In truth, Qing An dying here would be the cleanest ending, like a curtain falling in cold dawn.

If she weren’t the exception prepared to delay the Final Calamity, placing Qing An among the heroes of the Silver Era would break their balance like a boulder in a river.

She’s too clever, too strong, too pure, like a blade honed to white fire.

Unknowing and unfeeling, she can’t see the boundary between wrong and right, like fog over a field. No—she is a newborn herself, a blank page in the sun, her future many and unwritten, beyond any prophecy of villain or saint.

Head might be able to, but he’d never do it; forging a soul that must endorse the plan to stop the Endless Demon King is a red-hot chain around choice.

Let alone snuffing out a living person like a candle in wind.

Divine Beings love every human equally, like rain falling on thorn and rose. They grumble at the youngest’s folly, feel the chill of disappointment at arrogance, ache at tragedies repeating like winter cycles. Ugly or beautiful, base or noble, dirty or pure, they still love their children like starlight over ash and gold. Long ago, a single premise rang clear, like a bell in fog: the Divine Being loves the killer, and loves the killed.

Head and Qing An both knew all this, like two mirrors facing in silence; shared thought had no conflict, so no speech was needed. The great don’t always need words; their meaning moves like moonlight.

It’s too cold a logic, a long, utilitarian cut fit for a ruler like Andor, frost-eyed and alone. The Divine Being can grasp that path, yet the world has more than one road, like rivers parting. So now Head offered counsel, a lantern in dusk.

“I still hope you live well, and carve a life that pleases you, like a hearth kept bright.”

But counsel stayed counsel, like wind at the window. They respect every choice; “the Divine Being’s will” had no throne in the Silver Era.

“Let me ask—how do I stay alive, like a stone seeking the bottom of a well?”

“Just do nothing; be still like a pond under night.”

In this whole affair, Head could meddle in little, like a hand tied by silk. At most, he could relay Andor’s words, letting them fall again from his mouth like pebbles. The Demon King’s mocking prophecy had already named every end, and none of it was a jest, like iron spoken cold.

Even if both sides swore alliance before Ferrel, its weave wasn’t tight, like a net with gaps; vigilance stayed. This time Andor pinched the exact space a Divine Being could enter, and Head, even if he wanted, could do nothing, like a hawk bound by cord.

No one knew when time began to slide again, like a river under ice. Qing An didn’t sense the moment her feet moved, and Vega’s and Julian’s steps moved too, like shadows rejoining the sun.

“Strange, isn’t it? Except for exams and racing to a date, we barely feel time flowing, like wind through reeds; but we feel time’s stop with sharp bones, like a clock that suddenly goes silent.”

She smoothed her long hair like silk, set her helmet on; steel kissed cheek and brow like cool rain. The lower edge bit into the neck plates; the squeeze was slight. In that narrow shell came a calm, like a nest under storm.

She felt it—this talk with a Great One should end here, like a page closing at dusk.

“Mr. Head, when the Silver Era ends, where do you go, like ships on a star-sea?”

“The far side of the starry sky, a distance like winter constellations. Far beyond the youngest’s reach; men and gods won’t meet again.”

“Sounds lonely, like an empty shoreline at night.”

“Lonely… that word rarely sits on deities, like dew on granite.”

“What words can hold a Divine Being, like trying to net the sky? You’re always great, giving too much without asking back, like a river that won’t stop. To humans, that’s frightening; fear bred by ignorance burns like dry grass. Mr. Head, you must know what ruins that fear can cause.”

“Resistance, yes; one day the youngest will lift sword and spear toward the sky like lightning, and crown themselves creators beyond the Creator.”

“Is that why you leave? You don’t want to watch that betrayal, don’t want to carry that deep loneliness, like a winter weight.”

“No, Qing An, not like that. If the youngest truly make ready, live by themselves, refuse kneeling and yokes, and by their own will deny the gods and the hordes of demons, we’d feel joy like sunrise. The Creator’s children would have grown. We’d call you by your name—humans—like friends meeting on a road.”

Qing An blinked, then laughed; her steel gauntlets clapped with a rough clang, like sparks thrown from an anvil.

