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Chapter 93: The Crimson Sky(Part 1)
🕑 Added 2025-07-21 13:00:19 +0000 UTCLazmer stood atop the black hill, his hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed on the smoldering ruin that Hazy Mountain Fortress was rapidly becoming. From this vantage, he could see the fortress walls fractured by sustained bombardment. Fires burned unchecked. Plumes of smoke wound upward like serpents toward the pale, colorless sky. Scatterthought ballistics still peppered the outer defenses in rhythmic bursts, each shell carrying distortion runes to further erode the mountain’s protection against the intrusion.
It should have satisfied him. Brought him a bit of anticipation.
But it didn’t.
The longer he stared, the heavier the pit settled in his gut.
It was because the cracks in the dreamscape were still spreading, widening despite the tether he’d fed into it, despite the gallons of raw dream mist and haze bleeding from the fissure into the artificial world.
It wasn’t supposed to unravel this fast.
Baku should’ve been swallowed whole by now. Or at the very least, stalled until the sweep teams secured the inner sanctum and eliminated that upstart devil girl and prep for his sealing after. Yet, no messages came.
No confirmations.
He lifted his communication crystal again, lips thin.
“First field team. Report status.”
Silence.
His throat tightened. He keyed the next frequency. “Second team. Respond.”
Nothing.
He tried a third. The team sweeping the southern terraces. “Third Team, answer. Confirm position and status immediately.”
Useless.
His hand lowered slowly. The crystal dimmed, the sigils along its surface pulsing faintly but connecting nowhere.
The wind then blew softly across the hill.
A soft twang of strings.
The faintest vibration of sound reached his ears. A single note, drawn long and patient across the strings of a shamisen.
Lazmer’s head snapped around.
She sat atop a boulder not ten strides behind him, legs tucked elegantly beneath her elaborate kimono, the shamisen cradled against her lap as if this were a stage and not a war front.
Noh.
The Painted Devil.
A travelling artist of Hazy Mountain.
And if rumors were to be believed, the right hand of Hannya herself.
But Lazmer hadn’t felt her arrive.
He hadn’t seen her approach.
No sentries had cried any alarm.
His heart began a slow, cold descent into his stomach.
Worse still, he realized just now, the base camp was silent.
The siege batteries no longer fired, the barking of orders weren’t heard, and the movements of soldiers were now stilled.
Only the soft, deliberate pluck of shamisen strings beneath a sky thick with smoke.
“I must say,” Noh’s voice cut through the dreadful quiet, soft yet utterly unforgiving, “I did not expect this level of boldness from you, Lazmer the 22nd Acedia.”
She smiled, but it was far from kind.
“Of all the serpents in your nest, I thought you’d slither longer before showing your fangs.”
Lazmer swallowed against the dryness forming in his throat. He forced his voice level. “Your presence here… is highly irregular, musician."
“That’s one way to phrase it.” Noh plucked another soft note, tilting her head slightly as if listening to the fading resonance more than to him. “It’s a shame, really. I had a small bet placed on how long your cowardice would hold. You lasted longer than I thought. Shorter than I hoped.”
Lazmer’s mind raced. Where were his guards? His personal enforcers? Surely she hadn’t…
“You seem… alone,” she said, almost sweetly, as if reading the direction of his thoughts. “Isolated. Much like this little rebellion of yours.”
Her smile deepened when his eyes narrowed.
“Yes… that’s the look.”
Noh’s fingers danced lazily over the shamisen strings again, another soft, haunting note filling the dead air between them. “The look of someone realizing he isn’t half as clever as he believed.”
Lazmer’s jaw clenched. He said nothing.
“You thought you could carve out a little piece of history for yourself, hm?” Noh mused aloud, as though speaking more to the music than to him. “How bold. How desperate.”
Her words struck deeper than they should have.
Noh’s gaze softened, but with something closer to pity. “How curious, though… this little siege. This charming attempt at subjugation. It doesn’t smell like the Dream Faction’s usual cautious rot. No, this reeks of something far more… invested, personal.”
