Halfway through Andor’s speech, Anna’s patience frayed; her foot kept jittering like a drumstick beating a war-drum under silk.

Aside from a few stray flares of a Divine Being’s light, the peace summit flowed like a river under thin ice. The officiants finished their set-piece blessings. The open debate wound down. A draft for the Peace Contract lay on every table like frost.

For the humans, it felt seamless, clean as new snow.

For the Demon Kings—especially Anna—these grand words were ash. Empty echoes looped like wind in a hollow gourd.

Most leaders had already read the tone. The hosts had fixed it like nails driven through jade.

They didn’t walk out because Douglas and Andor spun honeyed knives. They laid out profits and futures, an open scheme. Everyone saw the hook, yet the bait was too sweet to spit out.

Arguments clashed in neat for-and-against. What remained in the air was one taste: signing paid best.

But Demon Kings worship fists. Their creed is granite.

Humans worry about people, institutions, production. Demon Kings measure only strength.

Strong enough, you take. Not strong, you starve. Simple as a blade.

From first day to last, the Demon Realm runs on jungle law. Some lands have house rules to grow overall power, but the root stays: the weak are meat.

Besides, these unascended Sons of the Demon King came to the mortal world to earn their crown. Gains and losses don’t weigh much on their scale.

So words and ledgers move few Demon Kings. A handful liked Andor’s proposal and nodded.

More were “persuaded” by Andor, physically. They’d planned to wreck the summit, but one-on-one they couldn’t beat him. They heard he’d name a common enemy, so they held their claws and listened.

For Anna, “kill the turncoat Qing” could wait. “Make trouble for Andor” mattered more.

She heard no crucial intel, only a bellyful of chaff. Her temper snapped like ice underfoot.

Her Giant Scythe slammed to the floor.

Ding. A bright note cut the hall clean, and every other sound died like candles in wind.

Onstage, Andor halted, eyes wary, gaze a drawn bow aimed at Anna.

The Devil High Lord and the Contract God still sat at their separate table, statues in stormlight. As agreed with Andor, they wouldn’t act unless someone used force.

“As I thought,” Anna said, voice cool as moonlight on steel.

She dragged the Giant Scythe up the steps. Stone scraped iron with a razor shriek that made ears sting.

Every gaze tensed like pulled wire. Anna laughed instead.

A smile to topple a city, cold as frostbite.

Her palm cracked across Andor’s face. If he were human, his spine would’ve snapped like a dry reed.

He turned back—and wore a beautiful face, short black hair neat to the ear, eyes black as deep wells.

“I knew it was you, Vega. Andor’s most trusted aide.”

Vega had taken the slap. She offered a perfect-courtesy smile, polished as lacquer. “Your Highness Anna, how did you tell?”

“Because Andor is arrogant,” Anna said, heat banked and coiling. “Not showy pride. A quiet height. You, always at his side, never knew it. He never dreads. He never fears.”

Anna pressed in, forehead to forehead, driving Vega to yield a step like surf pushed by tide.

“His Long Halberd is faster than anyone’s, heavier than anyone’s. He never saves a place for another. That arrogance—you're a maid. You can’t mimic it.”

“Then you mean my Master wouldn’t save you a place either?” Vega’s voice was light, blade-thin. “Even the mighty Slaughter Demon King, Anna, leaves no shadow in my Master’s heart?”

Anna’s brows knit. Her right hand held the black Giant Scythe. Her left lifted a small white sickle. Her stance slid into battle, a thunderhead rolling low.

Her voice dropped, anger gravel-deep. “Vega, trying to rile me? Without Andor, Dulan would only cling to life under my heel. And you? What are you.”

“No. Never, Your Highness Anna. It’s only a petty flaw of mine. Malice is a personal inclination, not an act of will.”

The flawless maid raised the Long Halberd, took two steps back out of the arc of Anna’s wrath, and bowed to all.

Anna’s guard climbed like a spear lifted. She despised this mere maid—even if she was a fierce spirit—but knew Demon Kings left no room for servants to resist.

Yet after being burned by Andor and Vega more than once, she knew Vega only uncages her bent and talks wild when the board is under control.

What’s her trump card? That demon arm—the Long Halberd Nandu? Its fame rides Andor’s strength. The weapon itself holds nothing singular, only what any magic arm can do—link to an authority domain.

Out of its master’s hand, a magic arm is only sturdy. So Anna couldn’t see how Vega would flip the table.

Even in the trophies Andor bragged about to his younger kin, there was nothing to break this stalemate.

“My Master never meant to deceive,” Vega said, voice clear as a bell. “It’s just that, on SkywardCity, too many rats want to spoil this summit. He has to handle that filth, and he can’t split himself into ten.”

“So he sent you to paper it over?”

“No, no, of course not. Anyone can give a speech. I’m here to lay out my Master’s principle, then answer your doubts.”

“You? Qualified?”

“This Long Halberd is the seal of my Master’s full proxy... But since I lack strength, I suppose none of you will accept that?”

