It (Lament of the Demon King) —
[The baleful star rose from the dead sea of stars.]
[With Misfortune and ruin at its heels, it was born from the foulest mire of this World.]
[All things will remember this moment.]
[For the World will collapse on the seventh day.]
(to be continued)
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...
“Nightmare?”
Crouched before the silver-haired woman, Ye Weibai brushed back the sweat-wet bangs on her brow. Terror still trembled in her twin pupils.
His face reflected in those eyes. She blinked, dazed for a heartbeat. Then the daze shattered like thin ice.
Fear cracked. Fragility fell away. Her expression turned feral, a mask of silver frost.
Her pupils froze, then pulled long to either side. They narrowed into knife-edged, serpentine slits.
“I’m going to kill you.” Her voice drew like a sharp intake of winter air, a threat whispered between teeth.
“Ah? Is that so?” Ye Weibai smiled. He reached out and flicked the transparent greatsword buried in her body.
The blade hummed, a wasp trapped in crystal. It shivered.
Pain flared a dozenfold in an instant. Sweat beaded on her forehead like rain on cold stone; her face blanched. She bit down, made no sound, and glared at him with hate.
“If you’ve got any guts—”
“I won’t kill you.” Ye Weibai smiled. “You’re a very important piece in the future. I won’t kill you. At least, not yet.”
“You’ll regret it. You absolutely will!”
He ignored the threat. He looked at her, and gray motes rose in his black eyes—the color of Misfortune.
The World flipped in his sight at once.
The World became a lattice of Misfortune. In that state, he could trace its gray currents, every thread and eddy clear as frost on glass.
He’d seen the gray fireworks pour into Aerin before. He’d used this sight then.
Now he saw it vividly. A monstrous clot of Misfortune sprawled over the silver-haired woman’s body, vast enough to hollow the gut.
It had a shape. A beast five stories tall. Its upper half was a wild hound without eyes or nose, only a blood-red maw packed with fangs. Its lower half coiled into a spiral that drilled into the crown of her head.
When Ye Weibai looked up at it, the Misfortune lowered its head. It opened that gory mouth and hurled a silent roar down at him.
“Doesn’t even know what to be afraid of.”
His smile thinned. A star of deepest black flickered across his pupils. He glanced at it once.
“...!”
Like a puppy startled by thunder, it whimpered. The massive body shrank into a curl, cowering behind the woman in terror.
—All darkness and all evil bow to the Demon King.
She couldn’t see any of this. Yet instinct said something was wrong. She felt for it—then froze. For one knife-slice of a moment, her draw on the sword’s power and her body’s regeneration dropped to nothing. In that instant, the ability she lived by vanished.
“What did you do to me?!”
Her snarl broke from the throat like a cornered beast’s. Anger, but more fear.
Ye Weibai lowered his head. The gray motes faded from his eyes. He considered. “So that’s how it is.”
As Demon King, his senses were razor-honed. He’d felt her grotesque recovery wink out in that instant.
He understood at once.
This woman’s power—its stink and terror—came from that faceless hound. More precisely, from the Misfortune riding her.
“Hah.” The thought made his heart go cold. It made him laugh anyway. The laugh ebbed; his smile fell away.
“This World is more twisted than I imagined.”
“Being the Demon King this time… suits me just fine.”
“A World this rotten to the core—wouldn’t its destruction be a mercy?”
So thought the Demon King, Ye Weibai.
“Answer me! Bastard! What did you do to me?” Silver was still shouting, her voice raw, her fear echoing across the empty square.
Even staring down death, she’d never shown terror like that—because with the trait of “undying,” she always had a way to live.
But in that heartbeat, her “undying” had been stripped away. She’d felt real death’s bite. It raised every hair on her skin. It almost wrung tears from her.
“What’s with that look?!” Silver caught the shift in his eyes at once.
He only watched her. He didn’t answer.
He had seen through her.
They’d only met twice. But Ye Weibai’s mind, now crowned as a world-breaking Demon King, had climbed to a terrifying peak.
His calculations, his empathy—everything had risen to a crest.
From that height above the clouds, every part of him burned brighter. He was almost someone else.
The Demon King had seen her truth.
