Why couldn’t I stop any of this?

Panic hit first, a wave of cold over hot coals, then my legs moved like frightened deer in a lightless maze. I ran and ran, until a loose rock hooked my foot like a hunter’s snare and I crashed. My clothes, soaked in blood, drank a fresh layer of dust like dry earth swallowing rain.

Grief burned like salt. I scrubbed my tears with a filthy sleeve, and the blood and grit smeared my face like war paint, ugly and raw.

Why? Why?

I knew it—an existence you can’t fight, a mountain that won’t move, a night that swallows lanterns.

I knew we couldn’t win, like ants against a flood.

I knew this world holds no redemption, no miracle, only wind over stones.

So why did I still hope? Why did I cling to that thread, that if we knit our hearts tight, we could seize victory like a spark in winter?

Stini threw herself in like a burning brand, clinging to the foe for our sakes. And we betrayed that resolve—we didn’t run. We believed in a legend’s Hero like children chasing a comet.

It was like tying a blindfold with our own hands, refusing the daylight. Only when reality tore our lids like paper did we scream.

My heart wouldn’t calm, a drumskin beaten by storm. The battle lasted a heartbeat, and I saw only death death death death death—like black characters stamped across the sky.

How much blood spilled, how many bones snapped, how many teammates left breathing? Death poured down like a fallen firmament, a collapsed sky flooding the earth.

It was bare death, vast death, hopeless death. We scattered like panicked beasts, hunted and culled, dying under the curve of someone’s smile like fish under ice.

My lungs clawed at air like drowning hands. My throat burned dry, ready to cough blood like rust water, yet I still ran, ugly as a rat in daylight.

My back faced the enemy, like a leaf to the wind. Killed however they pleased, I would deserve it. I betrayed friends who trusted me, dropped my weapon somewhere like a shed shell, and just ran.

I ran too fast. The next fall hammered my knee like a mallet on green wood. My face twisted. A few tears slid to my lip, and regret tasted bitter as wormwood.

I hugged my leg and dragged myself like a loathsome grub. Raw wounds scraped the ground like salt on open flesh. The pain pried a scream loose, thin as a thread, barely there.

As fear ebbed like a tide, sourness rose like smoke. Tears kept falling, and my scraped face looked worse, a smear of night soil and ash.

Stini would laugh and ask, Andor, Andor, why are there vines in subspace? Her voice used to trip like a brook.

Andor, Andor, it’s so ruined here, but so spacious. Let’s build a house and call it ours, like birds picking a branch.

Andor, Andor, I really like…

Now I hear nothing. Silence sits like snow.

“Ah—ahh, ahhh—ahhhhh—” My scream tore out like torn cloth over gravel.

I scooped sand and dirt and spilled them over my head like a grave’s first shovelfuls. Even buried, the heart wouldn’t quiet; it burned like a coal under ash.

I didn’t save her. I didn’t save anyone. My words fell like stones in a well.

Why can’t I do it? Why can’t I save them?

I don’t have a Hero’s steel resolve. I’m just a person who longs for a simple, warm life, like tea by a window in rain.

I kept screaming shapeless sounds, until—

“Stop, Andor. You look pathetic.”

Raven stood arms crossed, chin high like a perched hawk, words cold as sleet.

“Don’t cut in,” I snapped, breath still ragged like torn bellows. “It’s not your cue. I should see the Demon King strolling in with your head, nibbling as he smiles at me, so the despair sinks like a ship. You ruined my scene.”

“Who’s acting with you?” she shot back, voice sharp as a knife-edge. “I know I lack a standout quirk, but I refuse a corpse role just for that.”

“Exactly! The beats won’t link,” I said, gesturing wild as crows. “I smeared blood on my armor so I could be the ‘Hero who fights to the last and inspires the lead, then dies at once.’ That’s the punchline. All wasted.”

“Stini, you too,” Raven sighed, brows pinched like drawn bows. “We were exploring. Why did you suddenly start playing?”

“Elina, could you use a Divine Art to clean me up?” Stini puffed her cheeks like a pouting squirrel, hands on hips for a heartbeat, then flipped to a sunny smile, butter-soft, at the Divine Healer rolling her eyes beside her.

Raven’s machine-gun snark sped up her pulse like a snare roll. She clutched her chest and took slow breaths, long as waves.

“Don’t press them,” I muttered, eyes sliding. “They’re not exactly… plentiful, and it’s not even sexy.”

Her hand moved on instinct, and she flicked my forehead with a crack like a snapped twig. I’d been watching for a Construct ambush, not Raven going melee.

“I know you’re thinking something vile,” she hissed, eyes like needles. “Very vile.”

