Anna. Anna, the Demon King of Shadow. She’s bent over a plan, ink flowing like a night river.

Her pen races like a storm of crows. The stack of drafts rises like a small mountain, higher than her head.

“All your scenarios target His Highness Andor. My lady’s hatred for Andor runs that deep?” Nan Lu sighs like wind through eaves, drops her pen, and tidies her ponytail.

“Cut the chatter. Focus and write… If the urge flares, go downstairs, kill a few, then hurry back and keep writing.” Her voice is flat as a moonlit blade.

“Fine, but mainly… ugh, mainly I’m out of steam,” Nan Lu mutters, like damp firewood refusing to catch.

“Damn it… forget it. It’s your nature. I won’t harp.” Anna exhales like mist over a lake. “Stop writing. Let’s trade intel. First question: any movement from Andor?”

“Mm… Since the ‘daytime star’ showed and we invaded the mortal world, it’s been a week. You and the other princes hounded His Highness Andor. No other moves. Only traces west.”

“So Andor hasn’t used his Authority Domain on a wide scale for a while…” Anna bites her pen tip, a bad habit she stole from him, like a shadow stealing shape. “West, the Western Pioneering Grounds. I sent Liebich ahead to sweep for Andor. Any note-worthy feedback?”

“Yes! A local specialty. Beiti taro. Roast it, and it tastes like smoke-kissed chestnut.”

“Hey, stay on topic.”

“And, and—Liebich says if you drizzle blood the moment it’s out of the oven, the blood sets like frost, turns into a crisp shell. Even better.”

Veins rise on her peerless face like fine cracks in white jade.

She threads “Slaughter” into the quill like a red thread through silk. Authority takes shape, cold as iron, and she flicks it. The feather pierces Nan Lu’s skull like a needle through wax.

The force slams the girl backward at three times the speed of sound, a thunderclap in a corridor. She pins to a support pillar. Black-red blood wells from her brow, runs into her sockets, down her cheeks, and into her open mouth like a dark stream.

She’ll hang there a while, Anna thinks, the thought cool as winter glass.

“When you come down, wipe the blood. You know I like things neat.”

She kneads the arch of her ruinously lovely brow, sighs like a candle guttering, and downs her coffee in one dark swallow.

Does she truly love tidy rooms? The question rings like a pebble in a well.

Not exactly. She doesn’t fuss about the world around her. She just wants space wide as a plaza, lines clean as winter branches, whether the style is blood-hued, simple, or royal.

Her tidiness is habit, not creed—because Andor liked things clean, she cleans as if clearing frost from a window.

She drinks coffee through long nights because Andor bred a plant and named it “coffee,” a bitter bean under a black rain. He said it keeps sleep at bay and gifted her many seeds.

It never helped much, but because it was Andor’s word, the habit rooted, like ivy on stone.

All that was years and years ago, back when she was small as a shadow at noon. Now those habits are bones under skin, so deep they feel like instinct.

The same as with this plant called “coffee.” Long ago, she stopped asking Andor for seeds. She grew them, generation by patient generation, the way her habits grew with her, unchanged.

“I want a mortal to handle my paperwork. You spirits born of chaos and dark are useless at this. Andor’s Vega would be reliable.”

“But Vega can’t fight. I or Liebich could spare one hand and still kill Vega,” Nan Lu says, testing if Anna’s anger has cooled, tugging at the feather in her skull like a child picking a scab.

“You’ve been played by Vega so many times and still haven’t learned?”

“Mm…” The feather won’t budge. So Nan Lu hangs there like a grim ornament on a palace beam. “Vega can’t fight, but he’s slippery as an eel. I can’t help it.”

“…Forget it.” Anna looks at her carefree retainer lounging like a cat in sunlight. She sighs and loosens her Authority, letting the idea of “Slaughter” dissolve like smoke in rain. “We head west soon. Liebich found something. Prepare the auxiliary magic array.”

