it out before sunset, that red gate of the day. As for human masters, your boss will handle them.” He thumped his chest like a drum.

“But… Boss, if we’re thinking of all life, does destroying this city save the rest?” Her doubt wound like smoke.

“Quit yapping. Do what the boss says. After they die, their souls will be blessed…” The black cat on the ridge kicked the lizard off the roof like a shadow-boot.

Ouyang watched the sun climb, molten as a brass coin. His voice was a thin mist. “I’m sorry.”

Tumbling through the air like a stone flung from a sling, Sarayka had no idea what ran through his head. She’d hesitated at the word “massacre,” her resolve fragile as paper. Then she hit something soft.

Momentum slammed through her. She’d landed on a white horse; blood spattered like roses, viscera spilled like ropes, and life snapped like a string.

“Ah! You damned lizard! My dear Little White—” The blond man, Ferian, screamed like a torn reed. Back in Yulithilis’s garden, Sarayka’s flame breath had nearly cooked him; if not for Yulithilis’s plea, Ouyang would have finished the job—he had a knack for the last strike like a butcher’s clean cut.

Ferian was carried off as if on a wave, his family’s shock rising like a storm surge. They rallied famed royal mages, banners of sigils snapping like flags, and dragged him back from that fire-scarred edge.

Burns are work, not a miracle; to those mages, it was carpentry. Soon Ferian bounced again like spring bamboo.

The elders wanted facts first—origins of the beasts, the whole chain of cause—before judgment. Ferian couldn’t sit still; peacock-proud, he strutted into the street with an expensive mount, his vanity fanning out like a tail.

The horse was a picture: bright-eyed, strong-limbed. Leading that white beauty through the avenue, he drew heads like iron filings to a magnet, every glance a glittering knife.

Watching envy simmer like warm wine, his flame-burned heart finally felt soothed.

But heaven likes its jokes. At his peak of swagger, something fell like a meteor and smashed his horse with a dull boom. He wasn’t riding, just leading, so the blow missed him.

He staggered, breath sparking like a snapped wire, then his poor heart shrieked. “A lizard?! You—yes, you!” Trauma had branded Sarayka’s image into him like a hot iron—he’d remember all his life.

He’d meant to wait for his family to map the beasts and then reclaim face; the enemy struck first, clean as a knife. Cunning. Rage boiled, but his thoughts cooled like poured glass.

“Quick, seize that lizard!” he shouted, and his guards surged like a black tide, boots drumming like hard rain.

Sarayka blinked, blank as a stone. Humans charged, blades flashing like cold moons, intent poisonous as smoke. Before, she’d have slipped away—this maze of a city bristled with magic devices, thunder caged in metal, and its champions hit like hammers. Get surrounded, and you leave breathing like a punctured bellows.

Now it was different. She had a mountain at her back—a boss. No more swallowing sand.

She’d opposed wrecking a human city; in a heartbeat she flipped, approval blooming like fire.

Whoosh—the street burst. Pillars of flame reared like red trees, a ring around her like a crown. At the center, a sea of fire rolled; where she stepped, the ground sloughed into magma, glowing like honeyed glass.

“Run!” “A demon—the flame demon!” “My child, my child is in the house—” Screams tore through the avenue like ripping cloth. Unrestrained, Sarayka matched her title: a lord-tier Flame Lizard. Giant pillars roared, magma flowed like lava rivers, and the fire sea spread across Raviasen like a red tide. From afar, she was a god of flame, steering a storm of fire over the city.

Mages called up water, braiding dragons from foam, but their rivers were nothing against her inferno. Numbers don’t bridge a chasm—ten more men can’t leap a cliff this wide.

—

Elsewhere, the cats finally pried loose something useful from the girl Yulithilis. The room held quiet like a dusk garden.

“When the thing you call the Philosopher’s Stone was taken out, I pulled some information from it. With it gone, I won’t live long…” Yulithilis rubbed swollen eyes, red as petals; the cats were mighty beasts, maybe they had a way. She didn’t want to die—certainly not young.

She hadn’t met the prince who could tilt her heart like a moon; she hadn’t loved like a wildfire. She wanted to watch her parents grey like frost, then slip away gentle as snow.

The living cling—too many threads, too many lights.

Dufei and the White Cat fell silent, their breath thin as paper. Hell Lord Christo and Devila didn’t grasp the Other Shore, though they’d brushed its edge like fishermen touching deep water. It was the Philosopher’s Stone—even a fragment was a mountain of glass beyond their cut.

Most crucial: Ouyang had taken that fragment, and his absence sat like a locked door.

Saya, the one most likely to read the stone, was missing—chasing Ouyang, no doubt. For her, even if Dufei had a knife at his throat, the path to Ouyang would still be the road she ran, feet quick as swallows.

They pitied Yulithilis, but their curiosity flickered toward Mo Rain, a lantern turning.

From the start, both Mo Rain and Yulithilis had tugged information from the fragment. Yulithilis carried it—when it left, senses rang like struck metal.

What about Mo Rain?

Why could she listen to the same stone? Yulithilis lived by its support; remove it, and death padded close like a cat. Her grief was a storm.

Mo Rain’s face held no grief, no shadow of doom. At the moment Ouyang drew the fragment out, she’d gone pale as paper—now, no sorrow at all.

If death wasn’t stalking her, what had bleached her face then?

Under their eyes like lanterns, Mo Rain shook her head, took the watch that ticked with its own will, and slipped from the ducal manor like a ripple. In the streets, fire crawled like red moss; screams, mourning, tears—a rending chorus—filled the prosperous city.

“Ouyang-senior… thank you… you’re a good man.” Flames spread like spilled dye. She faced the direction he’d gone and smiled, soft as spring rain; dimples set like twin stars.

“The truth is too cruel for them. If it’s going to erase them, better you erase them yourself. Then, at least, they can hate something with teeth before they die… Senior, that’s what you think, right?”