In the Abyssal Pit, a prison for the worst heretics, the air hung like wet iron beneath a drowned sun.

Hunger surged first, a crimson tide inside her chest; then Kairi tore open chainmail, dug out the man’s heart, and bit down. Blood spattered her face like rain off rust.

The gag reflex never came back. In its place—flavor, wicked and rich. She wanted more. She wanted every drop, to chew each bone to grit like desert sand.

The masked Demon King had said it was normal, like a moon that forgets to rise.

The more she ate, the dark in her blood would wake. She’d edge closer to Demonfolk, thirsting for slaughter and ruin like wolves scenting night. But she didn’t want to be Demonfolk. Kairi still ached for fields under clear skies, for family already gone, like wind over old scarecrows.

She shoved her fingers deep into her throat. Retching clawed up, sour as storm-bent vines.

Yes. Hold on to that feeling. That clean disgust, like cold river water on the teeth.

She dry-heaved; only acid came up. She smeared it on the wall; the stone bubbled away like frost under salt.

“I’m getting less human by the day... what do you think, great Hero?”

Kairi rounded a shadowed corner. At the far cell, she crushed the iron lock with bare hands. The gate whispered open like a rusted hinge dreaming of rain.

Stench hit her first, a rot-thick wave; even Kairi, after so many kills, frowned as if biting a green plum.

Andor, the Hero: his left hand hung from a chain like a wilted banner; his right arm was severed at the upper arm, hooked beside him like a butcher’s cut. Burns, shocks, stabs, tears, bruises—the whole catalog of wounds, the whole museum of tools.

Worse, in that ruin he still laughed—disdainful, proud, like a hawk glaring at mud.

The sight tugged a thread; Kairi, unbidden, thought of the masked Demon King, a silhouette at dawn.

“This was your choice, wasn’t it.”

His voice cut in. Unlike eyes crusted with blood and filth, the sound was steady, clear—no tremor, iron in a bell.

“What are you saying? You dare call this my choice? My husband! My child! Their deaths—my choice?”

She didn’t care how broken he was. She grabbed his collar, hauled him up like a weed. Her fangs skimmed his eye, cold as glass.

“All you so‑called Heroes! Did you give me any choice? I kill not only to avenge them! I want to live. On my own farm, with the one I love, quiet as winter fields. Hero, who made me this butcher? You righteous ‘great’ Heroes.”

“No. I mean after. The choice to live. To eat. To kill. Those rose from inside you, born of your will. Am I wrong?”

“This isn’t what I want! You don’t know anything!”

“I don’t. I don’t care to. But from any stance, it’s worth saying: you may lack room to choose, yet you always have moments to choose, like stepping stones in floodwater.”

Kairi smelled trouble, sharp as ozone before lightning.

The Hero sounded like him—the Demon King wearing a mask of afternoon sun.

She wanted to ask what stance he meant. To pin it down, neat as a needle in cloth.

But she didn’t dare. She feared death, a cold hand at the nape.

So she ground her teeth and said, “What a joke.”

“You can choose to die. If you still choose to live, you still want revenge, or you haven’t lived enough. Then why complain? Complain a day lacks twenty‑five hours. Complain about gales and thunder. Pointless as shouting at rain.”

“If I twist your neck and rip out your heart, will you still call it pointless?”

“You won’t.”

“Why?”

“If you meant to kill me, you wouldn’t be talking. You wouldn’t wait on my answer. I’m guessing you think justice hurt us both and want resonance. Or someone sent you—Demonfolk—to fetch me.”

Even crushed, the Hero looked down on the world, like a mountain over a road.

For the first time outside revenge, Kairi felt killing intent bloom from nowhere, black as crows.

She was pinning her fear of the Demon King and her hate for the Inquisitors onto this man like shadows on a wall.

Kairi let go. Andor crumpled to the floor, a sack dropped in dust.

“Hey, in this state, I’ll die...”

She snapped his shackles with her bare hands, caught one of his arms, and slung him over her shoulder like a field bundle.

“Wait, you’re taking me out? Did Stini send you? This’ll make things worse for me.”

“Shut up. Ask the Demon King.”

“The Demon King... you mean...”

He knew something. Kairi knew she shouldn’t. Some doors are cliff edges.

“Shut up.”

She barked it again. He fell silent. Only their breath remained, like bellows in a cold forge, until they reached the dungeon’s lip.

They pushed through rust‑scarred iron doors, climbed to the highest tier, and stepped into pale morning.

Andor’s pupils pinched down; closing his eyes wasn’t enough. He turned his head hard, like a flower from noon.

“Has the sun risen? It’s too bright.”

Long in a dungeon, it happens. With care, it passes, like frost leaving a pond.

Kairi felt it too, a prickle under skin. The blood in her gave her unmatchable strength, but it made her kin to the Demon Realm—loving shadow, hating sun—mind and flesh drifting nightward.

And that was permanent, carved like a seal. She would never go back to lying on grass with husband and child under the sun, a warm noon nap like a lazy breeze.

“But I still want to live under the sun.” She stared at the horizon. The blaze turned her eyes blood‑red; vessels burst like spider silk, and tears of blood slipped down. She refused to look away, stubborn as a stone lantern in wind.

“Hard, you know.”

The Hero breathed it at her ear, a low tide sigh.

“I’ll strive for it.”

Her answer rose bright, a banner in storm.

“What a joke. That attitude—what a joke.”

That teasing, light tone—hear it once and it brands you. Kairi would never forget.

The Demon King was behind her, who knew when, like a shadow that had always been there, simply unnoticed.

This time he wore beachwear and flip‑flops, mask gone, sunglasses perched, voice as lazy as driftwood.

