“What was that sound?!”

Hearing a strange howl overhead, the Fallen warriors jerked their heads up, their attention peeling off the crowd outside the forest and climbing into the night sky.

A flock of shadows poured across the canopy, eerie and packed tight, smothering the moonlight that had been dripping through the leaves like silver rain.

The Demon Realm Forest, dim to begin with, sank deeper into a grim dusk, like a pond under storm clouds.

But the Fallen were Fallen—born of the Dark Spirit Empire, a land of long nights and endless woods—so this deeper shade didn’t blind their hunter’s eyes.

The nearest warriors caught the shapes mid-flight, sharp as owls on a branch.

Their forms were uncanny, alien silhouettes, and the warriors hissed, “Beasts?!”

The intruders offered no time for answers, only the sharp mercy of steel.

The vanguard drones, once they marked targets, dove into the tree sea like falcons stooping into reeds.

They came with a raider’s speed, swooping as they closed on the warriors, and unleashed cold-blue fire on each marked point, merciless as winter hail.

Rat-tat-tat. Whoosh, whoosh.

The sound ran like prairie wind combing broad swath, and like stones knocking down a gorge into a jagged lake.

Trees toppled in a line, chains of trunks falling like dominos; screams tore open the hush, each cry a torn banner in the night.

After a stretch of cruelty fit for a battlefield’s ledger, the vanguard rose back above the tree sea, leaving behind ground scraped raw like plowed scars.

First volley complete, the vanguard had pressed a brutal advantage; out of seven hundred Fallen, two hundred lay still, night-black eyes glazed.

“It’s the enemy!” The commander finally clawed free of panic, saw the strikes were organized, and barked orders sharp as spearpoints.

“Don’t let those things near the altar!” His shout cracked like a whip, dragging men upright from fear.

Under command, the rattled warriors steadied; bowstrings sang like taut vines, and Battle Aura hurled stones and blades, each man trying to swat hawks from the crown of the forest.

“Why so noisy?” An elder in ash-blue finery, old wood staff in hand, walked out from the deep forest like a root rising, voice a cold river aimed at the commander.

“Why so many dead?” His eyes skated over the growing sprawl of bodies, a winter glance without warmth.

“Priest!” The commander rushed in and reported, breath ragged, “We’re under attack by an unknown force!”

He pointed to the swarm wheeling above the trees, wild as crows over carrion.

Called “Priest,” the Fallen elder lifted his gaze along the finger’s line, and a dim arcane glow leaked from his eyes like dusk-fire through fog.

In a moment, the glow drew back like a tide leaving stones bare; the Priest lowered his chin and said, sure as a hammer strike, “Not unknown at all. They’re thralls of the Dark Blood Clan.”

“What?!” The commander staggered on the word, stunned and baffled.

The Priest smiled, thin as a knife’s edge. “Many in our Gaia Empire oppose the Hymn Project. But only one is this brazen—the queen’s third princess, Shelika.”

“Didn’t she die?” The commander’s confusion hung like smoke.

The Priest chuckled again, a fox under moonlight. “A tale the Council tells to unify the herd. Let me swat these flies first.”

He raised his staff; at the tip, green light budded like a leaf, then thrust skyward like a spear.

Ping, ping, ping!

Above, the vanguard swarm burst and fell, flames popping like bitter seeds, until not a single machine haunted the sky.

The sight lifted the warriors’ spirits like wind in banners.

The commander shouted fresh orders, hot as iron, “Shelika’s defected! Find that Blood Clan rat hiding in the trees!”

“No need.” The Priest smiled, sure as a hunter in tall grass.

A voice breathed through space, close and far, “You speak of a traitor…”

“Do you mean this humble self?” With the last note, bats poured from eight directions like ink, and out of that violet bloom stepped a beauty, a girl radiant as a night-blooming flower.

The beauty was Fulin in the guise of Shelika.

Fulin played Shelika with high ceremony and cool poise, arriving like a silk banner over a moonlit terrace, breathtaking enough to stun a line of men.

Shaken by face and spectacle, the warriors tightened their grips; blades rose like a forest of thorns, all aimed at “Shelika.”

“Traitor! You dare show alone!” The commander leveled his sword, his rage a cracked drum.

“Hold.” The Priest lifted a hand and smoothed the air, then stepped forward with a smile like warm oil. “Lady Shelika, I know your displeasure with the Council’s methods. But don’t turn that into betrayal of the Gaia Empire. You’ve stayed in Doran long enough. Tell me all you know, and the Wasteland Deity will strike without delay.”

