Chương 135: The One Who Returned by Sky

The human continent first saw a black star. Then the star opened its wings. The watchers of Bel-Orne Fortress sounded the alarm before they even understood what they were looking at. Above the eastern plains, a silhouette cut through the low clouds, carried by two black wings whose edges flared at times with a red glow. It was not a dragon. It was not an ordinary winged demon. It was not a patrol creature. It was smaller than a legendary monster. And yet everyone felt they should be more afraid.

Zayn Veylor crossed the human border without hiding. Below him, the fields emptied. Farmers abandoned their tools. Horses tore loose from their reins. Children were pulled into houses. Village bells rang before the messengers had even departed. He did not descend. He did not burn the houses. He did not massacre the roads. He passed above them like a sentence that had already chosen its tribunal. Drakhar's blood heated in his veins at times.

When the pain rose too sharply, the edges of his wings ignited, burning their own membranes. The regeneration torn from Voragna repaired what it could at once, slowly, filthily, never making the pain any less real. Zayn flew with a body that should not have held together. But it held. The Throne still beat behind his ribs. Not like an order. Like a reminder. Demon King. The title did not need to be repeated by the system. The world felt it. In the fortresses, priests vomited under the pressure.

Mages lost control of their circles. Soldiers raised their bows too late, then lowered their hands before firing, because some part of them understood that this silhouette had not come to die from an arrow. The fused scythe, strapped to his back, finally spoke. Its double voice vibrated through Zayn's bones.

"They're watching." Zayn did not answer.

"All of them. The farmers, the soldiers, the priests hiding behind their little windows. You finally have your audience." He clenched his jaw.

"I don't need them." The scythe laughed softly.

"Liar." Zayn kept flying. The capital was still far away, but he could already feel its direction. Not through a map. Through hatred. At noon, the news reached the capital before he did. It entered through three gates at once. A messenger from Bel-Orne Fortress, half dead from exhaustion. A broken magical transmission from the eastern watchtowers. A cleric of the Church who collapsed in the inner courtyard, eyes black, repeating the same sentence until he lost consciousness.

"He's coming back." In the central palace, the emergency council had already begun. The great Council Hall was full. The Crown had sent its highest ministers. The Church had brought three prelates and two readers of corruption. The Circle of Ash occupied one whole side of the room, gray cloaks fastened, faces too clean for executioners. The College had deployed mages, archivists, and ritual analysts. Military commanders stood near the great map of the continent. At the center of all this, Maelor remained standing.

Calm. Too calm. His gray hair was tied behind his neck. His hands rested on the edge of the table, near the markers showing the heroes' raid to the east. The raid that was not here. The raid that had left to kill the Demon King in the demon kingdom. The raid that still did not know the Demon King was coming the other way. A human general struck the table.

"We need to evacuate the capital." A prelate answered at once.

"Evacuate? And admit before the whole kingdom that the center of the Alliance is no longer protected?" A woman from the Circle of Ash spoke in a dry voice.

"The symbol will matter very little if the capital falls." A minister of the Crown turned to Maelor.

"Archmage, say something." Maelor raised his eyes.

"He is coming here." No one spoke. The sentence had stripped all usefulness from noise. An archivist still tried.

"Perhaps he is only targeting the Church or the College. We can relocate certain officials and—""He is coming here," Maelor repeated. This time, no one tried to correct him. A very pale prelate murmured,"Then the heroes must be recalled." Maelor looked at the map. The raid markers were already too far away.

"Too late." The word fell like a stone. A military commander straightened.

"If we concentrate the siege batteries on the eastern avenue, with the College's circles and blessed lances—""It may slow him down."

"For how long?" Maelor stayed silent. The commander understood.

"Not enough." A member of the Circle of Ash laid a hand on his weapon.

"You said he needed to be watched. You said we should not decide too quickly." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Maelor slowly turned his eyes toward him.

"Yes."

"And now?"

"Now we see what a decision made too late looks like." The chief prelate rose sharply.

"This is not the time to distribute blame!" Maelor looked at him. His calm did not break. But it grew heavier.

"On the contrary. This is probably the last moment some of you still have to understand that you bear some." The prelate stepped back half a pace. No one answered. Then the capital trembled. Not under an attack. Under an arrival. Zayn descended onto the eastern avenue. He could have landed in front of the gates. He chose to fly over them. The capital walls were covered in defensive circles. Hundreds of soldiers waited on the ramparts. The mages had set up firing lines. Priests recited purification prayers.

