“I don’t understand.”

The blonde girl’s eyes brimmed with foggy confusion, like a valley swallowed by mist.

She knew every word Master Bai spoke, yet strung together they dropped her into cloud and haze.

“The Demon King… I became one?”

“Yes,” Ye Weibai said with iron certainty. “You are the Demon King.”

“But… why?” The chill hit first, a winter blade sliding into her chest; after that came the numbness.

“Because the Demon King appears upon the Demon Seat.”

Her eyes flared wide, like a fawn caught in a sudden lantern. “What?”

“Remember my question—where is the Demon King now?” The black‑haired boy’s voice was steady, like a bell in night fog. “It’s on the Demon Seat.”

Aerin froze for a few heartbeats, then the thought dropped. She looked down at the chair beneath her—plain wood, a quiet thing Master Bai had guided her onto moments ago. This chair… was that?

“Yes. It is.” Ye Weibai nodded, his gaze a cold lake.

Aerin felt frost crawl over her skin. She lifted her head, fixed her gaze on Ye Weibai, the tremor in her lips fluttering like a bird in a storm.

“Master Bai… you’re joking, right?”

“The Hero King doesn’t joke,” Ye Weibai said, solemn as mountain stone, a righteous glow drawn across his face—like he truly was the Hero King.

“How could it be this simple?” Her voice shook; the fear shivered like leaves in winter wind.

“You think it’s simple?” Ye Weibai asked, then answered himself with a faint, tired smile. “You think getting you to say ‘you don’t like being the Hero King’ is simple? No. It’s hard. My Aerin, it’s really hard—hard like prying ice from granite.”

He looked at her whitening face and sighed, the sound like snow falling into a brazier. “Your heart’s been wrapped in layer upon layer of silt; with time that silt set into a hard shell. Breaking that shell isn’t simple. It needs a baptism of ice and fire. And those baptisms… someone has to orchestrate them.”

He didn’t say more, but Aerin understood. Uncle John’s death. The clash with the Temple Knights. The fate of the Witchwood Forest. Each tragedy was a curtain rising—each after she met Master Bai.

It wasn’t hard to guess; she simply refused to guess.

Her eyes reddened in a heartbeat. “You lied to me.”

Ye Weibai released her hand. He rose, took one step back, and looked down at her like a moon watching the sea. “Aerin, being the Hero King isn’t easy.”

He paused, then delivered the night’s deadliest line, a blade sliding under the ribs. “Aerin—you’re not fit to be the Hero King.”

Tears burst forth. Aerin bit her lip, the taste of iron like rain. “No—Master Bai—you—how could—”

She choked. The hurt collided with breath; words broke like thin ice.

“So many people—everyone in the World—doubted me. Only you said you’d make me the Hero King.” She cried, yet her mouth strained into a brittle crescent, a flower forced to bloom on frost. “I get it! Master Bai, you’re testing me, right? Testing if I’m worthy—if I’m qualified?”

Her tear‑filled eyes gleamed—beautiful because they held despair and hope together, like a fragile blossom opening on hard ice, too tender to touch.

Ye Weibai cut the stem without expression.

“Draw your sword,” he said.

“Wha—” She flinched, the sound caught like a bird in a net.

“Draw your sword—Demon King.” The Hero King’s voice rang like steel on stone.

Aerin reeled as if struck by thunder.

“No, no, no—” She curled in on herself, shaking her head like a willow in storm. “You’re lying! Master Bai, you must be lying! How could it be so easy to become the Demon King! How could it be so easy to become the Hero King! It’s just a chair!”

“No. Not just a chair.” Ye Weibai’s words glowed like embers in ash. “It’s a handful of starfire—a spark that lights the powder.”

“What powder?” She stared, seeing a stranger wearing Master Bai’s face, like a familiar house draped in shadow.

“Powder named Fear,” Ye Weibai said. “This chair gives people lost in Fear a reason.”

“What reason?”

“A reason to turn you into the Demon King.”

“I don’t understand!” Her voice rasped, dry as cracked earth.

“Aerin. You still don’t see?” Ye Weibai sighed; a cold wind passed, and the flame danced. “People don’t need a Hero King. They need a Hero King who can kill the Demon King—or at least die with it. That’s what they need. Not someone like you—”

“As the Hero King,” he added with a faint smile, pale as moonlight, “you’re too weak.”

…

…

“The key is to make them feel despair—and then leave them a path.”

The Emperor watched the crowd below, boiling like scalding water—no doubt the whole World seethed the same way.

Moments ago, through the water screen, they watched several scenes—tight, dazzling little plays.

They saw the Church of the Divine’s apex power—the Four Horsemen of Revelation—cut down by four women. A chill ran through them like iron in the blood.

They saw Aerin’s brittle fragility. Anger rose like smoke in a sealed room.

They saw the words Demon King’s Lair burn across the center. Fear swallowed them like a night tide.

It was like a film: the plot pressing forward, atmosphere thickening, until the swell crested. The World moved from the shock of seeing absolute justice and hope—the Four Horsemen—slain, to the fury at Aerin’s paper‑thin weakness, and then to despair when Demon King’s Lair flashed on the water.

And then they heard the black‑haired, black‑eyed boy say—

“Let me be the Hero King.”

“You will be the Demon King.”

Those words fell like flint into tinder.

In that instant, hearts thumped—not with doubt, but with a sudden, reckless thrum—“Could this work?”

Even if a few questioned it, the air swallowed their doubts like fog swallowing a lamp.

They thought it through, and it felt true: if the Demon King dies by the Hero King’s blade, does it matter who is which? End this round of the Cycle, and it’s enough!

Despair and fear began to ebb like tide. In their place surged the wild joy of escape and the glitter of hope.

In those eyes, light flickered—the light of Life, quick and bright as sunrise on water.

They laughed and embraced, as if they already saw the Hero King defeat the Demon King, the World saved. In that breath, the celebration’s drumbeat peaked.

But the Emperor, watching from above, felt his mouth twitch. A bitterness rose like bile; he almost retched. Faces below wept for joy, and he felt sick.

“Not used to it?” the Sky Saintess asked, her voice cool as a winter sky.

“I just think it’s laughable.” The Emperor clenched the locket hiding a photograph, teeth grinding like millstones. “It is a thing condensed from this atmosphere—and for thousands of years we’ve been crushed by this ugly mass into a pack of stray curs?”

The Sky Saintess’s blue eyes were unruffled, a calm lake under wind. “This is humanity. And we are human, too.”

“Don’t lump me in with them.” His face twisted, a mask of thorns. “These swine who know nothing—if not for It—I’d have already—”

“Then you’d already be dead,” she said, light as snow on eaves. “Turned into a Demon King, and killed.”

The Emperor fell silent. He knew she was right. He understood—but grief swelled like a storm front, hard to hold down.

“It’s begun.” Seeing him steady, the Saintess spoke again, soft as a bell through mist.

After a pause, the Emperor nodded. “The true finale—now the curtain draws. The last role—”

It was about to enter.