The strings plucked again, light and mocking.
“Tell me, Lazmer, who exactly promised you this mountain? Who convinced you to stray so far from your flock without so much as a whisper to your kin? Who told you Baku was all bark and no bite?”
Lazmer’s fingers tightened behind his back. A hairline crack formed in the polished surface of his communication crystal.
“You overstep minstrel.” His words came brittle as his mind began to race.
“Oh no, dear.” Noh’s smile curled like smoke. “You did.”
Her eyes glinted, as if she already knew the truth he dared not speak aloud.
“This wasn’t your faction’s doing. This wasn’t your House’s will. This wasn’t your strategy, strategist.”
Her foot tapped once, lightly against the earth, in time with the final note’s dying echo.
“This was for favor, wasn’t it?”
Lazmer’s breath caught.
“A debt being repaid. A bargain struck. Or perhaps… a leash pulled, and you obeyed like the well-trained thing you’ve always secretly been.”
The silence pressed in, thick as the mist curling from the dream fissure in the distance.
“I wonder… do they even know you’re gone?”
Her laughter, soft and elegant, drifted over the forest like falling petals.
“You’ll have plenty of time to ponder it. After all, it seems your little gamble has run out of pieces to move.”
Lazmer’s heart thudded harder against his ribs from the truth laid bare.
Somehow, some way, she knew.
Maybe not everything. But enough.
And worse, this wasn’t the end.
The mountain was changing. The sky was bleeding. His plans were already ash on the wind.
“Rest assured, strategist. When this is over, someone will come looking for the fool who moved without permission.” she smiled again. “And we plan to be there, watching, waiting.”
The shamisen’s strings quivered beneath Noh’s fingers as she continued her lazy song, watching Lazmer from beneath half-lidded eyes of her painted face.
Lazmer’s heart slammed against his ribs, not from her words alone but from the growing weight pressing down from the cracked sky above. The dreamscape, Caldeon’s paradoxical domain, was beginning to unravel, the seams peeling open in threads of unstable color.
And then it ruptured.
The horizon tore open in a bloom of rainbow light, swallowing the monochrome clouds and drowning the fractured sky in shimmering mist for a moment. The mountain groaned beneath the weight of it, the color bleeding down like spilled ink across the world.
Lazmer’s mouth felt like it filled with sand at this point.
Impossible. That was the only thought in his head. Impossible.
Baku should still be trapped. Even in defeat, the collapse of a paradoxical domain wasn’t something a single devil could walk free from so swiftly, especially not one supposedly weakened by time and age.
Yet before Lazmer could so much as draw breath to consider his next move-
A large hand closed around his throat.
Bone-shuddering force lifted him from the ground, hoisting him like a ragdoll into the shadow of something that snarled and laughed in equal measure.
“Kahuhuhu!”
That laugh.
That monstrous, feral devil laugh. The laugh of the naturals he hated so much.
Baku.
Lazmer’s mind reeled as he choked beneath the crushing grip, his feet kicking against the empty air. This wasn’t the half-senile schemer his reports spoke of. This wasn’t the reclusive fool too busy hiding in fog and fractured dreams to lift a blade.
No.
This was something else.
Rainbow mist bled from Baku’s mouth with every breath, a mist that distorted space, swallowing light and warping sound. The Dream Eater’s silver armor clinked with lazy menace as his free hand flexed at his side, still sheathed in bloodless hunger.
“I’ve never met an Acedia dumber than myself,” Baku crooned, his grin splitting wide. “Kahuhuhu! You know what that makes you, strategist? A first. And I do so cherish my firsts.”
Lazmer’s breath hitched as the fingers around his throat tightened, veins bulging, bones creaking beneath the pressure.
"Kahuhuhu! Why in Leviathans Maw did you think devils never came here?"
