Thirteen: War on the Demon Summit

The automaton didn’t keep Lilith waiting long; time slid by like cool dew on slate. Little White Dragon perched on the chair like a coiled cloud for five minutes. The antique-bronze clockwork doll returned, cradling three hefty tomes like millstones from a riverbed.

“Thanks.” Lilith took the books, her voice light as a bell in mist. The automaton bowed like a reed in wind, turned, and slipped back to its station, half its body vanishing beneath the desk like a blade into a sheath.

Calm first, curiosity next, she ignored the doll re-seating itself like a root under soil and flipped a book open, pages whispering like leaves. The three tomes held oceans of ink, yet she wouldn’t sail them all; neat bookmarks waited like bright fish along a dark stream. She only needed to follow the little flags and net the facts she wanted.

The story of the Legendary Sword surfaced fast, a silver fish in moonlight. As Eliza had said, the records called it a giant blade that pierced heaven and under-earth, a spine of steel threading sky and soil. When the Cataclysm struck like thunder on a cliff, the blade shattered and vanished like stars at dawn.

The trail was thin as hoarfrost; Lilith combed all three tomes like a rake through sand, and found only Eliza’s nursery rhyme and that brief, brittle line. Yet the records on the Nameless One’s sidearm were abundant as constellations, and the war that followed spread like stormfire. In Vampire books, they called it the War on the Demon Summit.

Its spark touched a god Lilith knew well: Icarus, lord of stars and cleansing light, a cold river and a sharp flame in one. For his friend, the Nameless One, he forged a keen blade from three night-born things: the first starlight after the sun sank like a ship, the sunlight caught during a sun-eating eclipse like gold under black water, and forget-me-nots plucked under a blood moon like tiny blue embers in red snow.

Steeped in Icarus’s power, the sword burned clean like winter fire; anything it touched was washed away like ink in rain. Even gods would find their divinity scored like ice under a chisel. Then it fell into the hand of the fiercest Primordial Demon God, the Grim Reaper who ruled death—the Nameless One, a dark tide behind a frozen crown. Fearing that edge would break their balance like a scale tipped by a single feather, the other Primordials gathered to strike.

There were five Primordial Demon Gods; Birth, keeper of life, withdrew like a seed under frost, and would not fight. The remaining three—Reversion, Ambition, and Oblivion—rose like storm peaks to smite the Nameless One, and the sky grew thin as paper.

The war raged for two hundred years, a wildfire that ate centuries like dry grass. The four supremes fought to the cursed cosmos’s outer rim, where stars fray like torn silk; day and night flipped like a coin, the moon traded places with the stars, and heaven and earth dimmed like a guttering lamp. Even the great Way ground thin like stone under a mill, before victory finally broke like daylight over a black sea.

The Nameless One won by cutting off his own arm, a white blade falling like a branch in snow. He took Reversion’s head with one stroke like a crescent scythe, punched through Oblivion’s chest like a spear through ice, and wrecked Ambition’s legs like snapped oars on a stormed lake. For gods, such wounds were not doom but winter scratches; still, the outcome set like iron. The Nameless One seized every sky like a net full of wind and raised an Undead Empire beneath that iron vault. The blade Icarus had made slept quiet in Udis’s palace like a sword in ice, until the Cataclysm broke the world and its trail went dark.

Lilith shut the book, mind steady as a pond before a stone. She handed the volumes back to the automaton by the door, its lenses glinting like beetle eyes, and left the Royal Library like a shadow slipping from marble. She roughly knew where to find the Nameless One’s blade now.

A cool certainty came first, then the chain of logic clicked like frost on eaves: the Shattered Ark was most likely the Nameless One’s sword, turned into the Broken Sword in her hand when the Cataclysm cracked the sky. Morris had to hold its remaining fragments like seashells in a ruin—just not inside the current palace, but…

“Good evening, Annie.” Lilith stepped into Annie’s inn, her voice a lantern in dusk. The Vampire girl leaned behind the counter, polishing a glass until it shone like a moon. Little White Dragon noticed two hooks on the key rack hanging empty like missing teeth; new guests, then—poor souls out in rain with no home light.

“Oh, Lilith! Well? Did you get a line back to the outside?” Annie’s excitement jumped like sparrows from a bush. “Those pencil-pushers at the office didn’t give you grief, right?” Her words rattled like beans in a cup.

“No, I met the princess just fine,” Lilith said, calm as a lake under stars. She looked at Annie, her gaze a quiet spring. “I want to ask, why’s this street called Hero Street?”

“What? You met the princess?” Annie’s focus snapped like lightning to a bell tower, not to the question but the first spark. She lunged and caught Little White Dragon’s shoulders, shaking with a strength like a bellringer at festival, almost rattling her apart.

“D-don’t, don’t shake, I’ll faint,” Lilith blurted, the world tilting like a boat in chop. She wrestled free like a fish slipping the net, scampered to a corner on quick legs, and pressed to the wall like a pale leaf in wind, eyes wary as a cat.

“I—I got too excited. I’m so sorry! That was rude!” Annie twisted with embarrassment like a vine on a post, then bowed deep, her head almost thumping the floor like a mallet.

“Uh, no need to go that far,” Lilith said, cold sweat beading like dew on a blade. “Let’s not dwell on that. I only wanted to ask why this street’s called Hero Street.”

“Because the Legendary Sword is on this street,” Annie said as if naming rain, tone flat as a slate.

“Huh? What Legendary Sword?” Lilith tilted her head like a bird listening; hadn’t the sword been in her hand all along, even if lately it wouldn’t answer like a silent bell? In this world, there should be one Hero and one sword; great—she was the understudy under someone else’s spotlight.

“Well, I’ve never seen it myself,” Annie said, leading Lilith out, words drifting like steam. “It’s a tale from before the street was built, an old wind through old trees.” She lifted her chin to the upside-down city overhead, a stone sky hanging like an iron orchard. “See? The old folks say the Legendary Sword that can save Vampires is up there, right above our roofs, so we call this Hero Street.”

“The Legendary Sword that can save Vampires,” Lilith murmured, eyes rising like moths to flame. She stared at Udis drooping over Morris like a ruined crown and fell into thought like a pebble into a well; sure enough, the fragments of the Shattered Ark weren’t lounging in the palace, but still sleeping in the ruins of Udis.

“Listen, Jack dreams every night of climbing up there to yank the sword free and play the Hero,” Annie said with a laugh, her voice like clinking glass. “Too bad he’s not getting up there in this lifetime, even if he grows wings.”

“It’s fine. I can go,” Lilith said, resolve blooming like frost-white flowers. She looked up at the wrecked city above, then shrugged off her long coat like a shed shadow, revealing a backless sweater pale as winter. On the White Dragon’s snowy back, two seams opened like quiet mouths, and a pair of white wings unfurled like dawn.

Unlike the batlike membranes that bared themselves when she fed, these wings were plated in white dragon scales, pure and keen like an angel’s blade. Little White Dragon spread them wide, a sail catching a cold sun, and beat upward toward the city overhead, while Annie stared below, shock bright as lightning over a dark sea.