If it was all true, worry rose like a storm-tide in her chest. But one truth burned cold: that middle-aged man was the enemy. Aphelia knew she offered him no gain; then why cloak his intentions in grand lament, like incense hiding smoke?
From all she’d seen, the man was a viper in human skin—cunning, ruthless, never sparing an enemy, like frost that bites even spring buds. So what was this theater for?
“You doubt me?”
He halted. His gaze swung over, heavy as thundercloud iron, pinning her eyes like nails.
“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”
Resigned to bad odds, Aphelia let defiance steady her breath, buying time like cupped embers against the wind.
They stared, silence pooling like still water. Seeing the resolve in her gaze, his feral mask eased, and he sighed, a tired wind through dead leaves.
“Being young is a gift. Your eyes look bright enough to burn a world. Shame folk like you don’t live long.”
“If I avoid folk like you, I’ll live to be ancient.”
She rolled her eyes, as if he’d told a tavern joke that soured like cheap wine.
He shrugged, easy as dust, then tapped her cheek and sat beside her like an old friend. He slung an arm around her shoulders, chains kissing her skin like cold snakes—without them, they might’ve passed for comrades in a night market.
“Don’t be so cruel. I’m explaining, aren’t I? Where was I? Oh—the plan.”
He looked absentminded, but sitting this close, Aphelia felt it: he wasn’t playing at recall; he was sifting through ash, breath frayed like torn silk.
That ragged aura made her wonder if he was a perfect madman wearing borrowed calm.
“Oh, right. A young crown prince—new broom, hot sparks. He wants storms and banners, something grand to prove himself. He swung it at my head.”
He spoke of Nero with a smile bright as lantern light, no sourness, even a hint of approval peeking like sunrise through smog.
“You’re smiling. So your hatred amounts to this?”
Aphelia wore a cutting smile, baiting him, hoping anger would spill words like coins from a split purse.
“Why not?”
His easy reply clipped her thoughts like a gust shutting a door.
With such hatred, how could he laugh? If not a broad heart, then what? It should be bone-deep instinct, red as iron.
“My enemies are about to vanish like footprints in rain. History will forget them. The whole Demon World will burn under the wrath of a True God. That foolish emperor and his nobles will be judged. The people will drag them off their high thrones and hang them on the Wall of Triumph, so all can see their folly. Tell me—”
He surged to his feet, zeal kindling like a priest at a midnight fire. Revenge felt like a sermon’s cloak more than his naked aim.
“—why shouldn’t I laugh?”
He leaned in suddenly. Aphelia flinched inside, but the chains woke like living iron. The mere thought of retreat tightened them, carving bright lines of pain and blood on her arms.
The other end of the chain coiled in his fist. Black Arcane Power seeped into the links, pressure doubling, like a millstone turning her to dust.
He stared with a twisted hope, as if waiting for some warped bloom to open in her eyes.
She surprised him. Aphelia laughed, a clean bell in smoke, and pity warmed her gaze like a candle in frost.
“Are you truly doing it for revenge?”
Her voice rasped, yet the light in her black irises made him glance away, as if a mirror showed him the grave.
“You’re just a sad creature. You hurt, so you pass hurt along. That’s all.”
“That’s too much. I’m a thorough avenger.”
He chuckled, but his grip clenched on the chain. Her laughter scraped him like grit in a wound.
“You’re already insane. This ‘True God’ is your gilded excuse. Anyone half sane wouldn’t believe your revenge.”
Unexpectedly, he didn’t argue. He folded into silence, like paper in rain.
“Maybe. At this point, purity doesn’t matter. Where would you find a perfect avenger in this world?”
Deep-red light bloomed in his hand, like coals under skin. He kept smiling, ignoring her flinch, and pressed that crimson light straight into Aphelia’s mind-sea.
Bound, Aphelia fought—each motion tightened the chains, iron whisper becoming a strangling chorus. That black Arcane Power on the links gnawed at her remaining Arcane Power like rust eating steel.
Even with a Demigod’s body, she heard bones grind out of place, dry branches snapping under ice.
Weakened, she couldn’t stop the light-sphere’s advance. She watched it ignore her defenses, sinking step by step into her mind-sea like a hot knife into wax.
Endless darkness surged like a drowning tide. Overhead, a massive array began to turn; in her sight, that turning sigil became a black serpent, coiling in the air, hunting for a heart to bite.
Then she understood the crimson point entering her mind. The stench of blood was thick enough to topple a bull. That “light” was a crystal forged from blood, so vast it beggared belief.
So much blood—where from?
There was no need to ask. The entire Hydra Clan answered with silence loud as a funeral gong.
The crimson point flared, a beacon. Black mist poured from the array, and with the scarlet light fanning wide, shadows birthed monsters beyond counting. They rose like children blessed at a river, born from filth, then knelt to the great array, abandoning their frenzy, becoming devout as winter monks.
“O God, I yearn for Your descent. You come from the heavens, casting the radiance of the pure. Wield Your shepherd’s staff, lead the lost lambs—”
The middle-aged man knelt too, hands clasped, whispering as if bathing in a True God’s dawn.
But to Aphelia, it wasn’t radiance. It was darkness so pure the space couldn’t bear it, so light got shoved out like steam from a sealed pot.
And that darkness reached for her, the one bound in chains.
Black seeped around her like nightfall. It felt like his Arcane Power, yet it wasn’t twisted; it just existed, shadow as shadow.
Holy!
Holy!
Holy!
The chant rang bright like a cathedral chorus, and low like the earth’s murmur. Both sides praised this pure darkness, like rain blessing crops.
“Child of man, be in awe…”
Mist circled her, then seeped into her flesh, a tide tasting the shore. Though it was pure darkness, Aphelia felt a strange warmth, like a hearth under moonless sky. The whisper at her ear sounded like a true divine decree.
“Why should I fear you, False God!”
A crooked smile tugged her lips. Right before she blacked out, she shouted it like a spark in tar.
“False God?”
The voice—neither male nor female—smiled with a lift of breath. This time it sounded inside her mind-sea, silver ripples on dark water.
“I’m the purest God there is…”
Darkness gathered around her, weaving a cocoon like a night chrysalis, wrapping her whole body. Deep-red light burst at last, unfurling into a vast sea of blood that flooded the warded space like high tide through a broken levee.
The shadows stood on their own, loyal sentries at the cocoon’s rim. Even the middle-aged man found himself kept outside by that living wall; one more step and they’d fall on him like wolves.
He still wore wild joy in his eyes, kneeling like a pilgrim before a miracle that smelled of iron.
“Congratulations, Nameless One. You got what you wanted.”
Oz stepped from the temple, disdain sharp as a knife, cutting at the kneeling man. He didn’t spare the shadows or the cocoon a glance. He walked past, boots tapping like drumbeats, and stopped at the man’s side.
“Quit pretending at sainthood. Where’s what you promised me?”
Oz looked like a beautiful devil boiled in war. His fine features were slashed by ugly wounds. His silver armor was scabbed with dark blood—his own, and blood of other breeds, dried like rusted lacquer.
“Don’t rush. You look worn out—hurt bad enough that a Demonic Knight would groan. So, tell me, the Hydra Clan’s best handiwork or mine—who wins?”
The man didn’t even look at Oz. He just smiled, easy as smoke.
“I hate to admit it, but those creations with no future can’t match your Plague of Beasts in human form. Even starting strong, they fall short.”
Oz drew out two crimson crystals from his ring, beating like hearts in cold hands, and set them before the man like offerings laid on a winter altar.
