If Head had come, I’d get it. But why you? Are you that hungry for my story, like a stray drawn by a cooking fire?

I heft the heart in my palm, warm as a coal.

The spun-up false world fell away like mist at sunrise, and I stepped back into matter. The sun slanted like a tipped bowl of light. Everything else matched the moment before the fight, down to the dust motes.

The trick to a fabricated world is throttling output, like binding a storm with twine. The Savior Saint has lived longer than lighthouses on a dead coast; his hunts aren’t just Demon Kings, monsters, and beasts—easy prey for bard songs. He’s also culled sky-whales that sprawl for tens of thousands of light-years, and “residual echoes of evil” big as a galaxy, like thunder that won’t stop rolling across a range.

If the Savior Saint got serious in the material world, a finger tap could quake the earth and lift the Endless Sea like a tablecloth. He’d never do that—he won’t shatter the merfolk’s cradle lagoon.

So we limit the rules, like drawing wards around a bonfire. In the “human” domain we cap output. Gods and demons do the same: they agree on rules, leash their strength, build an artificial field. It’s a “miniature,” a sandbox, a game-board wager where life sits on the dice.

“My thanks to the Great One for the careful upkeep of the mortal hearth,” the musician—now a messenger—said with a porcelain smile. “I’m here like last time, as the ‘anyone’ who can be anyone, to bring a message in Head’s stead.”

“Why didn’t He come Himself?” I asked, heat coiling under my ribs like smoke.

“The Divine Being says if He came, He’d spark your delicate contrarian streak, like striking flint near dry reeds. Then the whole thing goes up.”

“…”

I felt mocked, like a cat stroked the wrong way.

This musician—now a courier—talked with silk on the surface and sand underneath. If I had leisure, I’d fence him for a while—loud rhetoric like clashing cymbals, then a happy exchange of barbs like sparrows pecking seeds.

Right now I’m just hungry. My gut’s an empty drum. Did I miss dinner?

The heart in my hand still throbbed like a moth under glass, bleeding with no end, a hot river threading my fingers.

I want to eat—there’s the aftertaste of drawing on the deepest dark, the Ocean of Darkness like tar on the tongue.

I set my mask, smoothed my cloak, tucked every twisted, shadow-grown thing under a handsome shell, then looked back over my shoulder.

“Go on then. Say it.”

“Please don’t kill the Savior Saint—”

“You’re provoking a—”

“—I wouldn’t say that,” he cut in, a smile like thin ice. “Only the soul. Please spare him a little.”

“First, give me a reason to give up a superb mid-tier vassal,” I said, voice flat as an anvil.

“‘If the Ocean of Darkness devours the Savior Saint’s soul, then the Weaver Saint will strike a deal with Perfect Answer. After that, that mercenary will bore through the Ocean of Darkness and haul up the Savior Saint’s soul.’ That’s verbatim.”

“…”

Perfect Answer. Noreitanka. An archmage nearly omniscient and omnipotent, a beast one step short of the Great One’s summit. Member 4382, permanently expelled by the Council of Sages, and chief disciple permanently expelled by Archmage Pythagoras.

Another style: permanently delisted by the Time Administration Bureau. Genesis Saint. Saint of Creation. Titles like frost on a blade.

Unlike the Savior Saint, who doesn’t see himself as a saint, Noreitanka never did either. Crowning him was just another plank in his long scaffold of “experiments,” like nails driven into a living tree.

He excels at forbidden magic—the unbalanced stuff that breaks first principles, magic that can raze a civilization and even scald a Divine Being. Raven’s Type-I perpetual motion machine, or a bomb that freezes spacetime—those sit on the same taboo shelf, gleaming like apples that kill.

He bragged loud enough to draw hunts from all sides, the Great One included, then lay low, then raised a rebel banner at the sky. He burned mythic dwellings like dry temples. He twisted the Great One’s essence like a knotted ribbon.

He lost in the end. He had to sign restrictive clauses with the Divine Beings. Not being killed outright still says he’s got claws.

We could kill him if we wanted. But from what I watched at the Land of Endings, slaying a self-detonation expert like him costs more than it’s worth, like smashing a hornet’s nest for one sting.

“‘No matter what defenses you set, he’ll bore through the Ocean of Darkness. The differences are his method, and his ending.’ That’s also verbatim.”

Head won’t lie to me. That’s our ground rule, sworn before Ferrel like wine poured on earth.

But does hiring someone to lie count as cheating? I don’t know. I’ve stopped using otherworldly Sight; most foresight now comes from schemes and memory, like maps etched in ash.

So whether I can “stop Perfect Answer from drilling through the Ocean of Darkness” is still a coin tossed into fog.

The Savior Saint is strong, yes. But his strength sits in the “saint” mantle, a body woven from humanity’s collective prayer—like a river made of whispers. Forcing him into a mid-tier vassal won’t be worth much.

