“Don’t—”

A black tide rose and smothered her mind; in that last pale heartbeat, Lina “heard” a voice, like a lantern in fog.

It came near, then far, like echoes walking out of the past and pouring back from the future—the long river of Time and space reversed its flow.

The voice shouted—

“You can’t die.”

In that instant, Lina heard it clean as winter water.

It was the Demon King’s voice, the timbre the same, yet younger, like new steel not yet tempered.

Her last shred of awareness went out, snuffed as the living systems inside her were ground to ash.

When she opened her eyes again, she heard the Demon King.

...

...

“Stop playing dead.”

The Demon King’s voice flickered, then steadied, like a flame sheltered by cupped hands.

Like a shock down wet wire, something unknown surged into her.

Her consciousness snapped back; her senses fanned open, and vision bleached gray by death took light again, like dawn on ash.

She’d been a spirit lodged inside a longsword; now a heartbeat-like thrum returned, a survivor’s shiver after the flood, while the fear of that slow fade still clung like cold mist.

“Lina, wake up.” Ye Weibai’s voice carried like a bell in snow. “I know you kept an ace. A Deity doesn’t die that easy.”

An ace—?

His words turned like a key; a door inside her swung, and her spirit jolted awake, sharp as frost.

“Hmph. Demon King—you never meant to let me go.” Her tone was shadowed, like clouds before rain. “You already knew I left part of my soul in the sword.”

“I don’t know your exact trick, but I know this—” Ye Weibai smiled, a thin crescent, and raised the black-sheathed longsword, stepping off the mirror’s surface like ice. “With usable intel this scarce, you, once a Deity tuned to information, wouldn’t throw all your chips into a fogged river. I don’t buy it.”

Lina said nothing; housed in the sword, she had no face to show, only silence like a covered lake.

“I know.” Ye Weibai didn’t mind; his voice stayed calm, like steady rain. “Lina—you’re not as stupid, irritable, and fragile as you act before me.”

“Very well.”

She spoke at last, her voice quiet as high clouds, cool and distant like frost at altitude. “Demon King, you always knew I was performing.”

“Does it matter?” Ye Weibai asked, like a stone dropped in a well.

“You’re right. It doesn’t.” Lina’s voice was even, like a blade’s flat. “But I want to know how you’ll deal with me.”

“That’s a question we should discuss after we get out. Sounds safer.”

“No. I need it now.” Her insistence was a hand gripping rope over a chasm.

A trace of surprise crossed Ye Weibai’s eyes, a ripple on clear water. “You—”

“As you guessed.” Lina was frank, like light through paper. “I wasn’t entirely acting. I was truly tainted by Humanity.”

“Fear—Fear leaked out.” She paused, like a swallow at eaves, then pushed on. “So—I need to secure my ending, or I can’t throw my whole self into this game.”

Ye Weibai fell silent, then the corner of his mouth rose, a thaw beneath ice. “That’s humanity.”

Fragile humanity—knowing anxiety, jealousy, anger, fear are useless tools, yet they bubble up like spring water in sand.

Like a tide, like gravity, like drifting sand, like a bog; we build our fortresses, then use them to trap ourselves.

Lina was there now, standing at the lip of the unknown; she feared her ending, feared leaving this World with Ye Weibai only to meet another fall. Her heart twitched with anxiety and fear, and in that weather, she couldn’t focus every breath on breaking the current trap.

So she asked Ye Weibai for a bond, a promise like a knot.

“I can give you a guarantee,” Ye Weibai said, voice level as a plumb line. “But you’ll do me a small favor, Lina.”

“What?” Lina couldn’t imagine how she could help him; her doubt hung like mist.

“After this, tell me in detail how Humanity tainted you, and what it felt like, thread by thread.”

Her voice cooled, like moonlight on stone. “Are you playing me?” Yet before the sentence landed, she saw the Demon King lift his right hand in salute, fingers touching his left heart.

She knew it—that was the oldest thanks in the Hero King World, a gesture like an ancient seal.

She blinked, watching the black-haired boy; he sat straight as a blade, sleeves dark as night, his eyes ink and snow, clear to the bottom, gravity and sincerity filling them like still water.

For a breath, a scene flashed through her mind, a shard from the Hero King.

She and the Demon King hung in the air at the World’s highest point; back then they stood opposed like thunderheads. She’d never have thought this ant before her would later shatter the Cycle she had tended for thousands of years, and that afterward they’d be bound into so many stories, ending at this edge, forced to lean on each other.

Back then, her violet hair flew like a banner; her gaze was keen as ice. Her fingers clamped his throat, and she laughed at his struggle—what’s the point? It’s only death.

He bled, a red flower opening, and still he smiled—

“My Deity—why do I do all this?

I thought you, a Deity, would understand.

I thought I did it for ‘fun’...

Now I think maybe it is for ‘fun’, but not only that.”

She remembered: from the first time she met the Demon King, that boy showed that expression for the first, perhaps the only time—bewilderment, like a traveler lost in fog.

Even now, with crisis tight as a noose, death stepping closer, the board refusing to open, the Demon King no longer wore that emotion.

Lina didn’t ask aloud; she tucked the small clues into her heart like seeds.

“I understand,” she said, simple as a nod.

“Good. Then I promise you, Lina.” Ye Weibai’s voice was steady, like a line drawn. “When this is done, I’ll release you—how’s that? Easier now?”

“Hmph.” Lina’s snort was a cold spark. “Don’t think we’re finished. Demon King, let’s be clear—you owe me, and I’ll tally every debt.”

The boy bent slightly; black sleeves swirled like ravens, his manner easy, his smile light as dawn. “To be remembered by a Deity—that’s the Demon King’s honor.”

“Then next,” he paused, like a player before the final move, “let’s replay. What exactly happened just now—I believe what you ‘experienced’ is very different from what I saw.”

...

...

“That’s it.”

Moments later, Lina fed part of the information to the Demon King, like threads into a loom.

“Did you lay out everything?” Ye Weibai asked bluntly, his words clean as a blade.

“From entering that World onward, I told you all of it.” In her heart she added, like ink kept back: I won’t tell what happened during entry into that World.

She thought of sliding along that black seam into the mirror World, of the prismatic burst and the strange déjà vu—she didn’t yet know their use, but for no clear reason, she felt she couldn’t give all to the black-haired boy before her.

“You can choose not to trust me,” Lina said, calm as still water.

“I don’t trust it—and I do.” Ye Weibai smiled, a thin curve. “I trust that what you said was your ‘experience’. I don’t trust the facts as presented.”

Lina grasped his meaning in a breath. “You think I was misled? Or hallucinating? But I did die in that World—the hands on my throat—there’s no mistaking it.” She coughed softly, habit clinging like smoke; then she caught herself—she was a spirit, with no throat to bruise—and a wry smile ghosted through her mind. Humanity had stained her indeed.

“Try this. You just told it in first person. Now recount it in third person. While you speak, if I hear a wrong note, I’ll cut in.”

...

...