—Beyond the city walls of the Moser Empire—

“Ha—”

He let loose a monster yawn, then rubbed his gritty eyes, sand‑dry under the sun.

Today’s weather was absurdly good. Sun poured like warm silk; birds stitched chatter through scented air. That bright calm made his boredom grow like weeds.

At the start, when he got assigned to guard the daemons, he’d thought he’d committed some grave sin. Like being led to the gallows by a silk rope.

Looking at it now, he’d clearly overthought it. This job was boredom ground to powder. Every day he watched the crowd beyond the gate—daemons that did nothing but stand like stone pillars.

The first few days had a flicker of novelty, like a new toy glinting. Later, the work sank into sludge.

If not for regulations, he’d have dragged out a rattan chair, sprawled in it, and turned this post into a lazy sunlit vacation.

Still, the fatigue crept in like damp seeping into walls.

He rubbed again at eyes stung by light, needles pricking the cornea. He hated how the sun burned and bothered.

“Hm?!”

He had just opened his eyes when a twist of wrongness nudged his brain, like a crooked frame in a clean room. It was a visual wrongness.

Feels like… did that daemon get closer to me?

Roughly that kind of weird itch.

But the next moment, he chalked it up to his vision playing tricks. Like a beginner judging a shuttlecock. The ball still has room to drop, yet your gut says “perfect.” You swing. The result needs no comment.

Even so, after today’s shift, he’d let his brain cool like a stone in water.

Maybe it’s the rows of almost identical daemon faces. One mask after another blurs into a smear, and your head tangles. A good rest is non‑negotiable.

“Ka‑ka…” Metal scraping, a grating rasp through the quiet.

A stray sound slid into the hush like a knife across porcelain. With no one but him here, there shouldn’t be any sound at all.

But that scalp‑twitching scrape was real, and really odd. Did someone sneak out here to play again?

Clinging to that half excuse, half comfort, he scanned the daemon herd, a lantern sweeping reeds. It was his duty to keep trespassers out of this ground.

From this angle, a random sweep showed nothing. He knew it. He grabbed the long spear beside him and threaded into the daemons.

He roughly guessed where the sound had come from. He held the spear before him like a bamboo pole and edged between daemons, careful as a cat on a fence, not to brush them.

He’d heard the rule: touch a daemon while holding a weapon, and the daemon you touch will attack you, no matter what. Inside a ring of daemons, that isn’t a warning; it’s a death omen.

Get forced into a fight, bump another daemon mid‑swing, and the chain reaction drags all of them onto you. What else do you choose but death?

“Bang!”

His focus locked on not touching daemons, he never brought his feet into the picture. A stone hid underfoot like a coiled snake. He kicked it.

He wasn’t wearing armor either. The plates were too bulky; he feared brushing a daemon. His feet wore only pink slippers, candy‑soft and defense at zero. They couldn’t shield his toes from the stone’s bite.

“Ahhhhhh!”

Pain crawled from his toes to his skull, like a knife shaving glass. He howled. It felt beyond human tolerance, ice needles under nails.

Lucky for him, pain didn’t blow his mind clean. Even while yelling, he set his spear so it wouldn’t drop and touch a daemon. Smart move. A life saved… or was it?

Mid‑cry, he felt several cold gazes hook into him, winter fish cutting the current. The burn in his toes cooled under those frosty eyes. He blinked through tear‑blurred lashes. Several daemons, who’d been staring straight ahead, tilted their heads toward him. Frozen gaze spilled from their eyes like sleet.

No… this isn’t right… I didn’t touch them!

He checked his spear. Its tip hadn’t kissed any daemon. In fact, there was a fair gap.

Could it be the sound? No one told me sound could trigger them! We talked before and it was fine!

His guess was dead‑on. The Demon Elite had already been primed by Rafi. But the Demon Elite had no minds; they couldn’t find a target. So they sat in the command’s standby loop, blank as sealed masks.

Until the soldier’s shout. Every daemon that heard him got hooked by that noise. Add the spear in his hands, and he matched “armed and high risk.” Naturally, he became the target.

Then a vicious cycle would spin. His death‑cry would pull in other soldiers like moths to a flare.

No one knew the cause of the daemon riot. In their eyes, it was simply a sign of a daemon advance. Adrenaline would crash through them like a dam breaking. Shouts would spread like sparks in dry grass. The daemons’ targets would update one by one, and war would snap awake, fully lit.

Like a line of dominoes. And the soldier who triggered it was the first tile.

Now—

That first tile began to fall.