“A plan… what plan?”

Cut off from the core of power for years, Duke Dion stared at them like a ship adrift in fog, and everyone at the table had finally traced the currents.

“I’m sorry, Duke Dion. It isn’t a plan you’re allowed to know, especially not someone of your station,” Fenrir said, voice soft as falling snow, while Senro’s face stayed cold as stone.

What plan would hide from a former general, a blade once bared for the throne?

Dion didn’t dig; he let the question sink like a stone in deep water. A larger wave loomed. If the middle-aged man who could convert the Plague of Beasts didn’t fall, fanatics would swarm like moths to flame, and the Demon World would tilt like a sky torn by storm.

“The problem isn’t that simple, Fenrir. The Eye of the Stars cleared your name, but it never affirmed your guest retainer. He’s not of the Hydra Clan, is he?” Senro’s words cut like frost in a night wind.

Fenrir blinked, then forced a crooked smile that felt like a crack in ice. “Of course not. From where I stand, I’d never hire a Hydra Clan guest.”

That much was obvious, as the Hydra Clan was Nero’s mountain-sized backing. Even if Fenrir trusted one of them, she’d never let him near the inner fire.

Senro asked anyway, and suspicion pooled like ink.

“In that case, it all lines up. Your guest’s body is likely a nest another cuckoo has claimed,” Senro said with a sigh, like wind through dead leaves, and the Eye’s vision only deepened the mist.

“A cuckoo in the nest?” Fenrir’s eyes narrowed like slits in cloud.

“Yes. A cuckoo in the nest. The Eye of the Stars saw his essence. He’s Hydra to the bone, no matter how that twisted will raged like a beast tide. The Eye pierced to his core,” Senro said, light as ash, iron in her faith like steel under velvet.

“But I didn’t sense any sharp change, not even in his aura… unless you saw him wield a similar technique?” Fenrir’s tone trembled like a string under too much pull, and a terrible guess rose like smoke. Stealing a body sounded absurd, like climbing a ladder into the moon. Yet those experiments had been tried, and all had failed.

Among known work in the Demon World, no one had moved a soul into another body and kept it there. The root snag was the sea of consciousness. Once a soul left the flesh, its own sea shriveled like a pond in drought, and to seize another sea in a blink and make it your harbor was harder than scaling the heavens.

Senro kept silent, her quiet a winter lake that offered no reflection.

It was neither a nod nor a shake, a stillness that weighed like a mountain.

“Believe it or not, the punitive campaign is set. We’ve pinned his location like a nail in a map. As crown heir, whether you like it or not, you’ll fight to wash your shame clean as rain,” Senro said, voice cold as iron pulled from snow, and this time the edge brooked no refusal.

“Understood, Lady Senro.” Fenrir bowed her head. The honorific landed like a stone in her throat.

While the folk in Blackhold argued like storm and drum, Aphelia reached the great temple that crowned the Hydra Plains like a cliff of bone.

She leaned in the shadow at the temple’s base, catching her breath like someone under a waterfall, and wrestled her Arcane Power back into order after her sleepless march.

On her way to the Plains, she’d seen no patrols, not so much as a footprint in dust. At first she thought the middle-aged man had baited a trap, a hook under still water. Only now did she see that, beyond a few alarm arrays she’d picked apart like threads, no extra guards watched this place.

While her power settled, Aphelia lifted her gaze and felt the Hydra Temple swallow the horizon like a mountain.

The staircase climbed so high it bled into cloud, each giant step inhuman in scale, pocked by old blood like rusted stars, and no one could tell whose lifeblood had dried there.

Massive bronze tablets stood at the temple’s flanks like fallen gates, all shattered and scored, and she could read nothing in their ruined faces.

“What a waste… these probably carved the Hydra Clan’s history. If I knew them, they’d be a lantern for the way in,” she murmured, words drifting like breath in cold air.

What caught her most was the sea of carvings nearly buried in dust along the steps. The scattered lines looked patternless, like reeds in wind. She flicked a thread of Arcane Power across the stone like a fingertip on water, and several Runes flared as if summoned, then faded as her power slipped away.

