Interlude — The Assassin and the Demon
Eight months into his preparations for the invasion of the mortal realm, Rostiel decided it was finally time to send his right hand ahead of the army. He summoned her to his darkened chamber, and his voice, when it came, carried its usual cold certainty.
"Mizawa. You will travel to the realm of humans and demi-humans. Find anyone capable of standing against our invasion, and remove them."
Mizawa knelt before the throne, her heart caught on the memory of someone she hadn't let herself think about in years — Kazike, her closest friend from a life she'd been forced to leave behind. The thought of him standing in the path of Rostiel's purge was enough to make her voice shake, however carefully she tried to hide it.
"My lord," she said. "There is an assassin in the mortal realm who could prove valuable to our cause."
Rostiel's eyes narrowed with interest. "You wish to recruit a mortal into our vanguard?"
"If it pleases you, my lord."
"And you believe he would agree to serve?"
"He might," she said, bowing her head lower to hide whatever her face might have given away. "He is among the finest I've ever known."
"Very well." Rostiel waved a clawed hand. "Find him. Bring him to me." His voice sharpened. "But be warned — should this be a betrayal in disguise, you and he will both suffer for it."
"As you command." She teleported away before he could see anything more in her expression than obedience.
Once the dark magic had swallowed her from view, Rostiel allowed himself a slow, knowing smile. Perhaps she has her own reasons for this request. If so, she'll learn the cost of them soon enough.
I need to find Kazike, Mizawa thought, materializing in a quiet alley in Druzka. I have to save him. He's still my friend, whatever I've become.
She kept her cloak drawn tight over features that would draw the wrong kind of attention in a crowd like this, watching humans and demi-humans move through the market square with an ache she hadn't expected to feel this strongly after so long away.
The Guild seemed the obvious place to start. She approached the front desk with her head down. "Good afternoon. I'm looking for Kazike."
Missy studied the stranger's fine, unusual clothing and the hood that hid most of her face. "He's out on a quest with Kazu, deep in the Grand Dungeon. You'd have to go down after him if it's urgent."
"Thank you." Mizawa vanished into shadow before Missy could ask anything further.
Missy blinked at the empty space where she'd been standing, unease prickling at the back of her neck. A shadow-step. Who was that?
Mizawa surfaced on Floor 25, her senses already screaming at an aura she didn't recognize and didn't like. She followed the pressure of it through the tunnels and found Kazike slumped against a wall in a spreading pool of his own blood, his arm and leg both torn away.
Nearby, a human boy fought a High Ogre with a ferocity that stopped her cold — inhumanly fast, tearing through the creature with his bare hands before crushing its heart in his fist.
Is that the Kazu the receptionist mentioned? She held perfectly still in the shadows, the boy's suffocating aura washing over her even from a distance. This isn't a child's power. He feels like something else entirely.
She stayed hidden, watching him drop to Kazike's side and pour healing light into wounds that shouldn't have been survivable, watching bone and flesh knit back together in front of her. She followed them silently as they pushed on toward Floor 34, still working up the nerve to reveal herself — until another assassin beat her to the confrontation.
She watched Kazu take Cloyde apart without so much as raising his voice.
Too powerful. I need to be careful around him. When the moment came, she let a fraction of her own killing intent slip loose, using the distraction to step to the edge of the light near Kazike.
But the instant Kazike's eyes found her demonic features, panic overtook him entirely. He grabbed Kazu and slammed a hand to the floor, and the two of them vanished in a flash of light before she could get a single word out, leaving her alone in the dark once more.
Kazike hadn't been able to shake the dread sitting in his chest since that moment. He'd told Kazu he needed to prepare for his date with Bitshu — true enough, but not the whole of it. Mostly, he needed to be alone with the questions crowding his head.
Why was she down there? A demon general now — what does that even mean for her? He wandered the twilight streets without much of a destination in mind. I need to find her. I need to understand.
The next morning, he didn't have to look far. They crossed paths in the marketplace, and without a word exchanged beyond the necessary, they found a private back room at the Guild to talk in.
The silence that followed the locked door stretched longer than either of them seemed able to break.
"Kazike," she finally said, pulling back her hood. "Is it really you?"
"It's me, Mizawa." He crossed the room and pulled her into an embrace that had nothing careful about it. For a moment, the war between them didn't exist — they were just two people who'd finally found each other again.
He pulled back, throat tight. "How have you been?"
Her eyes shone with tears she didn't bother hiding. "Rostiel made me his right hand. But Kazike — I need you to know I'm only here to save you. Come with me. You'd be safe."
"Safe?" His confusion sharpened toward something closer to fear. "From what?"
"His purge," she said, the words tumbling out faster now. "He means to wipe out anyone powerful enough to resist the invasion. It's coming soon. I don't want you caught in it."
"Mizawa—"
"Please." She caught his hands in hers. "Let me protect you."
He drew his hands back gently, his expression settling into something grim. "Even if I weren't marrying Bitshu — I could never serve him. He's the reason we lost each other in the first place. He burned our home to the ground."
Tears spilled freely down her face now.
"You remember, don't you," Kazike pressed, voice cracking. "Your family searched the ashes for months. They gave up hope before they gave up looking. He did that, Mizawa. Break free of him. Come home."
She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. "I can't. He controls me now. If this is your answer — then I have no choice but to carry out his orders."
"What orders?"
"To remove anyone who might stand against him." She wiped her face and drew her hood back up. "Goodbye, Kazike."
"Can't you come back to us?" He reached for her, desperate.
She leaned in instead, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. "That's not possible anymore. Goodbye, my love."
She was gone before he could close his hand around her arm, leaving nothing behind but the faint smell of ozone in the empty room.
Kazike stood there a long while, the weight of her last two words settling slowly through him. You loved me. The thought arrived far too late to do either of them any good.
Mizawa reappeared on the highest peak overlooking Druzka, the sky stretched wide and clear above her.
"I love you, Kazike," she whispered to the wind, tears running freely now that no one was left to see them. "But this is where we part. I hope you find happiness in the life you've chosen."
She looked out over the horizon of a world she'd once belonged to, the weight of every choice that had led her here pressing down all at once. "If only I had the strength to defy him."
The memories came anyway, unbidden — laughing together in the Guild hall, meals shared over campfires, fighting back to back through dungeons that had felt, at the time, like the hardest thing either of them would ever face. Each one ached now in a way she hadn't braced herself for.
"I'm bound to his power," she said, mostly to herself, as the sun began its slow descent. "But you're free, Kazike. Find your happiness." She turned from the city and didn't look back.
Back at the Guild, Kazike sank into a chair, the day's revelations sitting on him like a physical weight.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner," he murmured to the empty room. "Why did you let him control you at all?"
The days that followed passed in a kind of fog. His usual work felt hollow, his attention snagged constantly on thoughts of her — the friend he'd lost once already, now trapped as a pawn in a war he wanted no part of.
Finally, his hand came down hard on the table, some new and stubborn resolve catching fire in his chest.
He wasn't going to let Rostiel keep her. Whatever it took — even if it meant walking straight into the Underworld himself — he was going to find a way to break that hold.