Savior Saint.

It was the only name he wore, like a plain robe with every emblem stripped away.

Unlike the other “nameless Heroes” summoned beside him, he cast off his true name himself, like a traveler laying down his pack at the river.

It stood for the friends, comrades, lovers, and all the rest he’d left behind, like flowers dropped one by one on a cold road, to save the world.

When the summoning ended, everyone exhaled like wind leaving a bellows; Princess Golia packed her cases and set off for the Hero Academy, while the summoned Heroes were ushered to rest with highest honors, like rare hawks placed in velvet-lined cages.

The Savior Saint felt no need; his body and mind sat like a honed blade on a whetstone, edge-steady, no rest required.

Out of courtesy to their hosts, and to net the necessary threads of knowledge for “saving the world,” he stayed a while in Colonna’s palace, like an anchor dropped in a bright harbor.

He waited, a still pond for a few beats, to see what those soon-to-be companions thought of saving the world, like fishermen studying the weather before launch.

The Colonna royals didn’t seem to know their skyfallen Heroes well; a little cart came rolling like a beetle, piled with drinks until it creaked.

Cocktails, red wine, coffee, tea, and—

—cola.

“They have this already?” His voice rose like a ripple under glass.

He picked up the bottle; the black liquid swirled like night rain in a lantern.

He had saved worlds without counting, walked worlds without end, seen coincidences like snowflakes in a storm—yet name, look, and taste overlapping so neatly was rare as a double moon.

“It’s a new drink, just developed,” said a servant trimming the palace garden, his words falling like clipped leaves. “People love it. The cherry one, not so much.”

“Thanks for the tip, but…” Feeling taut as a drawn bow, the Savior Saint set both hands on the table; his clenched fists showed a coiled force like thunder behind hills. “Why are you wearing a mask?”

The servant straightened; his big scissors went clack, clack, like a stork’s beak, a small omen tapping the air.

Facing him, the mask came clear: chalk-white, only the upper half of a face, pitted and ugly like wind-eaten stone, with a few black smears stark as crow tracks.

“Maybe the other servants thought you were too tired, so nobody warned you,” he said, voice level as still water. “This mask is the signature of Savior Demon King Andor.”

The air tightened like a drumskin; the Savior Saint poised to strike, a storm held in the palm.

But the servant bent again to the bushes and snipped away, calm as rain on moss, leaving the Savior Saint oddly unmoored.

He’d always been better with his hands than his tongue; he’d seen villains weave plots like spider silk, but slipping in as a servant and chatting like an old neighbor, without swagger or stage—was rare as a fox in daylight.

It felt like… he wasn’t here to be an enemy, like a wolf pacing the edge of camp without baring its teeth.

“Up front, I’m borrowing this innocent servant’s face, but not to threaten you—yeah, because you don’t care about threats,” he said, like someone tossing pebbles into a quiet pond. “Chief among the Ten Saints of the Time Administration Bureau, Savior Saint.”

“If you came in goodwill, you wouldn’t say ‘chief.’ The Bureau doesn’t want ranks setting Saints at odds like cocks in a pit—”

The Savior Saint frowned, the expression a shadow drawn across snow, but the servant cut him off like a gust snuffing a match.

“Oh, sorry. Fine then—former Pallbearer, Savior Saint.”

That was a sore thorn he didn’t care to touch; the apology sounded empty as a hollow gourd.

Clearly the man knew who he was; the phrasing was needling on purpose, like a finger pressing a bruise. If not for the earnest way he trimmed the hedge, the Savior Saint would’ve moved like lightning already.

Being good at saving worlds didn’t make him good at pleasant talk; his silence sat like a sealed jar.

Behind the mask, black eyes flicked his way like a raven’s glance, then returned to the green work, steady as a metronome.

“If you’ve no questions, I’ll speak,” the man went on, voice even as a road at dusk. “How’s that ‘concept’-forged body feel? A Divine Being rebuilt you by hand, so you could slide cleanly into a world built on ‘concepts’—but your companions, the other Heroes, didn’t get that touch.”

“So that’s why they ‘need rest’?” His words fell like pins on a map.

“Sure. The Divine Being could make everyone like you, easy as pouring tea. But gods and demons play by fenced rules; within them, the Divine Being’s allowed to do only so much, like a tiger pacing a painted cage.”

“None of that matters to me,” he said, cold as a winter stream. “Why give me this?”

