Stini ran into the gods’ trial like a lone skiff into a storm; even if he crawls back alive, it won’t be in less than ten days or half a month.

Raven—the girl I want to conquer and bind as my vassal—she’s a once-in-an-era genius born under the wrong sky. In the Golden Era, she’d have been a Sorcerer Emperor, a sun on a throne. In the Bronze Era, she’d have ascended to godhood, a star carving its name. In the Black Iron Era, she’d have been a frontier pioneer, a pickaxe biting into bedrock. Yet she landed in this Silver Era, where darkness lashes back like a riptide.

She’s gearing up to take the high-grade Arcane Engineer license. With her sky-leaping, wild-horse mind, and her main class being alchemist, the odds of failing sit like dark clouds.

So she’s burying herself in Constructs left by the Truth Seekers Assembly, eyes on the Divine Armament series—Hundred-Handed Giant, X-type, Modified. That labyrinth should keep her wandering for a long stretch.

Gloria, third princess of the Iron Kingdom Colonna, is in truth a Golden Era relic, reforged into a humanoid weapon that fights on its own, a blade wrapped in silk. I recently implanted into her the Sorcerer Emperor’s Soul Component; by any modern ethic, the spark inside counts as a full person.

It earned me a string of trouble, like nettles in the sleeve.

By the Silver Era’s view on rights, not even a kingdom can cage an innocent. At Gloria’s request, she should’ve been sent back to the City of Heroes. However...

Just as I expected, only one report sailed across the wires: she got blindsided at home by a suddenly surfacing Demon King and beaten black-and-blue.

Colonna’s Arcane Engineers spooked like horses at thunder. They hauled her back under lantern-light to triple-check every cog and rune. Her return keeps being pushed back like a shadow at dusk.

Our Hero Squad’s Divine Healer, Alina Helen, is a beastkin lady with cat ears, a lantern-soft presence. She opposed throwing Stini out of the Grand-Domain Temple, which earned the Grand-Domain God’s displeasure toward His agent. So Alina’s shut inside the Temple to “reflect,” and won’t be back with the morning tide.

In short, everyone’s tangled in personal storms. The Hero Squad has no team plans for now.

That leaves me time to handle matters that require the mask and mantle of Savior Demon King Andor.

The Western Endless Sea—people use it as a blanket term, like the Arctic Tundra to the north, or the Phoenix-Song Range to the east. It’s a border like a knife-edge: on this side, the human kingdoms with their lamps of order; beyond, not much light worth naming.

That’s my private read on the world’s shifting bones. The human-friendly centerland grows wider each year like frost retreating, and it’s obvious such tectonic change isn’t man-made. There’s no official map for it; it’s my sum of footprints and guesswork: the gods are widening the habitat of the Primordial Nine Races in the Void—or say it plain, they’re expanding the world.

Idle wind-borne theory for bored hours. Back to the chessboard. I measured for a long time, and right on my own prophesied clock, I found a thin spot in space like a crack in ice.

By the three-month deadline, if I tear this seam, the Time Ruins will bloom on their own. My prophecy will stand like a pillar.

I didn’t lie. At the SkywardCity peace conference, Vega spoke in my stead and foretold a Time Ruins bloom here in three months, then hammered home the terror of an otherworld incursion. I never explained how the Time Ruins would form.

Nor did I mention the part I’d play in it.

I spoke no lies. I just didn’t serve the whole truth, like tea poured short.

“My master who lies beautifully—by common sense, that’s still lying.”

Vega hoisted a coffin and rose from my Shadow, bone-white fingers knitting a body from midnight.

“People don’t know I lied; from a Divine Being’s vantage, mortals have short sight and never asked. Whether self-styled sages or the high and aloof, none can rightly accuse me,” I said, voice cool as still water.

I sank the living room furniture into Shadow, giving Vega space to lay the coffin flat like a slab on black ice.

Though my maid looks small, she’s nothing like me while I’m wearing flesh and blood. She runs on a Wraith template—a hidden boss in a game. The kind you’re allowed to skip because the difficulty spikes like a cliff.

In raw arm strength, she’s more than ten times stronger than me in a Hero template, an iron press against a willow.

She cradled the coffin’s end and set it down, breathing smooth as a lake. The move looked like the center of gravity had gone off a cliff; if our world were an anime, this frame would be off-model.

“My silver-tongued master who can’t handle girls, you always find a righteous banner for your ends,” Vega said, voice edged like a paper cut.

“Did you finish every check?”

I nudged the coffin with my toe. Anna airdropped this thing from her Slaughter Authority Domain into my Shadow Authority Domain a few days ago. I thought it was a world-ender sealed in a curse. Turned out it was only a coffin. We tested it again and again; aside from stasis magic, nothing explosive, nothing primed to blow, nothing masquerading as calm powder.

Given Anna’s odd moves lately, I can guess her meaning. It shouldn’t be dangerous, but reason says check twice, then a third time.

I have a pile of black-tech and black-magic on my side like knives in a drawer. Who can say Anna hasn’t matched me blade for blade?

“We’ve turned it over for half a day,” I sighed, a wind through reeds. “We’ll have to open it anyway.”

“Or you could ignore Her Highness Anna’s will and toss it away,” she said, light as a cat’s paw.

