Still, the Day Comes
"Still, the day comes. Still, the day comes... 'Is that... the Commander-in-Chief?'"
Azabel hovered in the air, gazing at the hordes of magic beasts surging forth like waves. Until someone appeared on the cliffside.
"Looks weaker than I expected?"
She didn't look like a warrior—more like a piece of art. The Geomgye Commander-in-Chief. The woman who had erased the Eastern Front. The monster who had vaporized a Calamity Entity of the Demon King Army with two sword strokes. White flames that incinerated the Observation Spell, leaving not even a trace of demonic energy behind.
Every time Azabel imagined such a being, he pictured something colossal. A presence that flattened mountains with its breath alone, repelled armies with a single step, shook the fabric of the world before even drawing its blade.
But the girl on the cliff was too quiet. No armor. No scent of blood. No storm of sword aura. No overwhelming pressure that could crush a Demon King Army executive head-on.
The Demon King himself fears that?
"Hmm... well. Capture her alive and present her as a gift..."
He froze.
The girl's gaze reached him. In that instant, Azabel's body stiffened, as if someone had driven a slender steel wire between his two horns. It was an intense stare. No sound, no pressure, no storm of demonic energy. Just eyes upon him.
Yet chills raced across his skin. The inside of the black horn protruding from his left eye socket grew hot. A thin crack of pain spread through the tip of the white horn curving from his right socket. His sense for reading the world's fabric warped in a flash.
Space tilted. Demonic flows dried up. Even the heartbeats of the magic beasts below—who didn't breathe—seemed to halt for a split second.
She was looking at him.
Azabel tried to hold his smile. His lips curved upward. But the edges trembled faintly.
"Khk... ah..."
A short breath leaked out. He'd meant it as an amused chuckle, but his parched throat twisted it into a ragged gasp.
Clack.
One step, and the air dried. Clack. Two steps, and the magic beasts below swallowed their roars. Clack. Three steps, and the edges of spatial rifts curled like thin paper touching flame.
She hadn't drawn her sword yet. Her hand merely rested on the hilt. The light leaking from the black sheath was faint.
The magic beasts couldn't charge her. Despite orders, their feet dragged. The instincts of these demonic-soaked remnants already knew the answer. Go there, and you'll burn. Dry up before you even touch her. Evaporate before the blade even splits your flesh.
Azabel saw it. In their eyes, instinct died first—then their bodies lost momentum.
Below, the beasts were being forced forward. Low-level commanders, under orders from his adjutant, herded them from behind. Front lines stalled, rear lines trampled over. Those veering aside were leashed by black demonic threads; those averting their gaze from the white girl atop the cliff were torn from behind.
Thus driven, the magic beasts surged toward the valley's center. Like waves. Like black tides.
But the tide slowed at a certain point. With each step Ena took downward, the wave's forefront began to dry.
First, claw tips. Then skin. Then eyes. Then throats. The beasts tried to scream, but even cries withered inside their throats. Those charging with mouths agape simply crumpled to their knees. Toppling bodies shattered like hollow char before dust could rise.
"...Now."
Azabel raised his hand. Fingers extended long. From slender nail tips, black demonic energy unraveled like threads.
The threads rose into the air. Straight upward. Silently. So thin they were nearly invisible. First one line. Then three. Soon twelve.
Riding the valley winds as if scattering, they ascended—then quietly formed circles in the sky's center.
Magic circles. One. Two. Three. Layered thin. Fainter than cloud wisps, lighter than bird shadows.
Instead of blanketing the sky in one vast array, he scattered dozens of small ones. Each insignificant alone. A single fireball. A few demonic arrows. Black shards to tear flesh. Pressure to shatter a boulder.
None could match a captain-level swordsman singly. But Azabel wasn't aiming for a single strike. He envisioned bombardment. Not a finishing thunderbolt—but rain that erased all room to dodge.
"Let's see how you handle this...!"
"Handle what?"
