The road runs smooth as silk, a river of dust under steel.

We’re not pushing the armored car full tilt. Anna and I feed mana in shifts, and the hatch yawns like a gill for air.

The sky is porcelain blue, and a lone black dot stains it like ink.

The dot swells, and a blonde beauty falls like a meteor, cracks my skull, and crashes into the cabin.

I feel more numb than shocked, like rain after a monsoon that never ends.

The heaven-sent trope tastes bitter in reality; probability says two points on two spheres—two lips on two skulls—almost never kiss mid-collision.

Physics adds a cold slap; a headbutt doesn’t soften because the other head is cute, and skulls don’t melt for a smile.

Pain blooms where it must, and cracks spider where they will.

If Stini’s Iron Fortification weren’t still burning on me, I’d be a corpse, damn it.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

The skyfall girl drops to her knees, palms pressed like a temple statue.

We freeze, shock crusting like frost, and her panic climbs us like ivy.

She bolts in the end, fear beating wings, and whooshes out the hatch.

“What was that?” Stini gawks, mouth a door blown open by wind.

“Who knows. Falling from the sky? Likely a star-spirit.” I knead my aching skull and drink my second HolyWater.

A hiccup, sure, but no drift off course; we keep driving toward the war’s heart like an arrow to a drum.

Boredom puddles in the cabin, so tongues wander like fish in a bowl.

“Where we go, things blow,” Nivifar says, voice cool as glass.

“Mm… can’t argue,” I mutter, swallowing the smoke of it.

“Idiot,” Anna says, as flat as a blade’s shadow.

“My learning curve’s a brick,” I admit, throwing a shrug like a bad shield.

“An avatar of ruin,” Gloria murmurs, calm as moonlight on a blade.

“Hey, that’s too much. Most of the time, it’s the Demon King doing the blowing up.”

“And that arcane workshop next door—was that the Demon King too?”

“Mm, mm, blame Maki. He parked the nose where no sane cart would rest.”

In the end, the bill circles back to me, and I claw it back later from Stini’s Hero Squad dividends.

“Still, I didn’t think Maki would go down that easy.”

Naiche—Anna sighs, a soft wind through reeds, and starts her murmuring again.

She’s said it three times since our engine first coughed to life.

“I told you. We ambushed with new weapons, and he never went all out.”

That’s all I can offer, smoke over embers.

Fog doesn’t douse coals; my vagueness doesn’t quiet her thoughts.

Anna’s questioning her own lore, and that’s storm weather for me.

In her mind, heroes are great, righteous, and strong, like mountains with banners in the wind.

Every challenger earns a biography, and the fights become epics sung like rivers through valleys.

It’s a ritual way to fight, a ceremonial dance more than a scrap in the mud.

She’s used to heroes dying in tragic splendor, not swallowing a shallow, clumsy win with grit in their teeth.

She’s glimpsing the other side of heroes—defeats that aren’t grand, losses without flair, like rain on ash.

Anyone with a working mind asks what a fall teaches, and Anna’s mind is a honed blade.

Watching her think, I can feel new gears turning, and lessons settling like snow.

She’ll try these cheap ways later, to fell heroes with simple, ugly, effective means, and she’ll build shields against such tricks.

After this, ambushing her, or killing her, won’t be easy; her edges will grow teeth.

The armored car shoulders aside roadside junk like a bull through brush, and I chatter idly with the crew.

Then I tap—no, I ripple the Shadow toward Nivifar, a secret current under the keel.

Hero blood is fine vintage, hot as fire in winter; those who inherit it rarely waste the name.

Nivifar keeps comparing herself to Stini, calling herself waste, talentless, useless, like a mirror cracked on purpose.

But anyone who can become an upper retainer is no dead weight; I’ve never seen a “waste” learn a theory in half an hour, then wield it ten minutes later.

She thinks the conversion made her sharp; I told her the talent was already hers, and the retainer rite doesn’t raise your IQ.

She keeps her belief like a charm under the pillow, grateful to me, especially in bed, and I let it be.

[When we breach the main line, Stini and I go in. You, Gloria, and Anna stay back. Use “keeping rescue clear” to block any Heretic Inquisitors.]

[As you wish. But Her Highness Anna—I’m not sure I can stop her.]

Her hands still fumble at times with the Shadow, but her mind translates pulses faster than mine now; pride and worry braid like smoke.

[She won’t go berserk. Otherwise all that time, effort, and infiltrating Hero Squad meant nothing.]

Meanwhile I keep chatting; Nivifar keeps her cool-girl mask and studies the weapon system, but I’m the mana pump, and silence would make me a broken valve.

I turn to my seatmate, Naiche—once I knew she was a trickster, I roped her in as a battery—and say:

“Naiche, why come with us? This run could stain your name. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Mm… I just want to see more. See the world. See what I don’t understand.”

That rings true; here, Anna isn’t lying, like clear water over stones.

Measured against peak-world warriors, Anna’s sword-work is bad, because she fought from ‘Infinity,’ wielding ‘Authority,’ beyond any moment-to-moment form.

After losing to the Hero Squad, she started learning, like winter soil taking seed.

Villains are foolish yet mighty; that’s a weakness you can aim at, until the villain learns to learn.