This silver-haired woman was bloodthirsty, cruel, arrogant, and lawless. Beneath those tempests lay another truth.
A truth even she might not know.
“But you’ll notice it. Eventually. Because you’ve been chasing it all along.” He snapped his fingers. The greatsword in her body dissolved by more than half. At her current draw, the dregs would be gone by this hour the day after tomorrow.
“Come on then. Try to kill me.” He told Silver what he’d told Aerin in daylight.
“When that time comes, I’ll give you what you truly want.”
He turned and left.
Behind him, Silver’s roars tore the air.
“Bastard!”
“Don’t walk away, damn you!”
“What I truly want? Don’t act like you know me!”
“What I want—what I want—”
“Is to kill—is to kill—YOU!”
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Arcane Time: 11:55.
Five minutes to midnight.
Five minutes until Day [one] of the Demon King’s birth ends.
Ye Weibai sat alone in a chair in the Hero King’s courtyard.
Azure moonlight filtered through the towering canopy. Leaves cut it to ribbons; mottled light spilled down—and not a shred dared touch him.
A hard night wind swept in. The trees swayed. Leaves hissed like steel on silk.
As it passed him, it died. It stilled, unable to lift a strand of his hair.
He didn’t sit straight. One leg crossed. Right elbow on the table. Hand propping his chin, head tilted, lids lowered. Even that lazy pose carried a blade-bright poise.
Alone, with no one near, Ye Weibai bared the Demon King’s bearing.
A King’s presence is born, not donned. Whatever his posture, it makes the ten thousand things bow.
Now, the insect-song faded. The air congealed. The wind did not dare intrude. The moonlight did not dare fall.
Then a gold lightning ripped the Void and split the hush. It speared toward the Demon King.
Without looking up, Ye Weibai lifted a hand to catch the strike.
The instant it met his palm, it rang like gold on jade. It snapped faster, slingshotting back the way it came.
His hand closed on air.
Since his birth, it was his first miss. “Oh?” Ye Weibai lifted his eyes, amused.
From the dark stepped a boy of sixteen or seventeen with cropped gold hair. He caught the lightning—a longsword of hammered gold.
Gold armor cloaked him. He was strikingly handsome. Skin pale. Features fine, almost girlishly beautiful. His gold eyes stared at Ye Weibai, cold as coin in winter.
“Stay away from her,” he said, voice indifferent.
“You mean Aerin?”
The boy’s features mirrored Aerin’s so closely that Ye Weibai frowned. “Her brother?”
Aerin had never said.
The boy didn’t answer. “Her affairs don’t need anyone else,” he said, flat and cold.
“Oh? Can you make her a Hero King?”
“Shut up!” The three words “Hero King” touched a nerve. Anger flashed across his face. “Both of you, shut up!”
When he’d taught Aerin, Ye Weibai had worn arrogance like a blade. Now a stranger barked shut up in his face, and he didn’t show a flicker of anger.
After all, the Demon King’s nature amplifies his worse edges. In daylight, most of it had been for the girl’s sake—a pose for a lesson.
“You… plural?” he murmured, thoughtful.
He wasn’t reaching for a fight. The other boy struck anyway.
“I said shut up!”
He roared. The gold sword cut up from below. A massive golden crescent tore free and crashed toward Ye Weibai like thunder breaking.
“Tsk.”
Even with patience, he was the Demon King.
And truth be told, his patience wasn’t great.
An invisible gale exploded from him. With a low hum, it scythed across the courtyard, swallowed the crescent, and rolled on, unstoppable, toward the golden boy.
Just before it touched, he vanished.
No ripple of magic. The boy simply disappeared.
“Hm?”
Ye Weibai’s mind field opened wide. He swept the manor. He found only two souls.
Uncle John. And Aerin.
He thought a moment, then took a step.
Space twisted. His outline dissolved like foam.
Next instant, he stood in the girl’s bedroom.
And in that breath,
five minutes slipped away.
Midnight arrived.
Day [one] of the Demon King’s birth ended.
Time until the World’s destruction:
Six days remain.
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...
It (Lament of the Demon King) —
(continued)
[On the first day, the Hero King shall cross paths with It.]
[But the gear of fate turns.]
[They pass each other by, strangers both.]
(to be continued)
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