Zayn passed overhead. The first volley was launched too late. Blessed arrows. Lances of light. Fire circles. Containment chains. He turned slightly in the air. His black wings caught fire. The heat of forge-blood rushed through his veins. He felt his flesh burning from the inside, his shoulders tearing, his skin splitting. He clenched his teeth. Then he slammed one wing downward. A wave of red fire swept through the projectiles. The lances of light twisted. The arrows fell as ash.

The chains melted halfway before touching his legs. The pain shot up into his skull. Voragna's regeneration sealed the burns at once. Not cleanly. Not without cost. But enough. He landed in the middle of the main avenue. The ground cracked. The soldiers stepped back. Zayn slowly raised his head. The human capital stretched before him. White. Tall. Ordered. Full of stained glass, statues, banners, and laws carved in stone. The city that had summoned its heroes.

The city that had looked at his black window and decided his existence had to be locked away before it was understood. A human captain tried to shout an order. No sound came out. Zayn walked. The soldiers moved aside. Not all of them. A group of blessed knights charged from a side street. Six men. Brave. Useless. Zayn did not even draw the scythe. He raised his right hand. The mark of Avarice burned in his palm. Ghelkar's Locks opened like black lines around fractured golden circles. The knights' armor froze.

Not destroyed. Locked. Their own equipment closed on them. The joints refused to move. Their helmets became cages. All six knights fell to the ground, alive, trapped inside what they wore to protect themselves. Zayn walked between them.

"Stay there." His voice was low. But the whole avenue heard it.

"I didn't come for you." That frightened people even more. Because they understood he knew exactly who he had come for. The kingdom's main building dominated the central square. It had not been built like a fortress. It had been built like a statement. High columns. Broad steps. Huge doors. Statues of the first kings, the archmages, the ancient heroes. Above the entrance, an inscription was carved: The Alliance stands so the world does not fall. Zayn read the line. Then he laughed. A short laugh. Dirty.

The fused scythe appeared in his left hand. The black skull opened its smoking eye sockets, crossed by the pale glow of the trapped spirit.

"Do we strike?" Zayn climbed the steps.

"No." He simply placed his right hand against the doors.

"We enter." Right of Seizure did not try to possess the building. It took the lock. Every lock. The bars, the seals, the prohibition circles, the threshold blessings, the Church's invisible chains, the College's safeties. For one second, the door resisted with all the authority of a kingdom. Then it understood Zayn was not attacking the law. He was taking away its right to close. The doors opened. Slowly. In a silence more violent than an explosion. The great Council Hall lay at the end of the corridor.

The guards inside raised their weapons. Zayn kept walking. A mage cast a confinement spell. Ruined Time wore it away before it reached him. A priestess raised a sacred symbol. Forge-blood flared in Zayn's veins. A simple wave of heat melted the metal in her hands. She screamed. He did not kill her. Not yet. He reached the Council doors. This time, they were already open. Inside, every high official of the human kingdom was watching him. The Crown. The Church. The Circle of Ash. The College. The army. The archives.

The nobles. All of them. Except the heroes. Zayn entered. The silence closed behind him. For several seconds, no one spoke. They were looking at what they had called an anomaly. They were looking at the reinforced half-mask, the black wings, the marks, the skull-headed scythe, the open palm, the red heat beneath the skin, the wounds still closing. Most of all, they were looking at the invisible title weighing on the air. Demon King. A prelate stepped back.

"Impossible..." Zayn smiled.

"That word comes up often." His gaze passed through the room. Some faces he barely recognized. Others he had seen behind windows. Others still had signed documents about him without ever speaking to him. Then his eyes stopped on Maelor. The archmage had not stepped back. He stood at the end of the table. Calm. Tired. Luminous in a way Zayn hated immediately. The system appeared. [Major human entity detected.] [Maelor Asterian — Grand Archivist / Archmage of the Alliance.] [Estimated Soul Strength: 318.] Zayn read the number. Then smiled wider.

"So it was true." Maelor looked at him.

"Zayn." One word. Not "Demon King." Not "anomaly." Not "candidate." His name. That was almost worse. Zayn took one step forward. Several council members retreated at once. He finally looked at them.

"Where are your heroes?" No one answered. Zayn smiled.

"Ah." He lifted his eyes toward the painted ceiling.

"You sent them to kill the Demon King." Then he looked at Maelor.

"Too bad." The fused scythe laughed softly. Zayn placed his right hand on the Council table. The ancient wood cracked under his palm.

"When I arrived, you looked at me like I was a mistake." No one moved.

"Weak. Useless. Dangerous. Too low to be a hero. Too dirty to be saved." His smile thinned.

"Now I am exactly what you were afraid I would become." A man of the Church trembled.

"We did what was necessary." Zayn slowly turned his head toward him.