“Guilty, so I accept punishment… wait, hold up. If you run out of strength and flop onto me, that’s worse, isn’t it?”

Her momentum ran away like a startled horse. She nailed the sneak attack, but misjudged her own force, and crashed down on me.

I’d been sitting. Suddenly her stomach smothered my face like a soft sandbag, and we toppled together. I could have caught her and stopped the fall, but this is the classic trope of accidental physical intimacy. I’d be a fool to dodge it.

“Pervert—pervert! Get off me!”

“What are you saying? You’re on me. And hey, that’s your belly. Shouldn’t it be, you know, higher?”

Even if it’s just a B-cup, a man can hope like a fool chasing a mirage.

“Pervert! I’ll kill you!”

I did nothing wrong, so I refused to apologize, and I vetoed the beating like a judge’s gavel.

She answered by summoning a whole army of Constructs, then led the chase herself like a storm front.

After she’d chased me red-faced for a while, shame cooled like evening shade. We finally settled, calm and efficient as carpenters, and talked.

“So,” Raven said, slipping back into elite composure, the voice of reason sharp as glass, “you staged that whole scene to explain the Demon King’s mental contamination?”

“We figured acting it out was easier,” I said, palms up like open books.

“Yep, yep,” Stini chimed, bright as a bell.

Stini and I produced it. I was the protagonist; she was the Hero. We invited Elina, the Divine Healer, to cameo as the Demon King. Princess Golia handled fight choreography and taking hits with clean stunts. Our archer, Catherine, directed with sharp field vision, like an eagle mapping wind.

Raven played the corpse with half a head eaten. Lots of screen time, still a corpse, still cold as marble.

Raven sighed and shook her head, helpless as a leaf.

“Sometimes I’m impressed by you two,” she said. “Stini, fine—Heroes love making messes. But you too, Andor? I know you two have insane initiative, but don’t use it on nonsense.”

“We were about to rest,” I said, shrugging like a lazy cat. “It’s healthy to leave time for fun. People who only fight won’t see the end.”

“You’re the captain, Stini,” Raven said, finger like a quill. “You set our morale. Do what you want. But you, Andor, you’re the vice-captain. Our wards and alerts aren’t even up. How can you be playing?”

It’s because Raven is so sensible—honest to a fault, sharp in everything except close combat or battle magic—that in a story built on quirks, she becomes the deadpan foil, a straight edge in a crooked gallery.

I’d set a miniature labyrinth stage. With scraps on hand and junk from my pack, I made props. For blood spray, I dyed translucent gauze and hung it in layers around Elina, our Demon King, like bleeding veils.

I brewed a load of “lingering black smoke” to mimic death’s concept, a simple alchemy output from class, coiling like ink in water.

Aged costumes on purpose. Makeup to push the mood before everyone got impatient. Props for each corner of our little stage. Most of it, my hands did, thread and resin like spiderwork.

Stini helped, but that sweet airhead only shines at heavy lifting. Everything delicate slipped like sand through her fingers.

All told, about an hour, a candle burned down.

“Either way, we won’t clear this tower today,” I said. “Saving time for a show is normal, like tea after a march.”

“You’re a boy with such nimble hands,” Raven muttered, half grudging, half amazed, eyes like measuring calipers. “But we were discussing countermeasures against the Demonfolk. I can’t accept this whiplash.”

“If you can’t keep up with a genius’s turns,” I started, grin like a fox, “you’ll be the deadpan for life—forget it. Point is, I want everyone to grasp mental contamination better. At least Elina and Catherine haven’t seen high-ranking Demonfolk officers, right?”

They both nodded in sync, like reeds in one wind.

“This humble one… is on her first study tour,” Elina said, cheeks pink as sunset.

“Indeed not,” Catherine said. “Your instruction is appreciated, Vice-Captain,” voice steady as a drawn bow.

That’s why they got lured into playing with me—playing the show. I adore students who are keen to learn and honest as fresh snow.

“As for Raven and Stini,” I said, “don’t underestimate mental contamination. It looks like nothing at first glance, like mist over a lake. The last ‘Demon King’ we took down, Yakfarro, was just an immature lieutenant. His contamination was weaker than the dire wraith Her Highness and I exorcised. The stronger the foe, the worse the mind-stain. Never take it lightly.”

In truth, Yakfarro is the Son of the Demon King, a far cry from the Demon King proper. Stini’s Hero technique, Immunity Privilege, lets our party completely ignore authority domains and even resist conceptual attacks’ contamination. But if you look straight at the Demon King, your eyes pull in the dark’s raw data, and you still take a hit, like frostbite through a sleeve.

