It
The Hero King has companions.
The Demon King does too.
...
...
When Ye Weibai spoke—
“[Hero King]—Ye Weibai.”
Her heart kicked hard, a startled bird under stormlight.
Not at the title “[Hero King],” but at the name “Ye Weibai.”
Ye—Wei—bai.
Her pupils loosened like ink bleeding in water.
Softness slipped over her face.
A breeze brushed her skin.
Gold from Master Bai washed her eyes, twin mirrors of light.
She began to remember—no, shards rose from a grave.
They spun, leaving fine scratches.
They seemed casual, yet stabbed her fragile heart.
That was the beginning.
Fate’s great wheel rumbled in shadow.
A golden-haired girl met a black-haired boy upon an arena stage.
“Aerin, do you want to learn to be the Hero King?” the black-haired boy asked.
“Mm! I want to learn!” Her eyes held stars, bright and restless.
“You can call me Bai,” he said. “—[Master Bai].”
From then on, Aerin called him Master Bai.
He never told her his full name.
She never asked.
Yet curiosity lived in her, a small lamp behind ribs.
Was it a strange name?
Was it a name with many crowns?
A true name that shook magic when spoken?
Or just a sound that made people laugh?
She thought, someday, she’d get his full name.
She imagined the scene, painted in warm dusk.
When she finally beat Master Bai and won his nod.
When her skill rose like a tide at dawn.
When she stepped onto a battlefield of steel and dust.
When she returned, a victor crowned by winter sun.
So many scenes, like dreams sweet with rain.
They soothed her tired heart.
But none—none of those—matched this one.
—Inside the cabin of the [Witchwood Forest].
—Gold poured out like a river. Dust flashed as it spun in the wind around Master Bai, like scattered stars.
—Master Bai held a golden longsword. Under the name of the [Hero King], he challenged her—challenged the one who was the [Demon King].
An instant—and a century—overlapped.
His sacred, lithe form froze in her sight, a statue carved of dawn.
His voice stretched thin, like silk drawn long.
At the last breath, she woke from a dream.
“Slay—the [Demon King]—me?” Her pupils pinched into cold stars—sharp, winter-hard.
Inside that icy star, a golden meteor swelled.
The sword tip drank gold and breathed light.
In that blink, Ye Weibai’s blade touched a drifting thread of her golden hair, a finger away.
The hair powdered without a sound.
It slid along the blade’s twin rivers.
The tip lifted it, and it speared toward her eye.
Whoom—sound boomed.
Black fire erupted from her body and erased it, ash in a night wind.
“Thou—”
Black streamers burned up from the floorboards, ink rising like a tide from her toes.
They dyed her calves, knees, thighs, waist, chest.
Her golden eyes were swallowed last, left a lake of night.
Only her gold hair still shone, a sunset refusing to die.
Even that dulled, strand by strand, under the black flow.
Her voice turned strange—iron left in snow.
“How dare—”
With each word, the world cracked and shifted.
Black flames burst from her like a storm.
Where they burned, things became other things.
A wooden chair creaked and became an iron throne.
The floor charred to ash, then gleamed like obsidian.
Space itself swelled with heat, breath held wide.
The tiny cabin stretched into distance.
Walls retreated to the horizons.
The roof climbed like a mountain.
The wood burned away, and behind it stood cold stone.
In a blink, the ragged hut became a castle carved of shadowed rock.
The distance between Ye Weibai and Aerin yawned open to dozens of meters, pulled by a vast force.
Ye Weibai looked across.
The girl wore black now.
Her eyes were winter stars.
She sat upon a stone dais raised from nothing.
Black hair spilled down her back.
Black fire burned quiet in her eyes.
The flame alone told of a power immense, twisted, oppressive, chaotic.
It shivered the spine.
Without doubt—it was—
“—the power of the [Demon King].” Golden strands flew. [Hero King] Ye Weibai smiled. “And—the power of [Atmosphere].”
...
...
“It really can be done.” The Emperor’s eyes widened, watching the girl turn black in an instant.
It took just a heartbeat.
The whole [World] recognized Aerin as the [Demon King].
In that heartbeat, the [Demon King] became the [Hero King].
The girl, stuck under the [Hero King] tag, turned into the [Demon King].
So easy it made him want to laugh.
“Ha, haha, hahaha, haha—ugh.”
Laughter soured. Nausea climbed his throat.
The Sky Saintess said nothing.
Her organs churned too—because of the crowd below, burning hotter by the breath.
She murmured, “This is what you called—the power of [Atmosphere]. If they wish, anyone can be anyone. Anyone can be no one. Anyone can be sacrificed at any time.”
“It is truly terrifying...” Her eyes cooled to ice. “It is truly—disgusting.”
Her lips moved.
Only she heard it.
“It is truly a nauseating—[World].”
“But it’s not enough.” He straightened, spine like a blade. His voice turned cold. “The roles are set. The structure is still fog.”
“The Hero King has companions,” he said, echoing the line spoken by the [World]. “The Demon King needs claws to be complete.”
His gaze swept across three other water screens.
On the fourth, a brief emptiness stirred.
He let his eyes stop—there was nothing there.
Why look at nothing?
Meanwhile, black flames—power of the [Demon King]—rose in the other screens.
...
...
When black fire began to burn on Crimson Blossom, slumped in a corner, gasping—
She didn’t panic.
She had expected this thunder.
She glanced at the flame.
She let it stain her armor.
She let it swallow her crimson eyes, leaving them dark red, dusk under smoke.
Her voice carried regret and sorrow, a rain-soaked bell.
“So, it’s here at last.”
She pushed her exhausted body upright.
She stepped into the [Void].
She vanished from the courtyard like a falling leaf.
...
...
The silver great hound felt no change in her flesh.
She ran across the earth, swift as wind over wheat.
Her goal was clear—the heart of the [Witchwood Forest].
The great river couldn’t halt her feet.
She skimmed its surface and reached the far shore.
She didn’t feel the black blossoms flaring on her coat.
Chaos thickened in her mind, a fog eating lantern-light.
It was close to devouring her human reason.
River wind struck her face.
Flames surged with the gale, tall and hungry.
She became a behemoth of black fire, a beast from hell’s kiln.
On the last leap, fully blackened,
she slipped into the [Void] and was gone.
...
...
“Ah, so this is—”
Lustrous tilted her head, gazing at the black fire blooming on her fingertip.
She held it like a jewel and tasted its edges.
It was all black, yet power’s texture differed, subtle as grain in silk.
That fine difference split her own power from this sudden [Demon King] force, two rivers with different currents.
She looked at the extra black flower as if it were hope.
A smile opened, slow and bright, a firework mid-bloom.
It dazzled, and begged pity—brief as a blossom doomed before the match was struck.
“Take me there.”
She vanished, leaving only the echo of light.
...
...
The last black flower—
It found no master, not the little girl.
It lost itself in the [Void], a moth without a flame.
That should be impossible.
The [Demon King]’s power should stand at the top of this [World].
How can there be a realm beyond its reach?
...
...
“Eh?”
A sudden clench of the heart.
It snapped [It] free from a “curiosity” never before tasted.
