Once every spectator had filed into the Swordgate arena, and every guard stood rooted to their post like firs in a blizzard, the hundred-kilometer icefield beyond lay clean of stragglers, a white plate with no black ants.

“All right. We can seal the surrounding field.” I lowered the binoculars and told the man beside me, a little theater as frosting on a steel cake.

Playing dumb or playing cool at solemn moments was a small vice of mine, like tossing a pebble across a frozen lake; it never delayed real work, so why not have some fun.

The High Hierophant and acting vessel of the God of Strength wore full plate in the same style as Eil’s, only without visor or helm, a bronze mountain without its cap.

He gave me a nod and waved to the other Divine Healers, his hand cutting the air like a banner in a north wind.

“Open the anti-magic barrier.” His voice was a bell under snow.

Light warped, and even the sky-piercing gate within Swordgate bent like heat-haze over desert sand, a dome glittering to the eye’s farthest reach.

Dozens of high-ranking Divine Healers chanted the strictures in braided cadence, their words stones in a river, damming almost every ripple of spellcraft.

From the outer skin to the heart of Swordgate, a vacuum of mana took shape, a winter hollow under Divine Being blessing that “blocked” any invasive gift.

Victor, Vega, and Berenz had already hunted the spies our dear siblings planted inside the walls, a trio of hawks clearing crows from a field.

If anyone wanted to make trouble during the duel between the Nameless Sword Saint and the God of Strength Bell, they’d have to march from the horizon to our gate, then break stone and steel like a storm breaking cliffs.

For mortals, that was a mountain in the sky; it might as well not exist.

“We can say ‘we’ve done everything we can,’ sure,” I said, a shard of worry like ice behind the teeth. “But if the enemy’s a Demon King, ‘everything’ still falls short.”

I called my authority from the Shadow, my beloved halberd rising like a black moon, and hurled it high so the dark joined the curtain, a night-silk drawn across day.

Blessing of the Ocean of Darkness flowed down, a cold tide in a silent harbor.

“Divine blessing can ‘block’ a Demon King’s authority, but every wall has a height,” I said, the words smoke in frost. “A Demon King’s blessing is a ‘proclamation’—we plant a flag and claim the ground as ours.”

“As long as they don’t declare war on me, they can’t attack this place head-on; you won’t hold that against me, will you.”

“Of course not,” he said, calm as a stone lantern. “So long as Your Highness withdraws the blessing once the exhibition ends.”

I raised the binoculars again, and a few black dots budded on the rim of the world like crows on fresh snow.

My not-so-beloved siblings’ spies had been culled by my subordinates, so they wouldn’t dare come at us face-first; they knew the Nameless Sword Saint stood here, a peak among peaks.

If they tried to mobilize before the duel, the Eternal Scar across the Endless Icefield—the thousand-mile canyon he carved—would remind them how a Sword Saint tutors Demon Kings, like a thunderclap tutors a sapling.

Deny a god, trip a god, even slay a god’s projection—any one counts as “anti-saint” merit, a brand that turns a pond into a sea on the path to promotion.

So Demon Kings would come stir the pot, even without hope, like moths tapping at a lantern just to feel the heat.

Anna did exactly that at the Hero Academy’s tourney, relying on her undying nature to beat the Sun back to the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom, a comet batting the sunlit cloudbank aside.

Add in her many, many slaughters, and the promotion came easy, like spring water finding a slope.

They can’t win upright, but making the duel stutter, making Bell and the Sword Saint taste grit—that’s still trouble, a grain of sand in the eye.

…My later plans need these fools alive; otherwise I’d happily send these sabotaging siblings of mine back to the Demon Realm in gift-wrapped pieces, like returning a broken tool to the forge.

“Next, it’s on us,” the acting vessel said, flint in his tone and winter in his eyes.

He donned helm and visor, the same cut as Eil’s, but his frame was orc to a human’s reed, broader, heavier, a boulder beside a stump.

The helm had raised bulges for his wolf ears, twin hills under iron cloud.

On his left shoulder lay a gold-and-red sash, a sunrise pinned to steel.

If my trivia wasn’t failing me, only the High Hierophant of the Strength Temple wore that; Eil had no sash, though his armor had the crafted slot for it, an empty scabbard in bright sight.

All right, not the moment to puzzle over whether Eil’s a big fish; the river is flooding.

“We? No, I won’t help,” I said, a wry twist like bitter tea. “They’re my kin over there, even if I don’t think much of them.”

“No one’s around,” he said. “No need for theater, Savior Demon King Andor.”

His gaze under the visor carried weight, not enough to kill like my father’s eyes, but enough to lay a stone on my shoulders.

I shrugged, brushing snow off a coat that wasn’t there. Looks like he blinked first.

“So I can skip ‘Your Majesty,’ God of Strength Fes.”

