“Head, you know everything, don’t you? Then what kind of human world do you want, and how to reach it—just say it… Oh. I think I get it.”

“Yes, Andor.” Regret shadowed his face; he spread his hands with a real, weary slackness, not a staged pose. “If I meddle in the mortal world yet keep the Creator’s relics from overturning, I must bind myself. More tightly than you.”

“Uh, like that clichéd plot where any friend who joins the hero’s party loses eighty percent of their power?”

“Andor, you’re not the protagonist. Stini is.”

The bastard didn’t deny it—the chains bite hard when he stands as an ally.

Fine. I said fine. It tracks, like chalk lines on a street.

Those who can see can’t change; those who can change see nothing. If you push harder and widen the view, the world bursts under a great one’s palm. If Head can help me, it means he’ll be shackled as well.

“So what we can count on now is the God of Wisdom letting go of wisdom?”

“If we could trust each other, I’d even abandon reason and leave only power for you to steer—if we could trust each other.”

You don’t have to repeat it—I know! The words spark like flint against thin patience.

The more you hope to gain, the more you must give up; the scales demand balance, either way. Head holds the scepter called “Wisdom.” If he forgets the past, falls to frenzy, loses reason, that’s a denial of the self. Within the human range of mind, there’s hardly a sacrifice larger.

He now “can do it,” yet doesn’t know how to do it. Keys, but no door.

What is plain from the grand vantage turns opaque when you step down in rank. Stars bright atop a cliff look like dust from a cellar.

If I had to name it, I’d say: “Once you’re used to strength, you can’t grasp what weakness even means.” It’s an unlikeable line. Don’t mind it, Head. Loosen up and my work gets lighter. If you don’t see the doom on the doorstep, then your spiritual ascent… doesn’t need to rush. From the golden age till now, humans got worse, yet didn’t go extinct.

A thousand years, maybe ten thousand. I’ll get it done, eventually. I said it like a stone that will wear down a river.

Head stayed silent, clouded and unsatisfied, yet he didn’t complain. Heavy cloud, no rain.

For humans, that span is too long; time’s tide carries off spirit, will, and shining thought. For immortal great ones, even the long-lived, forgetting is the hard part. We’re the ones who truly know what “keeping watch” means—cliffs facing the sea.

Of course, we villains call it “contract spirit.” Same script, opposite incense; ink instead of prayer.

“To sum up,” I gave showy claps to my unlikeable ally, palms like dry leaves, “everything stays as is. Consider Nairoe’s ‘wish’ mechanism. People treat anything a thousand years back as an unprovable myth. Fine—plan in thousand-year blocks. Also, I recommend devils. They honor contracts; once the terms lock, they obey.”

“But devil bargains begin with an intent to deceive.”

“Aren’t you the God of Wisdom? You know every trick and scheme, yet you’d get conned? Would a water elemental drown in water?”

“No. Because I’m the God of Wisdom, devils use everything they have when they deal with me…”

Head shrugged, helpless, like a sail with no wind.

Oh, that I can understand; a puzzle piece clicks in place.

I’ve always worked with devils as partners, and I didn’t consider that. Humans won’t bother to fight ants, but when the foe is life-long and fated, even the laziest sleeps with a spear and goes all-out.

Divine Beings in the Sea of Light, and the Demon King with the devils in the Ocean of Darkness—eternal opposition. Day and night grind each other like millstones.

A chance to outwit a Divine Being is almost never; even devils without species loyalty unite every usable force to cast a net over the sky and set a heaven-slaying rite.

That makes it messier, and it breaks my creed—solve what I can fast, don’t invite storms.

Fine. Drop seeking help from devils. Then we have no progress. We wrote this Coldgreen Era Project Plan, fiddled with it for months, yet it’s not as romantic as you imagine. The ink’s dry; the rose has wilted.

I dragged a few kilos of proposals from the shadows and tossed them to the floor, papers thudding like bricks.

It’s fine if they get dirty; I’ve memorized every line. The text is burned into bone.

At the end of the tale, in silver’s twilight, good and evil, light and dark, gods and demons blur together; the Final Calamity no longer is. Humanity won’t stay pure. The line goes, “The children of silver grow ugly as their enemies.” We know it’s inevitable. But here’s the burr: how do you expect such ugliness to chase rest for the soul and tempering of the will? Give grand expectations to the un-great, and the mask won’t hold; the twisted dark beneath shows like rot under paint.

The greater the ideal, the brighter the banner; the filler underneath may be a clotted rot. A flower over compost.

Since silver fell, that truth held like frost etched into law.

Those who truly chase ideals and dreams get labeled freaks, fireflies mocked in daylight.

Those who believe in justice and right only earn laughter, bells drowned in market cries.

People fear injury by evil, so to avoid wounds, even the kind wear malice like a mask. They get used to it; they feel like real villains and can’t climb out of that warm, dark comfort.

Call yourself the worst, and you won’t feel disappointed—aim low, hit mud.

Condemn yourself as evil, and you won’t feel guilty—scar yourself first.

The world is sick—no; this is the norm. As the world advances, heroic blood-courage is retired. A civilized human world doesn’t need that blade. The sword rusts behind glass.

So what emotion fills a hollow, faithless heart? A drop falling into a well.

Just a little is enough, yet it spreads long. Like ink in clear water, faint, pervasive, undeniable.

Its name is “Negation.”

One of the Arch-Devils.

One way the world ends: in quiet peace, like drifting into sleep.

“But—”

He spoke with a gentleness like warm rain:

“This is ‘Elevation,’ Andor.”

“By free will, break the shackles written on the skin. With flesh and narrow sight, a bound soul touches an infinite sky. That is ‘Elevation.’”

“Not a test, not a trial, not a curse, not salvation. Even if ‘Negation’ soaks you through, still ‘affirm’ the self. Use a life to narrate free will. That is the true price of Elevation.”

“No ‘supposed to be,’ no ‘only this,’ none of your usual ‘can’t be helped.’ If the world we gift humans is a mire, a toxic pit—maybe. Yet the most dangerous place births heroes, and the foulest mud grows the loveliest flower.”

“What do humans want? We’ll fulfill the wishes of those who wish. But how do we define ‘wish’? I’ll answer, and wait—will the Creator’s youngest child grow, and reach Elevation?”

——————

“So cold, Head.”

“Yeah.”

“So gentle, Head.”

“Yeah.”