“Of course. It’s my honor—your curiosity is a fresh breeze in a land where most see the Demon World through a fog of bias,” Lilo said with a light, willow-soft smile.
Seeing Aphelia’s condition, she left a few scrolls beside her like folded wings, then slipped from the room, heading beyond the city to lay the array, a hawk flying for clear sky.
Blackhold was wreckage and ash after the previous battle, a storm-torn field; setting a ritual circle here was courting thunder. A stable high-grade teleportation array belongs in calm weather; right now in Blackhold, Arcane Power and the elements tangled like crossing rivers. One careless stroke and the etched circle turns into a ticking bomb; when it triggers, it blows the caster to splinters like shattered ice.
As a Demigod mage, Lilo knew the basics like stars in her palm, so she hurried for the city’s edge, a runner racing the dusk.
The moment Lilo left, Aphelia planned to probe the serpent ring’s power; then an unexpected guest drifted in like cold dawn without knocking.
An ice-blue silhouette pushed the door and entered: Senro, frost made flesh. She scanned the room like a winter wind over stones, then her gaze settled on Aphelia; that cold line of sight made Aphelia’s brow tighten like a drawn bowstring.
If the Valkyrie’s chill was the eagle’s high disdain, Senro’s was a warning sign carved in ice—keep away. Irritation pricked Aphelia like a thorn, yet caution held her steady; strength like this was storm weather. She asked first, emotion steady, voice calm.
“May I help you, Lady Senro?” The honorific fell like a ceremonial ribbon.
Aphelia wasn’t some pampered scion bluffing behind a tiger’s shadow; she would move in the Demon World for a year, and offending a mountain-sized figure was a fool’s dance.
Hearing the address, Senro’s face shifted like a clouded moon. She waved her right hand; a chair of ice crystals grew beside her, a lily carved from frost.
“Where’s the Valkyrie?”
Senro sat, and the chair was set a notch higher like a dais; she was already slightly taller than Aphelia, and now the height difference tilted the field like a slope. The petty provocation made Aphelia’s temples throb, a drum under a tight skin.
So she looked down on me, and used such kiddie tricks to prod, Aphelia thought, a dry laugh like wind over reeds.
“Unfortunately, the Valkyrie’s gone. What, Nero didn’t fill you in?” Aphelia turned her eyes away, a shard of mockery on her lips, and dipped back into the serpent ring like a diver into a dark pool.
Senro looked as if she hadn’t heard the news; fine, Aphelia thought, lay a seed between Nero and Senro, a seed in winter soil. Nero had used her; he deserved a pebble in his shoe.
“Heh… I heard you’re heading to the Demon World’s Imperial Capital?” Senro’s soft laugh was frost at dawn.
Aphelia’s indifference was mist on still water, so Senro let frost bloom; snow-white rime spread from her like creeping ivy, encircling Aphelia, and two deep-blue arrays unfurled above her head like twin moons.
A blade of ice kissed the pale curve of Aphelia’s neck, sharp as a winter edge, and a figure of frost appeared at her side, silent as a shadow in snow.
Aphelia sighed, breath clouding like steam from a teacup. “Must we? With this parade, a passerby would think I’m some man-eating beast crouched in reeds.”
She opened her hands, palms bare as clean plates, and eyed the blade like a cat watching a needle.
“When it’s someone the Valkyrie values, caution isn’t a sin.” Senro smiled, satisfied as a cat with cream, and flicked her hand; the ice-blue phantoms drew back their blades like tides receding, retreated to her rear. The frost withdrew like evening shade; only white traces on Aphelia’s robe proved the winter had been here.
In that instant, a jet-black flicker streaked and vanished like a raven’s wing; danger brushed Senro’s side, a cold stream down her spine. She fixed on Aphelia, instincts ringing like iron, while the phantom behind her stayed mute as stone, and doubt touched her mind like a moth’s wing.
The ground turned under them; roles reversed like wind shifting. Aphelia stroked the serpent ring on her ring finger, eyes bright with starlight and tease, watching Senro’s composure freeze like a river under night.
“So you’ve gotten that power… no wonder you’ve got the guts,” Senro said, mouth twitching, feeling that fleeting surge like a knife’s shadow.
Aphelia wouldn’t explain she couldn’t fully master it; she hoped for a beautiful misunderstanding, a painted mist. Whatever came next, let Senro think twice before the first step.