If the Ocean of Darkness gets perforated, the world will capsize like a boat in a squall. Written order turns to scattered leaves. Human common sense, learned over ages, flips like a table. Physics and magic lurch like a jester’s joke. If humanity doesn’t die instantly from concepts breaking, that’s already the kindest winter.

So Perfect Answer—a terrorist who’ll blast the world’s roots just to escape—being stripped from the saints’ roll isn’t unjust at all. It’s a brand burned right.

“But I’m the villain now,” I said, a smile like a knife’s shadow. “I don’t do what ‘helps others.’ See? Even if it’s pointless, I want to take his soul back and roast it two or three hundred years, like chestnuts over coals.”

“His Eminence, Head, knows you get more stubborn the harder you’re pushed, like a mule on a narrow bridge,” the messenger said. “So He hopes compensation will make you release that soul.”

If you can’t make me let go clean, pay me to open my hand. Win-win, like sharing a loaf by the fire.

Fine. It feels like they’ve mapped my temperament like stars on a chart. Maybe Ferrel handed Head the sextant.

“Let’s see what price you bring,” I said, tapping the heart like a drum.

“Your favorite method,” he said. “Gold. Enough gold to buy a beautiful soul, bright as a heap of coins in sunlight.”

…

…

Divine Beings are all-knowing, all-powerful, like mountains under the sky. But if They plan to speak, describe, explain, or truly intervene, They must lower Their rank, like a titan stooping to enter a door.

As for Head, walking in the human world means He’s lowered Himself a lot. How much might and sight remain, I can’t tell. Can He see “inevitabilities”? Does He know what’s coming, like reading ripples on a lake? I don’t know. Andreas never got any permissions tied to “Wisdom.” I’m the one good at wreckage and ruin, the hammer in the dark.

Head won’t explain it anyway, and even if He did, I wouldn’t believe it. Smoke is still smoke.

Still, I lean toward this: before we negotiated, Head had the answer already. He knew the other side’s floor price, and the number that leaves us both satisfied, both eager for the next trade—like beads flicked on an abacus.

I still keep “True Body Manifestation,” “Endless Evil Faces,” “Andreas’s True Form,” tucked away like blades under silk. I trust Head has equal or greater tools folded in His sleeve.

The musician and I talked in the open wild for a long time, wind combing the grass like fingers, haggling how much gold the Savior Saint’s soul is worth.

He was the same as always. Posed manners, theater gestures, every secret and feeling hidden behind that pale smile like a veil. He claims “strict neutrality.” Knowing Head, I’d bet He told him the price for every counter, stacked like chips on a table.

Whatever. The price satisfied me, so I won’t complain. We’re partners. If the other wants something, and it won’t cut my hand, I lift my palm, like letting a bird go.

“That’s it,” he said. “This deal pays back all your setup costs with extra besides. It’s a ‘no reason to refuse’ deal, like rain after drought.”

I tossed him the heart. Head will take the living soul from His proxy’s hands. The musician caught it with a soft slap, smiled, and pulled a notebook from his breast, pages smelling of ink and dust.

It was “a completely Mephi Conglomerate–side-stepping, entirely extra investment project,” an off-the-books river of coin. That’s the “gold” Head offered. Makes sense. He won’t dump so much bullion it jars the mortal market. He’ll skim the flow as the river runs. That’s cleaner.

The notebook’s market projections matched the amount we’d agreed on, number for number, like tracks in snow.

Of course! Head! Are you spying on me?

—I mean, Head surely foresaw the outcome of this trade, like seeing the harvest in the seed.

I was just pulling my beloved halberd from the Savior Saint’s corpse—the blade came out like a moon from cloud—when the musician hurried two steps, calling after me.

“If possible, could you send me back to the City of Heroes?” His smile wavered like a candle in wind.

Setting aside how an ordinary man who faces the Shadow Realm will gulp down ugly truths in a heartbeat and go mad like glass under a hammer…

Come on, really? You took my commission to explain things to Stini like a herald. Then you took Head’s commission like a juggler. And now you ask me for a ride? You’ve got nerve like a brass bell.

I sighed, breath white as frost, and called the Shadow. It rose like black surf to ferry him at their master’s will.

“Fine. I know. This is your ‘neutral’ way of handling things,” I said, watching darkness fold like wings.

“Thank you for understanding,” he said. “Head as well—dealing with a Demon King’s lethal negotiation, and He paid me with only two cups of wine. Even the trip to Helena was funded to the exact coin, like counting beans.”

“Compared to that, I pay much better, right? A Demon King’s story! What’s that worth?” I asked, grin sharp as a fishhook.

“Mm… hard to say,” he mused. “Stories without arc or turn bore most listeners, like flat water. Maybe half a cup.”

“Hey!”

“Tell me the story when we’re back? I can buy you dinner,” he said, eyes like a cat begging cream.

“A Demon King doesn’t need anyone to treat him,” I snorted, pride bright as a banner.

And—

—I’d rather eat what Vega cooks with her own hands, warm as a hearth.

—As for Ferrel’s “luminous cuisine” that’s poison to a Demon King, I’ll pass. A shining plate can still hide fangs.