Noh watched in silence, the shamisen resting across her lap now, untouched. Her expression… shifted. Not in surprise. Concern, perhaps. A twinge of recognition.
“Baku,” she said softly, “you’re slipping again.”
He didn’t hear her.
Or he didn’t care.
The rainbow fog grew denser, swirling up around Lazmer as Baku’s laughter deepened, low and guttural. “Death? No, no, no, my dear little worm. You don’t deserve death. You’ll live.”
His eye burned into lazmer, gleaming with savage joy. “You’ll live forever. In my dreams. Over and over again. Every failure. Every mistake. I’ll carve them into your mind until your soul melts. Until waking and sleeping blur into one endless pit of shame and pain.”
Noh rose silently, stepping closer despite the suffocating weight in the air. Her hand touched Baku’s armored shoulder, light as falling silk.
“Baku.”
Still, he ignored her, teeth bared in a grin too wide, too hungry. “You’ll scream for release, but there won’t be any. Only dreaming. Only me.”
“Elder brother.”
The words cut through like a blade of still water.
Baku’s laughter falter. His eye slid, slow and deliberate, toward her. His grin remained, but something in it softened, slightly.
Noh smiled faintly, her painted lips curving slightly. “He’s not the one we’re looking for. This… this blunder? It reeks of desperation. Not authority.”
Her words tightened something cold in Lazmer’s chest.
“You went rogue, didn’t you, strategist?” Noh said, her voice as gentle as drifting snow. “This plan wasn’t sanctioned. Not by your faction. Not by your council. Not by anyone… save whoever holds your leash in the dark.”
Lazmer’s heart thundered.
How did she know? How could she know? She was just a musician, a civilian.
The grip around his throat loosened, not released, but no longer crushing. Baku’s head tilted, studying him like a curious predator might a struggling meal.
“Kahuhuhu. Well, well. That changes things, doesn’t it?”
He dropped Lazmer like discarded meat. The strategist hit the earth hard, coughing, gasping, clutching at his throat as if it might somehow hold his shame inside.
“You hear that, Noh?” Baku said, stretching as the rainbow mist thickened, curling around his feet like living smoke. “We’re going to have such a good time with him. Such a lovely little chat.”
Above them, the clouds churned. From within the monochrome sky, Baku’s mythical monster began to stir, its vast shape twisting behind the veil of unreality.
Lazmer wheezed as he forced himself upright, trembling. His mind raced, clawing for options. None came.
Baku turned, the wildness fading from his grin into something sharper. “Status of the mountain?”
Noh’s smile returned, serene and untouched. “Dead. All of them. Thanks to Kabuki.”
“Kahuhuhu, good boy.”
“I was sending him toward the sanctum, but…” Her gaze flicked east, toward the inner heart of the mountain.
And together, they saw it.
The sky.
The clouds above Hannya’s sanctum bleeding crimson, swallowing the monochrome in a tide of living red.
The ground trembled beneath their feet.
Something… awoke.
Something powerful.
More than they’d felt before. Stronger. Wilder. The signature unmistakable, even cloaked in its new skin.
Baku’s grin returned, wider now. “Looks like she’s finished.”
Lazmer’s breath caught again.
Evolving.
She’d been evolving this whole time.
Baku laughed, the sound booming as the rainbow mist poured freely from his mouth now, devouring the fading grey of the sky. “She’ll be fine. Her tenet’s unruly, sure. But simple things thrive when there’s a clear enemy.”
Noh’s smile deepened, her eyes narrowing with quiet amusement. “Like us, elder brother.”
Lazmer shuddered beneath the weight of it all.
He wasn’t watching the fall of a mountain anymore.
He was watching the birth of something far worse. And he was powerless to stop it.
~~~
A few minutes earlier.
Inside the fractured inner world of Hannya’s consciousness.
The temple grounds trembled beneath fields of blackened roses. Above, petals fell in slow, lazy spirals against a sky cracked with crimson light. At the center of this strange and broken realm stood the three reflections of Hannya herself: Body, Soul, and Hannya, the Mind, gathered before a vast projection of shimmering light.