They had tasted the terror of Ouroboros themselves. That absolute crushing—to death like a boot on a small flame—left no breath, no gap, no dawn. At the hint of Ouroboros’s power, Senro locked up, a deer pinned by a viper’s stare from shadow, not daring to move.
“Now, can we talk properly?” Aphelia’s smile was a lamp under night, steady and warm; with strength shown, she had a bargaining table, a bridge over a chasm.
Senro shook off the moment like snow from her shoulders and found her poise, yet caution edged her eyes like rim frost. “Since you have that power, negotiating isn’t impossible.”
She recovered a calm as if she stood on higher ground again, an actress back to her mark. “But for someone like you, what payment should I lay on the scales?”
“Who knows? Let’s talk trade.” At that, both let old airs fall like dry leaves; they smiled like friends meeting after long seasons.
Nearly half a day later, Lilo finished etching the array, lines crisp as crane tracks, and returned to Nero’s base, footsteps quick as swallows.
She couldn’t help worrying that Nero’s crew might trouble Aphelia—a cloud that wouldn’t lift. Still, the scrolls she’d left could absorb a full-force strike below Demigod, a shield like a sturdy umbrella; not for killing, but enough for self-preservation.
That thought eased her like tea warming the chest. She raised a hand to knock—then the door opened from within like a curtain parting to a breeze.
Out stepped Senro, face like winter jade. Seeing Lilo, she gave a nod like a pebble dropped in still water, then strode away from Aphelia’s room, footsteps crisp as sleet.
“Miss Aphelia, are you alright?” Lilo kept her voice gentle as rain. Senro wore that same expression in the capital like a permanent frost; it might not mean offense within.
“I’m fine, Lilo… senior, perfectly fine.” Aphelia felt the earlier form of address clumsy, and took Nero’s term; the word sat like a tag on the sleeve.
“Lady Senro just left. Could it be…” Lilo exhaled, a small cloud in cold air. She stepped closer and scanned Aphelia like a healer reading pulses, then asked with care, words light as feathers.
“It’s nothing. Lady Senro only asked the Valkyrie’s whereabouts. Nothing excessive,” Aphelia said, shaking her head like a bell, then stood and patted her loose robe, dust rising like flour, to show she was intact.
“Right, since you’re back, does that mean…” Hope lifted like a lantern.
“Yes. The array’s complete. We could head for the capital right now.” Pride warmed Lilo like sunrise, a glow Aphelia noticed but couldn’t place, so she smiled along, gentle as spring water.
Aphelia didn’t know the distance from Blackhold to the capital—far as gulls to the horizon. For an ultra long-range teleportation array, stability and clean transfer demand manpower and resources like building a bridge across a gorge. The Blackhold side was Lilo alone, a single hand writing thunder; the capital side was her family’s power, a forest of hands. Even in the Demon World, finishing in half a day was worthy of a gasp, a hawk’s cry.
“That works. But before we go, I’d like you to introduce Blackhold a bit. Funny—I’ve never really looked at this city,” Aphelia said, a sigh curling like smoke. Since leaving the human world and falling here like a star out of orbit, pressures piled like snow on a roof. After a brief rest came only slaughter, a red river. What followed tangled even True God-tier battles, mountains fighting mountains.
This first foothold in the Demon World—she’d never truly seen it.
“My honor, Miss Aphelia. But Blackhold is half-ruined now; I can only give you a tour in words, like painting with breath,” Lilo said.
They didn’t bother notifying Nero’s people; they slipped away like fish in reeds. Guided by Lilo, they walked through a city that had just weathered trial by storm, streets lined with scars and ash.
“Blackhold, at the start, was the Hydra clan’s base,” Lilo began, voice threading history like silk. “They marched with the earliest Demon Emperor, fighting north and south, storms on both horizons, and countless heroic tales rode out from here like banners.”
“When the war ended, this border town prospered, leaning against the great plain like a back to a wide river. The Hydras grew rich, but their forebear was wise—he knew when to step back at the crest, retreating into the plain and yielding this town like a stag leaving the meadow.”
They moved to cross a square. Shattered statues lay scattered like bones of giants; a huge stone block barred the path like a fallen cliff. Lilo sighed and stirred a spell, moving it aside like turning a tide.
“Awkward, really—the piece I moved was the statue of Hydra’s first patriarch,” she said, eyes soft with dusk. “A pity his descendants are almost wiped out, a bloodline cut by frost.”