If the villain patches every crack, becoming seamless, the balance snaps—justice and evil lose their counterweight.

So you cut the villain’s thread before the loom finishes the cloth.

That’s drama from the stands and history’s logic for the scribes.

Villains always fall on the eve of world ruin, always die one step from a crown, always succeed until their one absolute failure.

Yeah. Time to send my dear sister home.

I make up my mind, the thought landing like a stone in a well.

[So, until she thinks she’s ready, Anna won’t snap. Keep an eye on Gloria. She’s directly under Colonna’s crown; she might say “we must save Raven,” then twist Raven’s head.]

[That sounds terrifying… but I’ll fight to the death. Even cut to pieces, I’ll block anyone trying to break through.]

She flashes me a smile, bright as steel.

[Didn’t you say you could resurrect?]

Are you a fool? Cut into pieces, no Divine Art can revive you without exposing us.

And don’t trust me so easily—no, trust is fine, but don’t swallow every line I toss.

What I promised was advertisement; ads don’t usually lie, but they do polish the mirror, and reality scuffs it.

I can revive you, but don’t test it like a child prodding a cliff.

[Haha.]

She suddenly laughs at the weapon panel, a chime in a storm.

“What is it, little Nivi?” Stini asks, head tilting like a bird.

“Nothing. I just thought of something sweet, something that makes me happy.”

[I’m not the macho “my woman must never be wronged” type. You have a public identity to maintain. If your death’s too grisly, normal Divine Art can’t bring you back.]

[I know. I’m still happy.]

[…Are you?]

[I am.]

I don’t know why, but irritation prickles like sand in a boot, and my Shadow waves keep misfiring.

[I lied to you. I stole your body and heart. I’m not the man you dreamed of. Aren’t you afraid that resurrection will change you into someone else?]

I do have that power, a knife hidden in the sleeve.

The Demon King’s revival gathers a retainer’s soul remnants from the Ocean of Darkness and the old echoes they left there to rebuild them.

If the soul’s too frayed, we patch with echoes, and the revived retainer may lose recent memories and wake weak, like a moth from a cocoon too soon.

I do it all, which means if she dies, I can mold the process as I wish; too much sculpting drops my stature, but small edits to tip memories are a Demonfolk craft.

I showed Nivifar “my everything,” and told her all this, by night’s black lantern.

She falls silent, then replies, careful like a beginner tracing characters, Shadow ripples feeling their way.

[All that exists, yes. But when I had nothing, you threw me a rope—even if it was painted with poison. That redemption burns bright.]

[I only wanted a retainer. Agree, and I take you in. Refuse, and I kill you. That olive branch was pragmatic.]

[It’s enough. When the world is pitch black and you’re alone, and someone listens, someone wants your answer—that joy is real.]

[Hope rekindled? Hope from the Demon King? The world’s a funny beast.]

[You said, “This is a world without salvation,” which makes your alms precious.]

[Even if it’s offered casually?]

[Andor, you decided from the start to use the Reaper’s Gift. That’s not casual. Even if it were, it’s enough.]

Beside me, Anna shivers, like a deer hearing a twig snap, and scans the horizons of steel.

Did we touch one of her nerves?

Ah—Nivifar spoke my name. I taught her how to write my original name yesterday, and Anna noticed?

Names are vessels of language; speak a name, and the god or demon watching that name may notice.

Say “Anna,” and nothing; say “Andor,” and she bristles—why me? Besides fighting, we share no bond.

Thankfully, after a few wary glances, Anna sits again, still as a pond, and the moment thins.

Nivifar doesn’t know; she pretends to study the panels and keeps the Shadow running like a hidden brook.

[Why bring this up now, like you want me to argue with you?]

[I want you to hold your own will.]

[I don’t understand why a Demon King cares about other people’s minds.]

[Strictly speaking, I don’t. I just don’t want to change them. Like not killing insects, not speaking to insects, only keeping respect.]

[That doesn’t sound like a Demon King.]

[It isn’t. Head and Ferrel spent many, many years proving it to me until I had to agree. Enough talk. Eyes up—we’ve entered the battlefield.]

Brooding on useless ideals, I catch sight of the first duel like a spark in fog.

One in a full black robe, steel gauntlets hugging his hands like shackles.

The other ringed by humming mana, arcane components orbiting like cold moons.

An Arcane Engineer against a Heretic Inquisitor, fire against iron.

“Stini, faster!”

“We’ll hurt people.”

“If we can’t shove through, we’ll never reach the center. Punch it.”

Stini grits her teeth, then stomps the pedal like crushing a serpent’s head.

Mana drains from us, floods the core, and explodes as thunder and raw forward surge.

At first, Stini barked, "Out of my way," as the armored vehicle charged like a steel bull; people rose like bamboo to bar its path.

Later, only her hoarse plea—"Don't die"—scraped the air; fear gripped her throat, and maybe, like Anna, she had learned the same bitter lesson.

Bit by bit, the ground bloomed with blood. Magic and Divine Art veiled the sky like a funeral shroud. And the castle stayed unscathed, a stone heart amid a barrage of Divine Arts.

Headquarters of the Truth Seekers Assembly—the Hall of Truth.