Honestly, if Anna had posted me a forbidden-curse-level bomb, I’d feel less headache. World-ending has world-ending countermeasures; magic has magic answers. But if you say she shipped me a living person...

I scratched my head, wishing my guess were wrong. I stepped back two paces. Vega lifted the lid like unveiling a moon.

A sleeping girl lay inside, quiet as snow.

She was bare as a statue under rain. Her ears were longer than a human’s, shorter than an elf’s, a soft, in-between curve. Eyes closed, hands clasped, wrapped tight in chains etched with rippling runes.

Catherine. Catherine Breeze. A genius eligible for apotheosis, wind under her heels. Once a member of our Hero Squad. She caught Anna’s blade for me at the Tower of Final Stars. Everyone thought she died; in truth Anna kidnapped her, then “trained” her inside her own domain.

Now Anna mailed her to me like a gift wrapped in thorns.

I clicked my tongue, a dry spark on iron.

What can I do? I’m helpless as a man in rain without an umbrella.

“Vega.”

“So, my master whose heart is knotted like old roots—how will you handle this pitiful, adorable, delectable Catherine—who once saved your life, even if you wouldn’t have died anyway?”

“Vega.”

“I’m always here, my master whose mind is a forest of tangled vines.”

“So damn noisy. Shut up.”

“If that’s your will, I obey,” she said, curtseying like a shadowed lily.

Vega and I unlatched the chains and lifted Catherine from the coffin.

She knows the line. She’ll tease when I’m prickled, then, before I snap, she works hard and earns back the points, needle and thread.

I’m annoyed, but not enough to break the table. She has my temperament mapped like a coastline. That’s not bad. I let her.

When Vega lifted Catherine, I saw two savage scars across her back, raw roads where wings once grew. When Anna cut off those Aerian wings, she didn’t choose a clean stroke.

The demonfolk make their high-tier vassals from wraiths by grinding spirit, soul, and flesh to paste, then recasting it to taste. Doing it with a human? Few Demon Kings try. Human minds are hard to mill to dust.

If Anna “trained” Catherine, she aimed to shatter her psyche like a mirror.

“Let’s heal her first,” I said, voice low as ash. “The rest can wait.”

Catherine’s breath is a flicker of candlelight. Her body’s a map of cuts. Many haven’t closed. Some are infected, red as embers. If I didn’t know death by infection counts as a kind of tormented ending inside Anna’s Authority Domain—something she can leash—I’d think she dumped a dying mess at my door.

Anna once filled Catherine with the concept of Slaughter. Curse and blessing, thorn and ring. It kept her from dying to Slaughter, forcing her to bear endless pain.

Now Anna has withdrawn every stitch and spike, leaving Catherine clean in my hands...

For me, it really is a mess, a basket of snakes.

“I thought my cruel, blood-loving master would take her first, then kill her,” Vega said, cuddling unconscious Catherine, idly toying with the Aerian’s not-so-prominent chest like a life-sized doll.

“Cut the chatter. Bathe her. Treat her wounds. Then send her to the temporary Demon King Army base.”

“Not killing her?” Vega truly looked puzzled, head tilted like a cat. “I’m very good at handling corpses.”

“Yeah, yeah. Your craft at staging corpses to frame the right suspect is unparalleled—Vega, are you stupid today? Catherine saved me. She took Anna’s blade for me. Even if ‘dying for me’ is meaningless on a god’s ledger, that’s not the point.”

“Then where is the point?” she asked, eyes bright as glass.

“Betrayal. Grace. Step over those lines, and you never come back. I can only choose to save Catherine.”

“Indeed, indeed. My eloquent master always finds a defense for himself.”

“I’ve always wondered why you keep pushing my deeds toward ‘good,’” I said, a thin smile like a knife’s reflection. “Everything I do has reasons.”

“You also do things not purely for yourself, my beloved master,” Vega murmured, pressing in so Catherine’s cold chest brushed my sleeve like winter porcelain. “I still remember when you chose to ‘believe’ the Hero girl and rewrote your plan. When you chose to ‘encourage’ Miss Catherine, though betrayal was the only likely return.”

“You have grand reasons. But can you prove you’re not lying to yourself?”

“I can’t prove it,” I said, steady as a stone. “But I am holding to what I want to hold. That has never changed.”

“Then I’ll follow you to the world’s edge,” she said, voice like a vow carved in frost. “Just don’t betray yourself. That is my only wish and stubbornness, as your slave, your servant, your sister-in-arms.”

She finished, then princess-carried Catherine, bowed, and left like a curtain falling.

“Practicing evil is as hard as practicing good,” I said to the empty room, the words drifting like smoke. I don’t know if Vega heard.

I rubbed my temples and focused on the sudden surge of feedback, like rain striking a hundred drums.

The sensing arrays I spent a year laying across Hero Academy all screamed at full volume: an immeasurably strong demonfolk has invaded, striding through the halls, heading straight for my home.

My Authority Domain chimed back a single word for the intruder’s mantle: Slaughter.

She sent me a grand gift, a precious potential high-tier vassal. It’s more trouble than profit for me, but out of courtesy, I should greet this little sister whose temperament is all thorns.