“Effort, struggle, courage—those belong to storybook leads. Kairi‑chan, don’t tell me you still haven’t noticed. We’re the villains. The black hats. The ones to be hunted and hated. No room for love or belief. Only to swallow others’ flesh, mixed with our own vomit, and live low until a Hero kills us.”

He snagged the Hero’s collar and tossed him like garbage, careless as flicking peel into a ditch.

Kairi disliked the Hero too, but with no healing Divine Art, that drop could finish him. Some human habit remained—maybe instinct. She caught him, steady as hands on a plow.

“Kairi‑chan, I told you... whatever.”

He showed no care—no fondness, no hate—just the way you look at useless things. Even his kick was a nudge, like moving trash toward a bin.

“Andor, how’s it feel to be hated by a justice that faces the light same as you? Ah, don’t answer. Just hit your marks. In a moment, a lovely Hero will save you. You’ll turn the tide, then beat those Heretic Inquisitors at the tribunal.”

“—Though I’m not interested.”

The Hero watched him without the stare of sworn enemies, like stars regarding a moon. He seemed about to speak, then swallowed it.

They knew each other. Kairi was curious, but she shut the door. Whatever they said, she’d close her ears. Dying for curiosity is a sparrow chasing a hawk.

“Well, I didn’t expect much from you, Kairi‑chan. Thought you’d kill the great Hero Andor. But you really helped me bring him out. Thanks. So I’ll show some gratitude. Want anything?”

The sun climbed, gold over roofs, yet the street lay empty, a stage after the play. No vendors, no maids with flyers from days ago, no travelers—no one.

The Demon King met her doubt with a half‑smile, thin as smoke.

“Want to know why the street’s empty?”

“...No. I don’t.”

“No curiosity at all...” He shrugged, light and mocking. “Try another. I said no material support, but I’ll answer one question—anything. Which Heretic Inquisitor will be alone next. Maki’s movements. Even my relationship with Andor.”

Kairi didn’t want to know. Everything about him was a cold pit. She refused understanding like a hand refuses fire.

She had only one wish.

“Please spare me.”

Just this, like a single candle in rain.

“I don’t want revenge anymore. Please spare me. I just want what I had. I want to live under the sun.”

She knelt to him, honest as turned soil, pleading from the heart. He clicked his tongue. Without his mask, impatience showed, a shadow across water.

“...Boring.”

“It’s her choice, Demon King. Your answer? Your promise?”

Unexpectedly, the Hero on the ground spoke for her, a voice like a cracked bell still ringing.

The Demon King glanced back, a look Kairi couldn’t read, like clouds hiding a star.

“That’s why I said boring. Kairi‑chan, if only you were one of those self‑styled sages who see through everything. Stab me in the back, play quiet tricks—hand me to the Heretic Inquisition. Then if you die, I can say it was your own foolishness. People would understand.”

“I... I won’t.”

“That’s why honest people are trouble. If I send you to die now, I become the villain no one can forgive. Annoying. Fine, fine. I’ll tell you.”

He clicked his tongue again, raked a hand through his hair, squatted, and leaned close, a shadow bending to water.

“‘Eat a hundred hearts, and you won’t die jumping from SkywardCity’—I didn’t lie. But it’s only a premise, like a game with ‘the Demon King will destroy the world’ as its premise. We treat it as prologue. We never meant to make it happen.”

“So you... lied to me?!”

“Where’s your head? Did your Demonfolk blood bake your brain? I said I didn’t lie. Games end in other ways, right? ‘The Demon King destroys the world’ won’t come true. ‘The Hero defeats the Demon King’ is the real ending.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Simple: I think you’ll betray me, and then I can kill you. That’s it.”

He spoke it like weather, casual as drifting cloud. Kairi’s skin crawled, ants under bark. Who builds betrayal into the plan? Trampling trust, praising anti‑cooperation—spoken like sunrise.

“Even if your body turns Demonfolk, your soul won’t shift at once. Annoying. If it were my kin, they’d have sold me by now—and they’d be dead by now. Your choice is optimal for you. By luck, you picked the right path.”

“—Just boring, that’s all.”

“Demon King. The promise.”

The Hero called again. The Demon King walked over and kicked him, a pebble flicked into a pond.

“Alright, alright. Praise your own folly. You’ve earned a ticket toward freedom. In exchange, I’ll scrap my method of purging traitors and show the Council of Sages a different hand. Be glad. Thousands will die for your decision. The impression I give won’t be my best.”

“The promise!”

“Andor? Tiresome. Close your noble, stinking mouth. Fine. Kairi, here’s your clear‑to‑win trick. Not the ‘struggle alone’ I said before—this is a cheat code. Do it, and you’ll clear perfectly.”

He snapped his fingers and slowly sank into the shadows, like dusk swallowing a path.

“The trick is—make the story ‘the Demon King destroys the world’ come true.”

"Keep killing, Chixin—careful as a cat. I can promise that, for this stretch, no net will close on you. You'll make it to the end, then slip out of SkywardCity like a shadow."

"Remember this. As the villain, if we go with the 'Hero beats the Demon King' ending, every little monster gets blasted by righteous Ultraman. So don't dream of a truce, or of pardon; those cute tricks—"

"—won't save you."

The Demon King was gone, like a shadow lifting at dawn.

The hollow, still street began to gather noise, like ripples waking on a pond. Any minute, folks would step out and pick up their plain, lovely day.

But that day wasn't Kairi's.

"I'm heading out. You?"

"Since the Demon King said Stini will come save me, let's take him at his word. He's too proud to lie about something like this."

"Thanks for the help back there."

"Don't thank me. Next time, I'll have to put a sword to you."

Kairi laughed. She turned to wind, light as falling petals, and drifted away.

Andor—no, Vega—lay on the ground, talking to himself:

"Miss Kairi, you'll be a good colleague someday, so... please don't betray me."