When the last streak of sunset faded, the world finally welcomed true night. The stars that guided the way lit up from the far edge of the sky. Compared to a thousand years ago, that ancient radiance seemed to have changed a little—but across the long stretch of time, it still illuminated this land that had already been abandoned.

A massive hollow pierced through the earth, like a wound that ran straight to the bone marrow—jagged and terrifying.

But it had finally reached the diseased core that had been fermenting in the dark for a thousand years. Pure starlight poured down, yet it burned as hot as flame, stopping that “plague”—something that could have harmed even more people—from spreading any further.

“So beautiful...”

Shenyi stared at the stars.

He didn’t even know how long it had been since he’d last seen stars.

In the short first part of his life, he’d lived in a cramped, stifling underground world, never seeing sunlight—much less stars.

And in the far longer second half, this Abyss had been completely cut off from the world. Whenever he looked up, all he ever saw was dim fog and endless yellow sand.

The only times he’d been able to see stars were when he was following “her.”

Even now, Shenyi could clearly remember every word “she” had said.

“Someday, I’ll lead every single one of you to stand tall beneath sunlight, moonlight, starlight... beneath every kind of radiance in this world.”

What beautiful words—beautiful enough to make you imagine them without meaning to, beautiful enough to make you want to stake everything you had and follow.

And compared to those words, back then, she herself—though she stood in the deepest night—had still been brighter than sunlight, moonlight, starlight... brighter than every kind of radiance in this world.

“Ah... right. I can’t relax yet... I still haven’t... I still haven’t revived her... revived our king...”

Shenyi finally remembered his duty. He rolled over and slowly propped himself up with a ruined arm.

But the moment his upper body rose, a violent agony slammed into his soul. He hadn’t felt pain like this in a very long time. His body doubled over as he vomited. Black, reeking viscous liquid spilled out along with chunks of flesh from his insides. That filthy blood tried to wriggle one last time, but it couldn’t pollute even the tiniest speck of dust anymore.

“Ugh...”

Two other people were vomiting too. But unlike Shenyi, what those two threw up really was just last night’s dinner.

So they recovered faster than Shenyi. After a dizzy moment, the blond human “ant” was the first to step in front of him.

“Honored ruler of the demonfolk, ancient monster with a thousand-year lifespan, strongest of the demonfolk, Grand Duke Shenyi... where’s that lofty crown of yours now?”

Muen sneered down at Shenyi. But reflected in his pupils wasn’t that terrifying Crowned One anymore. Shenyi’s crown had vanished somewhere. Right now, he looked more like a withered, ordinary old man.

A pitiful old man.

A wretched old man.

A homeless old man.

“Get out of the way!”

Shenyi roared.

“Muen Campbell—if you don’t want to die... then get out of the way!”

“How rare. The mighty Grand Duke Shenyi is actually giving such ‘gentle’ advice? I thought you’d just press a hand down on me—like crushing an ant.”

A mocking curve tugged at Muen’s mouth.

“So even now, you still haven’t realized your mistake?”

“Mistake?”

The old, wrinkled face trembled. In a voice already turning hoarse, Shenyi snapped harshly:

“I only did it to revive her, to revive our king. What mistake have I made?”

“...Is that so?”

Muen’s smile vanished at once. His face turned expressionless.

“Then you really are completely insane.”

“Shut up. I’m not insane, I—”

Shenyi’s pupils tightened, because he saw Muen flicker in an instant. Fists clenched, he closed in.

Threads of black flame coiled around Muen’s fingers—but not to devour anything. He simply didn’t want to directly touch that nauseating stuff on Shenyi.

Seeing Muen move, Shenyi almost laughed. Since when did an ant dare—

“Ghk...”

Shenyi’s expression froze. His body bent again as Muen’s fist slammed hard into his abdomen, curling him up like a cooked shrimp.

It was strange. He was a Crowned One who had lived a thousand years. The toughness of his flesh wasn’t something a weak human like Muen Campbell could shake.

And yet when that punch landed, Shenyi felt as if his body were a tottering stack of blocks, ready to collapse at any moment.

Was it because of that blow from the Calamity Dragon just now?

“I’m not done.”

