Endless shadows rose from Uroboros’s own shadow, a night tide unfurling; that vast silhouette wasn’t human at all, but a serpent of shade coiling in the dark.

Black radiance crystallized around her into a thousand facets; uncanny flowers climbed those cold prisms; more shadows budded from the midnight blooms, gathered behind Uroboros, and massed into an army.

The few hanging in the air stayed stone-still, their focus a drawn blade on Uroboros herself, as if that army of shade couldn’t touch their calm.

“Please don’t ignore my children like this…”

Uroboros breathed the words. Her Obsidian Scepter tapped the temple slabs; the touch was soft, yet the echo rang like iron and filled the hall.

Gray breath seeped from the Scepter; low moans rolled from every side like distant surf. Shadows in the haze buckled on armor, raised blades; some twined with the gray into snarling beasts and crawled behind her like living night.

Only then did solemn weight settle on their faces. Yet Uroboros’s show wasn’t done; a thin, mocking smile curved like a crescent on her lips.

They didn’t hesitate to stop her, but black radiance barred them like a river of ink.

“Lady Senro, we can’t let her keep this up.”

Duke Dion, armored heavy, gripped an amethyst blade; deep-violet Thunder streamed around him like stormwater. Beside that black radiance, his violet Thunder looked oddly dim.

The might of a True God repaints heaven and earth.

Relief pricked Dion’s chest; without the starry sky Senro held up, none of them could stand long under that black radiance against Uroboros. He thanked the stars they’d come with a lineup fit for a True God.

Frown lines crossed Senro’s brow as she watched the black radiance wall them away like obsidian glass.

“Leave it to me, Duke Dion. Get our old friends ready to break through. The enemy… is a True God in truth.”

She met Uroboros’s gaze across the void like two stars locked; neither yielded, and the Uroboros on the temple even let a sliver of a smile show.

Dread tugged at Senro’s heart. Her deep-blue Star-Eyes measured the truth: the serene figure upon the temple was indeed a True God.

Her deep-blue staff hung suspended. Endless starlight poured down like rain, and great astral forms stepped from the abyssal dark, becoming twelve phantoms arrayed around Senro.

“Hm. How amusing. Descendants of theirs, are you? A pity you’ve forgotten your true names.”

Uroboros studied the twelve midair phantoms and nodded, thoughtful. She raised the Obsidian Scepter and leveled it at Senro; her black hair streamed like night-silk in the wind.

“My army, devour them!”

Countless blade-bearing shadows took wing in tight ranks, a true regiment of night, lunging for Senro’s people like a cloud of ravens.

If you stripped away the black radiance and gray breath, this host might as well be the army in legends of the Lord’s descent.

Swap holy brilliance for midnight glow, sheltering clouds for gray haze, and you’d have the Church’s fabled Sword of the Lord. High above in feathered robes, Uroboros made an ominous thought spark in Senro’s mind.

The Demon World doesn’t revere holy light like the human world, yet travelers carry tales across the borders. Senro had even used her Star-Eyes to survey the Church’s own legends.

In one hidden legend, a passage reads:

He is a lamp in the dark, shepherd to the Son of Man.

He wears heaven’s feathered robe and bears the Scepter of Glory.

He comes to the world, calls the children of man, seeks salvation without unsheathing a blade.

The children sing for him; all beasts bow.

Sanctus! Sanctus!

We welcome our Lord: the pure rise, the impure sink.

This is the true marrow of the Church’s lore. There’s even a torn image; aside from the gold blaze and the figure’s gender, every detail mirrors the Uroboros before them.

If the Church’s god is Uroboros… that’s a thought that bites.

Senro faced the dark monarch Uroboros had become; even with twelve golden phantoms shining at her side, worry pooled cold in her chest.

In truth, their trump against a True God was those twelve massive golden phantoms.

After Duke Dion summoned old friends, they prepared to hunt the middle-aged man. When the True God’s array snapped alive, they felt the spiral slip from their grasp; Senro slammed open her inherited power.

