Early morning.
Inside the Royal Capital of the Kingdom of Ert, a sweet, rusty stench of blood hung over everything.
The gardener had fallen across a flowerbed. The cook had dropped into his own iron pot. Servants lay in every corner, their clean white uniforms dyed red by blood that had long since congealed.
The head steward lay stiff and eyes bulging across his desk. A few beads of dew slid down from his brow and struck the desk with a soft drip, merging with the crimson pooled there — from a distance it almost looked as though he were weeping.
The King, so arrogant in life, had been nailed to his throne, four blades taken from his guards driven through his four limbs. The four heads that had once owned those blades, eyes wide and mouths open, were set out on the floor before the throne.
"Don't any of you think the smell in here is a little much?"
Solitär swung her staff idly back and forth as she walked along the bloodstained red carpet. Human corpses lay scattered around the grand stone pillars, and a few had even been embedded into the shattered ones.
"I'd guess the ordinary townsfolk living out there still have no idea what happened last night."
Grausam kicked aside the round object blocking his path.
"Hee hee."
A Demon Race member shaped like a little girl darted out from behind a nearby pillar and went chasing after the rolling ball.
"The Demon Hunters stationed here are all but wiped out. The palace is wiped out. This place belongs to us now," explained the Demon Race member wearing a black eyepatch. "One Human with halfway decent skill got away, but he's no threat at all."
Revolte sat cross-legged before the steps of the throne, all four blade-gripping arms stretched out. He seemed to be admiring his own handiwork.
"Looks like you're rather pleased with this round of blade-testing." Brother Miracle leaned in for a closer look at the King's corpse on the throne.
"And your side? Why didn't the Human working with you come back with you? I was planning on trying my blades out on it one of these days."
Revolte opened his eyes and looked at Grausam.
The other had once been one of the highest of the Seven Sages of Destruction — but there is no such thing as courtesy among the Demon Race, and as a Demon General he acknowledged nothing but raw strength.
"…" Solitär kept her face cold and said nothing.
"It failed, as expected. Though the result isn't bad. At the very least, our declaration of war has been delivered."
Grausam put on a smile, as if he were looking forward to what came next.
"Um… big brothers, what do we do now?" A red-skinned Demon Race member with four arms tried to ask the question, shrinking back as he did.
"We wait." Revolte rose slowly to his feet and, with a single stroke, split both the King and the throne in two.
"Hardly necessary. He was already dead," Grausam said flatly.
"I just wanted to swing my blade."
With that, Revolte walked over to a pillar off to the side, and the cautious-looking red-skinned Demon Race member trailed after him.
A whole hall of the Demon Race, with not a shred of unity between them. All simply waiting, in silence, for a certain being to arrive.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Several minutes passed before footsteps began to echo from the corridor outside.
Because of the smell of blood, Solitär had taken up the position nearest the door. She put on that professional, gentle smile of hers and greeted the tall figure stepping through.
"We've all been waiting quite a while."
Every Demon Race gaze in the hall converged on the doorway.
"I went to collect a few companions."
The great doors swung open, and the first things to meet the demons' eyes were a pitch-black hood and a pair of horns.
Eyes hidden behind his hair. A white mask over his mouth. A cloak set with armored plates that stirred with every step he took, and on the chest of his garment, the image of an eye.
This Demon Race member kept his eyes shut, yet seemed to see everything — an air of mystery clung to him from head to foot.
His arrival sobered every demon in the hall at once. The scattered, standoffish mood of the room found, in the instant he appeared, a trace of harmony.
The former Demon King's right hand. The commander of the Demon King's Army who stood below one and above ten thousand. The great being who would guide the Demon Race's future.
The Omniscient One — Schlacht!
The Demon Race's prophet, who by rights should have died alongside three of the Seven Sages of Destruction together with Hero of the South, now stood in an era he had no business existing in.
"What's the next step of the plan?" Grausam's cold voice broke the silence.
"You've all done very well. Before I lay out the next step, I need to introduce two more companions who have joined us for the sake of the Demon Race's future."
Schlacht raised a hand, and a single-horned Demon Race member and a bronze one stepped out from behind him.
"It has been a long time, Lord Grausam."
Zaha, the one-horned demon, appeared to be an old acquaintance of Grausam's — rare among their kind, he went out of his way to greet a Demon Race superior first.
"You don't seem to remember me?"
"Ah. It seems that over the years, playing at being Human so I could blend in among them, I deleted a fair number of memories. Yours was probably deleted along with the rest," Grausam explained to Zaha's confusion, his face unchanged.
"Ever the same as always, my lord. I am Zaha, 'the Keeper' — a subordinate who served under you for a time."
"I see."
Grausam nodded, said nothing more, and lapsed back into silence.
"'Bronze' Briz. Formerly a subordinate of Lord Böse the Immortal."
The demon in bronze armor gave a brief self-introduction, then went still as a statue behind the Omniscient One.
"These two are beings I trusted in the past. They will be joining us for this battle as well."
When Schlacht finished speaking, there were no words of welcome, no sound at all.
The great hall sank into silence once more.
"Schlacht. If we choose to follow you, will you tell us your purpose? After all, as far as my memory goes, you're dead."
After a moment, Revolte asked his question outright.
"Oh my…" Solitär sighed with a smile.
Grausam's expression, by contrast, turned faintly amused.
The other demons wore variations of the same cold indifference.
"Everyone. I gathered you all here for one reason: the future of the Demon Race. Perhaps none of you have realized it, but the future we currently stand in is distorted."
Every demon listened in silence to Schlacht's words.
Apart from the Demon King, the Omniscient One was the only being who could make the rest of the Demon Race believe. Because he alone possessed the Miracle of "foreseeing the future."
"Something has thrown all of my projections into disorder. I had no choice but to come from the past to the present in order to correct the future."
Hearing Schlacht state his purpose, not one of the demons doubted him. From the very beginning, the great majority of the Demon Race had always fallen in with his arrangements.
Demons like Teacher Ma — strong enough to matter, aware they'd been played, and joining anyway because there was no other option — were few and far between.
"The free city of Gaderia. That city should not exist in this world. In the future of the Demon Race that I saw, it does not exist… it is an error!"
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