—When does a person become a so‑called lower animal?

—Is it after losing something? Reason, calm, cost and gain, the courage to trade yourself for some grand cause?

—No. It should be something purer, more instinctive—like... arrogance, fear, despair.

—Ah... maybe... it is. Then does it mean, if you give animals those things—instinct—they’d become human too? “Vice versa” isn’t always logical, but think it through. It’s possible, right?

—Even if it’s only... possible?

—Even a chance is enough.

“What?”

“Mm?”

“Master Bai... did you say something?”

“No.” The boy with chopped black hair and a flowing black robe turned a fraction. “Nothing.”

Aerin watched Master Bai’s shape fold into the shade, while his eyes—black and white like ink and snow—kept a steady shine.

The purity of that black, the glassy white, stunned her gaze. She squinted. Then a streak of fierce gold cut across her vision.

Sunlight. For some reason, today’s light was blinding. She looked up past the canopy. Dawn, usually a pale wash, was brushed with tender, cottony gold.

The gold felt familiar to her, and faintly threatening. She feared that light. She hunched in, as if to dodge its touch.

Ye Weibai flicked his hand. Darkness rallied like troops to a trumpet. It whooshed up and veiled the sun, leaving a thin film. The world dimmed.

Darkness again. Yet her fear eased.

She trailed Master Bai. Whether on purpose or not, they kept a single body’s distance.

In the black forest, only the rhythm of crushed leaves spoke. A pin could fall and sing.

“Aerin.” The boy ahead spoke first.

“Mm?”

“I asked you before.” Without looking back, Ye Weibai’s soft voice threaded the dark. “Have you thought the one by your side—say, me—might be the last Witch—”

“Master Bai!!” The girl’s voice rose, raw with anger. It cut him off.

Not just anger; grief and pain ran with it.

Just as you couldn’t refuse a girl’s coy plea a moment ago, if you heard this cry of despair, you couldn’t keep speaking.

So Ye Weibai fell silent.

They walked on. And on. How vast was the Witchwood Forest? It felt like a corridor of night without end.

At last, the girl spoke again.

“...Master Bai.” Her voice turned soft—no, fragile. Like dawn’s dew, trembling on the verge of a fall.

She pleaded. “Please don’t say things like that again.”

“Mm.” Ye Weibai nodded.

He answered too fast, as if waiting for her to ask. So readily that the ease itself made Aerin uneasy.

“M‑Master Bai, you, you...” She faltered.

“Aerin.” He cut her off. “Let’s have a lesson.”

“A... lesson?” Aerin echoed, adrift.

“Yes.” Ye Weibai went on. “Do you know why people get angry?”

Aerin opened her mouth. No words came. His question struck from the dark. She didn’t know the answer. After her outburst, she felt unfit to speak.

He answered himself. “Anger is rooted in fear.”

“Anger is rooted... in fear,” Aerin repeated.

“Yes.” He nodded. “A lion roars at a leopard because it fears losing its prey. People bristle at the strong because they fear losing resources—especially in love.”

Aerin nodded. It was simple, clear. Still, she said, “In love... isn’t that jealousy?”

“A different mask. At the core, it’s fear.” Ye Weibai’s tone was cool. “Anger is fear. Sadness is fear. Jealousy is fear. Greed is fear. Everything can be read as fear.”

“Everything?”

Her heart lurched. She trusted Master Bai, yet it sounded too absolute. Worse, as his outline melted into dark, she felt compelled to resist. She needed a counterexample. Because it was too cruel. Too cold.

But no rebuttal came. That made his words feel even more real. And more despairing.

“What we call fear is, in truth—the will to live,” Ye Weibai said.

The phrase will to live sparked in Aerin’s eyes. Out of nowhere, an image struck like lightning—two strangers talking, perhaps about fear. She blurted, “A boulder falls. A mother shoves her child away and dies. If it’s fear—if it’s the will to live—she wouldn’t do that, right?”

“No. Both yes and no.” Ye Weibai’s answer left her adrift.

“Master Bai. I don’t understand.”

“The same, because it’s rooted in fear—in the will to live.” Ye Weibai said, “Different, because even if it’s the will to live, what ‘to live’ means shifts by person, creature—even species.”

His voice stopped. Aerin, head bowed to listen, looked up, puzzled. He had halted.

“Master Bai?”

“Aerin. We’re here.” Ye Weibai’s voice went very gentle. Like a child with one candy left, reluctant to eat it. Like hands opening an old box, careful and slow.

She had never seen him like this.

It didn’t delight her. Panic rose instead, like a curtain lifting on something ill‑omened.

She stepped closer. Then she saw it: a small wooden house before him.

A cabin three meters high, raised on a base. A flight of sallow planks led up.

An apricot‑red pitched roof. Dark red logs, stacked for the walls. One window. One door. A black curtain sealed the window from within. The inside held its breath.

The thick dark had hidden it. So had the clumped leaves. Only near did the cabin surface.

Too abrupt. Why would a cabin sit in the Witchwood Forest? Could the rumors be true? Does a Witch live here?

Staring at the cabin felt like staring at a grave.

Fear rose for no reason. Aerin stepped back.

Ye Weibai stopped her. Not with a hand, but with a look.

“Aerin. This is our destination.”

“But—what is our goal?” He stood an arm’s length away. Panic climbed like ivy. She must not run. Even as running whispered sweetly.

“Let’s go in first.”

The steps creaked, each note a dry reed. Ye Weibai went up to the landing.

Then he looked back at the girl who still couldn’t move.

A shiver snapped through her. In the dark, the black in Master Bai’s eyes had flooded his gaze. His eyes were pure black now. And in this deep black, they shone.

Terror clamped her heart. Her soles scraped the ground. Without noticing, she had backed three, four steps.

“Aerin.” Ye Weibai said softly. “Think about what I just said.”

She froze.

What he’d said—

“Fear”...

“Will to live”...

The words spun and collided in her head.

She was still dazed when he went on. “I didn’t finish. Fear and the will to live are the same. But what ‘to live’ means isn’t. For some, it’s survival. For others, it’s a life.”

The beast called fear bucked harder in her chest. Aerin’s breath quickened. Air wouldn’t go in. Yet his voice held a thread of clarity through the tangle. She gasped, “T‑that mother, what she sought was ‘a life’?”

“Perhaps.”

“P‑perhaps?” Pain rasped her voice. Something invisible pressed her throat and choked her words.

Ye Weibai only watched. In this moment, he could not help.

He sighed. “Yes. No one can truly know another. So I can only say—perhaps.”

“I... I understand.” Aerin’s back met a tree. She had never felt such weariness. As if every bone had been shattered. Every muscle ground to paste. A whisper brushed her ear, urging her to sleep, to run.

She wanted sleep. She was so tired.

But ahead, Master Bai was watching.

“That mother’s ‘to live’ was ‘a life’...”

She braced a palm against the bark. She pushed off. She bit down and stepped forward.

“A life not where she keeps breathing, but—”

The first step is the hardest. Once it lands, inertia or courage carries the second.

She took another step. Then two. Then three.

Until she stood before Ye Weibai.

The blonde girl’s face was bloodless. She panted, drenched. Cold sweat fell like rain. Yet by her strength alone, she reached him.

Then she said, “A life... where she sees her child grow up safe and whole. Am I right, Master Bai?”

Ye Weibai smiled. “Perhaps you are.”

Then he steadied the limp Aerin.

He opened the door.

They stepped into—

the Demon King’s Lair.

...

...