Even as the Demon World’s foremost priestess, Senro moved with double care around that force.

Those twelve golden phantoms rose from Senro’s legacy of power. In today’s Demon World, stargazing is a muddy road; stargazers pray to constellations by serving as priests to gods. To the Demon World’s priesthood, Senro seems heaven-chosen, the God of Constellations’ secret child.

But they don’t know this: Senro isn’t any sworn believer. By a twist of fate, she found an ancient legacy and stepped beyond all stargazers. She worships not gods but vast knowledge. The believer’s badge is just her mask.

That legacy, boundless as the starry sky, lets her range the endless star-sea—only a corner of the cosmos, yet enough to birth power that stands beside a True God.

The Zodiac Twelve are the source of those twelve golden phantoms. They match twelve constellations in the endless star-sea; Senro, as mediator, borrows their light for now.

The twelve golden phantoms erupted. Starlight poured from the deep sky and spun midair into a blazing Milky Way, a heavenly trench that walled the shadows away.

Any shade that dared to cross the river became ash in the starshine.

Breaths eased around Senro. Then several Demigod auras flared like suns igniting.

A deep-violet sea of Thunder swelled vast. Duke Dion lifted his amethyst blade and roared; sweeping Thunder turned to blazing sky-wrath, leapt the starry river, and cleaved through the host.

Roaring hurricanes followed, surging ice-rain, titanic meteors—true Plague of Beasts, a hell on earth of wind, frost, and stone.

The assault didn’t stop there. A hymn-like chant rose among them, and the red-haired mage stepped forward; she held no focus, only a robe bright as flame.

“Fire magic—”

Her golden irises narrowed into feral slits. Wings of flame unfurled behind her. A massive spell-circle flowered like a burning mandala.

“Dragon’s Breath!”

Flames that could burn heaven and earth surged from the circle, lashing the shadows pinned under the Demigods’ blows.

Demigod domains overlapped, blending in the dark star-sea without seams. Their full strikes twisted into a storm of Arcane Power that swept everything like a scything gale.

The shadow host writhed in the storm. Elements flayed them—fire, frost, and stone. The warped arcane gale pinned them in place, to take Senro’s people’s merciless spellfire.

Yet Uroboros on the temple looked utterly unworried. She smiled wide and even applauded, palms ringing like silver.

“Not bad, not bad. You lot are mere Demigods, yet you wield such force. Rare indeed.”

Uroboros walked onto the great beast’s back. Her Obsidian Scepter tapped; crimson runes kindled like embers.

“That is…”

Danger flared, and the red-robed mage felt it like heat on the skin; her feral slits snapped toward the glow.

“In that case, I’ll answer you in your own way.”

She eyed the red-haired mage who’d just loosed Demigod fire; play flickered in her gaze like a cat’s.

Duke Dion didn’t hesitate; he hurled a vast surge of deep-violet Thunder. Even so, that sky-wrath sank into the black radiance like a stone in the sea and vanished.

Crimson scales budded along the mage’s arms; beast-hunger pressed past reason in her slit eyes. Red wings tore her robe and spread wide like burning sails.

The red dragon’s shadow sharpened, and the mage slid toward frenzy. Cold pricked from Senro’s hand; she forced frost through the air, clamping down the runaway dragon-change and hauling the mage back to sense.

But then, the Obsidian Scepter fell.

Scalding flame erupted from the Scepter. A deafening bellow shook heaven and earth. A phantom giant-beast loomed behind Uroboros like a mountain of night.

“Impossible…”

Duke Dion’s eyes blew wide as the blaze funneled into the beast’s form; disbelief cut lines in his face.

“Red Dragon… Source?!”

The mage went slack with shock. Then savagery surged again in her slit gaze, and a red-dragon shadow, pure flame, unfurled behind her as well.

“What did you do to Oz!”

A roar soaked in dragon might tore from that scarlet shadow. The red-robed mage seemed to become a human-shaped wyrm and blasted searing flame across the air at Uroboros.