Iron Kingdom Colonna, capital Machu Picchu, royal palace, grand hall.

Only a few stood under the vaulted glare: Emperor Polacci of Colonna, Colonna’s foremost swordmaster Konosen Kent, and several of the Empire’s elite guards, sharp with magic and steel. Court mages tracked for threats like owls in dusk, while a handful of Divine Healers held the rite’s reins.

No other royal blood attended, save the Colonna Empire’s Third Princess, Princess Golia.

The girl let her hands fall, and the emptiness in her eyes thinned; confusion drifted there like mist over a river as she looked around. That sweeping, back-and-forth gaze rasped over everyone like cold sand, and more than a few guards shifted as if their armor had turned inside out.

A blade and a machine had learned curiosity. That thought alone tightened throats among those who knew Gloria wasn’t human, and it chilled even the machine-familiar.

When Gloria’s eyes slid across the man who was her father in name, Emperor Polacci turned away as if from a bright window. He passed the knot in his chest to his subordinates with a single sidelong look, a river of worry crossing stone.

“No error? This can’t tolerate an error.” His voice dropped like a pebble into a still pool, ripples hard to read.

Whether he meant Gloria or the rite, none of the Arcane Engineers on the Demon Slaying Sword project dared answer. A royal’s casual question hung like a drawn bowstring, and though nothing would halt the rite now, no one would risk a word to tempt the almost-zero chance of failure.

Only one Arcane Engineer spoke.

She met the Emperor’s eyes, her voice low and steady, like iron cooling in oil. “No error. I swear it on my family’s honor. No error.”

Julia Melansa slipped off the arcane metering goggles that masked half her face. The eyes beneath were steel set under frost.

“The ‘hilt’ in your hand retains absolute authority. Princess Golia’s logic circuits show no corruption. Memory accrual, tactical accrual, theoretical accrual—zero deviation. Aside from the component we still can’t parse, the one Andor calls the ‘Soul Component,’ no error.”

“Then what about the Soul Component?”

“No problem, Your Majesty. It only lets Princess Golia ‘think like a person.’ That pathway outranks the second implanted persona, but it can’t touch the authority of your hilt.”

Konosen drew breath to speak, but Emperor Polacci lifted a hand, palm like a shutter closing.

“I trust you, Viscount Melansa. And trust means I shouldn’t overthink.” He drew a hilt without a blade from his breast, clenched it as if squeezing a thunderhead into stillness, then smoothed the tremor in his chest with a long breath. He turned to the waiting Divine Healer. “High Divine Healer Porter, begin the rite.”

Porter bowed with grave weight, and with the other Divine Healers raised his scepter. The floor’s vast altar woke like a buried whale, sigils surfacing in light.

Divine power boiled and surged over it, a hot spring under winter stars. It felt less like a rite hosted by mortals and more like a Divine Being arranging the table. People sent a beacon toward the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom, fixed the coordinates like sailors taking a star, and opened their hands for grace.

After all, to speak with futures and with the dead, to trace history and heroic spirits—those are paths walked by gods.

Steel sighed; the swordmaster’s blade slid free. Gloria turned as well, the arc of her body a shield, watching for any hand that might break the circle.

Colonna had hewn toward this day for a long time. They had even decided to let Gloria roam and support the Hero—then recalled her like a hawk mid-flight.

This was the greatest gift the Divine Being had offered in the disaster of the Demon King’s invasion.

Hero Summoning. Call heroes from the future to face a tide of Demon Kings never seen before. With humanity’s tomorrow on the line, not a hair could go wrong.

When the divine glow peaked and scattered like snow off a ridge, statues answered from the void.

A Holy Knight in exoskeletal plate arrived mid-stagger, frozen in recoil. The gouged hollow in his chest slowly packed with drifting stone dust, like sand filling a footprint.

A heap of burned-out ash gathered against itself, and an Assassin reformed into the posture of a body bound on a cross, shadow nailed to stone.

A dragonslayer, torn at the waist by fang and claw, still held a fighting stance. He reassembled piece by piece, like a broken blade finding its seam.

A Night Watcher knelt on one knee, a cross-sword planted in the floor like a grave marker. The clean cut across his neck knit with the patience of winter thaw.

They were failed saviors, failed heroes. The worlds they swore to keep had fallen like cities into the sea, and their names slipped into history’s junkyard.

The great Divine Being of the Silver Era granted them another chance at life, another chance to save the world, another chance to take back their names, another chance to be heroes.

Stone shells weathered and cracked. They said nothing. They walked with the steady tread of soldiers, relearning bodies that should have returned to dust.

Only one arrived in flesh, directly onto the soil of the Silver Era.

He wore no expression. His plain black coat had every crest smeared over and every badge stripped; the high ring of his collar fenced off the lower half of his face. His hands rested as fists by default, ready to swing at the slightest wind. Studs at the knuckles of his full-finger gloves flashed a cold light, like ice on iron.

The heroes had arrived; the horde was not yet scattered.

At the rim of the circle, behind a hedge of guards, a servant in an ugly mask let out a deep yawn in that solemn hush.

No one felt anything was wrong.