A vast surge of space ripped Senro’s starry vault in an instant, like silk torn by a hooked wind. Even if that sky was her home field, she couldn’t fully dam that dreadful tide. She could only watch as the middle-aged man slipped into the stars like a stone into deep water.

As he left, Senro dispelled that deep-blue eye, and the endless night cracked like glass. The crushing weight rolled off everyone like a receding tide.

When the starfield broke, the outpost twisted like a warped mirror. In a blink of daze, they were flung back to the ground like leaves in a gust. A violent sway hit them like a quake underfoot.

“This is…” His voice quivered like a plucked string. He felt shaken to the core before he moved, fear drumming in his ribs like rain on tin. He wasn’t a Demigod like Duke Dion, so the vertigo and sting drove him to one knee like a felled tree.

Nero went straight out cold, like a candle snuffed by wind. His wounds were heavy, and his will and strength sagged like wet rope. He wasn’t even close to Titleholder level, a sapling in a storm.

“Forced space transfer carries backlash, like thorns under the skin; breathe and it fades.” Duke Dion’s voice came steady, like iron under snow. “If Lady Senro hadn’t sent us out, the collapsing space would’ve crushed you like a millstone. Only I might’ve crawled out, like a stone in a flood.”

Seeing them sway, Duke Dion let out a sigh like steam in winter. He strode over, and from his storage ring drew two vials glowing like coals. He handed them to Zhe, and with a nod sharp as a blade told him to drink, then feed Nero.

The deep-crimson light bled through the glass like dusk through frost. Zhe hesitated a beat like a held breath, then popped the seal and downed it in one swallow. Vitality burst out like spring water, and his fogged mind cleared like a sky after rain. His joints crackled like firecrackers, bright and crisp along every limb. The arm ruined in battle knit in a blink like ice sealing a river. When he clenched his fist, strength surged past the past like a tide over old marks.

He lifted Nero without pause, like a brother catching a falling spear. He uncorked the other vial and tipped it into Nero’s mouth, a thin stream like silver thread.

He felt a knot of worry pinch, then he spoke with air still cold in his lungs. “Duke Dion, could you… give me one more?” Or sell me one, like trading fire for winter. “There’s someone else who needs it, but she’s weaker, like a lantern in wind.”

Zhe glanced at Christine, and his sigh trailed like smoke. She was only a maid, dragged in by being too close to Nero, like grass burned with the field. As partner and future liege, he had to think for Nero, like a steward guarding a hearth.

Duke Dion gave the prone Christine a look, surprise flickering like a spark. He drew breath to speak, but Senro cut in like a blade through silk.

“Leave the child to me, like a sprout under frost.” Senro’s tone was low, like dusk on water. “Duke Dion, I’ll need you to reach some old friends, like sending crows to distant towers.”

Gravity weighed on Senro’s face like snow bending a branch. A crease of worry shadowed her brow like a cloud before storm. For Duke Dion, it was startling, like thunder in clear sky. In all the years he’d seen Senro, this was only the second time that mask cracked like ice. The last was when she tried to peer into the Demon World’s future, like staring into a bottomless well.

“How bad is it, Lady Senro?” His voice dropped like a drum in fog.

“Not here for details, Duke Dion.” Her words fell like pebbles in a pool. “I need some rest, like embers needing breath. Young man, list the other outposts where Nero had no spillover, like islands beyond a storm.”

Senro’s gaze slid to Zhe, cold as frost on iron. Deep-blue Arcane Power bloomed across the floor, spinning a massive array like a frozen moon. “Say the place, and I’ll send us there like a stone skipping water.”

“Those that won’t be caught in the battle’s wake are these few, like lights past a ridge.”

Under Zhe’s lead, they returned beneath Nero’s manor, to an underground twin like a shadow on water. Senro’s people worked fast, and turned it into a fortress, bricks set like teeth. Robed mages in deep blue moved like a tide, sigils flashing like stars. They even dug Jasmine from the rubble like a buried seed. Her injuries were heavy, so she and Nero were laid in side rooms for treatment, like patients under winter quilts. After a short rest, they sat in the war room, air tight as a drawn bow.

“Then, Lady Senro, since you need me to find those old friends.” Duke Dion’s eyes steadied like lanterns. “If I’m not wrong, the threat has climbed to True God level, like lightning touching the crown.”

Duke Dion’s face set, the old general’s edge returning like steel from oil. That middle-aged man’s uncanny power had carved a mark in him like a scar.

