[World] Genesis
His days spun without a notch, like a millstone grinding the same grain.
He drifted the river like a leaf; when the sun burned, he baked outside like clay; when rain drummed, he holed up in the little house.
When the food from home ran dry, he took what the current would give, like a heron in dark water; weeds from the silt, chewed to keep scurvy away.
Foul weather found him like wolves on a ridge, yet never again that one night of rage; that cold water swallowing his world felt like a dream he’d forged.
He seemed to strain to live, like a swimmer fighting the tide, yet this [World] felt thin as paper against his skin.
At times he felt like a walking corpse, a lantern with no flame.
Luck, or something like it, stayed by him in a black phantom, a shadow that clung like a tether and kept a coal warm in his chest.
It never spoke, but it took his words like stone takes rain; to keep his tongue from rusting, he spoke to it daily, pebbles into a bottomless well.
He would not step onto that foreign continent, a shore he treated like fire; he even refused his gaze, as if eyes could burn.
A voice in his mind kept tolling like a bell in fog:
—Do not land on that continent, or terror without precedent will rise like a mountain before you.
Out of fear, his body obeyed like a trained bird; he drifted alone and aimless, circling the homeland he’d never reach, like a moth around a dark lamp.
Endlessly, he turned in a [Cycle], a [Cycle], a [Cycle].
Until—one day.
The [Cycle] broke.
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...
—The [Demon King] was born.
It wasn’t rare, like another bead clicking on an abacus; count it, and this was the 9,679th [Demon King].
So many [Demon King]s, tides of power and malice, rushed to drown the [World], yet each wave broke and died, cut down by the [Hero King] and his companions.
On most days, that news stirred panic like wind on wheat, then quieted; people had learned their proverb: if the sky falls, a taller man props it up.
The tall man, always, was the [Hero King], a pillar against the storm.
So many times, [Hero King] and [Demon King] appeared and vanished like constellations behind cloud; the [World] stayed unchanging, a wheel locked in [Cycle], and people learned to sleep to its creak.
But this time was different.
The [atmosphere]—shifted, like pressure before lightning.
First, the 9,678th [Hero King] and his companions—fierce as wildfire and bright with hope—had to burn themselves out to fell the [Demon King], with no time to leave a spark behind; in a thousand years, that was the first such ash.
Second, more fatal than a hidden reef: the current 9,679th [Hero King] stumbled like a child, weaker than a commoner in the street; how could he meet the [Demon King]’s tide?
The [Demon King] kept growing like a storm gathering, while the [Hero King] kept thinning like a wick; the trend had been there like a wet fuse, lacking only a spark.
Most didn’t notice, or noticed and turned away, sweeping dread under the rug like dust.
Humans are born with a knack to forget, like shutters closing at dusk.
But when facts lay bleeding on your doorstep, you couldn’t pretend blind; the stain spread like ink on snow.
The [Demon King] was born, and this time the [Hero King] might not stop it; even if he did, the slope toward ruin felt carved in stone for the [World].
That thought, a thorn as small as a splinter, festered into despair and cold fear.
So people tried, on purpose or by drift, to drown that rumor like kittens in a sack, and raise another rumor in its place.
—This [Hero King] has been bewitched by the [Demon King].
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...
A blaze of white streamlight fell on Aerin, dusting her in silver frost like dawn on grass.
Wind surged like a river through pines, and her golden hair flew like banners.
In her shrinking golden pupils, that streak of white swelled like a moon; the knight’s blade hadn’t touched her skin, yet a marrow-deep chill wrapped her like icewater.
They were so close that Aerin saw the eyes under the white helm, deep and cold like wells in winter.
Those pupils held no killing intent, not even life; they weighed her like a butcher sizes a carcass.
A corpse is, of course, already dead.
Dead…?
Breath ragged like a bellows, Aerin seized as pressure pressed her flat, a mountain settling onto a bird.
For a heartbeat, [Time] turned and swapped; she was back at the manor like a ghost retracing steps, face-to-face with the black iron knight.
Blood fountained and flowers swayed, a cruel spring wind; the dearest person died before her like a candle pinched out.
Weakness, helplessness, panic, grief poured in like floodwater, washing her mind blank and lightless.
She fell as if into the sea, skin gone cold, vision gone black, a stone with no bottom to hit.
She sank, sank, sank.
Until—snap.
Golden powder waltzed before her eyes, like pollen shaken from a bloom.
A blade-wind whooshed past her cheek, shearing a flying strand of gold and grinding it to dust, clean as frost.
Among the sword’s shriek, that tiny sound should have been nothing; in Aerin’s ears it cracked like thunder, and a heartstring twanged and broke.
Something in her, cramped in the shell too long, clawed free at last.
It was—[Fear].
In an instant, everything in her gaze froze, like ink trapped under ice.
Night wind, surf, sword-light, and hair—hung suspended like stars blown out.
In that beat, something cold, lovely, pure, and terrible bloomed in her chest like a white flower, and raced through her limbs, remaking her bones.
The next beat, the world ticked forward like a clock struck.
A knight’s edge kissed her brow like a line of winter.
Then.
She drew.
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...
While [Fear] hatched in Aerin’s chest, Ye Weibai walked the Witchwood Forest like a shadow crossing a lake.
Wet grass muted underfoot, dark as velvet; on both sides, towering trees rose like sentinels, quiet and straight.
Night wind combed the leaves with a dry rasp; branches swayed and danced in moonlight, sketching silhouettes like lurking monstrosities.
Back straight, long black coat fluttering without wind like a pennant, Ye Weibai clasped his hands behind him and stepped on shadows as if a king on tour.
Where he passed, wind, sound, and shadow held their breath like courtiers.
Boulder, bank, or trunk—nothing could bar him; all slipped aside on their own, parting like reeds, yielding the road to the [Demon King].
From above, one would see a new straight road, drawn from the boy in black like a blade-stroke, cleaving the Witchwood Forest like a knife through butter.
[All Things Yield]—that is the [Demon King]’s way of travel, a rite like thunder clearing the sky.
He went on, and on, and on, as if to cross the whole woodland like a spear through silk.
Until he met a giant cross, stark as a gallows, and stopped like a tide against stone.
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