Displayed before them was the work of their past week, an anatomical projection slowly rotating, highlighting the minute details of Hannya’s soon-to-be corporeal form.
Smooth, perfect hands. Delicate yet dexterous fingers. Feet shaped with precise symmetry, arches and proportions measured to satisfy even the cruelest of vanities.
But the rest of the projection…
Voluptuous. Hourglass. Skin soft and unblemished like ivory silk, every curve exaggerated beneath the illusion’s gentle glow. A waist that could be spanned by hands, flaring into generous hips. Thighs plush and taught enough to command loyalty. Breasts full and heavy, with an obscene delicacy to their shape, balanced just enough to avoid vulgarity… barely.
Hannya observed the rotating projection with a keen, scholar’s eye, arms folded beneath her chest as her expression remained aloof and sagely.
“This is perfect. The ultimate jade beauty.” she voiced objectively.
Body, leaning forward with a feral grin, tapped the projection on the hips. “It could use… more. More curve. More authority. You want submission? Crush them beneath superiority. That’s how the world operates.”
Despite the projection already bordering on decadent, Body’s suggestion would have turned it from lewd to downright oppressive.
Hannya shook her head, brow faintly furrowed. “No… I don’t want to overwhelm him. Cold Handsomes are delicate at heart when it comes to these types of things.”
Her thoughts strayed. Inevitably, unavoidably, to Vainglory.
He had been tall. Strong. Proud. But he needed something gentle, something inviting. Not just raw dominance.
“This form is perfect. It’s balanced. Elegant. I don’t want to distract him from me.”
Soul, quiet and reserved, gave a rare nod. “Authority and grip matters… but security matters more. We must be approachable. Open. Our allure comes from contrast, not force. Let him see a form worthy of trust… and fall into the snare we lay with kindness.”
“Trap-...pardon,” she corrected herself, smiling faintly, “connect with our exquisite personality through this perfect vessel.”
None of them seemed aware, or perhaps none of them cared, that the ‘humble’ design they praised was already egregiously curvaceous. The kind of silhouette that shattered resolve. The kind that invited obsession, madness, and ruin.
Hannya nodded, satisfied. “Yes. He should see me as I am. No more, no less. To add too much… would outshine him, and we can’t have that. That’s not love.”
Body rolled her eyes but relented with a sigh. “Fine, fine. No need to trample him yet. We’ll leave that for later.”
With their decision made, the temple began to tremble anew.
The roses wilted. The sky bled away. The great pillar bearing her paradoxical tenet flickered with crimson light, Desperate Love, its runes unreadable yet deeply understood by all three.
“We’ll meet again,” Soul said softly as the world around them fractured. “Next evolution, our voices will echo stronger. Our hearts more aligned.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Body waved. “Don’t get too sentimental. We’ve got work to do.”
“Farewell, for now.” Hannya smiled as the light consumed them.
~~~
Her eyes opened.
The cold stone of the evolution chamber greeted her senses first. The heavy silence. The faint taste of incense on the air.
And the weight of her new body.
She stood, slowly, feeling the shift in balance. The way her chest moved with her breath now. The subtle pressure of thighs pressing together, the distinct sway of hips that hadn’t existed so boldly before.
Hannya moved with slow grace, testing each step like a predator relearning its hunt.
She grinned at the way it shifted and spilled. Superior. Domineering. Strong.
But then… she caught sight of herself.
The mirror, a simple, full-length, polished obsidian, reflected her form back at her.
Her kimono barely fit now, straining across her chest, the hem scandalously high on her thighs. The silk clung to her in ways that defied decency.
But none of this caused her expression to falter.
No, it was something else.
Her height.
She stared. Slowly, her eye twitched.
“…only… five-nine?”
Her hand rose to her temple. In her…enthusiasm she forgot an important part.
The scale.
