“That would be me.”

A cold, sandpaper voice came first, then a girl in red—red hair, red dress—bloomed before Ye Weibai like a scarlet flame in snow.

Unlike Misfortune and Nightfall, whose bodies were wrapped in gray and black motes like storm grit, the crimson girl called the War Deity floated in the air like a lantern in wind. No howling particles circled her; her short red hair and short red skirt just flicked like grass on a breeze. Ye Weibai could see every line of her figure, pale skin like porcelain in moonlight, and a face where both irises burned like twin coals.

Aside from those fire-lit eyes, she looked like any high school girl, a sparrow among hawks. She didn’t wear a screaming particle tempest like the other two; she was quiet water beside crashing surf.

She stood calm, and her face was calm, like a still pond under dusk.

But as Ye Weibai looked at her, a hush fell in his chest like falling ash; Crimson—she might be the strongest here, a blade wrapped in velvet.

Across the way, Nightfall’s slowly darkening expression was proof, a cloud thickening before rain.

“Little Red~ if you came any faster, I’d be paste already~” Misfortune laughed, complaining as if humming in a storm.

She said she’d be meat paste, yet her smile sharpened, like a kid tasting pepper candy.

The red-haired girl answered earnestly, voice steady as iron: “Tracking your coordinates took me a while.”

“What happened?”

“While I was walking the spatial tunnel, I ran into Void mid-way, and tangled for a bit,” she said, like meeting a reef in a current.

“Wao~ that one, huh~ such a hassle!” Even Misfortune’s playful tone wrinkled, like silk snagging on thorn. “How’d you bump into her?”

“By chance. She’s still looking for her younger brother,” Crimson said, the words dropping like pebbles in a well.

Misfortune shook her head, speechless, like a cat scolding rain: “Ah, that siscon Deity. I told her last time—her brother’s long dead~ even his soul’s gone to dust, no way to reincarnate, and she just won’t believe it.”

Crimson was quiet for a beat, a pause like a held breath. “...No wonder she asked me to punch you if I saw you.”

“Wao~ you’re joking! Take your punch, and it’s either I die—” Misfortune’s lips curled up like a crescent blade, smiling while her voice cooled like night air, “—or you do.”

Ye Weibai blinked, a spark of shock flaring like struck flint: Misfortune, who even made Nightfall work, dared to say that to the War Deity… where was that confidence born?

The red-haired girl voiced no doubt. She spoke with the seriousness of a drawn bow: “I understand. Fifty-fifty. I don’t fight unprepared. Without more than fifty percent, I won’t swing at you.”

“Ahaha~ what a touching answer,” Misfortune replied, flippant as a leaf on wind.

“Crimson.” Far off, Nightfall’s voice cut in cold as ice water, slicing their talk.

“You here to steal my prey too?”

“No.” Crimson turned back to Nightfall, face all earnest, and said words that crawled like frost: “I only came to beat you to death.”

“Wao! This Deity’s so cocky!” Misfortune whooped, a firecracker in a quiet lane.

Nightfall didn’t flinch, but a smile slowly pulled at her mouth like a shadow stretching at dusk. “You think you can?”

“I don’t know, so I want to try. If I can, I kill you. If I can’t, I’ll say it next time,” the red-haired girl answered, grave as a stone. She extended her right hand, palm up like a white plate catching snow, fingers unfurling one by one like bamboo shoots. In her empty palm, something invisible and colossal seemed to surface like a whale from deep black water. Around her, space itself spidered with twisting black cracks like ice on a river.

Thud.

At the sight of that spotless palm, Ye Weibai’s heart jolted like a drum strike, and bile climbed his throat like dark tide.

“Don’t look!”

A hand came fast and warm, covering his eyes like a shutter. It was Misfortune. At his ear she spoke with rare seriousness, voice a low bell: “That’s Crimson’s divine art. A normal human who sees it—dies.”

“...” Ye Weibai’s breath hitched like a snagged thread, then he nodded, the motion small as a snowflake.

So this was a Deity who bore the title War Deity… a presence utterly different from Nightfall and Misfortune, like steel against silk.

Just to see was to die. That’s how cruel the gap is, between gods and men, like a cliff between shores.

Ye Weibai closed his eyes, resigned. Darkness fell like a hood. He had only sound, like a blind man counting rain.

Misfortune’s playful voice floated, light as confetti: “Then, Little Red, I’m leaving this to you~ I’m off~”

“Trash! Trying to run?” Nightfall’s voice came cold from afar, a knife in winter air.

A moment later, a tsunami of tearing wind roared from far to near, like a jet screaming low—then, at the last instant, it unraveled in silence, a wave turning to mist.

Crimson spoke, unhurried, steady as a mountain: “Your opponent is me. Nightfall—take this punch, will you?”

“...”

And then, a silence like a sealed tomb.

What happened?

With eyes shut, Ye Weibai felt nothing, as if even his ears had been packed with snow.

After a long while, Nightfall’s voice came again, weak at the edges like smoke. “Ye Weibai—”

Ye Weibai stiffened, spine straight as a blade in frost.

