What is battle? Or rather, what counts as battle?

Normally, it’s blood on steel, breath like smoke in winter, blades tearing flesh, jaws locked on throats, life paying for life in a storm of grit.

Higher up—think Stini or Gugwen—it’s wind-slick strategy, lantern-bright schemes, healing like spring rain, and legendary sorcery that flips the board like thunder.

At the peak—Augustus-level—you wear blessings like a sun-crown: no debuffs touch you; wounds feed strength like fire eats pine; under the sun you revive thrice, under the moon once.

Yet even if your sword splits sky and earth like a comet, you’re still ground-bound, a dance within sightlines, a spectacle that can be predicted, watched, described.

Mortals do not cross that nameless border, a cliff of night where breath freezes like glass.

No one crosses the line between Divine Being and mortal; that line is death, extinction, a homecoming to silence—no step for humankind.

Gods and demons haven’t clashed in ages; since the dawn of the Silver Age and the Stay-in-Place Accord, direct duels are rare as winter plums.

Divine Beings aren’t all doves, true; but even in the war-scorched Demon Realm, unless you defy the Demon King’s crown, they keep their hands sky-cold.

A Divine Being versus a Demon King isn’t blade against blade, step against step; it’s absolute versus absolute, yes versus no, greatness versus smallness—beyond names, beyond words.

Vast light and abyssal dark crash like tides, grind like glaciers, and overturn like quakes, twisting the air and shaking the bones.

See it and you go blind; hear it and you go deaf; think it and madness blooms—spectating alone is a drowning wave.

But the people in Hero Academy were lucky, lucky to the bone, lucky for three lifetimes under one sun.

Sane walked as a human, so he lowered his rank; and Anna wasn’t yet a true Demon King, her darkness not crown-high. Inside that space, mortals watched through a barrier like ice, and all they got was a splitting headache.

To behold gods and demons clash with mortal eyes? Worth dying for, even if the body drops like autumn leaves.

Other times—the early Silver Age war, Sane descending to duel the Demon King, or Andreas at the Silver Age’s dusk—every onlooker died on the first glance, a moth to a star-flame.

I swing the Long Halberd and churn the concept of Slaughter across from me, like stirring a black sea with a moonlit oar.

“You sure you’re fine? A Demon King, standing in my domain like that?” Sane spoke in Elina’s voice—neither soft nor cute. One star.

Strictly speaking, I’m on the seam where two domains blur, a shoreline of fog and mirrors. I’m not parked in either camp.

“It’s fine. Just hold tight to me,” I said, voice flat as snow.

Inside a domain, gods and demons are omniscient and omnipotent; I’ve said it, like rain repeating on tiles, but it’s hard to feel without the cold.

Example: if I drop my guard and step fully into Anna’s domain, I’ll be thrown into some corner of the Ocean of Darkness and butchered again and again, like a fish on a jetty.

If I stand in Sane’s domain alone, I’m ash in an instant—true, I won’t die, but living as ash can’t be a Hero’s face.

If I open my own domain, Sane might strike me by instinct—after all, I am Shadow. Also, it looks uncool. A crow on a wedding veil.

Yes, a Demon King at full throttle is ugly—repulsive, nauseating—the shape that mortals recoil from, the face they dread to see in lightning.

Can’t do that, or the alliance sinks like a stone; better everyone died here than break the pact with a grimace.

So I stand at the conceptual border where both domains blur like ink in water. I keep my existence anchored in the material plane and feed as little of my soul into the Ocean of Darkness as I can, so my shape stays within what people can stomach.

Meanwhile Anna hammers me through her domain, and Sane grips me within his; their forces press like two tides, and a delicate balance holds.

Right now, half of me looks normal; the other half is swathed in darkness, outlines still visible. Still in the strike zone.

Torn flesh death, blood-loss death, organ-failure death, spine-snap death, five-senses-gone death—every brutal ending runs up the half of me inside Anna’s reach, cutting soul-deep like ice.

Burned, seared, blistered, incinerated, wreathed in flame—the sun’s harsh might climbs the half of me in Sane’s hold, and I taste a Divine Being’s power like iron in my mouth.

I won’t die, but the pain rises from the soul like a volcano, a roar I almost let loose.

Screaming would be tacky, though. A deadpan face has perks; I can hold a good silhouette with no extra effort, like stone under rain.

Or maybe I just don’t have spare strength for any other expression. I keep the Long Halberd moving. That thought flickers like a coal.

My body stays material to keep people’s sense of me intact, but the weapon doesn’t have to. I let the halberd manifest as Shadow’s essence—a huge, vast, grotesque, twisted alien thing—and I sweep it through the domain of Slaughter, spreading my Shadow, eroding her ground like night fog over fields.

Now and then, I hear Anna’s muffled grunt, a pebble in a well—so it’s working.

With her true form manifested, Anna chose perfect resonance with the Ocean of Darkness. Most of her soul sank into that sea; she became the union of every concept in her domain, shed the physical, and turned into concept, pure and cold as moonlight.

The Slaughter on my left hand is her. The Slaughter on my right shoulder is her. The Slaughter above my head is her. The Slaughter at my back is her. A thousand blades, one will.