An unfamiliar clear voice. Azabel's head snapped around.
There she was. Right behind him.
The long sleeve of her Eastern-style garb fluttered slightly in the wind; a few silver-white strands brushed her cheek. The black sheath still hung at her waist. The blade not fully drawn.
Wasn't she just below the cliff moments ago?
For a brief instant, Azabel's mouth clamped shut. Comprehension lagged.
Then he saw what she held. His adjutant's head. Precisely, the part above the neck. The demon who had been quietly reporting at his side until moments ago—the one fretting over Kaion reorganizing forces faster than expected.
His head dangled from her hand. The severed cross-section was unnaturally clean. Scant blood. A few drops of black ichor plopped down, but it looked less like a beheading and more like a fruit stem snapped off.
That quiet it left behind. Even death made no sound.
"Is this your subordinate?"
She asked again. Her voice was calm. No mockery. No rage. Pure confirmation. Like inquiring after the owner of some roadside find.
"Hm. Soft neck."
With those words, belated blood trickled from the head. Drip. It fell—but didn't reach the ground. Dried midair.
Sizzle... The black blood crumbled to fine ash and vanished.
"Ha... haha. Quite swift, aren't you!"
Azabel laughed. The laugh didn't hold steady. It scraped inside his throat, cracked, leaked out with breath.
Crack.
Bones twisted audibly. Black demonic energy boiled beneath his skin. His hand swelled, wrist split, forearm sprouted horns. Slender spines at first. Soon they tangled, meshed, twisted into a massive exoskeleton.
Black horns. Ashen horns. Blood-vein-like demonic lines embedded. All enveloping his arm, growing enormous.
No longer human arm. Nor demon limb. A colossal beast's foreleg. Or a siege ram built to breach walls.
It swung.
KABOOM!
Air exploded. Not sword, not fist—but a horned mass raking the entire valley side.
Rocks along its path shredded. Cliff chunks tore free. Dry trees uprooted, shattering midair.
Azabel chose area over speed. If she's fast, limit her paths.
"Dodge this if you can!"
The massive horn-arm engulfed where Ena stood. Crunch! Empty air crumpled. Wind tore belatedly in its wake; cliff edges crumbled like cookies, cascading down.
Rocks plummeted into the valley. Small ones rained; large ones crushed flesh and bone atop beasts, rolling on.
Dust billowed. Gray haze mingled with black demonic wisps and dried blood reek.
Azabel laughed. He had to. That arm had bulldozed half the valley. Not speed, but coverage. Against a swordsman trusting eyes and feet—erase the space to move. Even captain-level: dodging would unbalance, blocking rupture the body, mere shockwave twist guts.
So laugh. To convince himself he still held the board.
"Haha!"
The laugh echoed through dust.
"How's that, Commander-in-Chief? Art belongs in a glass case, not out in the dirt like..."
Words cut off.
Dust parted. Ena was gone. Not atop the crumbled cliff, nor amid falling rocks, nor valley floor.
Azabel's horns scanned the world's fabric. Spatial folds. Heat traces. Pressure remnants. Invisible footprints.
Nothing.
The white girl who'd stood before his eyes had vanished—like light that had never been there.
Azabel's laugh twisted again.
"Where..."
"Big arm."
The voice came from behind. His horn tips froze. Without turning, he folded his arm. Reflexive. The enlarged horn-limb whipped back, lashing space itself.
BAM!
Shockwave burst midair. Mushrooming dust pressed down; valley beasts slammed flat by the aftermath alone.
But no impact. No flesh crushed. No bone grazed. No blade clash.
The horn-arm merely cleaved empty air.
"Tch!"
Horns erupted from Azabel's shoulder. Nape. Spine. Flanks. Black and ashen horns burst forth, weaving into armor. From his back, dozens of long thin spines unfurled like wings.
Magic circles bloomed at spine tips. Small. Fast. Close.
Whatever. What now?
Time to end the farce. Ena gripped Illyun's hilt.