“Sooner or later, I’ll kill you.”

“...”

Ah, a Deity said she’ll kill me someday, like thunder promising rain. How unlucky.

But hey, didn’t I just dodge a disaster, like a boat slipping past a reef?

Ye Weibai was quiet for a breath, then his lips pulled into that familiar shy, calm smile, a lantern behind paper. Toward where Nightfall stood, he smiled and said, “Then come—Little Black.”

Nightfall’s voice jumped high, a spark hitting oil: “Lit—!?”

Boom!

A gale slammed his face like a tidal wing.

“Waooooo~ she’s super mad~ kid, you’re awesome!” Misfortune laughed fearless, laughter ringing like bells in a storm.

“We’re going~ we’re going~ hold tight, we shove off~!”

Whoosh!

A razor shriek of air ripped his ears for a heartbeat, like a needle through silk.

If it had lasted longer, Ye Weibai thought he’d go deaf, like glass cracking. Thankfully, after that instant, the world sank into a strange quiet, still as deep water.

He felt, like a blind fish sensing current, that he was no longer in that “inner world.” They moved instead through something like a tunnel, a throat of wind.

“Don’t open your eyes yet. If you lock eyes with Them, you’ll get dragged away,” Misfortune said, voice low as moss. “If you get dragged, that’s trouble~ I’m not Void, that girl with the power of the void. I won’t be able to find you~”

Ye Weibai snapped his almost-open eyes shut again, lids sealed like lacquer. “...Them?”

Misfortune explained, words like pebbles rattling down a slope: “Them—the Void Forgetters. Remnants of the war of the gods. Twisted matter born from Deities’ corpses—no shape, no mind, no will. All we know is, they nest in void channels and feed on the void and on living things.”

Too many strange names poured like stars; Ye Weibai didn’t know where to place his hands, his thoughts gusting like leaves.

He stayed quiet a long time, then decided to ask from the roots, voice a soft flint. “Little Ash… now, can you tell me what this is all about?”

“Little Ash? I can be called that~” Misfortune didn’t mind; she laughed big, a river over stones, with a hint of trouble knitting her brow. “How to put it… I’m not great at explaining~”

“The story starts with—the Third War of the Gods. Don’t ask me about the first two; I don’t know, fog over water~ Anyway! After that brutal war, most of the gods died, like stars falling from a winter sky.”

“The dead ones split—corpses from Godheads. The corpses, I said, drifted in void rifts and birthed all those weird things like mold on bread. The Godheads floated all over the World, and some non-gods picked one up and turned into new Deities.”

“Me~ I picked up the last Misfortune’s Godhead and became the new Misfortune,” she said, proud as a cat with a stolen fish.

“What about Nightfall and the War Deity?” Ye asked, words careful as stepping stones.

“Those two are different. Nightfall seems like the last god’s reincarnation, not a half-baked one like me. Little Red’s even scarier—she’s one of the few who survived the war of the gods, a true Deity, iron to the core.”

“She’s absurdly strong. Sadly… my divine art hard-counters her, like water to fire~”

“Uh, I’m drifting~ Anyway, now all kinds of gods are running wild across the World and every dimension, brawling and smashing, like storms wrecking fields. That ‘inner world’ earlier was one of the battlefields. They say it’s where Sword, first in slaughter, fought the most secretive Doll—so it ended up that ruined,” she said, painting rubble with words.

“So, the strongest among the gods finally felt the tide turning bad. They started a game, using rules like chains to bind the gods—”

Here, Misfortune’s voice turned serious and cold, a blade drawn in moonlight. “Listen close now—Ye Weibai, I didn’t save you for free.”

“You’ll be my piece, Misfortune’s piece, in this game.”

Ye Weibai answered without a blink, calm as a lake: “We agreed on that from the start, didn’t we? More than that, I want the rules.”

“Right~ we did.” Misfortune giggled, a windchime, then went on:

“Borrowed Relay—that’s the rule.”

“Instead of fighting on battlefields, the gods decided to use beings other than gods as scoring tokens. They’ll borrow things from them as the scoring object—an arm, a hand, a head, a soul, a life, fear, happiness, joy—anything works! Once chosen, it can’t be changed, that’s the base law.”

“As for the scoring standards and the judge—those are set by the currently strongest among the gods—Trade,” she said, dropping the name like a weight.

With it finally laid bare, Ye Weibai took a long time to digest, thoughts sorting like grains through a sieve. Maybe he’d seen too much already; he was calmer than he’d imagined, a stone under surf. He asked:

“So… Nightfall wanted to take ‘the fear right before death’ from me?”

“Yeah~!” she sang, a spark in dry grass.

“What about Crimson?”

“Her… I don’t know,” she said, a shrug in the dark.

“And you?”

“Me—ahahaha.” Even sightless, Ye Weibai could picture the smile curdling into malice, like honey turning to tar.

“The desperate yet earnest tears of a girl—that’s what I want most.”