"Respect... ah, right. I suppose I should show respect."

Shenyi thought for a long while before he remembered what the word even meant.

After all, as Shenyi the Grand Duke, as the demonfolk’s ruler, a full thousand years had passed. He had long since forgotten what it meant to respect anyone—and most of the people in this world who had ever been worthy of his respect had died in that great calamity.

The white-haired, red-eyed little girl in front of him should have been one of the few he ought to respect, even if she looked somewhat different from the version in his memory—smaller, for one, and wearing a childish pink strawberry pajama set.

But some things didn’t change with size. That indifference, for example—that distance, as if she had long since stepped away from the mortal world.

And that lofty gaze from above.

It was a gaze that came naturally, without any intent to insult. Even the “little brat” she’d called him carried no humiliation—because she truly had the right.

Meladomir.

The oldest human alive in this era. Like Shenyi, one of the survivors from a thousand years ago—and the only Origin-Rank Grand Archmage of the age.

A thousand years ago, she had been a figure Shenyi could only look up to, never reach. Even now, that simple gaze from above was enough to make most people in this world feel fear.

"And yet, I don’t think I have any need to respect you anymore."

Shenyi said it suddenly.

His expression was gentle, like an old man chatting idly beneath a banyan tree at dusk. But his tone was cold enough to spark flame and war at any moment.

"Oh?" Meladomir arched a brow, surprised. "Why? Is it that after living a thousand years, you’ve finally grown some courage?"

"This has nothing to do with courage."

Shenyi shook his head. "It’s just... you’re the same as me now. A pitiable person who’s lost what matters most, struggling and wandering through this world. What reason would I have to respect you?"

"..."

Meladomir drifted down. Her jade-white bare feet landed on the black stone, the clash of white and black mirroring the atmosphere itself.

Her long hair swayed. Her red eyes flickered. Something seemed to be condensing into substance...

But in the end, she only let out a long sigh.

"You’re right. We’re nothing but pitiable people," Meladomir admitted plainly.

They had lost something important.

They slept alone in this world, wandered alone.

Bound by some duty, searching through endless time for a possibility so small it was almost zero—without even the courage to walk toward death...

Pathetic. Miserable.

"So?" Shenyi smiled and extended a hand, inviting her with sincere warmth. "Are you here to attend my rebirth ceremony? If it’s you, I can save the best seat for you."

"No."

Meladomir’s voice was cold.

"I’m here to end this farce."

"..."

The air congealed again.

Like a sword drawn from its sheath—metal screaming against metal.

Shenyi was radiating an unusual degree of goodwill, but this reunion, this meeting after a thousand years...

Perhaps from the very start, there had been no possibility of easing it.

"Why."

The smile on Shenyi’s face slowly faded. His scarlet eyes fixed on the other pair of eyes—also red, but clearer.

A fierce disappointment surfaced in his gaze, like he’d been betrayed.

He had believed that, just as a thousand years ago, Meladomir would stand on his side.

"You heard it too, didn’t you? Her crying." Shenyi spread his arms.

The dim space was silent.

On the obsidian throne, the skeleton draped in feathered robes sat upright without a sound. The hollow sockets were deep, empty, holding nothing—yet Shenyi seemed to hear a crying clearly.

Her crying.

Wretched. Painful. Sorrowful. Filled with hatred...

Of course she should hate. She had borne malice she never should have suffered, and on the day disaster descended, she was murdered cruelly.

Among the demonfolk... no—among those who had not yet become demonfolk, she was the one person who most should not have died.

And yet she became the “only” one who truly died.

"You can feel that pain too, can’t you, Meladomir!"

Shenyi roared.

"You saw everything she did with your own eyes—so you should know, just like me, just like her, that bone-deep hatred and unwillingness!"

All the statues turned their heads, glaring at Meladomir.

Meladomir’s expression didn’t change at all.

She tilted her head, as if listening closely.

"Yes... I can hear it. Her crying."

Images surfaced before Meladomir’s eyes.

She had never been inside the Myriad-Age Cycle. Her longevity came from authority over time itself; her memories had never been washed clean or distorted. Those scenes remained sharp—so sharp they often replayed in her dreams.

The sights from a thousand years ago. The disaster... the sights from before “It” descended, beautiful as sunlight pouring over a sea of flowers.

And she knew what kind of person she had been. When everything was about to collapse, she had been the first to discover the source of it all, and she had tried—painfully—to rewrite the ending.

She failed, but no one blamed her. Even if a mortal cannot stop the flood’s rampage, no one condemns the fool who dares stand before the flood.

It could be said that the entire demonfolk... no, those who had not yet been called demonfolk a thousand years ago, carried a sin that could not be forgiven.

But she—the one who had once led them forward—did not.

Brave. Kind. Powerful. And most important of all...

She had stayed lucid. She had never fallen into the fervor of those sins.

Someone like that truly should not have met such a miserable end. If the guilty could still cling to life, why should the one without guilt die so sorrowfully?

"But..."

Meladomir lifted her head, meeting Shenyi’s eyes directly.

"Are you sure her crying is the way you describe it?"

"...What do you mean?" Shenyi froze.

