Draconic magic, “Oblivion Firmament.” The fiercest destruction mortals can touch. Among dragons, a long Dispute raged—does it count as true erasure, and should it be banned.

War-chant magic, “Co-Decay.” You collapse your inner elements like a star imploding. In return, your mana surges, your bones and sinews harden like tempered steel.

Bestowal magic, “Edict Bestowal.” It locks the body’s outline like lacquer on jade. Even if you crack within, so long as it’s active, your shape holds.

I pinch the fae’s ash. It rasps through my fingers like dry sand, then vanishes on a breeze like a ghost’s sigh.

In it, I feel the fingerprints of those magics, each a scent on smoke. There are others too—killers, shapers, simple light-and-shadow for show.

Killing the Lunarfolk isn’t easy; they’re moonlight in armor. By the same token, even ending themselves takes more than a wish.

To die while breaking your body inch by inch, still keeping time with the music—that’s a slow, exquisite torture, like ice dripping through bone.

And they laughed as they played to the end, like lanterns burning bright at dawn.

I’ve watched countless Heroes fade, each a tide of song—dirge, hymn, war-chant. But Opa and Eve turned death into a grand, glittering stage.

I incline my head the barest fraction toward where they vanished, like a leaf bowing to rain.

To those who deserve it, pay the respect that’s due, as incense pays its smoke to the sky.

Paroti’s voice breaks the current of my thoughts like a pebble in a pond.

“Alright, no need to grieve. They don’t need our grief, and they wouldn’t want it. Opa and Eve’s shows were always joyous. If we don’t smile, we wrong their care.”

He prays for them again, brief as a bell-note. He doesn’t open the rear door and lead us on like before. He stands in the doorway instead—upright, open—where Opa and Eve once stood.

The air prickles; trouble gathers like thunder behind the hills.

“Miss Stini Saya, you’ve got a reliable partner. Mr. Andor saw I meant to draw you into our camp, so he never lets me get a word in.”

He laughs, bright as a struck flint.

“You don’t need to ask more. Don’t need to say more. Call yourself a Hero with pride. Tell everyone—it was your win.”

“That’s it?”

Stini’s starting to get used to how a notary speaks to the dying—respect, and care. Only that. A white blank beyond it.

“Yes. The rest, leave to your reliable companion.”

“Uh, Andor, I can help—”

I’m about to refuse when Paroti, considerate as a man closing a window for rain, answers for me.

“Miss Stini, this is an evil you can’t do—lying to truth, refusing others, bearing pain, fearing the unknown. I agree with Eve and Opa—you’re unqualified. We can’t entrust saving Raven to you.”

“As a Hero with a chest of merits, the Heretic Inquisition won’t press you. Even if they ask, you’re entitled to keep your silence. Just declare victory, and guarantee Raven isn’t a heretic,” Paroti adds, voice steady as a seal on wax.

“Mm… alright.”

She pouts, then nods, like a petal settling.

Paroti turns to me; his gaze lands like a weight on still water.

“Then, Mr. Andor. You… you’ve done what we of the Truth Seekers Assembly dreamed of at best. So well it makes me doubt.”

“So you don’t believe me in the end?”

“Hahaha, no, no. We can only believe you.” Paroti clutches his belly with laughter like bells tumbling down steps. “You’ve passed the last gatekeeper’s trial. We don’t have the strength to question you more.”

“The last gatekeeper… huh?”

A cold smile boils underneath. A dead man’s face shows nothing.

“So you still can’t take us to Raven?”

“Don’t rush. I added a trial of my own. I, Paroti Surishi, am the final gatekeeper. If you want through, then defeat me.”

He mirrors the ones before. He lets the magitech components fall silent; his mana goes still, like a lake at dawn. He spreads his arms, smiles like a candle.

This is wrong. The wind is blowing against the grain.

“Paroti, you shouldn’t—”

“You shouldn’t have to die here.”

Someone finishes for me. It’s the one I hate most, the one I dread like a blade behind the back.