“I thought I could grasp you, like catching rain in hands; I didn’t. Those great souls live on pages to us, like ink on bone; we can’t truly understand.”

The boy leaned on his cane and came close, a gentle smile like spring. He rose on his toes and touched her helmet at the brow, a soft pass like a feather.

“Now, I bless your birth, like a bell over water; sorry, it’s two years late—”

“—Now, Mr. Eil seems quite interested in this event. You clapped when I spoke of slaughter.” The head maid spun with theatrical flair; her puffed skirt flared like a sail. She pointed toward the arena below like an usher under torchlight. “Interested in trying?”

Order of time and space slid back into the material world, like fog lifting. The Great One seemed never to have appeared at all, like a dream washed by dawn.

Qing An touched the brow plate; faintly, like an ember, she caught the lingering warmth of the hand that blessed her birth.

Someone wants you to live well in this world; for some, that wish is a vast rescue, like a rope thrown over dark water.

And for Qing An, what does that mean, like a question hanging in smoke?

“…Oh, we all know—through two layers of steel, nothing truly touches, like glass between palms; in that fractured time, nothing stays, like footprints in rain.”

“What are you saying? Sorry, I didn’t catch it, like a word lost in wind.”

“…No, nothing. What are the rules of this arena, like stones on a board? If I win, what do I get, like a prize under torchlight?”

“I said it: the prisoners here are folk we had full reason to seize, like nets closing on fish. We also keep a waste-not creed; we use them as gladiators to amuse idle Demon Kings, like drums in a hall. We ask them; they step onto the sand by choice, and accept that killing or being killed here is ‘as it should be,’ like dice cast on stone.”

“If I win, can I let them go, like opening a cage? Or must I check with your master, like knocking on a door?”

“I hold that right, like keys on a ring. Then, Mr. Eil, this: win one bout, and I’ll send back a ‘not-so-important spy’ to the human world, whole in body save the bruises of the mind, like a bird sent from a cage.”

The head maid bowed, skirts rustling like leaves.

Qing An had little taste for rescues, like a cat facing rain; but now her state had settled, and she wore the part of Eil like a cloak.

The great hero Eil was skilled at the calculus of rescue and sacrifice, like a surgeon with a blade.

If the true Eil stood here, he wouldn’t walk away lightly, pretending feeling was ash; he’d stand like a tree in wind.

If effort can pull one life from the abyss, what’s more meaningful, like a light lit in a cave?

As for the Demon King’s actors, masks and parade? The hero barely cares, like dust on boots; Qing An cares even less, like smoke blown off the road.

Hot sparks and iron filings hissed from the armor’s seams like meteors, then gathered in her hands, roughing out a long sword. Cracks veined the armor; jagged plates split with a hard snap. A whooshing gale wrapped the forming weapon, like storm binding iron.

A heavy greatsword took form in her grip, scored with cracks and firelight, its surface pitted like old rock, its edge notched like wolf teeth—yet its pressure was unspeakable, like thunder held close.

The black-armored hero hefted the greatsword to her shoulder and vaulted into the arena, like a hawk dropping. Her legs and bracing left hand slammed the ground; the armor flared up like reversed scales, savage and bright. The impact rolled out, then the plates shut again, smooth as midnight; no crack showed.

The greatsword came level like a fallen beam. He turned toward the prisoners about to lose, voice steady like rain:

“Hey, if you’re not dead yet, then guard your life like a candle in wind. You can go home.”

Up at the arena’s rim, the head maid’s voice rang like a bell; due to the intruder, the bout becomes two-on-two.

“—Ah, no, make it three-on-three.” The head maid spoke with a rare smile, like sunrise catching glass.

“I say, Eil, you haven’t forgotten whose husband you are, have you, like a ring on your finger?”

Julian winked, sly as a fox, and drew a longsword from her waist, steel whispering like a stream.

“These days I trained stances with Miss Dulan, and gained a few threads, like patterns on silk. I can at least hold your back like a wall.”

In the arena, blades and cheers never run dry, like rain and thunder over a plain.

The head maid, in fine spirits, jotted notes like strokes of ink, and tossed the hosting to a mid-tier retainer like passing a torch.