Senro cut a glance at Zhe, and the chill in it stung like sleet. It felt like a warning, or like a hawk’s proud gaze from height. She let ice-blue Arcane Power pool before the long table, shaping a miniature Hydra like frost-sculpted coral.

Threads of ice-blue unspooled from her fingers like spider silk. She adjusted the Hydra and split it into several small statues of races, sizes uneven like stones in a river. The largest was the Hydra, and next was a demon-dragon, horns sharp as sickles.

Duke Dion picked up each tiny carving in turn, eyes narrowing like a hunter in brush. He frowned and spoke, confusion rough as sand. “These look like border races, like faces seen only at the rim. Especially that one, the dark elf. They show up in the border war zone, not around Blackhold, where their tracks are snowless.”

“That only makes him more dangerous, like fire crossing a river. And it’s not so simple, like a knot inside a knot.” She swept the carvings together, and they burst into cold like breath in winter. With that Arcane Power, she carved a formation on the tabletop like frost etching glass.

“Summon the Star-Image!”

A demon-dragon’s phantom rose from the array like smoke from a brazier. Senro laced her fingers, and seeing those unique twin horns, she sighed like wind through pines. “By the Eye of Stars, that man also ties deep to Fenrir, like a river under ice. Don’t bristle, Duke Dion. I’ve sent someone back to the capital to invite Fenrir here, like a letter sent by hawk. We’ll handle other matters first, like stones in a riverbed.”

Duke Dion’s face soured, disbelief pooling like dark water. As an elder, he resisted the thought that Fenrir shared roots with that man, like oil mixing with water. But Senro’s Eye of Stars had never erred since she became Royal Priestess, like a compass under true north.

He drew breath to object, but Senro shook her head, small and clean as a falling leaf.

“Of course, it doesn’t prove Fenrir cooperates with him, like shadows touching but not joining. We’ll know when she arrives herself, like dawn answering night. The man’s link to the Plague of Beasts is what we must weigh, like weighing thunder against rain.”

Senro flicked her hand, and the dragon phantom unraveled into a black storm like ashes in wind.

“We’ve always treated the Plague of Beasts as uncontrollable, like a wildfire without borders. Its devouring and corrosion come from mottled souls, soaked in despair and rage like ink in water. Those souls are its root, like rot at a tree’s heart.”

She paused, then looked to Duke Dion, her gaze steady as a spear.

“But that power could be an anti-magic field, right? If it’s the Plague, it lacks mind and only devours, like locusts over wheat.” Duke Dion chased his memories like hounds on a trail as he spoke. Years of war had taught him the Plague, but that man’s eerie tricks didn’t fit, like a crooked nail.

“In fact, that proves he’s tied to the Plague, like a hook to a line. Duke, if I recall, your Thunder weakened when it first came back, like embers before a bellows. To prove it wasn’t an anti-magic field, I left a shard of my frost Arcane Power to watch, like an eye in the eaves. It didn’t return until the end, and it recorded his Arcane Power fluctuations, like grooves on wax. We compared them to the Plague of Beasts, side by side like twin shadows.”

Two waveforms rose in the illusion, their pulsing lines like twin snakes. “Exactly the same.”

The iron fact sat before Duke Dion like an anvil, and his face darkened like stormcloud. As Senro said, that man was no different from the Plague, a true human-shaped Plague of Beasts, like doom walking.

Such a thing must be extinguished at once, like stamping a spark in dry grass. If the method to turn ordinary races into Plague spreads, the Demon World would heave, and a thousand-year order would shatter like pottery.

For strength, the Plague breaks balance like a hammer on glass. In a human body with devouring, a hidden eater could grow in a century to face several Demigods, like a seed becoming an oak. This power needs no insight, only corpses as steps, like a ladder of bones. No one but the devourer would want that path, like a feast for one at a funeral.

For most strong ones, facing the Plague means flight, like deer before wildfire. How do you beat what you can’t kill, like punching fog? If a human holds such power, it’s a kind of immortality, like winter that never thaws.

“Has he already reached immortality, Lady Senro?” Duke Dion held his breath like a hunter at a blind. If that man were like true Plague, beyond life and death, they’d have one choice, like stones for a dam. Sacrifice most to pile an array that seals him forever, like burying a volcano.

“He hasn’t, so we still have a chance, like light under cloud. We must strangle this in the cradle and never let that craft into the Demon World, like cutting blight from a field.” She replayed the illusion of Duke Dion and the man crossing blows, images flashing like steel on steel. “He isn’t immortal; he only used an incomplete power to frighten, like a wolf pelt on a scarecrow.”