“Smart. Knowledge doesn’t come free; you’ve heard the saying,” he answered, light as smoke. “Call it a gift then. A meeting gift, like a lantern lit at a stranger’s door.”

He pointed at the cart brimming with drinks, like a cornucopia on wheels.

“I used that cart to host the Slaughter Demon King, the Tyrant Demon King, and the God of Wisdom; it won’t slight you, sir. Like the gifts I sent the other Heroes—potions to help human, dragonborn, undead, and godchild adapt faster to this world, plus several tailored trinkets—I used different ‘recipes’ so no one would suspect a single hand.”

He added with a small sigh, thin as smoke, “I did it loudly, and the palace tangled into chaos like yarn, but that wasn’t the plan.”

“So these bottles are my gift?” His tone lay flat as a lake before rain.

“Yes… and no,” the servant said, eyes bright as flint. “The real gift is the personal visit of Savior Demon King Andor. I think we might share a language, like two maps of the same coast.”

“…”

Seeing the Savior Saint unmoved, and not objecting, he kept talking, words unspooling like silk from a cocoon.

“The Holy Knight—he’s called xxx—comes from the Year of Calamity where black iron meets mud, like a storm joining sky and field. I watched him take demon heads one by one, swinging sword and shield like twin suns, alone holding back an invasion demons had plotted like engineers of ruin—pity, even a Hero has a nemesis fated like a shadow at noon.”

“His talent wasn’t much, a small flame in a windy night; that’s why I admired him. As a plain man, by grit and thought, he reached world-saving heights like a climber bleeding on ice… reminds me of a musician who squandered his gift—ah, not related, drop that leaf.”

“The Assassin—she’s xxxx·x·xxxxx—comes from the Bronze Age… or Iron, or Silver, who can swear under changing moons? She ‘came back to life’ more than once, tried more than once to save someone, to guard a place, like a moth circling the same lamp.”

“When I first watched her, she was already ‘like that.’ She’d eaten the pomegranate of the underworld, drunk the River of Forgetfulness like cold milk, and plucked the red spider lily from the far shore—yet she still longed for someone, for somewhere, pulling herself from death to life on will alone, like a swimmer against a black tide. Again and again she came back, and again and again, she failed; in the end, she did nothing, like rain that never reaches the roots.”

“The Dragon Exorcist—she’s xx·xxxxx—from the Iron Age. Her line passed down the duty to scour dragons, generation to generation, like hammer blows echoing in a forge. No deed sung by crowds, no mark that bent the trunk of history; if she’d never lived, the official scrolls wouldn’t crease.”

“All her days she chased dragons, met dragons, tempered dragons, turning ‘dragon’ into a legend, a sign, a symbol buried like a fossil in rock. She stood like a bulwark for humankind, a gatekeeper at the border of the material and the arcane; to the end she wrestled dragons, and a bad death was fated, as sure as winter follows fall.”

“The Night Watcher—he’s x—from the Bronze Age. A Divine Being sent His child down to mortals, hoping to crown mortals with god-sheen; but in that span, many things happened, like weeds in a warm rain—his firstborn cursed the god and betrayed mankind.”

“The Divine Being sent His second son again; sadly, the trial came a little late, like dawn after a long eclipse. He couldn’t stop his brother becoming a pale moon, snuffing the great light, swallowing the sun, and making darkness lord of the world. In the end, he could only become the Night Watcher, guarding the last humans in a fireless age, walking with them toward extinction like candles guttering in wind.”

“And you, Savior Saint, xx—you’re not like them,” he said, the words clean as a knife over water.

“In thought, in vow, in the root of what you are, you’re different, like bedrock under shifting sand.”

“They all mean to save ‘humankind,’ or ‘a society ruled by humans,’ ‘a world where human speech is the main script,’ or something tied to the genus of apes and men, like a family clinging to its tree.”

“But you’re different.”

“Savior Saint, holy savior—what do you save, what do you aim to save? You walked among men as a saint; your creed is no fog to me, it’s a blade.”

“Save the world. Only the ‘stage’ itself. Everything else can be dropped like ballast. In your sight, saving the world is hard enough to crack bone; ‘humans,’ ‘ecology,’ ‘civilization,’ ‘right and wrong,’ ‘sacrifice’—you don’t put them on the scale, and if they’re saved alongside, it’s only in passing, like leaves caught in a current.”

“How cold, how cruel, how frightening,” he said softly, the words falling like ash—“and how unmatched in grief and greatness: salvation, Savior Saint.”