Before Shenyi could even react to that plunge in reality, Muen’s second punch arrived—this time to his cheek. The world spun in an instant. His body didn’t move, but his perspective felt like it had been rotated a full seven hundred and twenty degrees by that one hit.

“Holy shit, I didn’t know we got to do this.”

At that moment, the other little ant in Shenyi’s eyes—Ariel—finished throwing up and eagerly joined the fight. She swung her Heavenly Fire greatsword, slashing again and again with sharp, fierce moves. Even if she couldn’t leave so much as a scratch, beating up a top-tier powerhouse still felt unbelievably satisfying.

“Sending people to hunt me down—eat that. Stirring up this massive mess—eat that. Being this ugly—eat that. Making my Muse think her fantasies were real—eat that—”

“Enough!”

Shenyi suddenly bellowed.

“Enough, you insects!”

A gray curtain spread out of Shenyi again, blasting Muen and Ariel away. The two of them had no ability to resist at all, tumbling together like dust caught in the wind as they were swept aside.

Shenyi panted hard.

Yes, he was badly wounded from the Calamity’s blow—but he was still alive, and that meant the winner was him!

He won... he won...

If he’d won, then how could two ants possibly stop him?

“Ridiculous... truly ridiculous.”

Shenyi showed those two ants nothing but contempt and scorn. He couldn’t even be bothered to look back. They’d been casually ground into meat paste by now, hadn’t they?

“Wait for me... my king...”

Shenyi kept moving forward.

The road felt longer than he’d expected. This Abyss night felt colder than usual.

His eyes searched farther ahead... farther ahead. He couldn’t see that far anymore. The dragon and that old woman were gone from his sight. He didn’t know if they’d left.

Would they come back? Losing to him had to feel awful, right? If Meladomir’s true body came, that would be real trouble...

No.

It didn’t matter.

It really didn’t.

Because as long as she revived... as long as she revived, everything would be fine. Every problem would stop being a problem, just like a thousand years ago. Even in that desperate, impossible abyss, she would still lead them toward the right direction.

Even that final matter...

That wasn’t her fault.

At last—after walking for who knew how long—Shenyi lifted his head. He finally found what he wanted.

On the obsidian throne, the feather-clad skeleton still sat quietly, upright. Above her head, the Myriad-Age Cycle—wrapped in chains woven into a thorny crown—slowly rotated as well. Unspeakable radiance gathered along the ring and then dispersed again, mesmerizing.

It was there.

And she was there.

Shenyi was ecstatic. He hurried forward, step by step. Flesh fell from him. Bones snapped. Reeking clots of blood scattered across the ground. Shenyi didn’t notice any of it.

He only went forward.

Forward.

Forward.

Then he reached out his hand. ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) For the first time in a thousand years, he touched the gorgeous Myriad-Age Cycle with such devout longing.

As long as he touched it—so long as he touched it, he could—

He touched it.

In that instant, Shenyi felt the unique chill of the Myriad-Age Cycle. His perception traced along the chains, and he sensed the existence of those souls at the far end.

“Finally... finally...”

Shenyi murmured, trembling with emotion. The old man who had ruled the demonfolk for a thousand years now couldn’t control himself like a child.

A thousand years of wishes.

A thousand years of plotting.

A thousand years of endurance...

And in this moment, it was finally—completely—fulfilled.

In that moment, it was as if he saw blinding radiance rise. As if he felt a scorching warmth descend like spring sunlight. He even heard a roar like a tsunami, and felt that miraculous divinity beyond every miracle in the world—death returning to life.

Finally, when all the visions in his eyes vanished, Shenyi saw the girl who appeared before him.

Her skirt fluttered. Her presence was gentle yet unyielding. She stood there in the light—exactly the same as her in his memories.

“My king... my king... I finally... finally waited for your return...”

Shenyi was so overwhelmed he could barely contain himself. For some reason his legs couldn’t stand anymore, but he still crawled and rolled to her feet. He lifted his head, staring at that blurred face, longing—desperately longing—for those lips to part, longing for the first words she would say to him after a thousand years.

“What do you think... if it were her, what would she say to you?”

Before “she” could speak, that hateful voice sounded again.

Shenyi frowned, glancing sideways—and there was Muen Campbell, baring his teeth as he rubbed the backside that had very obviously been kicked, while still doing his best to look cool.