"Do you know, Shenyi? I wasn’t planning to show myself."

Her pink nightdress swayed as Meladomir paced across the black stone.

Behind her, in that pitch-black corridor, those eerie shadows should have been making hoarse, murky murmurs—tearing apart anyone who broke the rules. But now they were absolutely silent.

"I wasn’t planning to show myself, and I wasn’t planning to interfere with you—interfere with the demonfolk—because I still carry a certain guilt toward you. That’s why, for a thousand years, I let you change in this corner, quietly becoming something unfamiliar..."

"And because of the Myriad-Age Cycle’s existence, you are harmless to the world itself now. So no matter how you thrash about, I can pretend not to see it..."

"But, Shenyi..."

Meladomir stopped.

She stood among the statues, studying their varied forms. Then she looked up, toward the countless chains carpeting the sky, toward the souls at their tips...

Souls on the verge of shattering.

A soul’s wear was normal. As long as one existed within the artificial “cycle” of the Myriad-Age Cycle, erosion was unavoidable.

Only... it could have come slower.

"Have you still not realized it? You—someone who once stood with her against the oppressors—have become your old self... you’ve become the very thing she hated most."

"You’ve become an oppressor too, Shenyi."

The demonfolk existed by relying on the Myriad-Age Cycle.

That powerful ancient relic was both bondage and protection.

If the Myriad-Age Cycle hadn’t washed their souls again and again with each turn, these former followers of the Demon God would have long since been fully corroded by that pollution, rotting into monsters.

Those corrupted things wandering the “slums”—that was the fate of souls that had never entered the Myriad-Age Cycle.

And precisely because of that, controlling the Myriad-Age Cycle meant controlling the demonfolk’s souls.

Yet Shenyi intended to squeeze power out of those souls, using it as fuel to resurrect her.

"Oppressor?"

Shenyi laughed, unconcerned. "So what if I am? If I can save her from pain, then even if I become something unfamiliar, even if my hands are stained with blood—so what? I already—"

"You still don’t understand what I mean!"

Meladomir cut him off. Her tone turned suddenly severe, but the way she looked at Shenyi carried a strange pity.

That pity made Shenyi uneasy—then angry.

"I ignored what was happening on your side for too long. Before, I only suspected it faintly. Now I’m finally certain..."

She looked at Shenyi and spoke each word clearly.

"You’ve gone mad, Shenyi."

"...Mad?"

Shenyi’s aged face tilted slightly. He looked at Meladomir in confusion. "Are you insulting me? Heh. I never thought you would be so rude—"

"No. I’m stating a fact. You’ve gone completely mad—so mad that you’ve forgotten something that important."

"Forgotten..." Shenyi rolled the word around, as if tasting the meaning it held.

"Do you know? There’s another reason I didn’t want to interfere. Because I know your plan will never succeed. Everything you’ve done—from beginning to end—has been nothing but a farce. A pure farce. A ridiculous farce."

Meladomir’s lips parted slightly, as if she meant to tear Shenyi’s soul apart with words.

"Because she is..."

...

...

Muen felt himself falling.

After he jumped from that tower, he had felt himself falling the entire time.

A horrifying weightlessness swallowed him, like the Abyss had devoured him. He struggled to move his limbs, trying to grab onto something—anything—but there was nothing to grab.

It was as if there was no substance in this darkness at all.

"Hey, hey—don’t tell me even an Evil God couldn’t kill me, but I’m gonna end up dying here by falling to my death."

Muen scratched his head in frustration. He realized he couldn’t even use magic, so he tried cautiously:

"How about a little light?"

And light actually appeared.

The moment the words left his mouth, a blinding radiance stretched from one end of his vision to the other.

But it wasn’t beautiful.

The instant Muen looked at it, a savage pain pierced his brain. Unimaginable howls and murmurs rang inside his skull. His mind began to shake, his vision warped, and an indescribable terror surged up.

It didn’t feel like pure light at all—more like the leftover glow of some dreadful existence...

Or perhaps it wasn’t light, and Muen’s brain could only comprehend it in the form of light.

But regardless—light appeared.

Then it tore the world open.

An indescribable shadow spilled out from behind the radiance, spreading across the sky at an alarming speed. The sun vanished. The moon disappeared. All Muen could see was the shell of the world, wailing as it cracked apart bit by bit.

Yet it wasn’t only the sky that broke. The earth underwent an unimaginable mutation as well. The surface built of soil and rock began to flip over in a grotesque way, the strata turning into living things—like enormous tentacles entwining and convulsing. Then those masses of flesh split open. Ancient buildings that symbolized civilization sank into the ground and were chewed to pieces, the crunching sound like a child savoring a delicious snack.

Crowds fled in terror, only to be bitten and torn apart by monsters from the shadows. Several children clung to each other, trembling as they hid in a shelter that was temporarily safe—only for the scene to shift, leaving behind nothing but a few unspeakable monsters slaughtering each other.

"This is..."

Muen was so shaken by the horror he could barely breathe. His gaze swept rapidly over the apocalyptic scene, searching for its source.

At last, above a grand city still mostly intact—a city of towering spires—he saw... “It.”