“Your Excellency.” Paroti bows, perfect as a drawn line.

Head, the Divine Being of Wisdom, steps out of the wall like a swimmer from water, like a walker on air. He wears a sleeveless hospital gown that pretends at a ritual robe, thin as a whisper.

The blasts of magic and Divine Art hush, sparks like fireflies dying. For a breath I forget the battlefield—almost jest about where Head stole that gown.

Reality snaps back like a bowstring. I whip my eyes to Stini. Time has stopped for her; her pout hangs like a crescent moon.

I breathe. Head isn’t exposing me to Stini—yet. Then He… no, call him he now. Why come?

I expect him to needle me. He doesn’t even glance my way. He only frowns at Paroti, like thunder on a clean horizon.

“You shouldn’t die here.”

“Divine Being, you once said, ‘I don’t have to die here.’ But I’m a disciple of Nagash. Isn’t dying here fitting?”

“No need. A disciple of Nagash has already passed. That’s not your burden. You can live.”

“Live…? My lover died here. My family died here. My friends died here. My teacher has returned to the land of the dead. I want to follow them, as before.”

Head’s brow knits tighter, a storm gathering.

“I won’t say, ‘You’re just emotional.’ Paroti, you’re clear, you’re rational, you know what you’re doing. But…” His voice no longer rings with the old certainty. Hesitation sifts through it like sand.

“Divine Being, thank you for grace and mercy. My will is set. I want to die here.”

“Maybe, you could—”

“Maybe. Maybe Your Excellency’s advice is right, optimal. But my teacher said it. You said it—”

“—Mortals have the right to decide their fate.”

“…”

He goes silent, a bell with no clapper. A Divine Being famed for omniscience declares His will, yet cannot prove it right. Stranger than fish-folk drowning in water, than winged folk falling skyward to die.

Laughable. Sorrowful. A cracked mirror catches both.

Only now I see His eyes lack their old sun-fire. They’re ash-gray, like a blind man’s, like a storm after the rain.

“Head, why are you here?” I ask softly, like a knife sheathed in velvet.

Malice warms the words like wine turned sour.

“Andor. It’s none of your concern.”

I reach into the realm of Shadow, cold as a well. I take the mask I carved with long patience. I press it to my face like a second skin.

It’s ugly. But it marks me as the World Saving Demon King. It draws the formal line against a Divine Being, as black ink draws a boundary.

Another reason: without it, I might not leash the feral twist of my grin.

“Pity? Lament? Tongue tied? Where’s your silver tongue? Persuade Paroti, hah. Head, you wear a human body—did your mind turn human too?”

Head, a gatherer of all “Wisdom,” sees a thousand threads I will never see. But the Head before me is different—moth-scorched.

“Why hesitate, Head? If you know everything, if you know it’s useless, why come?”

“Andor, I don’t want to talk to you right now…”

“I’m disappointed.”

“…”

“My archfoe lets himself grow weak and witless, casting away power and wisdom like pearls into a ditch!”

Mortal love and hate. Small despairs and thin hopes. I feed on that like a wolf on marrow; the taste is too familiar.

Head hesitates. Emotion tugs Him here. He shows a body, a lighthouse in fog. I know what He’s thinking.

Anger follows like a fire catching dry grass.

I don’t care for others’ curses. But if my archfoe is this pathetic, doesn’t that make me just as foolish in the mirror?

“Is it pity? Pity that a man who could be a Hero falls here? So you come on impulse. The great Divine Being stains Himself with human love and hate? Get lost. I don’t admit you’re Head. Put on that confident smile, then come see me.”

The Ocean of Darkness heaves. It growls low, a leviathan turning beneath the keel.

My voice in this tainted world is a chorus: a terrified child, a hopeless bride, a shriveled crone, a dying warrior. We scream hoarse together.

Darkness spills from my feet like ink, staining the world. It paints the room pitch black, like midnight without stars.

My Shadow stretches, lengthens, swells into a sky-choking beast.

It has a thousand arms and ten thousand bone wings, a cathedral of hate.

