The scheming Demon King guessed right: Miss Stini really had forgotten a souvenir for Mister Andor. He’d already read the flutter of her little thoughts like moths circling a lamp.
Fate is a tapestry woven by gods and demons. That much is true. Don’t use human wit to measure their reach; too much nonhuman sight makes skulls crack or minds fray. As a rule, when a Hero believes they’ve beaten fate, that belief is already threaded in the loom. Knowing that is enough.
But this not-quite-complete Demon King still missed a stitch.
The “butterfly effect” gets painted bold in later ages. So the Demon King writes a whole script for the future, sets nectar before the butterfly, and that’s it. Once wings start beating, the world moves along the score he penned, like gears catching, and it never stops.
Sometimes, those not yet omniscient overlook small grains of detail. It isn’t a matter of calculation; it’s about vantage and rank, horizon and height.
Stini Saya, a Hero. Her silliness and her intuition are twin rivers with equal force. Her hair is willow-green, tied in a short ponytail. She recently slew a Divine Being, who then acknowledged her, granting a sealed space for weapons. Her strength and standing climbed like a star rising.
She’s the thread at the center of this tale.
But at her core, she’s a penniless hill-bumpkin, a small-town soul who’ll argue with an innkeeper over a fistful of copper, dust on her boots and cheap coins chiming.
Even now, the word “Hero” is mist to her. She has pure courage, stubborn grit, and love given without return. That’s not praise. She doesn’t grasp how she tilts the village balance like a pendulum set swinging.
With Shadow Artisan Andor Mephy stepping out of the ice cream shop, time, history, the world kept spinning like a clock face under sun.
Stini poured her whole heart into a gift for the one she loved, cupping a little garden, shielding each petal and leaf. So she didn’t register the steel spike spearing into her belly.
The young man who threw it didn’t register it either. It came like lightning from a clear sky.
Light plate armor is a mainstream choice. Two kinds of adventurers wear it. First: the poor newcomers, who can’t afford full harnesses, buying plates piece by piece. A heart-guard here, an arm-plate, a knee-plate there, shoring up vital points until coins allow a full kit.
Second: the highest-ranked warriors. If a single sword and shield can’t block all blows, they train to take hits with specific plates: arm, leg, shoulder. They match a full-suit fighter’s defense while keeping their bodies light and quick, like swallows knifing through wind.
Stini is the second kind. A legendary Hero who can cut sky and earth with one stroke, with skill enough to duel a true god. A few narrow plates serve her like a tower shield when she moves.
That doesn’t mean the skin outside her plates hardens like steel. Training doesn’t turn humans into another species. We must admit our smallness. It is “smallness” that grants humans endless possibility and a fire that never stops climbing.
Humans might die at any moment; they might also defeat gods and demons. The two facts aren’t enemies. They sit like twin peaks on the same ridge.
Mid-tier spell, “Splintering Steelbone.” Once the steel spike licked Stini’s flesh, it detonated. Its mass swelled. Dozens of steel thorns sprouted at speed, rampaging inside the girl, then punched through muscle and bone to tear skin.
A brutal sea urchin made from iron and meat bristled inside her.
Stini’s eyes went wide. Before she understood why blood welled at her lips, her gaze scattered like wind-blown sand. Her limbs stopped listening.
The black-thorn flowers she had just gathered with care spilled across the ground again.
Then a steel-plated mountaineering boot came down hard. Soft petals met iron. The flowers were crushed to pulp in an instant.
“I don’t accept local products disguised as specialities. Spur-of-the-moment gifts don’t carry real heart.”
Andor’s face went dark; it usually is, but today it was close to pitch. He planted his Greatsword in the earth as a makeshift shield-wall, wrapped his left arm around Stini’s small body, and locked his right hand around the end of the spike.
“Same goes for trinkets like this. They’re not worth your life.”
He pulled. Veins roped his hand.
Along with shattered bone, torn fibers, and damaged organs, he wrenched the tree-shaped spike out from the girl’s abdomen, raw force against iron.
“If you want me to accept anything, live first. Then go to the market and find the most expensive gift as apology.”
“I don’t have money, aaaaah!”
Stini, limp and cold a heartbeat ago, had her pupils shrink like pinholes. She sprang from Andor’s hold and headbutted the Greatsword cover. A big red lump rose on her forehead; she yowled like a kitten stepped on.
Besides that, not a single wound remained.
“Return from Death,” one of Stini’s blessings. The Goddess of Life, Liv, gifted it to her. When the body can no longer sustain life, it fully restores, once every seven days.
Flesh and bone regrow and seal perfectly—so long as no foreign object blocks the rebirth.
The Hero took “Splintering Steelbone” head on. No one expected that. Andor, watching from the shadows and planning to wait longer, had to break cover to save her in the first instant.
Even then, it was a gamble for Andor. He wagered Stini’s “Return from Death” hadn’t triggered before he pulled the spike. He wagered the single revival hadn’t been spent.
He won. As usual, a great Divine Being had him in their gaze.
Even so, Andor broke a cold sweat. His jaw clenched until it clicked.
“Idiot! You can beat a Demon King, so you think every challenge matches one? You’re still flesh. Live like flesh—careful.”
He exploded, voice like stones falling.
“What if you die?”
“Eheh~” The girl tapped her own head and grinned, apologetic and clueless, no sense of having just died. Until the boy sank a fist lightly into her belly. “Guh… that hurts, Andor! Right, I can revive, don’t worry—guh—okay, okay, I’m sorry! Stop hitting me!”
Her trusted intuition chimed like a bell: the usual corpse-face Andor was in a foul mood. If he didn’t wear that face, his brows would be knotted into a dead tangle only scissors could cut.
She’d been badly hurt before, near dying, and he always stayed composed. As the Hero Squad’s vice-captain, he steadied everyone like a stone pier under a bridge.
This time he had a wild edge, close to losing control. Stini didn’t know why. So she carefully stepped around the storm in her almost-boyfriend.
It was only “almost died,” she thought. She’d long had the resolve to die anytime without regret, like a lantern ready to go dark.
“You…”
Andor pressed his lips tight. He lifted his fist, then let it drop, and sighed because there was no winning here.
“What happened? I’ve been chewing my nails over your Hero trial. You finally come back in one piece, and we meet an assassination on sight?”
“Well…” She frowned, then steadied. “I don’t think it was an assassination. More like an accident. The Hero bumped into a conspiracy by accident. Probably that.”
When it’s serious, the Hero becomes reliable. She narrowed her eyes, rose from the ground, and called her arms. Idle mind slid into combat posture like a blade sliding into a scabbard.
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why we were attacked. I don’t know what he’s after.”
She edged the Holy Sword “Galewind” out past the Greatsword cover, ready to swat aside any thrown strike. Then she slid her whole body out, eyes tracking the young man’s escape path like a hawk’s.
“But my gut says this. That box in his hands doesn’t carry anything ‘that can grant happiness and relief to a whole city.’ Not a healthy tool.”
“Your intuition sets the Hero Squad’s course.”
“So?”
“I’ll lecture you later. For now, I’m welded to your flank. Nothing else is punching holes through your stomach.”
“Thanks. I owe you the priciest souvenir.”
“You pick. I’ll pay for our pauper captain. Debts pile up; we’ll owe them slow.”
The girl and the boy shared a grin. They slapped palms. Then they ran together, footsteps in sync, hearts beating like drums under the wind.