The motion was subtle. No threat of drawing. No wrist twist, no shoulder dip, no toe-push off air. Just her hand descending.
Slender fingers beneath white sleeve wrapped the black sheath's hilt.
Click.
A tiny sound. One that could vanish amid the beasts' howls filling the valley.
But in that instant, the entire valley heard it.
Beasts froze. The 10th Squad's blades held breath. Kaion's shoulders tensed. Burning spatial rifts quivered like beasts swallowing screams.
And Azabel heard something snap inside his horns.
Crack.
Real fracture—or terror scraping his senses? Either way, irrelevant.
Azabel knew. The moment that hand drew the blade, every ploy he'd laid became worthless.
Folded spatial rifts. Hidden sky circles. Beast-wave surge. Adjutant's death. Horn-forged arm. Phantoms, shells, transfer spells.
All crumbling to battlefield trash. Lightly. Utterly.
"...Wait."
Azabel said. Voice cracked. He tried smiling. Curved lips, feigned leisure, mask of detached observer.
But smoke rose from his horn tips. The black horn from his left socket already paling white; the right's white horn webbed with hair-thin cracks.
He felt those cracks gnawing his senses. World's fabric unseen. Spatial folds blurred. Demonic scents evaporated before his eyes; fingertip-woven circles scattered like ruined hives somewhere in the sky.
"Wait," Ena echoed lowly.
No laugh in her voice. No deep wrath. That flatness terrified Azabel most.
The enraged show gaps. The murderous reveal direction. The pride-wounded prattle long.
But Ena didn't simmer long. To her, this battlefield was no shocking outrage, no masterful trap deserving awe. Merely noise to clear. And now, time to tidy.
"Wait for what?" Ena asked.
Azabel licked dry lips. Tasted black blood. His own. When it flowed, he didn't know.
"You..." His voice dropped. "You don't understand."
Ena's fingers twitched faintly on the hilt. That alone reheated his horn interiors. He rushed on.
"I wasn't trying to kill you."
"Seemed that way."
"I wanted confirmation."
Azabel swallowed. Even that breath scorched dry inside his throat.
"How far you reach. What you react to. How much you burn before drawing. How you handle descending spells, folded rifts, beast horde volume."
He laughed. Thin, wretched this time.
"I merely! Sought to interpret your sword."
Air shifted with those words. Below, Kaion looked up. The 10th Squad blades, surviving beasts, burning rifts—all seemed to hear in that brief instant.
Ena eyed Azabel. Her gaze still clear. But faintly sunken.
"You," she said.
"A demon seeking to interpret my sword?"
Azabel's horn tips stilled. Low words. Low and quiet. Yet that quiet pierced deeper than any prior heat.
In that moment, Azabel realized. Until now, Ena had been annoyed. Beast waves. Sky barrages. Spatial rifts. Horn-arms. His shallow taunts. All mere nuisances.
But just now—"interpret the sword." That shifted something inside her gaze.
The change was tiny. Too tiny—making Azabel feel it sharper. The sensation of touching what he truly shouldn't.
"No way."
His lips quivered. He wanted to retreat. Spatial rifts lingered. One unclosed crack—his final escape hatch.
One breath away. Short distance.
But with her hand on Illyun, that breath was endless.
"You...!"
Azabel summoned demonic energy. Remaining horns exploded from his back. Black spines stretched skyward. Threads to grasp space. Fission spells to shatter body into multiples. Horn-anchored barriers. Command cores embedded in beast hearts.
He burned it all at once. No longer observer. Prey now. A beast hurling every trick to survive.
Yet Ena didn't budge watching his preparations. Only her white hem stirred in wind.
"I'll show you," Ena said. Low voice. Reaching the whole valley.
"Beast born of night."
Her hand moved.
"The sun."
Azabel saw. His horns existed to read the world's fabric. Spatial folds. Demonic stems. Tiny gaps before sword strikes. Spell centers' tilt before completion.
