I woke late, the sun already spearing the sky like three bright lances.

At my door, Stini tried to storm my inn room, but she and Dulan were already rolling in the dust like two cats in a burlap sack.

Her pretty face was puffed and red, hair matted with grit like windblown straw.

I felt a sigh rise; Dulan’s no fool. Lazy by habit, sure, but she’d have told Stini who she was. If they weren’t enemies, why were they swinging?

Beasts first, logic after—that’s how it felt. Two beasts of equal rank meet on the same trail; they scrap to set who leads and who follows.

To avoid bleeding the team, Dulan kept her great blade sheathed, and Stini didn’t touch her Holy Sword. They went with fists, nails, and hair.

The innkeeper hovered nearby, eyes flicking between their tangle and my rumpled, half-awake scowl, like a man watching storm clouds split.

I rubbed the fog from my eyes, muttered an apology, then cracked each of their foreheads with a sharp knuckle-flick, like knocking sense out of walnuts.

“So lively at daybreak? If you’ve got that much spark, go catch a Barlo rabbit and roast it, you two idiots!”

“She swung first.” “I don’t start fights.”

They kept pinching each other’s cheeks while trying to explain, faces stretched like flour dough.

The flick didn’t stick. Fine—next time, we’ll use fists.

After I schooled the two instinct-run idiots, breakfast finally felt like a quiet pond again.

“This is my third maid. Last night I used a teleport scroll to call her back from the Western Expansion Grounds. Get along. No fighting.”

They still traded dagger looks, and Dulan was wide awake now, spirit kindled like a lantern.

Teachers chant “don’t bully” like rain on a roof, yet schoolyard storms still happen. Fear of the teacher lessens the hail, not the thunder.

They won’t draw real steel. As long as they don’t trouble others, I’ll mark it as ‘sparring,’ make it clear we’re allies, then let them manage the rest.

I claimed I needed a bath and asked Princess Golia to watch the two problem children. Stini balked and stalled, so I kicked her out like a stubborn goat.

I came back, set the kettle, and brewed tea for a guest riding in on the morning like mist.

Heat curled the leaves; fragrance rose like a small cloud. The timing felt right—for the guest and for the tea.

I stood and opened the door.

The young man in a black suit turned toward me right then, as if he’d just arrived—crafted theater, meant to prick guilt so I’d pay more. Devils play every angle to perfection.

He—the devil I often trade with—smiled and nodded, then walked inside with the calm of a moon over water.

“Sorry to keep you.”

“It’s fine. Time’s always our friend.” He lifted the cup with flawless grace and sipped, like tasting a quiet mountain.

“Was it necessary to yank me out of bed? Or is wake-up service part of a devil’s contract?”

I knew he’d been here at dawn, stirring my spirit like a stick in a hornet’s nest. My temper hit harder because of him.

“I’m not in a hurry, but you might be, Your Highness Andor. Devils keep the best merchant’s code in the world—‘the customer’s loss is our loss.’ That’s our mantra.”

“I don’t buy devil patter… ah, you mean Nivifar’s side? That’s the help I want.”

I poured two cups, raised one to my lips.

I tasted my own craft… bah. Too many leaves. The brew bit like bark. My tea has nothing on Raven’s.

Across from me, the devil drank unhurried, tasting not the bitter but the picture inside the cup.

“So, Your Highness already knows a devil made a contract with Nivifar. How you learned it isn’t our topic… you want me to cancel her deal? Impossible. A devil’s credit outlasts anything. Even if the Divine Beings break oaths, devils don’t break contracts.” He shook his head like a steady metronome.

I knew well: for devils, contract is absolute. They meddle only before signatures dry, where language is a battlefield and wit is a blade.

A devil will fulfill a contract even at the cost of a ‘life’—if devils have such a thing. I know the lore.

“I won’t ask the impossible.”

“Then what do you want?”

“If I can’t halt Nivifar’s story, speeding it works the same. Finish her contract fast. That’s within your discretion, right?”

“About that…”

He looked at me, a touch of strain, like a wire drawn tight.

“You’ve paid dearly, and I’ve taken it, so I’ll match value. But you said, ‘accelerate the contract’…”

“Does that bind you? I can keep paying.”

“It’s not the price… You know there are many devils. Some rank like the Demon King; some are closer to ordinary Demonfolk. Only the contracting devil can shape how it’s fulfilled within options. Others can’t interfere, no matter their opinion.”

“So you can’t find the devil tied to Nivifar? I’ll add money; please track them down.”

“Your Highness Andor, devil contracts are very secret. Even to our own, we don’t leak.”

So he’d decided not to grant my wish.

“Then if I find which devil signed with Nivifar, that’s enough, yes?”

“Mm? That… yes. I’ll mediate between you and that devil.”

“Good. Then please accelerate Nivifar’s contract.”

“Your Highness Andor? I already said…”

“Please accelerate Nivifar’s contract,” I repeated, and added his style name like striking a gong. “Great Devil Duke, Your Majesty ‘Blindness’?”

