The Glutton… no, call her Kairi; she’s found her stride in blood and steel like a wolf learning to run on snow.

Meanwhile I slip back to the basement, a night janitor sweeping ash in a ruined shrine.

I need the scene to breathe like a natural landslide. I want the Heretic Inquisitors to read it as: Kusma tortured a piece of the Demonfolk, luck broke the chain, the demon killed him.

I won’t give her material aid, like leaving no fingerprints in wet clay.

Teaching her knowledge is different, like seeds waking in old blood; I can say it’s her Demonfolk lineage awakening, and no one knows what that lineage can bloom into.

Law is a locked room with no witness. In later ages, cops can’t grill a suspect without a decisive blade of proof.

Even with motive and time, suspicion is just fog. Without evidence, I can let the mist swallow my footprints.

Presumption of innocence is a warm cloak in cold rain. And the Silver Era doesn’t solve cases much faster than later days.

We know Divine Beings watch like distant stars, but on “future,” “cause and effect,” and “the right answer,” endless sacrifices are smoke that never reaches the peak.

The gods’ interference is a tethered kite. The Prime Accord says they grant Divine Arts, but not for war against the Demon King, more for storms and tsunamis, the blind grief of chance.

In hurricanes and tsunamis, they are lighthouses in black water. In ritual war, they keep their hands off, like distant thunder beyond the ridge.

The Son of the Demon King must be slain by the Hero; when Sane struck at Anna, he got hammered, like a bell rung for a crime.

It’s a balance, scales steady over a abyss; gods and demons won’t tip them lightly.

And I haven’t done anything to rile gods and men like a wildfire. I’ve only whispered, while my siblings like to wipe out cities like sweeping crops.

No Divine Being will break an oath and whisper to mortals for that, like rain refusing to fall from a clear sky.

I just need to muddle past the Heretic Inquisition’s sweep, like a cat burying its tracks in soft dirt.

First, the handcuffs. I broke them with my Domain of Authority, like frost splitting iron.

That looks wrong, like a clean cut in old bark. So I’ll age it by hand, make it look like metal fatigue or brute force.

I take pliers and a hammer from the boy, tools glinting like teeth, and dress the torn edge until it reads like strain and struggle.

…Good. It looks about right, like a forgery that passes at a glance.

Then there’s Kusma’s mangled corpse, eyes rolled back like dead moons, left ribs all plucked out, right ribs shattered and clawing upward unnaturally.

His guts are almost scooped empty, a hollow cave showing pale spine and basin bone, like winter branches under snow.

Problem is, I touched his arm, like a smudge on fresh paint.

The Heretic Inquisitors can’t ask a god how the murder happened, but they have their own magic, like dust that reveals hidden footprints.

They can tell what part was gripped, which way force flowed, and the rough shape of the hand, like reading river lines in silt.

They can do about as much as later forensics, a lens peering at dried blood like red glass.

The Silver Era has hard men, too. If they pay a price, they can look through where I touched and glimpse me, like frost revealing breath.

Or they can invert will and action, and feel my presence through the weight I put down, like heat prints on cold stone.

If I had brawled with Kusma, the backlash would have rung the walls like a drum. Too many will-laced scars, and my shadow would stand up and wave.

But I only touched his hand. That’s a knot I can cut clean.

I take rubber gloves from the boy, black like storm skin, and tear Kusma’s arm off at the root with brute force, like ripping a weed from wet soil.

I throw it into the Shadow at my back, a dark pond where my dependents wait like eels for meat.

Good. That piece is done, like a door quietly latched.

Kairi scraped at the floor for a while when she first saw me, fear dragging her like a tide. The Heretic Inquisition has profilers who read scuffs like tea leaves.

The boy in a sleeveless patient gown sweeps the corners like a careful ant, skirts the blood, and lays a skin of dust.

He rakes patterns with his fingers like wind in sand. After a few passes, the floor says: Kairi and Kusma clashed hard, then flight, like rain then break in clouds.

A perfect stage, lanterns trimmed, curtains drawn.

Better than I planned, a lucky wind at my back. I only meant to rough it in until it felt right.

I clap, sound sharp as flint on steel. “No wonder you’re the God of Wisdom. You’re a master of grifts and masks. Partner up with me?

“Ah, sorry, you wanted to jump-scare me, so here’s the delayed scream… Wait—what! Since when were you here?”

I pitch it flat, an emotionless voice that matches a corpse’s face, like frost on stone.

“Just kidding, Andor. I don’t poke you for nothing,” he says, voice smooth as still water.

“Then say it. You’ll say I can’t kill a Divine Being. Since the Silver Era, no god died, no Demon King died, so I shouldn’t start it.

“No problem. I won’t spark a hate that burns for ages. I want to get along with the gods.” I lean on “get along” like a hand on a friendly shoulder.