That sense alone had carried him through battlefields. Trusting it, he sought to read Ena's sword. Draw mechanics. Wrist angle. Sheath light's first leak direction. Stroke as line or plane, range or heat first.
Etch it all.
But as Illyun drew—every line vanished from his sight.
Light burst from the sheath. Not explosive flash. No savage blaze.
Utterly natural. Like day after night. Eastern sky brightening, darkness yielding without resistance. Not ignited—but the world reclaiming its light.
Illyun. Drawn.
Shhh... Like pottery shards on dry soil.
Could a battlefield's end sound so small?
Azabel's horns, failing against the heat, ignited.
"Kh, guk!"
He couldn't hold back the groan. Black horn tip from left socket whitened. Whitened part crumbled. Right white horn cracked. Light seeped through cracks. Where light entered, senses severed. Reading lines vanished one by one.
For the first time, Azabel knew the pain of losing darkness. "Blinded by light" didn't fit—he had no eyes. Yet now, he was going blind. Socket horns couldn't withstand the sun.
"This!"
Azabel swung his remaining arm. Aimless. Toward Ena. Toward light. Toward the blaze devouring his senses.
The arm was long. Huge, heavy, spell-tangled. To twist space, absorb shocks, shred contacts—a horned mass.
It met Illyun's light.
No severing feel. No clash. Just erasure. Fingertips first. Knuckles. Wrist. Forearm. Shoulder. Exoskeleton grayed to ash from contact point.
Not too fast. Slow enough for Azabel to feel every step. Thus cruel. He knew the sequence of his arm's vanishing.
"Gaaaahhh!"
Scream finally burst. It echoed the valley. Beasts' howls gone, sharpening it.
Horns sprouted from his body—crumbled instantly. New arm-forging demonic energy dried before rising. Barriers paled before unfolding. Transfer spells lost frames before doors opened.
Spatial rifts never closed. The space to close evaporated in light. Nothing remained.
Ena sheathed Illyun once more. Azabel saw it. Light alone turned valley to day.
Azabel laughed. Or sound between laugh and scream leaked.
"Ha... haha."
Trembling, he staggered back. Leg senses fading. Levitation crumbling. His body began falling.
Then Ena moved. Too fast to track. Before his plummet, she was before him.
White sleeve swayed. Illyun returning to sheath.
Shing. Blade sheathed. With the sound, lingering valley light slowly sank.
But day didn't end. Flames gone—yet darkness couldn't return.
Ena grasped Azabel's throat. Not roughly. Lightly. Nape-pinch grip.
Yet his body couldn't move. In that small hand, demonic circulation halted.
"Demon."
Ena said.
"Quick end or drawn out. Choose."
Azabel's lips parted. Black blood flowed. Dried midair before chin.
He barely opened mouth.
"Puhk... haha... learn..."
Laughing, another horn shard fell. Trembling voice, he laughed.
"I see."
Black blood crusted his mouth.
"Night cannot best day, after all."
She raised hand, lightly pressed his horn.
Crack. Remaining black horn split.
Ena eyed him again.
"What you sought to interpret."
She said.
"My sword—did you find your answer?"
Azabel's lips moved. Laughed. Barely.
"Yes."
He said.
"Damnable humans... especially you... an unsolvable riddle."
Only then did Ena smile faintly.
"You understand. Good."
Ena's hand moved. No sword. Palm to his chest center. Lightly pushed.
In that instant, all remaining demonic energy inside him stopped. If demons had heart-like organs, that too halted.
Horns crumbled. Arms powdered. Back spines scattered as white ash.
Azabel didn't fall. Black form vanished; pale face collapsed into cracks. Last remnant: mouth's smile. Even that grayed to ash, drifting away.
Silence settled the valley. The battlefield, as if never greatly aflame, grew still. Air still hot.
Ena slowly released Illyun.
"...The sun rises."
Day, needing no one's leave, was coming.