I shouldn’t know half of this. Their intel isn’t detailed either, so glossing it is fine, like blurring the background in a painting.

“…Oh. Got it,” Raven said, chin tilted up like a proud swan, eyes sliding aside so they wouldn’t meet mine.

You clearly don’t! Listen, seriously. With Stini’s Hero aura, we will probably, maybe, almost certainly clash with Anna soon. With our current team’s strength, we can’t win. But if you listen, we might last a while, like a candle in wind that refuses to die.

I’m trying to save your lives here, dragging the topic to mental contamination, then pulling you in with a show, all to make you understand a bit more. Knowledge is power. If raw strength won’t climb, we use this to keep you breathing, like a shield woven of words.

Is it easy for me? Not at all. I get it now, those protagonists who can respawn endlessly yet can’t tell others the future—how it knots the heart like a tight rope.

“Raven, what did you think of my acting?” I asked, tilting my head like a curious crow.

“Only one bit landed,” she said. “Elina, as the Demon King, got wrapped head to toe in cloth. I didn’t feel the terror. Everyone else probably feels the same.”

The others bobbed their heads like pecking chickens.

Good. They’re right where I want them.

“It’s exactly that—‘I didn’t see how terrifying it was, because that terror can’t be described,’” I said. “That’s the true Demon King. At least the tier under it—the dire wraith—gave me that flavor, like a chill that has no source.”

Yakfarro was a waste of a tyrant, less impactful than Zoral communing with the Ocean of Darkness. After the Ironwood Forest operation against Zoral, a third of the surviving students entered the Temple of Wisdom for mental care, minds cracked like ice. After Yakfarro, who was bad at using domains and got weakened by Stini’s Immunity Privilege, most captured students slept it off and went to class the next morning, like a fever that broke.

“What high-tier Demonfolk show—their words, their faces, their very bodies—are concepts projected into the material world,” I said. “See their face, and you take mental contamination. Hear their voice, contamination. Touch their body, contamination. The rain carries it. The wind carries it.”

In domain theory, it’s the root concept radiating outward, invading the human frame, inscribing you with an alien concept. The specific concept depends on the authority domain. A normal person who sees Yakfarro feels sudden, causeless lust, like heat lighting a dry field.

That’s already too deep for now. They don’t need the blueprint. They need the controls, like flying a plane without building it.

“So you don’t listen to them,” Raven said slowly, eyes narrowing like shutters. “Don’t smell them. Don’t see them. Don’t touch them. Then you avoid the contamination?”

Etch this into bone. Don’t dismiss it because it isn’t a bleeding wound. Most Heroes die to mental contamination, like a ship scuttled from within—like Catherine in one branch of the future, who fought Andreas until her mind frayed. Otherwise, she could have lasted longer, like steel held to quench.

“From my two encounters with dire wraiths,” I said, breath even now, mind cool as night water, “that’s true. It matters even more than physical offense and defense, like shadow deeper than the blade.”

"If I don't look at him, the air lifts off my chest like mist, and my mind isn't pressed under a stone. But in a fight you can't help seeing your foe; the field is a storm and eyes are lanterns. If I shut my senses down, I'm a blind man in fog and can't pin his position."

I wish everyone here would fight Anna guerrilla-style, fox bites on a boar. But a hot-blood like Stini charges like a drumline and won't listen.

"Mm, got it; the night’s already thick as ink—shouldn’t we sleep?"

Raven directed a few Constructs to shift shape; metal flowed like mercury, and they became tents—no, one-man fortresses with beetle-shell walls.

I stepped into mine. All the seeds of foreshadowing lay buried like grains under dark soil; now comes the slow lift of the curtain.

"Huh, Andor, no harassing one-liners today?" Raven asked, her words skipping like a pebble across still water.

"Ah—forgot. Want me to make up for it?" I teased, tossing a stone into the calm pond.

"Screw you," Raven snapped, fur bristling like a cat.

She stormed back to her tent like a thundercloud with puffed cheeks, and the door slammed like a clap of thunder.

Was this that twisted habit—harassed so long that silence felt empty, like a stage with the lanterns out?

I sheathed the thought like a blade; live through this pass first. In my little fortress I lay in the easiest pose, so I wouldn't wake stiff as frozen bamboo, then let my mind sink into the Ocean of Darkness.

I reached down to the space beneath us, threading a line through the earth to my maid—the mad Berenz.

"Hey, Berenz, you there?" I called, my voice dropping like a pebble down a well.

"Not dead yet." The reply came frayed at the edges like a signal through rain, but it was enough.

"Good; there’s more I need you to do next, another chess piece to set on the board..."