“You know who I am?”

“To watch the Final Calamity, you’ve worn a junior salesman’s mask for years. Hard work—thank you for the discounts.” I tried to sip like a cool breeze, then regretted it when the bitterness bit like winter bark.

He said nothing, lifted both cups and the pot, rinsed them in the washroom, then set them on the elegant rack I always use—like moving through his own rooms.

He came back, slid our table aside so our chairs faced cleanly, nothing between us but air like clear glass.

He kept the smile.

“Looks like we can speak frankly now. Endless Demon King, Your Majesty Andreas—you can call me ‘Blindness.’ I go by that name.”

“Then your answer?”

“As I just said: since you can point to the devil who contracted Nivifar, it’s my time to mediate. I’ll keep that promise.”

He smiled bright as flint catching sun.

That’s more like it. That’s the devil I know.

Unlike a proper Demon King, their station sits higher, grander, more beyond mortal sense—like mountains in cloud.

Victory doesn’t stir them anymore. They crave a foolish soul’s lightning-flash, the spark that finally beats them.

Because they never err, they long to be felled by a perfection one step past perfect.

Demonfolk rarely die; in the world of men, killing a Son of the Demon King only breaks the body.

Devils go further. How many exist, how they exist, whether they’re ‘alive’—it’s all fog. Killing a devil? Deeper fog.

“How you knew I contracted with Nivifar, and that I’m a Great Devil Duke—none of that matters. The wise say, ‘every minute is precious, so spend it looking forward.’ What matters is how you want me to act.”

“As I understand, the arc goes: create a crisis here, Nivifar saves the city, becomes a Hero. But you sold the power source meant for her to that fellow ‘Class,’ so the Son of the Demon King puppets Nivifar, and she destroys what she sought to guard.”

After that, Stini’s Hero Squad suffers trial after trial to defeat Nivifar, learns her ties to the Hero bloodline, why she fell, and what bound her heart.

But in that past life, Nivifar’s stubborn knot never untied. Stini’s companions raged and wanted Nivifar dead. Stini brought Nivifar back to town, knelt, and begged the victims to spare her.

Nivifar wouldn’t owe the Hero… maybe shame made her turn away from the very foe she longed to surpass. She mocked both sides and chose enmity, then went alone to the Demon Realm, scouting Demonfolk for humans as penance.

Only rare, broken letters came from the Demon Realm, marked with her cipher like a seal, proof she still breathed.

Daviya showed me a cherished photo then.

Half of Nivifar’s face looked etched by acid; both arms were sealed in a baleful black exoskeleton, and a tail, stringed with meat, ran from a jutting spine like a dripping rope.

She stood in city ruins, ringed by common folk so angry their eyes blazed like coals. A taller Stini reached for her in despair, the other hand gripped tight by a teammate.

Nivifar’s expression held the lightness of one abandoned by the whole world—or ready to abandon it—and the lonely grief of having no door to walk through. Both mixed like storm and sea.

To Demonfolk, that expression is a rare beauty, a moon over a ruined lake.

But this time I need my focus on Raven. Nivifar’s thread—please hasten it.

“So how do you want to shorten it? Which step?”

“All of them. Everything done within three days.”

“Hmm…”

“I’d love to spar word by word, minute by minute, but the clock bites. Can you do it, and how much more must I pay?”

“I said I wanted honesty. This isn’t a price issue. It’s deeper. Your Highness Andor, you seek to change what shouldn’t be changed.”

His eyes opened from their pleasant slits, and the smile fell like a petal.

“The world and its history have a fixed track. We can hop on that rail, but leap too high and the world tilts. Devils enjoy the unexpected, but we don’t want selfish tilts that end in collapse.”

Is the future set or wild? Does fate exist? I don’t know. As far as I know, no Divine Being claims fate.

But devils are the highest of the undying today. Maybe they see the bedrock. From ‘Blindness,’ it sounded like a linear path, lines you can trace.

So I asked out of curiosity:

“Are devils among those who ‘see the essence of the world’?”

“That’s not the point. I was a bit heavy-handed. I still hope you understand: the cost for your aim isn’t ordinary. Even if you see the future, you can’t wield it like a whip.”

“I know—the more we act, the likelier we kick a butterfly that flaps a storm and breaks the world.”

Transcendents stay silent. But why do Transcendents stay silent? No one’s offered a full answer. Can’t, or won’t—that gap matters.

As Andreas, I knew. As Andor, I don’t. No mystery—rank too low, sight too short.

“You don’t understand. This isn’t a simple butterfly tale. It’s deeper, harder to name. Don’t belittle the codes we’ve kept since old stone. I’m warning you: when you realize you were wrong, it’ll be too late…”

“I’ll fix what breaks. So—your answer?”

I wouldn’t let up—the noose tightened step by step, and the devil sighed.

“…Alright. As you wish, Your Highness Andor.”

“And please, hold a cold mirror to why self-assured mortals always lose to the Devil—it’s important.”

He left those words behind as he thinned like smoke and slipped out of sight.