We’re both taking damage. I hope this stalemate lasts until Augustus arrives. But the world hates plans. In a bit, Sane will say, “I can’t keep this up; can you handle the rest?” and I’ll be headlining solo.

The Demonfolk aren’t bright, thanks to the Ocean of Darkness, but the Divine Beings aren’t much better; their logistics are a tangle of vines. After descending, they show no results. Without Head, you’d have been dragged off your Starry Sky Divine Kingdom by the Demonfolk ages ago.

Beyond self-detonation and sacrifice, what else can you do? Your oracles are muddy water, and that’s not new.

While I’m grumbling inside, Sane’s face floats before me like a sun behind cloud:

“This child can’t hold anymore.”

See? Called it.

“Can you—”

“If you’re done, leave the field. I’ll take it. I planned to finish this alone anyway.”

I sigh, a wind through pines. Sane hesitates, eyes weighing me; he trusts the battle, not me.

From the earlier fight, he knows if Anna and I joined hands, he’d lose for sure. Yet I chose to help against Anna, so I’m truly an ally, at least in this storm.

Even so, he’ll still hold to some shabby little suspicion like a thorn in the heel.

Sane’s an odd one among Divine Beings. We’ll get to that later, like a note pinned for dawn.

He nods. Then the Divine Being’s features peel away from Elina—face, neck, shoulders, arms, waist—what belonged to the god returns skyward to the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom like starlight recalled.

Not naked. One star.

I steady Elina, open an anchor point to the Hero Academy, and send the last member of the Hero Squad to the hospital like a leaf carried home by stream.

“Alright. Now it’s just the two monsters,” I say, voice like a blade in shade. “How do you want to do this? I’ll match you.”

No outsiders remain. At last, we can throw words like stones across a river.

The domain of Slaughter condenses; black smoke gathers into a human silhouette, narrows into a peerless beauty’s waist and long hair, and sets a face that could topple cities.

“Heh. You say ‘slaughter’ too? Traitor!” Anna snarls, teeth bared like a hunting cat.

“Wrong. I chose the best road forward,” I say, calm as night water. “If anyone’s a traitor, it’s you. I led you into the mortal world, and you jumped me with your friends.”

“Cruelty is our sea’s way, a fight inside the Ocean of Darkness. But you ran to the light. You think darkness still favors you?”

“Cut the chatter. Are we fighting or not? If not, I’m happy to wait for Augustus,” I say, knocking on the hour like a bell.

“You’re not the Andor I knew.” She falls silent a beat, presses a hand to her chest, and bows, hair spilling like ink.

“You’re not strong anymore. You didn’t betray me; you betrayed yourself. I thought you were the peak I’d never surpass, but now I see you’re just human. Ordinary.”

“People change. Soft words won’t move me,” I answer, voice dry as frost.

“Andor, did you fall in love with someone?”

She drops it like a stone into still water.

“Did you fall for Catherine? If so, I’ll throw that favor away and kill her.” Her smile doesn’t touch her eyes. “Hmm, maybe not. Or did you fall for the Hero? That would be rich—rich enough to split my sides.”

Everyone’s an expert on my love life lately. I really just want to romance Raven…

Her lips say “funny,” but there’s no laughter there. She slashes her own belly with a scythe; entrails and blood splatter like red petals, then flames devour them, and she’s whole again, a phoenix with knives.

“Who is it? Tell me. I’ll kill her, so you can turn back into the old Andor—the one deeper than the Ocean of Darkness.”

“So what? You want me to kill you?” I ask, voice like a cold wind through reeds.

“No,” Anna says, iron-hard. “I want to defeat you. Face to face. I’ll prove I’m stronger than you. Much stronger.”

At the end, her tone carries something deeper, a river under ice. Is it about who I was? I don’t know. Maybe I don’t remember. I never spared much thought for this unlikeable little sister.

In the script, she’s a villain, a supporting role; not the one who journeys with me through trials to distill feeling into gold. Though I never forgot she’s a living being, with her own mind and heart.

I did underestimate her. I thought if Anna fed her hunger for ruin, she’d be content, a Demon King chasing only her own bent.

It’s my story, but this part is fog. I don’t know.

Anyway, Anna isn’t the tale’s protagonist. These knots don’t matter. I’ll knock her down with the Hero and send her back to the Demon Realm like a storm driven out to sea.

There will be no tearful beat between us; if I gain anything in this fight, it will be memories forged with Stini and Raven, constellations of our own.

She never had a place in my script. I never meant to write this side villain in. So I say:

“I don’t know.”

I say it in the same tone that cares for nothing, a winter moon over black water:

“I don’t know a thing—why you cling to me, what obsession you hold. Let’s fight. That’s the language that suits us.”

Sometimes, it’s harder to treat a friend than an enemy; you can pour pure malice on an enemy like rain, with no second thought.

Only the Hero stands fair on both shores, weighing if the enemy bears some untold ache, and sometimes offering pity like a lantern.

But I’m no Hero. I’m not even mortal. I am a Demon King, blood-thirsty and ruin-bound.

A battle woven of blood and laughter—that’s my homecoming.

On the field, the last two remain. We roar like beasts in a storm and charge, weapons raised, each a tide breaking toward the other.