To ask how the world might grow more absurd and beautiful—demonfolk never use foggy words like “beautiful”—is to upend every dull, foolish, laughable order set in stone.

In a way, it’s exploration. My mood first: steady as a cold flame. My words next: I keep repeating that the Divine Being loves humankind; otherwise the demonfolk would have eaten them clean by now. That love is a deep ocean seen from a cliff; from a human shore, it won’t look like love.

This time, I promised Head I’d help forge a new era. It’s a price I pay, not a thing I want. To be precise, Head wishes to open the Era of Cold Verdure, not me.

Truth be told, I don’t care about the average happiness index. I’m a Demon King; winds that benefit the world don’t blow my banner.

Head knows this too. He’s watched the river of history bend beyond the far bank, so he readies a new era where the young can grow. Yet few humans will accept it; their eyes are lanterns that light tonight, not the aeons.

Humans care whether they and their beloved live past tomorrow, not whether three hundred million years from now their species drowns like a city in floodwater.

So Head asked softly that I carry the blame, that I push the era’s gears with a demon king’s hand. But to demonfolk, pleas and noble causes are both wasted breath; only the exchange of benefit is iron coin.

Still, for a “friend” whose alliance I swore before Ferrel, I won’t extort…too hard.

Lady Nairoeu, a Narrow Deity, governs the domains of “smallness,” “partiality,” “extraction,” “focus.” With the Broad Deity Infinite, she draws the lines that fence the world. In plain talk, think of her as the “small” in great-and-small.

Outside of Wisdom God Haydon—the one who “understands everything”—she’s the Primordial Deity closest to humans. She thinks well in human angles. In the church of the Narrow Deity, they say: “She walks among the crowd, debates with the wise, discourses with the worthy; seeking a god is pointless then, for she looks no different from a person.”

I guess Head meant for her to glimpse the Era of Cold Verdure and ponder a gift for humankind.

Head is the omniscient who counted from the end of the Golden Age to now. I don’t believe his abacus ever misses a bead.

“You guess right, Andor. I want her help building the new era.”

“…Divine Beings always like reading minds while stepping out from behind someone, don’t they?”

“It’s a coincidence, Andor. You still love your cold sarcasm.”

“Only for you—only for your lot with warm knives under their sleeves.”

Nairoeu vanished with that slice of paused time, like dew under noon. Before I could enjoy the second half of my coffee, Head arrived almost at once.

Same look as before—sleeveless white patient garb, the frail body of a boy. They say he’s Nivifar’s younger brother; she cried to me for a long time.

He comes off as all-knowing—by which I mean, only when needed. Most of the time he wears a fool’s mask, so partners don’t fear him like a storm.

Another time-still over the human world, identical as a mirrored lake. It tempted me to write a little time-stop series of booklets.

…I’m joking. Truly joking, okay?

Unlike Nairoeu, Head treats partners with gentle hands. I didn’t need to fight my way out of the frozen stream; he added the concept of flow for me. I could suspect malice, though: that he’ll use stilled time as one chain to bind the Endless Demon King, so he doesn’t want me growing resistant to it.

“If you’ve lost sanity, would you still care how you’re sealed?”

“Mind-reading is very unpleasant, Head. You should understand that.”

“If I only infer thoughts from personality, that explains it. You’re, at heart, an easy book to read.”

“Being read with surgical precision is also unpleasant, Head. You should understand that, same as me.”

“If you let go of personal enmity and bias, we needn’t circle and test each other like hawks. We’d save time—though here, ‘time’ is a word without meaning.”

Head always wears a quiet smile. For gods ascended from humans in later ages, feelings are a limb of the self. For Primordial Deities like Head, emotions are surface ripples he shows only to bridge understanding with humans.

So don’t trust any gesture of theirs. Even a master of microexpressions will read nothing from that sky. Even when they don’t mean to lie, clouds look the same.

“…Fine. Let’s call it that.” I drop the hunt for flaws in Head’s phrasing and turn to real business.

The proper business—

“Head, what do you hope Nairoeu’s gift brings to the human world?”

“I’ll answer with a question. If I wish for a world where everyone can become who they wish—where a knight’s son might become a farmer, an emperor’s son a hunter—what else does this world need?”

“In my view, nothing. Drive madness and stability to their extremes and you get anarchy or a honeycomb collective. You can’t expect a worker bee to ponder freedom. If you want change, the simplest method—smash the hive.”

“That sounds reasonable on the skin, but Andor, you’re just too lazy to think.”

“Yeah. There are other methods—so why not choose the one that saves time and strength?”

I’ve said it already: I only care whether I fulfill my promise for the new age, the Era of Cold Verdure. Body counts don’t weigh on my scale. Give it a century or two, and the human headcount blooms again like spring weeds.

“Head, you know the maximum population growth rate peaks when a species drops to half, right?”

“You don’t need to flaunt Black Iron Age knowledge. Knowledge is me; it’s a part of me.”

Strictly speaking, “to become who one can become” isn’t equal to pure anarchy. Anarchy is just the straightest path through a thicket.

When humans form groups, someone holds the whip-hand. For public or private cause, they make decisions that fence others. That’s not evil; rope twisted into one cord helps a species endure storms. But the Divine Being wants more than that, far more.

—to ensure human survival, and then their self-uplift afterwards.

In the eyes of the Divine Being, wealth, martial skill, power are sand grains. Only the misty things—spirit, will, awakening—earn a second glance.

Head’s baseline view is no exception—romance too large for human pockets.

“What if Nairoeu’s gift helps them become who they want to be?”

“The Era of Cold Verdure isn’t about ‘whether you can become who you want.’ It’s about ‘whether you’ve thought who you want to be.’ Where’s the path for a newborn? Engineer, doctor, scholar, teacher—sure. But what else? Humans aren’t limited to four coats. If a child has never heard of a high-voltage electrician, or an ice-cream taste tester, how could they become that?”

The child hasn’t chosen at all. It’s like a hive: a worker is born able to choose locust bean honey, osmanthus honey, or jujube honey—but still only honey, not egg-laying.

A freedom that looks like freedom but isn’t. Gods and demons don’t talk “freedom” by itself; we say “free will,” the will that decides. That has almost nothing to do with the usual word “freedom.”

“My view? Nairoeu’s gift helps the new era, yes. But its meaning lies in ensuring ‘can become’ and ‘security after becoming.’ The root problem—the group’s grip on personal thought—still sits like a stone on the chest.”