The image split apart abruptly, as if it couldn’t bear the presence of that existence.

Muen’s vision went black. It felt like his head had been smashed by a sledgehammer, his consciousness churning violently.

But when he came back to himself, he found he was no longer falling.

He braced himself against a wall and forced himself upright, realizing he had somehow arrived in an unfamiliar corridor.

Unfamiliar, yet familiar.

The architecture was nothing like Belrand or anywhere on the continent, but Muen recognized those intricate, exquisite patterns.

Because he had seen them—more than once.

At Gutongs Castle, in the room where the Enchantress Grand Duke once imprisoned him, and...

"A dream."

Muen murmured, studying his surroundings.

Ever since he obtained that branch of the Myriad-Age Cycle, he had been having the same strange dream. This was already the third time he had entered it.

This time was more real than the previous two, filled with details no dream should have. He could even see—and touch—the faint mottling time had left in the stone.

Muen’s gaze fell on the door in front of him, ordinary at a glance.

Based on the first two times, he should have pushed it open and met that girl again—the one lying in a pool of blood, clearly dead, yet still begging him to save something.

But this time... 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"▌▌."

A voice came from behind the door.

Someone speaking, in a language that felt unfamiliar to Muen.

Ancient speech.

Strangely, while it was unfamiliar, Muen could understand the meaning. But the first few sounds—words that seemed like a name—slipped through his mind like water, leaving not a trace behind.

He tried to recall them and found that no matter what he did, he couldn’t remember the name those sounds represented.

"The spread of Pollution is getting worse. More people are being corrupted into those monsters. Things have completely spun out of control!"

"▌▌, what do we do? Everything feels like it’s about to be destroyed. The world outside this city is already collapsing. What exactly is it that we’ve been worshiping?!"

"..."

"Calm down."

After a silence, another voice sounded from inside the room.

Muen didn’t know how to describe it. It was as if, after a thousand years, the voice had been completely distorted—no clear tone left, hoarse and rough, like a recording played from an old radio.

And yet it carried, inexplicably, a power that soothed the heart.

"Stop praying. We can’t let them keep being polluted, and %&...%&..."

The next words blurred, as if they were falling back into the river of history, battered by raging currents until they couldn’t be pieced together.

Muen could no longer make them out. He only knew the conversation went on for a long time.

But just when he thought the rest would remain jumbled and incoherent, that reassuring voice became clear again.

"Right... could you go out for a bit? Let me stay alone for a while."

"Yeah, I know being alone is dangerous right now. Outside, those monsters are everywhere. And there are lots of survivors in this city who want to kill me—they think we’re the source of all the disasters. But it’s fine..."

"It’s fine."

"I’m strong. Did you forget? They aren’t my match."

"Just for a little while. Just a little while. There’s something very important I need to think through..."

"Yes. That’s right. It concerns our future."

"..."

The voices died down, followed by another stretch of silence.

One of the two inside seemed to have really left. Even Muen, standing outside, could feel the loneliness and stillness that followed.

A long time passed.

As if the person inside truly spent an age thinking—or perhaps it was only a short time, and the length was just Muen’s illusion.

Then the voice sounded again, this time speaking to itself.

"I’m sorry, everyone..."

"Forgive my weakness. This is the only way I could think of."

Something in Muen stirred. He lifted his hand and shoved the door open.

On the other side was the same room he had already studied twice—this was his third time here, and it was familiar now.

And across from him was that girl.

This time, because something had changed, she was no longer in that dead state from before. She stood there, simply watching him enter.

Muen looked at her as well.

She had a face Muen found deeply familiar—almost identical to An’s. But as a faint doubt rippled through his chest, that familiar face blurred in an instant.

As if her face was meant to be indistinct, and the sense of familiarity, the resemblance to An, had only been Muen’s illusion.

"You came."

The girl spoke softly.

"..."

Muen considered for a moment, then spoke carefully.

"That tiny will that guided me here, hidden inside the Myriad-Age Cycle ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) branch... was that you?"

"Yes."

She admitted it plainly. "It was me."

"Why?"

"..."

She didn’t answer.

"You wanted me to know something, didn’t you?"

"..."

Still no answer.

It was as if she were only a brief, fixed program—incapable of answering questions that complex.

Or perhaps... there was no need to answer at all.

"I see. Then I understand."

Muen lowered his gaze to her palm.

Hovering above it was a perfect circle formed from simple lines—without substance, like pure rule made visible, filled with a beauty that made the heart catch.

It should have been pure white. But now it was gradually being covered in red.

That red came from the girl’s blood.

The red of the Myriad-Age Cycle. The red of the entire demonfolk. It seemed all of it had been dyed by her blood.

"I understand what you wanted me to know."

Three dreams.

In the last one—perhaps because that will within the Myriad-Age Cycle had grown stronger—Muen had seen more.

He had seen what looked like the moment “It” descended. He had seen that argument. He had seen her alive.

But none of that was the point. Or rather, it wasn’t the point of what she wanted to convey.

The point was... where the third dream overlapped with the first two.

Blood.

The clean cut at her pale throat.

And in a room with only one person...

A lonely, silent death.

"So... you killed yourself."