礼 lives to express respect, not to drink vanity from others,” he said. “Your barbed honorifics are empty coins, Demon King.”

“Barbed礼 makes me happy, though,” I said, a smile like ink on ice.

Shadow wrapped me, swallowing clothes, skin, and mask alike, then shed like a serpent, revealing a different skin.

A black long coat like mourning clothes. Cropped black hair and cold-black eyes. A dead man’s face that never flinched. A greatsword like a door plank, two meters long and half a meter wide, riding my shoulder like a sleeping ox.

Vice-captain of the Hero Squad. Raven’s suitor. A controversial great hero. Owner of the Mephy Consortium. Shadow Sorcerer.

Andor Mephy, on stage.

“Demon King Andor can’t take the field,” I said, a dove feather tucked under iron. “I’m a dove-faction Demon King; I won’t hand my own camp a pretext to stab me.”

“Shadow Artisan Andor can?” he asked, a spark under ash.

“Of course. ‘For Swordgate’s safety and the Sword Saint’s send-off, the great hero Andor slipped from the arena without disturbing anyone, and faced the horde alone.’”

“It’s a perfect time to farm reputation, like casting a net when the tide runs fat.”

We walked up to the wall over the gate, and I narrowed my eyes at the oncoming swarm, a storm-front of claws and teeth.

Runners skittered on dry-stalk limbs, all fours scraping ice like spider glass.

Glutton fiends came with jaws swollen to their chests, gullets like sacks dragging through mud.

Ember-wraths burned with clinging flame, each step a coal dropped on parchment.

And more, many more of the Demon Kings’ lower vassals with warped gifts and skins, a traveling circus of wrongness under a thundercloud.

Earth-gnaw grubs, roaming land-sharks, iron-golem gators—the most common three, stamped by the domains of “Extremis,” “Multiplicity,” and “Loyalty,” each a brand on their hide.

Other siblings sent fewer lower vassals; maybe mid and upper vassals hid among the tide, snakes in tall grass waiting for a heel.

Not that it mattered here; this was a no-magic zone blessed by both gods and a Demon King, a dry well for sorcery, so even upper vassals were just beefy beasts in thicker hides.

To show goodwill, I jumped first from the wall, a black petal falling from stone, and drove the greatsword deep into the belly of the nearest Runner like a stake into thawing earth.

“I don’t mind,” I said, tugging steel free with a spray of night. “The gods all know who I am anyway.”

“But you? You’ve descended, even if it’s through an acting vessel, and you won’t use your authority; the other gods will still know every step you take.”

“That’ll be a headache for you, a pebble in every shoe.”

My greatsword needed three full spins to charge and accelerate, a windmill turning up a gale; that long wind-up gave an expert ten clean openings to cut me down.

Mindless beasts were easier; they were brave like waves, which is to say, they smashed themselves to paste on the rocks.

Even a meat grinder still cranking up will pulp anything that throws itself in.

“It is a headache… but Bell…” Fes said, dropping from the wall, voice a low drum.

He fought with a longsword and a hand-shield, his footwork a fox over snow, gutting one monster after another with neat cuts and mirror-bright ripostes.

“Oh? What about her? Did she beg you for help,” I asked, a chuckle like wind in a chime.

“She didn’t ask,” he said, blade writing silver lines in red water. “It’s just… she hasn’t smiled this happily in a very long time.”

Swordgate has only one gate, a single throat in a stone beast, because this fortress was built to stop demonfolk moving either way, a cork in a bottle between worlds.

It’s the peak of mortal fortification craft, not an unfalling city, but with steady hands it can hold a month against endless waves, like a cliff that drinks the sea.

Its strength lies in these walls, not the gate; the gate is a hinge that squeaks.

As long as a hero holds that hinge, even several Demon Kings hammering won’t break through before the duel ends, a storm that exhausts itself against a lighthouse.

My spinning blade scythed down another wave; the impact snapped bones like dry twigs, and I took two steps back to breathe, a bellows strapped to stubborn flesh.

This is why I dislike a human body: you must breathe to keep moving, a debt you pay with every step.

Fes earned his name; even in a borrowed orcish body, he breathed even and quiet, a lake under dawn, already shifting to conserve strength.

I glanced up at the newborn sun, a coin fresh from the forge, and it made me think of the Sun, that hot-tempered god whose glare I’ve never liked.

But the sun keeps time whether I like it or not, a drum no one can silence.

Today, the Nameless Sword Saint foresaw his death, and we’ve got seventeen or eighteen hours until midnight, the last bell for a death match.

I sighed, a thin cloud in the cold, raised the greatsword flat to catch a Rampaging Bear’s overhead smash, then kicked its knee sideways like breaking a chair leg.

I rolled the edge and opened its chest, ribs cracking like kindling under an axe.

Continuous labor is the worst kind of grind, a millstone that never lifts off your shoulders.