“On it!” The feather pen gets slain, essence to shell, like a moth snuffed by flame. With the concept killed, Nan Lu drops from the pillar and trots off, happy as a sparrow, to lay out sigils.

Anna watches her recede down the corridor, shakes her head like a willow, and turns back to sort the mountain of plans for a final time before they march.

Too many of Andor’s marks live in her, like constellations in a night sea.

Andor is the Demon King’s eldest, the finest Son of the Demon King. Many younger siblings have worn his guidance like a cloak.

He taught them how to wield Authority, like teaching a river to remember the sea. He taught their habits, their clothes, the mortal world’s customs like map and compass.

He told the legends of heroes, each tale like a torch carried through wind. He wore a corpse-still face and spoke with a flippant drawl, then dropped challengers with one sweep of his halberd, like wheat before a scythe.

Sons and daughters of a Demon King still grow. Yet as Anna grew, each step, each laurel, seemed to bear the trace—no, the help—of Andor’s hand, like a shadow just ahead of her.

The thought chills her like night rain. Not fear, but a cold knowledge: however high she climbs, Andor stands above, teaching the next rung.

Among the twenty-four Sons of the Demon King who invaded the mortal world, almost all share a similar scar. Andor’s overwhelming power turned into a shadow in their minds.

Some accepted that shadow like winter accepts frost. More of them—Anna among them—carry ruin and rage in their blood, and they chose revolt against the one above.

Attacking Andor mid-transit was foolish as striking a boat in a storm. He was leading the ritual. If he died, the gate would snap like a bowstring, and they’d be dragged back to the Demon Realm, promotion lost.

But—

He was right there, his back to them all, arms bound by the spell like a priest at an altar. He couldn’t move.

Anna and the others felt it like instinct, like a wolf catching blood on the wind. This might be the only chance, the only time to strike Andor. Miss this, and they would live beneath Andor’s shadow forever.

So when the killing intent inside them surged like a tide, Anna struck first. Then the second. Then the third. The Sons of the Demon King attacked as one, like knives thrown at dusk.

They struck, again and again, pouring their best Authorities like molten iron onto one man. Their hands shook from the recoil until the bones ached.

Yet that battered silhouette didn’t fall. He stood there as if the storm were rain on a roof that wasn’t his.

When they fully crossed into the mortal world, Andor didn’t even turn to see who had attacked. He walked away, calm as a mountain, without a single glance.

It didn’t feel like flight. It felt like disdain carved in stone, a pride that didn’t bother to notice their proudest strength.

No one pursued. No one dared.

Reason said he was a spent arrow. Heart asked: how many more blows till he falls? How many would have to die before he drops? No one knew. Everyone feared. His back alone froze them like ice on marrow, and then he left, wind in his cloak.

Anna is ashamed of the girl she was, stunned like a stag in torchlight.

She tightens her fine-boned hand, and it holds every Slaughter she’s dealt from Demon Realm to mortal world, like beads on a dark rosary.

A Demon King of Slaughter grows stronger the more she kills, as a fire grows on dry pine.

She crossed into the mortal world and reaped battle after battle. Her power crested like a blood-red moon at zenith.

“So I must defeat him… no—I’ll kill him. I will. With my own hands.” Her voice is soft as falling ash. “If I kill the Demon King’s eldest, maybe my Authority will break into a higher sky.”

Prove it to Andor: she’s not the little girl who trailed his heels like a small shadow.

She is a king. A king of demons, with a crown of night.

“Andor, I’ve grown strong. Have you?”

She grips her armament, two scythes, one big, one small—Birth’s Joy and Death’s Anguish. It feels like holding the world’s throat, drunk on the power that hums like stormwire.

A peach-flush warms her cheeks, like a maiden about to meet her lover—only the love is sharpened into murder.

A killing intent, clear as glass and brewed for a hundred years, rises like dawn over a field of blades.