"Necessary?" The word came out softly. The room grew colder. Then Zayn smiled.

"I'm saving that one for later." The man went white. Maelor spoke then.

"They are not your immediate target." Zayn turned back to him.

"You still decide?"

"No." Maelor placed a hand on the table. Magic circles appeared beneath his fingers. Not aggressive. Prepared. Ancient.

"I am buying time." Zayn gave a brief laugh.

"For who?" Maelor did not look away.

"For those who will return too late if I fall quickly." The silence changed. Zayn understood. Maelor knew. He knew the heroes were elsewhere. He knew the capital did not have its greatest hope. He knew he was alone. And he remained. Zayn found that irritating. Almost insulting.

"You're not running?"

"No."

"You're not asking me to talk?"

"You'll talk when you want to strike differently." Zayn narrowed his eyes. Maelor continued,"I cannot erase what was done. I cannot pretend we were right. I cannot even ask your forgiveness in any useful way." His voice remained calm.

"But I can stop the Demon King from reaching this room without resistance." Zayn stood still. Then he laughed. Not much. Just enough to make the glasses on the table tremble.

"Still very tidy." He rotated the scythe in his hand.

"Even now, you speak as if every sentence was put in place before it came out." Maelor did not answer. Zayn stepped closer.

"I thought for a long time about what I would say when I came back here." His gaze moved over the prelates, archivists, soldiers, nobles.

"I thought I would tell you it was your fault. That you created this. That you chose the monster, and the monster had come back to claim what it was owed." He stopped a few meters from Maelor.

"But the Throne showed me something funny." Maelor tensed slightly. Zayn saw it.

"Ah. You don't know everything." The scythe murmured,"Finally, some good news." Zayn tilted his head.

"Maybe I would have come here anyway. Maybe your ritual only brought back faster what the world was already waiting for. Maybe you weren't even important enough to be the true cause." The Council remained silent. Zayn smiled.

"That should reassure you." He set the point of the scythe against the floor.

"But it doesn't reassure me." Maelor slowly raised one hand. The circles beneath the room lit up. The pressure of his soul unfolded. Not like Vaelthor. Not like height. Not like a forge. Not like a maw. Like a perfect structure. A vast magical architecture, built with enough genius to make even monsters hesitate. Zayn felt the difference. Maelor was not a General. In his own way, he was worse. A man who had taken human power and pushed it until it became a border. [Maelor Asterian — Soul Strength: 318.] Zayn smiled. [Zayn Veylor — Soul Strength: 281.] The gap was real. Still. The room trembled. The members of the Council were pushed back against the walls by sudden barriers. Maelor sealed them inside protective spheres. Zayn raised an eyebrow.

"You're protecting them?"

"Yes."

"They don't deserve it."

"I know." The answer silenced Zayn for a second. Maelor continued,"But if I begin protecting only those who deserve it, I become too similar to those I judge." Zayn tightened his grip on the scythe.

"You think that's what separates us?"

"No." Maelor finally raised his archmage's staff. The light around him turned white and blue, dense, almost impossible to look at.

"What separates us is that you still have the choice to make the guilty pay without becoming the executioner of the entire world." Zayn did not move. Then he asked softly,"You really believe that?" Maelor held his gaze.

"I have to." Zayn lowered his eyes. For one second, his smile vanished. When he looked up again, his face was more human. And therefore much more dangerous.

"Do you know what I hate most, Maelor?" The whole room seemed to stop breathing. Zayn raised the scythe. His blood began to heat in his veins.

"It isn't you." The first red flame ran along his arm.

"It's me." Maelor did not answer. Zayn smiled, but his mouth almost trembled.

"I hate myself." The sentence landed in the room like something no member of the Council had the right to hear.

"Because I did nothing." His voice dropped lower. More broken.

"At first, I did nothing. I didn't decide. I let your priests talk. I let your guards close the doors. I let your heroes become heroes while I became your problem." The scythe fell silent. Even Maelor remained still.

"And after that, all of you called it impossible. Impossible to save me. Impossible to believe me. Impossible to treat me as anything other than a mistake." Zayn stepped forward. The flames spread to his wings.

"But it's not that I didn't try." His gaze locked into Maelor's.

"It's that nobody wanted me to succeed." An absolute silence followed. Then Maelor slowly closed his eyes. Only for one second. When he opened them again, the pain was visible.

"Zayn..." Zayn lunged. The fused scythe screamed. Maelor raised his staff. The first clash between the Demon King and the Archmage of the Alliance shattered every window in the Council Hall. And throughout the human capital, everyone understood that the emergency council had just become a battlefield.