Vega shrugged. Facing Anna and the other unhappy Demon Kings, she reached under her skirt’s shadow—today she wore Andor’s dress pants, so she skipped the improper motion—and drew a square crystal from the Shadow.

Pale blue, with a white, flossy spiral turning in its heart. A crystal fit for a gallery.

The instant it gleamed, Anna’s face went iron-blue. She stepped back hard. She didn’t know what it was, only that it was dangerous.

Lethal as a cliff edge in fog.

Vega explained, polite as incense smoke. “We purchased this holy relic from a hungry orc tribe on the Arctic Tundra with a mountain of grain: a tear left by the Snow Goddess. Our Arcane Engineers found fragments of the world-rule of ‘extreme cold’ within. They carved arcane sigils with dozens of tons of rare materials. Detonate it, and the rule of ‘extreme cold’ manifests in the mortal world.”

“As for the result... we made only this one. No test.”

“Yes. You may treat it as a finished Forbidden Spell.”

“We call it a ‘Freeze Bomb.’ The name fits.”

At “Forbidden Spell,” the hall erupted like a shaken hive. Even Appoint, the Contract God, stood.

A Forbidden Spell has one measure only: it can end the world.

Think a Null-Void Annihilation Cannon. Think a Perpetual Engine.

Vega wasn’t lying. The Freeze Bomb would yank on the concept of ‘extreme cold’ and freeze all things. Even time and space wouldn’t escape. What’s frozen would hold that instant forever, like flies sealed in amber.

The Arctic Tundra once suffered Demonfolk invasions, and its rules warped. Twisted rules birthed twisted artifacts. The most famous is Unmelting Ice. Hold it, and you feel no temperature. No fire or ruin-spell can melt it.

“The Freeze Bomb’s end state is to make Unmelting Ice. But how wide? How deep? Unknown. Remember, a Divine Being’s authority carries an absolute edge. Perhaps it spreads across the entire mortal world.”

“You know what you’re doing...” Appoint said, solemn, gaze steady on Vega.

Anything that could end the world makes both Demon King and Divine Being drop grudges and stand shoulder to shoulder.

Light and dark, good and evil, chaos and malice—they’re modes of being. You define being before you split it.

To end the world, to turn all to nothing—perhaps the Ocean of Darkness has that self-undoing drift, but it only answers the Ocean of Light. It balances, not erases.

This crude, direct destruction? No one wants it.

“Exactly. This is only one experiment by the Savior Demon King Army,” Vega said, smile thin as ice. “We intend to share this invention with you. After the summit, this ‘Freeze Bomb’ will become the Peace Contract’s keepsake. We’ll present it to the Divine Beings as the gift witnessing this peace—”

“—well, if it survives that long.”

Vega borrowed Andor’s cadence. Now she was the one smiling cold.

“We hoped to finish in harmony. Since Your Highness Anna is in a hurry, that must mean everyone is in a hurry, right?”

“Coincidence: I’m busy too. My true body is rushing to SkywardCity’s core to back up those clumsy Arcane Engineers. I’d hate to see the city saved, then ruined by a fool’s wrong switch.”

“So let’s skip the red tape and cut to bone. The so-called common enemy.”

“We must cooperate. Even if we don’t, we can’t drag each other under. Otherwise, this mortal world may no longer be ours.”

“Three months, six days, twelve hours, and eighteen minutes from now, a patch of space in the Endless Western Sea will buckle inward and form the Time Ruins.”

“Then, an otherworld incursion. Some travelers might mean well. More will be frenzied, unspeakable things—beyond words, beyond parley. Don’t bet on coexistence; kill them all. Fewer of ours will die that way.”

“This is my Master’s prophecy. He swears on the name of Savior Demon King Andor. No jest.”

“Raiders will come by the heartbeat. They’ll kill whatever they see, take whatever they see, burn whatever they see. The weak—children can beat them. The strong—Demon Kings will die. The pressure lasts ten years. The hole won’t seal. Only lives can fill it.”

“My Master can counter their viruses, deny their authorities, and foil their strategies. But not if others hobble him. We’ve no reason to shoulder it alone.”

“Maybe human and Demonfolk hatred won’t vanish. We still share this sky.”

“Humans—your land, your children, your homes. Will you hand them to invaders?”

“Demon Kings—the mortal world is our cake, our gem. Will we let thieves take our rightful treasure?”

“Now we need a minimal baseline of trust, enough to fight the invaders together.”

“...say, a paper Peace Contract?”

Vega passed around the new draft.

Unlike the first, this second draft was lean as a blade. It cut out all cooperation clauses and kept one line: signers shall not launch large-scale attacks on each other during the incursion.

The premise is Andor’s prophecy proving true, and the invaders being as terrible as he said.

So if events turn out that dire, the contract bites. If the prophecy fails, no loss, no effect.

The first contract sought dovish allies. The second stops the mortal world from bleeding itself white.

Seeing the flicker of temptation in their eyes, Vega felt a good report forming for Andor.