Everyone knew the first Demon King was a Minotaur. The children’s stories said it as though it were a simple fact, repeated so often that no one questioned it anymore. Yet the truth behind how a Demon King came to exist at all was a different story.

That Minotaur had once been nothing special.

He was not born mighty, nor clever, nor blessed. He was merely a wild demon roaming the demon regions, weak even by their cruel standards. Other demons mocked him, hunted him, and used him as a living reminder of what it meant to fall behind. When they finally grew tired of torment, they decided to erase him altogether. Broken, bleeding, and trampled into the ash-covered ground, the Minotaur lay waiting for death.

It was on that very night that the sky changed.

A shooting star tore across the heavens, blazing so brightly that night turned into false daylight. Shadows vanished. Mountains cast outlines sharp enough to cut. Every creature that looked up felt an instinctive dread, as though the world itself had briefly held its breath.

According to every surviving record, there was no impact crater. No explosion. No ruin left behind.

And yet, the star did land.

From within the falling light, something emerged.

No one could later agree on what it looked like. Some texts described a figure shaped like a man, others spoke of shifting light, while a few insisted it had no form at all. What mattered was not its appearance, but what it did. The thing approached the dying Minotaur and looked down upon him, not with pity, but with something closer to curiosity.

It gave him something.

No one knew whether it was power, knowledge, or a fragment of something far greater. But the change was immediate. The Minotaur’s shattered body healed in moments. His muscles thickened, his horns sharpened, and his eyes cleared with sudden awareness. More terrifying still, his mind awakened. Where there had once been fear and pain, there was now understanding.

The meteor rose back into the sky, drifting effortlessly toward the void beyond the world. Before leaving, the being spoke a single truth into the Minotaur’s mind.

"You are now a Demon King, like from those fantasy stories."

And then it was gone.

The Minotaur rose alone beneath the stars, trembling— not from fear, but from joy. When he returned to the demon lands, he hunted those who had once tried to kill him. The same demons who had mocked and beaten him now knelt, sobbing and begging for mercy. Their despair fed something inside him. He loved when the so called strong knelt before him and begged.

In that moment, he believed he had discovered the meaning of his existence.

To be feared.

To be obeyed.

To rule.

He declared himself Demon King and united the demons under his banner. With their newfound cohesion, the demon race turned outward. War followed. Many races were driven into hiding. Others resisted and were crushed. As the world bled, the desperate called upon the gods themselves.

The gods answered.

Thus were the Heroes born, blessed with divine abilities to oppose the Demon King. The first heroes failed. The second nearly succeeded. It was the third who finally struck the Minotaur down. Yet even in death, the Demon King ensured his will would not vanish. His legacy passed to another demon, chosen at random, as though the title itself had become a curse that sought a host.

Centuries later, during yet another climactic battle between a Hero and a Demon King, the world witnessed something unprecedented.

As both sides unleashed their strongest attacks, a figure suddenly appeared between them.

The combined power struck him directly.

And did nothing.

The man simply fell unconscious, then rose moments later, unharmed. Calm. Confused. He introduced himself as a Cosmic Traveler —one who wandered freely between worlds and universes. Believing the two factions had somehow saved him, he chose to repay the favor.

He looked into the future.

What he saw made him speak words that still haunted the world centuries later.

"In one hundred years, this world will be devoured by someone," he said. "It is inevitable."

Before leaving, he uttered one final word— one no one truly understood.

"Switch."

Then he vanished and replaced by a flower.

From that day forward, the Demon King faction changed. No longer content with conquest or domination, their goal became absolute. If the world was destined to be devoured, then they would become the ones to do it. Not as rulers. Not as kings.

But as the end itself.

---

Kaeya finished recounting the long and unsettling history, her voice steady even as the weight of it lingered between them. Tyler walked beside her in silence for a while, the forest path crunching softly beneath their feet.

He said "switch"... Tyler thought. The word refused to leave his mind. After a moment, he glanced at her and asked casually, as though testing a stray thought,

"Did that mysterious person... the cosmic traveler... have a pixie on his shoulder?"

Kaeya stopped walking.

She turned to him slowly, her brows knitting together in disbelief. "How did you know that?" she asked, her voice sharper than before. "That detail is not written in public records. Only a handful of royal archives mention it, and even then it’s treated as unreliable."

Tyler’s lips twitched despite himself. That’s definitely Adam, he thought. That idiot really does show up everywhere—every world, every timeline. Aloud, however, he only shrugged lightly, offering a vague smile that revealed nothing. "Just a guess," he said.

Kaeya studied him for a second longer, clearly unconvinced, but she let the matter rest. "That encounter happened exactly one hundred years ago," she continued. "To the year."

Tyler exhaled slowly. "So the end is near," he said, not as a question, but as a conclusion.

Kaeya nodded. Her expression darkened, losing some of its earlier composure. "The end is near," she repeated. "At least, that is what the signs suggest. We cannot say with certainty that the cosmic traveler spoke the truth... but what followed cannot be ignored."

She folded her arms, gaze drifting toward the trees. "After that year, something unprecedented happened. Those with prophetic abilities—fortune tellers, seers, oracles—anyone capable of glimpsing the future—lost their sight beyond a certain point. No matter their power, no matter their lineage, they could not see past the coming year."

Tyler’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Which means," he said quietly, "whatever happens... happens before that year arrives."

"Yes," Kaeya replied. "Or the world simply ceases to exist beyond that point. Either way, the future becomes blank."

Silence fell between them again, heavier than before.

"That is why the kingdom is desperate," Kaeya went on. "Why we hunt Demon Kings so relentlessly. Why we act even when the cost is high. We cannot afford to wait and hope the prophecy is wrong."

She hesitated, then added, "Recently, however, we got something resembling hope. The best Seer in the world says that a being blessed by nature will save the world."

"The druid," Tyler said.

Kaeya nodded. "A druid. One blessed not merely with nature’s favor, but with something else like cosmic powers. If such a person truly exists, they may be able to interfere with what is deemed ’inevitable.’"

Tyler smiled faintly at that, a look that held more meaning than he let on. "Well," he said, "let’s hope it works."

Then, with an easy grin and a slight bow of his head, he added, "Your Highness."

Kaeya rolled her eyes at the title, though the corner of her lips curved upward despite herself.