“Leave now. Or I’ll kill you.”

“Andreas, stand down. You won’t kill me. You can’t.”

Dark coils climb Head’s ankles like snakes. A light flares, hot enough to glaze mountains into glass, and burns them to ash.

Light not meant for mortal eyes blooms in Head’s gaze. Any who see it would learn all knowledge, then “Wisdom” would swallow them, and they’d become part of Him.

Diamonds prick the hospital gown like stars. Flowers open on the cloth like spring. Plain cotton turns to brocade and silk; images beyond human imagining ripple there like auroras.

He—no, He is He—wears a sun-halo behind His head. It drives the Darkness into the abyss. It pours color, light, and hope back into the world.

But the Darkness doesn’t flee far. The Shadow with a thousand arms and ten thousand bone wings still squats behind me, howling hollow, resentful, wrathful. It spits poison and curses like thorns.

“He shouldn’t die! He shouldn’t die here!”

“You knew it all! He chose to die here!”

Head closes His eyes. Silence pools. He sighs, soft as a page turned.

“…Alright. I lost. It means nothing. You didn’t win anything.”

I expected a Dispute of doctrines, maybe a fight—steel on thunder. Instead, Head concedes cleanly. It’s like throwing a heavy punch into empty air, never finding purchase.

No. We never truly had a Dispute. I raged alone. Head used words to quench me like water on coals.

The roaring Shadow balks, then shrinks, then twists, then creeps back to my feet, becoming only what light makes of dark.

“Then, Your Excellency Andreas—no, better call you Mr. Andor.”

Paroti forces a wry smile, thin as paper. He spreads his arms to me and shows his chest—the heart, red apple under skin.

“I’m just a human. Pierce my heart and I’m done. Simple. Not worth such quarrel. Please, do it.”

“As you wish.” I take off the mask and cast it back into the Shadow like a stone into a well.

My face is dead as ever; today it’s colder, like frost on iron.

I raise the Holy Sword, Galewind, a silver gale in my hand. I pierce his heart. The edge is so clean I feel no drag until the guard thumps bone.

I turn and draw the Holy Sword free with the spin, smooth enough to spill no blood. But heat like a furnace floods the blade; my hand jitters; blood freckles the air.

No. I can hold steady until my hand chars. It’s the Holy Sword itself that trembles, a hawk balking the glove.

Looks like the Holy Sword still won’t accept my “reason” as “justice.”

“Thank you, Mr. Andor.”

Paroti sounds surprised. It didn’t hurt much; he didn’t bleed much. He scrambles to clamp the wound with magitech, like stitching snow. It’s barely enough to keep him breathing.

“It’s nothing. You want to die. Just not yet, right?”

The bodies behind us still lay uncollected, like fallen leaves after a storm. I only let Paroti make his own choice.

That wound was a signed death warrant, blood ebbing like a tide. With timely treatment, he could keep a small spark alive for a while. If Paroti wished to die here, refusing treatment would let the night take him soon.

“I just chose the most efficient option—the blade that cuts clean.”

“Ha, in that you mirror the Divine Being of Wisdom.”

“Hmph.”

I let out a cold laugh, frost on steel, and waited for the world to slip back into the human plane.

I’d used a fragment of Andreas’s Authority. My rank rose briefly, like a banner in wind. I saw what Head had done to this pocket of the world.

Now Head was easing it back to normal, like a tide receding. Paroti lacked a transcendent rank and froze there, like Stini, as still as stone.

“Though I dislike it, your choices follow the compass of reason and the pulse of wisdom; denying them is a shadow denying its body. Even dropped to a mortal rank, a Divine Being keeps its mountain-high grace.”

“So?”

“So, Head, why did you come?” I asked the first question again, blade of mockery sheathed; this time I wanted a real answer.

“This time was born of impulse, a spark jumping the gap. If I have to say it…”

Head gazed toward Paroti’s place, his eyes sinking back to ash gray, emotion veiled like mist.

“Maybe to bear witness—to the radiance of humankind, like dawn on wet stone.”