Him again!

How was he not dead yet? He’d taken Shenyi’s blow and still didn’t die. This thing wasn’t an ant—it was a cockroach.

“I’m asking you. If she revived, the first sentence she’d say to you, Shenyi—what would it be?” Muen asked again, still curious.

“Shut up! You have no right to speculate about my king!”

Shenyi snapped in fury.

As for what his king would say... earlier he’d claimed that if his king revived, then even if she killed him in endless hatred—even if she destroyed the world—he wouldn’t care.

But of course, the words he wanted to hear were—

“You were wrong, Shenyi.”

But “she” said coldly,

“You’ve disappointed me.”

“...Huh?”

After a few stunned beats, Shenyi forced out a confused sound from his throat.

Why would it be—

“Of course it would be.”

Muen stepped to Shenyi’s side, lowered his head, and looked down at that hateful, pitiable old man with a matter-of-fact expression.

“You can forget how she died. You can even use your thousand years of muttering to imagine ten thousand tragic ways she could’ve died, to listen to her ‘hateful’ sobbing. But how could you forget...”

“Why she died.”

“...”

Shenyi’s eyes flew wide. Black blood ran from the corners of his eyes, but he had no time to care. He could only think, and think, and think.

Why she died.

Why she died?

What “why”? She was killed. She was killed brutally by people who hated her. For a thousand years, her voice had been in his ears, telling him about her hatred and rage, telling him about her tragic suffering. Meladomir’s words were nothing but lies—

But suddenly, images flashed.

【Shenyi, someday, I’ll lead every single one of you to stand tall beneath sunlight, moonlight, starlight... beneath every kind of radiance in this world.】

【I’ll make it so you don’t have to endure this oppression and pain anymore. I’ll make it so you don’t have to go through bloodshed that never needed to happen.】

【Even though I’m not a king... I’ll lead you forward like a true king, until we reach a place where everyone can sincerely smile.】

【I’ll do my best...】

【Danger? It’s fine. Even if I die, it’s fine... Besides, aren’t you here? If I die, you’ll keep walking down this road, won’t you.】

“Ah...”

Somewhere, a wind rose. It carried the faint chill of night, and little by little, it stamped that bone-deep, heart-eating pain into Shenyi’s soul.

In his pupils—so dry they were nearly burned out—confusion and clarity alternated. Sometimes it was her smile from a thousand years ago. Sometimes it was the crying corpse on the throne across these thousand years.

But in the end, he saw her pull back her smile—staring at him with a face full of pain.

What kind of pain was it? Disappointment? Self-blame? Sorrow?

Whatever it was, it reflected into Shenyi’s soul so clearly that his soul hurt far more than when the godslaying spear fell from the sky.

He remembered.

Of course.

How could he forget?

How could it be possible that she would be consumed by anger and hatred—would even want to destroy the world?

She was her.

The gentle, brave, stubborn her who had led them forward a thousand years ago...

There could only be one possibility for her death: she died to light the road ahead for them.

Whether she was killed...

Or whether she killed herself.

She would never hate this world.

She would never hate anyone.

She wasn’t the Demon King.

The thing he’d been trying to revive was.

“It was you!”

Shenyi’s face twisted into ferocity. He thrust his ruined hand straight into his own chest.

His heart was long gone, but he still grabbed a lump of black, writhing, viscous stuff out from inside. His eyes were bloodshot, like he wanted to tear that black sludge apart.

It was the Demon God blood that had deceived him—made him destroy everything!

But Shenyi sank to his knees again, collapsing.

“No. It was me...”

The demonfolk’s souls should never have been this broken.

Compared to the wear of reincarnation, the greater reason their souls shattered was that too much soul power had been extracted from them.

And under Shenyi’s deliberate manipulation, the entire demonfolk—led by the eight Grand Dukes—had fractured into different tribes and slaughtered each other in meaningless wars for a thousand years.

Countless demonfolk died in those slaughters, suffered more pointless deaths, more pointless reincarnations... until they became like this—so broken they no longer had even reason.

“The Demon God blood became a shadow and stayed by your side for a thousand years, but It only began truly corroding you not long ago... that means you instinctively sensed something was wrong, didn’t you?”