“Hidden in plain sight. A baited hook left in sunlight. Hydra wanted fish—only this time, they got dragged off the pier,” she sighed, helpless, at the temple’s brute logic.

Those glowing Runes were a defensive array, likely a shield like a cliff, just broken. If intact, slipping in would be like walking through a hailstorm bare-headed.

With a temple like this, the defense would be top tier, mountain-high and deep as the sea. Backed by the Hydra Clan’s wealth, they raised it in the Plains’ heart like a banner, a jeer nailed to the sky.

We built it here. If you’ve got the guts, come climb.

It was a brazen challenge, and a perfect stage for the Hydra to set their might like thunder. Until its recent fall, countless strong must’ve painted these stones with their lives to prove the temple’s power.

Given their state now, the middle-aged man probably swept them like leaves in a gale. Nothing breathed nearby, not even a rat, and the temple felt like his den carved into bone.

Thinking of those shadow-creatures that fought like tar and teeth, Aphelia felt a headache bloom like a thorn.

“Hm. Someone,” she breathed, emotion flaring first like a match in the chest, then movement. She sensed a strong aura cut across hers like a hawk, and she snapped up an isolation ward, hiding herself like a fox under bracken.

A vast portal yawned open on the steps, its unstable Arcane Power streaking past like shellfire, gouging craters that still throbbed with power like hot coals.

A figure stumbled out, white robes shredded like paper, twisted Arcane Power coiling around him like black fog, flickering as if a wind would tear it apart.

No doubt. This was the root of all rot, the middle-aged man who dipped his hands into the Plague of Beasts like oil and fire.

A second portal opened above, steadier, clean as a blade. A knight in silver-white armor stepped through, helmeted, and Aphelia didn’t dare twitch, a deer frozen as frost.

Crimson Arcane Power poured off him like a torch in night. Runes awoke under his feet by the thousand like embers, yet their light cast no glow, and his silver armor swallowed it like a mirror gone black.

He shouldered the barely-standing man and climbed. The crimson power burned like a beacon, igniting every hidden Rune beneath the dust, and the staircase became a radiant ladder, a road to heaven laid from stone and fire.

His steps were heavy, yet they struck a rhythm like a drum, and by the time Aphelia heard the pattern, the trap had sprung like a net.

Down below, the newborn radiance pressed her chest like a boulder, and the vast Runes, one by one, lifted off the ladder like birds taking wing and showed their true faces.

“A True God… array?” Her voice shook like a string in wind.

She watched the Runes rise and braid themselves with blood like vines, weaving a colossal array that mocked common sense like stars at noon.

The wavering auras scrambled her senses like a whirlpool, and the array itself overturned her knowledge like a table flipped in rage.

Brilliance bloomed like a stainless saint, then donned a gown stitched from veins of blood, and the holy took on a forbidden charm like a lily dipped in wine.

Now the godly light and the demonic blood bled together, and the great temple stood as its pillar like a pillar of dawn. The ladder dissolved into radiance, and the towering awe thundered its name to the world.

Ouroboros, the World-Serpent.

The sound pierced the heart like a spear of ice. Even those who couldn’t read a single Rune would tremble as if a god spoke his name into their bones.

For Aphelia, who had brushed the hem of god-tier power like fingers near a flame, the pull was stronger, a tide that dragged at the soul.

Born in light, dusted in blood.

In an instant, the brilliance drowned in blood like snow under a red flood. The pure saint was drenched, and what had been a forbidden stain turned into pure eldritch beauty, a rose with venom on every petal.

The earth shuddered like a beast waking. Aphelia locked her knees as if bracing under a falling sky, her sea of consciousness quaking like a storm-tossed lake. Facing a True God–grade array splintered her focus like glass, and her mind reeled on the edge of collapse.

From the moment it bloomed, new things flooded her sea of consciousness like cargo forced into a small boat. Power beyond mortal reach burned through her veins like hellfire, and every breath felt like a trial in a furnace.