He’d been the one the King roped into pet-sitting his beloved hound, so that fawning, respectful low rumble was a sound etched in his bones, like a bow made in the throat.
Now the Daemons were roaring in that same pitch, a drumbeat rolling through smoke, and only one being could pull that note from them—their master.
And the master of Daemons was—
“The Demon King?!”
The man in the skin-tight suit jolted, then turned his neck by degrees like a rusted hinge, his face going a sickly blue-green, like pond water under cloud.
“C-Commander, did I just hear a very bad word?”
The commander wasn’t looking much better; his nails had bitten into palm-flesh like hooks set in meat.
“With me.”
No extra orders, no reasons; he grabbed his coat and strode out, shadow peeling off him like a blade, and the tight-suit pervert hesitated, then—spooked by the word “Demon King”—hurried after.
The moment the commander cleared the door, a heavy pressure dropped across his back like a mountain yoke, and it bent him at the waist.
He had a sturdy frame, so he straightened fast, but cold sweat beaded like dew on stone, and that oppressive weight—
Definitely the Demon King, he thought, a thunderhead pressing low—did she open with a show of force?
He forced his body to obey and ignored the tight-suit man who staggered out and went down like a cut marionette, then walked straight to the battlements and looked over the wall.
Most Daemons with mended legs were kneeling like a tide at ebb; the few still broken bowed their heads so deep their foreheads kissed dirt.
These mindless Daemons moved as if their orders were carved into bone and blood, all facing one direction like reeds bent by the same wind.
And in that direction stood only one figure.
To call her human felt wrong; only a Demon King could stand where all Daemons knelt, like the lone peak where clouds come to prostrate.
She looked like a girl of seventeen or eighteen, springwater-clear and too young for a crown, yet the commander felt a weight like storm-sky and fear blooming like frost inside his chest.
The Demon King-girl opened her five fingers toward the wall; magic thickened there, a visible current pooling around that small hand like light on a jade treasure.
In a breath, five tiny black orbs blossomed along her pale fingers, each no bigger than a marble, each leaking power like a cold wind out of a crypt.
“Inferno.”
At the word, the five orbs slipped free of her fingertips; whoosh—they lanced for the wall so fast they seemed like chalk lines drawn by lightning.
They were spheres all the same; the instant they touched stone, they swelled, and a half-dome of black fire bloomed like a night eclipse, swallowing that section of wall and nearby Daemons to cinders.
Humans should’ve felt a flicker of relief, because that black fire burned down most Daemons near them, but no one could smile when the hand that did it belonged to the Demon King.
The commander flexed his stinging fingers as if shaking off rime, grim-faced; he glanced back—the tight-suit man had braced against the aura and forced himself upright like grass fighting wind.
“Hey! Pervert! Get back there and tell the King, now!”
The man bobbed his head like a pecking bird; he didn’t want another heartbeat here, and with a proper excuse to leave, why would he argue?
He slipped into shadow, and the commander called after him, voice like a thrown spear.
“And tell the King this: if his plan was to wait for a Demon King to show up, then he’s done it—he’s dragged us all to the gates of the Underworld!”
For once, the tight-suit man agreed, a bitter taste rising like smoke; he even felt like striking, because treating your people as expendable pieces was filth—what if he got sold one day and never knew?
He let the gloom sit a moment like drizzle, then still angled toward the King, clutching a thread of hope like a lantern—maybe their King had a way to face a Demon King.
“All units, listen up! You get three seconds! Eat your fear now! Right now, fear only kills you faster! Tell me—do you want to live?!”
The answer crashed over him like surf on rock: “Yes!!!!” again and again, a thunder that wouldn’t end.
A commander’s job is to give the right order at the right time, like setting a rudder in a storm, and in this moment he made the right call—bleed the fear first, or the battle’s lost before it starts.
“You there—those on the ground! How come I don’t see the will to live in you?!”
He pointed at several soldiers flattened by the aura, his words spitting sparks, but under the anger ran a warmth like a brazier, and every soldier felt it.
Not just the ones he named—others sprawled elsewhere pushed up too, bodies shaking like reeds, fighting the weight with every thread of will.
“And you by the wall—yeah, you! Don’t think I don’t see you! Stand at attention, right now! You don’t get to lean on walls or guns—you lean on yourself! Make it through and I’ll pin a medal on you; fail it and I’ll send you home this instant!”
Reward and punishment work like rain and sun, and the ones propping themselves on stone or steel straightened as one, spines like spears.
“Good, good—you’re tough kids. I’m proud of you,” he said, voice like a hand on a shoulder.
His fingers searched his belt; he drew a revolver-shaped sidearm and spun it once, metal whirring like a cicada, a faint blue light breathing at the muzzle.
“Then our war begins.”