Muen watched the changes happening to Shenyi and spoke calmly.

“So on a subconscious level you resisted that corrosion, and held out for a full thousand years. But in the end, you still...”

Still lost to yourself.

Shenyi finished that sentence in his heart.

Because from the start, everything had come from his cowardice.

Cowardice.

Confusion.

Fear.

That was why he’d gone mad trying to revive her—regardless of any cost—so that the demonfolk, who should’ve one day been reborn in radiance...

Instead crawled in darkness for a full thousand years.

What he felt for her wasn’t pure love. It was dependence born of cowardice.

He depended on her radiance so deeply that after she died, he didn’t even dare look at the real sun.

“My king... will you still forgive me?”

Shenyi lifted his head, instinctively wanting to follow that silhouette again.

But when the hallucinated radiance faded, what he saw was only the human girl born from her fragments—the one named An.

The girl stood in front of him. In her every movement, there was a faint trace of her—yet the difference was enormous.

At least her gaze wasn’t this cold, like she was staring at a bug that had dirtied the thing she loved most.

It was hard to tell whether what she’d said earlier had come from the shadow of a memory fragment flashing through her mind... or from her own will.

“I see...”

Shenyi let out a self-mocking laugh.

“Meladomir was right. This was all just a farce.”

In truth, he could barely even make the expression of smiling anymore—because even the flesh on his face had already collapsed into separated clumps of meat.

The illusion of victory peeled away. Candles lit again along the stone walls. Under that faint, wavering light, Shenyi could barely maintain even the state of being “human.”

The Demon God blood had been completely pierced through by the godslaying spear. Even if immortality meant it couldn’t really be called “slain,” its activity had been completely erased. In a sense, that was no different from killing it.

Now, he truly was no different from an old man who had lost everything.

The thing he’d clung to for a thousand years—when he looked back, it was as if he’d been a clown sitting alone on a stage, dancing by himself, while still dragging those suffering puppets to perform with him.

He had become the kind of person he’d once hated most.

“Should we finish him?”

Ariel walked up to Muen. Even though she’d just been pressed again by this guy a moment ago, she was still itching for that feeling of beating up a Crowned One.

“I don’t think we need to.”

Muen shook his head and glanced at the tiny key woven from a thin chain in his hand—the one “she” had given him in his dream.

“If it were the Shenyi from a thousand years ago, he should know what to do.”

As soon as Muen finished speaking, Shenyi suddenly lifted the Myriad-Age Cycle high in his hands. The already-cracking ring rose up as a faint flame climbed from his body.

The flame was milky white. It had no substance and no heat. It was completely unlike normal fire...

Because it was the flame of Shenyi burning soul power.

In truth, his flesh was already completely shattered. Right now he was nothing more than a writhing mass of rotten meat. His attacks could only make Muen and Ariel look a little worse for wear—there was no trace of a Crowned One’s might left.

Thankfully, the Demon God blood had ultimately failed to stain any souls other than his.

Souls he had originally meant to use to revive her.

These soul-flames traced along the chains on the Myriad-Age Cycle, returning to those demonfolk souls that were already on the verge of collapse.

No.

From this moment on, reincarnation shattered, chains broke, restraints lifted...

And they would become human again.

“Come to think of it... I almost forgot what the name ‘Shenyi’ truly means...”

Shenyi.

Shenyi.

The will of a god. The meaning of a god.

It was a name she had given him, back in the era before the First Evil God descended—carrying her earnest hope.

But what he followed had never been any god.

He had never believed in that Demon God.

That was the true reason that for a full thousand years—without even one cycle of reincarnation—he had never been completely polluted by Demon God blood.

“My king... can I follow you again?”

Shenyi murmured softly. In the rising, unreal firelight, he felt as if he truly saw her silhouette.

She was still the same as ever—gentle, brave, kind—standing in dazzling radiance.

She smiled and reached a hand out to him.

...

A few minutes later, under the silent gaze of the others, Shenyi’s soul finally turned to ash.

This Grand Duke of the demonfolk—who had ruled for a thousand years, who had caused countless pain and disasters, who had been blinded by obsession for a full millennium...

In the end, he died by suicide.

Just like his king.