The confidence in his tone felt like a trap sprung; Fulin’s heart tensed first, a cold bell tolling inside her, before her face stayed serene.

So Shelika answered nothing, and instead asked, voice cutting like a frost-edged fan, “How far has the Hymn Project advanced?”

“As your first question?” The Priest’s smile soured sweetly. “Fine, I’ll tell you.”

“Just recently, with the bishops united, the Wasteland Deity descended upon our Holy City—vast in form, sacred in bearing, pure as a high winter, a royal griffon ruling the earth.”

“Though this Wasteland Deity is proud as a storm-stallion, we found its most fitting rider. And now—”

His voice rose like trumpets at dawn. “As soon as the altar rite completes, the Deity will descend upon this unclean land, purify all things, and Doran will be our newborn holy ground!”

He threw both hands skyward, a man praising the firmament, face devout and dripping pity like dew.

Outward, Shelika’s gaze stayed cool, but inside, Fulin’s sorrow pooled first, heavy as lead water.

She knew “purify” meant slaughter; let this pass, and Doran would run with blood, a man-made hell in the trees.

“Is that so.” Shelika kept her aloof tone, and pointed like a needle at the Priest. “Then I’ll have to end you.”

The Priest’s sinister laugh crawled like ivy. “You claim no betrayal, yet I feel no sacred breath of the Earth Mother from you. Only arrogance. Only the folly of stubborn will…”

His grin twisted into a mask. “Traitor, become a sacred foundation!”

He called up globes of lightning, and arcane power whipped the air until the forest felt like a brewing monsoon.

Against storm and thunder, Shelika stood calm as a still lake, a quiet that looked fragile and frightening.

The warriors cheered, loud as crows in a wheat field.

The Priest roared, drunk on his gale. “Without the Earth Mother’s blessing, you’re a common Blood Clan mage. With only blood-thralls, you’ll never match me!”

As the lightning orbs flew, Shelika’s smile answered first, cold and exquisite, a blade wrapped in silk. “Oh?”

The word fell, and then—boom!

A thunderclap burst through the trees like a god’s drum, and—

“No… impossible…” The Priest whispered, clutching his gut, a hole burning through flesh. Blood gushed like a broken spring.

The sight stunned every eye, a silence dropping like snow.

Warriors howled and rushed Shelika, steel flashing like river fish, but before blades could kiss her, the same fate carved them open.

Boom. Boom—

Air shattered like crystal struck, and the red scatter drove minds into panic, a fever of crimson.

Shelika’s smile blossomed again, effortless and elegant, and she breathed the name of the technique like perfume. “Marksman Drones.”

Shift the lens five hundred meters away, deeper into the Demon Realm Forest, where shapes twist like dreams and shadows sit thick, an island of secrecy under knotty boughs.

Dozens of machines clung there—iron spiders the size of men, limbs arched like the moon’s ribs.

These were the Marksman Drones Shelika named.

They gripped fat trunks with metal legs like hooked claws, anchoring their bodies like barnacles to stone—

So the gun-rods, thick as an arm, could stab true from each iron belly.

Fulin conceived them as Marksman Drones, made manifest by Shelika’s Blood Armament, crimson will turned to iron.

Each shot struck with force rivaling an eighth-tier spell, long-range fangs snapping from the dark to bite the throat.

When the vanguard couldn’t press in, the marksmen took the stage, cool as night rain.

Yet the marksmen had a flaw—no self-aim. They needed a spotter, eyes like hawks, to feed precise positions.

So Shelika showed herself, bait and beacon both, letting the far guns pluck life like fruit.

Thunder rolled again and again, the Priest’s body finally sinking fully into its own shadowed pool, and the commander fell too, toppled like a felled pine.

“Good. The obstacles are cut. Only you remain.” Shelika licked her lips, a fox’s tease, smile wicked and soft.

She spread her hands, and behind her the silhouette of bat wings unfurled like night unfolding, blood threads weaving into crimson lace—

She summoned a fresh host of vanguard, a swarm like locusts, like the reaper’s knives fanned in a ring—

Rat-tat-tat. Whoosh, whoosh.

The forest rang with that crisp, almost sweet noise, like ice struck with silver.

It didn’t last long. The Demon Realm Forest slipped back to silence, a pond under stars.

Shelika walked through a carpet of bodies, feet like a swan’s over a scarlet lake, heading deeper where they’d tried to bar her path.

“So this is the altar?” She stared ahead. On a lone stone pillar, an obsidian crystal rested like night’s heart.