Shadows are everywhere.

Even on sun-drenched streets where people surge like tides, shadows cling like moss to stone.

Sightlines cross, slip, and block; gaps open like eddies in a stream. That gap is what I call Shadow.

Do you still think “shadow” is just where light can’t reach, like an unlit corner?

Physics cares little for clean borders. Light scatters like dust in air; even in shadow you glimpse shapes like a leopard through reeds—partial, blurred, half-known. That is shadow.

Utter, seamless, perfect black belongs to darkness, a deep trench of night. That’s Andreas’s seat.

More muddled, with stray light snagged like threads in fog—that murk fattens fear. That’s me. That’s Shadow Demon Andor.

I pull a body from the shadow like a blade from its sheath and slip into the crowd.

My kid brother, Victor, excels at this. He navigates gazes like a fisherman reads currents, and he blends into people by instinct and trade.

I do it by managing the order of operations. I can feel any patch not pinned by sight—every blind spot like a pocket of still water—and then… fine. I’ve got fractions of a second in a shifting shadow-space. Making my physical form surface there is a high-skill maneuver.

I’m more a big-swing, broad-stroke kind of guy. In a crowd, I shove open a patch of shadow, conjure the very idea of shadow out of thin air, tug eyes aside like a hand turning a mirror, then happily pop out. It’s my signature stealth. Ordinary folks can’t learn it.

When you hold a domain’s permission, you do as you please.

I tighten my white leather gloves like a fencer at dawn, glance around like a fox at a hedge. Good. No one thinks anything’s off. I flow with the human current and become one more drop in the river.

I’ve had a few days off. No need to visit the kid— I mean, Lady Light Jade—for story time. Letting it idle is part of the game; a field rests to grow fierce. Humans fear nothing when they own nothing; pain blooms only after you gain, then lose, like frost after harvest.

As social creatures, we braid our days with voices like vines on a wall. Cut those vines in a stroke, and loneliness floods in like winter rain.

Lady Light Jade is the same. Only then will she see how much she longs for a human life, and bargain with me and Aversion Overlord Sylvia.

I said I was leaving to set up the welcome feast for the Aversion Overlord. Truth is, before the bunting goes up, I’ve got something tighter to stitch.

For example, another date…

I hum a tune like a sparrow pecking grain, duck through two turns into a side alley where the flow splits, leave the boulevard’s surge, and, per Vega’s surveillance report, step into a street-side snack shop.

It’s tucked away, the kind of place regulars anchor like stones in a brook. The shopfront is plain, the lacquer chipped, the sign weathered.

Princess Golia is wrestling tendon off a roasted lamb shank like a wolf with a bone. Beside her sits a small hill of ribs, spine, and leg bones, a pale cairn that says lunch cost plenty.

She looks neither like a princess nor a warrior, just a cheerful glutton with grease-shined lips.

I sit across from her like a chess piece placed with care.

I, and we, never fear strong foes. Your Highness, do you know why?

You… already… strong enough? she mumbles around bone, words stumbling like stones across water.

Not a shred of tension!

No, no. Not that kind of answer. Strength alone won’t push back a Demon King, not the usual meaning of “strong.”

Knowledge? Language? Thought?

Beyond strength, that’s what humans hold—tools like fire in a cave. But that’s too broad to bite. If I must name the weight, I’d call it exposure—what you’ve seen, like horizons widened by climbing.

I don’t understand.

That’s why I’m telling you now. Look—I’m holding Authority, a root of the world, a lever that moves eras like seasons. To the great, any single power or idea looks small, like a candle in noon. But if—someone stood where we stand, saw with our field of view, and glimpsed what we’ve seen—then it’s trouble, like two arrows aimed at one eye.

Talking… about me? I learned… Andor’s identity.

You’re not the only one with a headache, Your Highness. You’re a character in the story, not the one writing the script. You get to speak and act as you please, like wind across grass. And yet you saw things you shouldn’t have seen…

I will… not… tell others.

I want to believe that. Vega’s surveillance says you returned to the City of Heroes and lived as usual, never saying what isn’t yours to say. But…

…

But your silence so far doesn’t prove you’ll stay silent later. I need a reason—why you won’t expose me—so I can decide how to keep you quiet.

Only then does Gloria set down the bone, eyes narrowing like a cat catching a scent. Instinct kicks, and she raises a guard.

Just as I expected, Gloria’s perception is dull as a blade with dents.

The Demon Slaying Sword is just a weapon. No matter how hard Colonna’s Arcane Engineers tried to make a blade fight itself, it can’t overwhelm a top Hero in every field. At sensing rule-changes in the air, she’s slow.

Only now, as light passes the finished barrier and the scene bends like water over curved glass, does she catch the wrongness.

This pocket is already a parallel otherworld, an eddy apart from mortal logic, like the small world I opened when I dueled the Savior Saint.

Your Highness, do you know I intend to propose to you? I slip off my gloves so they won’t stain, pluck a small piece of meat, and pop it in like a seed.

Mediocre flavor; why does Gloria eat with such joy?

I know.

Eil leaks intel every other day like sand through fingers. I’m not blind to a mole inside my World Saving Demon King HQ. Oh, and the rumor on the street—“the World Saving Demon King wants to propose to Princess Golia”—he spread it after hearing it from me.

You want… propose… to me?

She tilts her head. Fifteen degrees less and it would’ve been adorable, like a sparrow cocking to listen.

That’s not the point! You learned things you shouldn’t have. Now you owe me an explanation!

By the original plan, yes, I would’ve done it—proposed. But now that’s in doubt.

If Gloria broadcasts what she’s seen, it could burn my plan to ash—total, no-remedy damage.

Her confusion deepens like fog pooling in a valley.

Great. Did I use too much jargon? No, I didn’t. What jargon?

Silence stretches like a tight wire. Then Gloria starts squirming for no reason.

Is that… shyness?

This humble girl… unworthy? Should… say it like… this?

No no no no no!

Are we speaking the common human tongue, or did they load your head with words but skip grammar?

I’m about to kill you! Can you be serious?

Not… proposing… to me?

I mean I was going to propose! But if you expose me, the preconditions aren’t met, and I’ll have to drop the role of Andor mid-act. Then no proposal. Wait… why that “so that’s a thing” face? Have you never thought about these very, very serious problems?

So? Andor is, by common sense, a very good husband. I agree.

The point! I need a guarantee, a way you won’t expose me! Stop getting hung up on the proposal!

Oh. That…

Exhausting…

I know the AI of the Silver Era, and the Sorcerer Emperor’s Soul Component. The person called “Golia,” born of those two, isn’t built for lying.

If she says she doesn’t understand, then she truly doesn’t.

But…