Let Stini take the troublesome quests, like a blade that wants a whetstone.

She’s the Hero, after all. That line fits Stini whether she surprises you or not.

“Right,” Head says, aping my tone, my dumb shrug, like a mirror pulling faces. Then he turns and tidies again, as calm as dust falling.

Tsk. I click my tongue hard, a pebble pinging a bronze bowl.

So my little habits are that annoying, like a squeaky hinge you can’t unhear.

I swallow the urge to hit him, a fist cooling like iron in snow, and clean the odd blood spray on the wall shaped by someone’s stance.

Every hint of “an extra person” must go, like weeds tweezed from a garden. It’s delicate work.

I don’t trust Head, but I don’t think he’ll turn on me for this small thing. In our creed, betrayal is an ice blade—sharp, lethal, but brittle, made for backs.

Even if he sells me now, it won’t cut to the root. At worst, the Council of Sages doubts my sincere wish to ink a peace pact, like clouds shading a promise.

Using that knife now would be wasteful, like breaking a sword on a knot.

When we’ve mostly finished, Head acts like he just remembered, a casual leaf on a stream. “Oh, right. You’ve got a lot to do during the peace conference.”

A bad taste crawls up my throat, like iron and rain. “So?”

“So you won’t have time to date your girlfriend?”

“Stini and the others—Abigail will hold the reins—slip of the tongue, I mean keep them company,” I say, reins taut like a horse’s breath.

“Oh, that. I mean your girlfriend. Your actual girlfriend,” he says, grin like a fox in snow.

“They’re not—wait. What do you mean!”

I freeze, rag dripping like a tired cloud, and glare at Head.

He laughs outright, a river over stones. With a human shape, he’s caught human vices, like a magpie pocketing shiny tricks: teasing, preening, being cute about it.

“Your girlfriend. The Eternal God who should have fallen with you into the Land of the End. Heir to the Creator’s authority. Pure as a maiden, clear as spring.”

“…Ferrel—forever.”

“Ha. Correct.”

“What about her! Isn’t she on the far eastern star, a lantern at the rim of the sky!”

“She saw you, felt lonely like winter without a hearth, and came to play. She should be somewhere in SkywardCity now.

“Don’t snub her. I snuck her down, didn’t tell the other Divine Beings,” he says, voice light as dust.

I slap the rag onto Head’s face, a gray flag, and plunge into the Shadow like a black tide.

I spend everything I am hunting the one girl I know like my own scars.

We spent countless days and nights, nailed together like twin stakes, foundation stone for a growing civilization, both jailers and prisoners.

We stayed forever in the Land of the End, watching mortal history like a river, arguing without end like wind arguing with cliffs.

I mocked her childishness; she called out my cold, like fire and stone trading heat.

I know her best. I know what a glorious idiot she is, bright as noon and blind to soot.

She is the purest good in the world, quick enough to grasp the shape of what I call evil, like a scholar mapping a storm.

But Ferrel can’t take evil into herself. She won’t think in crooked lines. Without someone naming the poison, she can’t taste the bitterness.

In short: naive, saintly, foolish and bright—a big, beautiful idiot, snow that refuses footprints.

If she learns I’m catalyzing a crippled Divine Being, one that can end the world, she’ll move at once.

She’ll erase the first “villain” I built besides Kairi, like a pure flame burning a moldy page.

Ferrel can’t perceive evil, but she does think. For the world, for the bright side of the coin, her choice is absolutely correct, like an arrow to a mark.

But for people woven of dusk and dawn, for the Silver Era, for gods smudged with a little night—her absolute right becomes an unforgivable wrong.

She’s too white to be read by gray eyes. Her perfection is a mirror that blinds.

In the gods’ ledger, the ending would stamp itself as “a god killed a god,” ink black as midnight.

Since the Silver Era began, no Divine Being has died to the Demon King, and no Demon King has died to a god.

And gods have not killed gods, a chill fact carved like a lawstone.

We can’t let that “fact” take root, like ivy cracking a wall.

I must find Ferrel fast. Otherwise the peace conference isn’t the only thing collapsing like a tent in a storm.

The old balance of gods, demons, and men will reshuffle, like chess pieces after a table flip, because “Eternal God Feriel slays the Deity of Justice.”

I lean toward chaos, but I hate a sure win turning back into a coin toss.

——————

Head peels the rag off his face and smiles, a winter sun that warms without melting.

He had already seen the “future” where Andor bolts, so he stays to finish the scene, a quiet hand smoothing dust.

“So. I won’t meddle in the peace conference, and now I helped clean your mess. That’s the price I pay.

“Ferrel entering the board is the price you pay.”

“Andor, do your best. Don’t let the world end,” he murmurs, voice like a lullaby over coals.

He hums a tune like wind through reeds, tiptoes to wipe a spot of blood on the wall, and speaks with lazy ease, as if dust were snow.