That wasn’t the plan. That hadn’t been the plan.
Yes, in her old world, demons trended taller. Yes, six-five was perfectly respectable for a man. Just like Vainglory.
But her? She was supposed to match. To stand equal.
Not be… shorter.
Her lips curled. “You dumb fucking femlet…” she hissed under her breath.
Anger simmered beneath her perfect skin, boiling at the thought of her ambitions crumbling at the finish line.
She-she needed to evolve again in six months to-
And then…
A rumble beneath her feet.
Explosions. Bombardment.
Her head snapped up, regal demeanor falling into place like a mask, even as embarrassment burned beneath her skin.
She stepped out the chamber with haste.
Smoke rose outside. Fire crackled in the distance.
She stepped forward, robes rustling, fury blooming anew.
Exiting the sanctum, her gaze fell upon the battlefield below. The mountain bled smoke and ruin.
And there, Dozeuff. His scythe flashing. With a monster looming.
Shela, bloodied. Salitha, cornered.
Her eye narrowed. Why? Why was the Dream Faction attacking now? This was supposed to be a moment of safety, of hidden growth beneath their ignorance.
“I’ll show you all that I’m supreme!”Then Dozeuff sneered, stabbing the black shard into himself. “Superior! Above all!”
Something inside her snapped. That was the last straw. This pest say that in front of her? After she dumpstered him not too long ago?
The Arrogance.
Her anger unfurled, coiling up like a serpent behind her ribs.
One thought echoed.
Kill that pitiful existence.
Hannya’s hand raised to the sky, crimson light blooming around her fingertips.
“Kikiki…”
Her laughter spilled, soft and cruel.
“Supreme? Above all?”
The sky turned blood red in answer.
Her Tenet: Desperate Love bloomed alive.
DING
[
The chaos platform has offered you a mission.
Candidacy Trial: Judge The Rebellious
]
Comments
Wintermelody
Thanks for the chapter (≧▽≦)(≧▽≦)
Andrew
Hannya apparently knows about judges: From chapter 63: Hannya smiled thinly. “A worthy token. I’m surprised that wardens are still remembered in Hellina. I’ll savor it later.” The envoy nodded. “Our temple saved his body but not the soul. Lulling virus is indeed a horrifying sickness.” She took a furtive glance at Baku. The Envoy felt a difference in the presence of the senile devil, but she left it be for now. “And a warden cannot exist without a judge, my lady. It’s a surprise your fortress carries such history books in this day and age.”
Yonis
Thanks for the chapter. Can’t wait to see Hannya body him in the next chapter.
Butch Perterson
lol the shorter thing is something I always do on rpg games 🤣 and no, Baku and Noh aren’t really siblings, but there’s lore about all that lol as far as hannyas toxicity it’s her original misandry and the lazmer leash will be covered after the big fight!
Aune
ohhh snap, is the platform testing The pink Devil's judge potential ? I wonder she knows about such lore from the books?
Aune
5'9, is that 175 cm?
ShadowTycho
You know you messed up when existence itself puts a hit out on you. love the accidentally shorter. Her take on a relationship is toxic as all hell, but I have trouble placing if its just the original's misandry or her 6 star blood making it so that she has to top and metaphysically cannot have a relationship of equals. baku and noh are siblings... interesting. that would mean that Noh's ghost brother tenant is also baku's sibling. seems like Baku's whole family might have been put on the mountain. Somebody is holding Lazemer's leash, did not expect but it makes how poorly thought out this attack was make a lot more sense. I wonder if he was sent here to succeed or fail. Or maybe he is a distraction. hmm... good stuff.
Butch Perterson
lol are you trying to say I spelled it wrong or used it wrong? 😂
Prent
Arragogance: verb To be so arrogant that those watching you can no longer recall what arrogance is.
Butch Perterson
PLEASE SHES IN HALF THE CHAPTER PLEASE
Cosmoros Subs
Hmmmmm.....
