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Chapter 73: Moving Parts & Hidden Pieces
🕑 Added 2025-06-17 00:31:49 +0000 UTCIt had been ten days since the banquet.
Ten days since the broth that changed how dreams settled behind closed eyes. Ten days since Shela asked for the truth and didn’t flinch when she got it. Ten days since Salitha stopped speaking with warmth and started walking with hesitation.
And now, Hannya stood at the northern path of the mountain, veiled against the morning cold, staring out at a horizon, feeling a wrongness in her gut.
The summons had been formal, polite. Stamped with the capital’s wax and passed through channels that left no room for refusal.
A border negotiation. A terms review. An envoy meeting regarding territorial taxes and dream core yields. Just dull enough to seem routine, but not dull enough to ignore.
Baku stood beside her, his broad arms crossed under his cloak, eyes narrowed.
“Looks like they’re finally moving.”
“They’ve been moving,” Hannya replied. “They’re just not pretending otherwise now.”
He grunted. “You think this is the play they’ve been waiting for?”
“I think this is the stage they built while we weren’t looking.”
Behind them, mist curled down the narrow path. The northern border wasn’t as steep and open as the southern way, but it carried a different tension, one of gloom and thin veils. The mountains there whispered less like a feral beast and more like an ethereal courtroom.
Which meant it wasn’t made for primal truth. Only cold judgment.
Hannya’s fingers brushed the edge of her sleeve, where her crest had been newly embroidered in black, gold, and pink. The followers she was collecting had begun wearing it too.
‘A slight,’ she thought. ‘or a declaration.’
It didn’t matter which the nobles believed. Either could be used against her.
“Still time to turn back, kid.” Baku grinned.
Hannya didn’t respond.
Instead, her gaze drifted westward. Toward Ragescar Valley.
They hadn’t told the Capital about it yet.
Not like they needed to.
Noh had already begun the preparations in silence.
~~~
In the valley, the sun bore down in the sky, outlining cliffs like teeth rising from a wound.
Mirro stood atop a jutting stone, arms crossed, his new robe already half-torn at the hem.
“I thought this would be more glamorous.” He muttered.
“Temple erecting usually isn’t.” said Nini, bent over a wide scroll, marking down leylines and mana pulses. “But if we lay the foundations right, the next generation of demons won’t have to die horribly in their sleep.”
“How noble.” Mirro replied.
Behind them, a small caravan of acolytes, some common-blood devils, demon workers, and a few nobles hoping to prove loyalty, were hard at work preparing the ground.
It was the first project sanctioned by Noh under Hannya’s name.
The temple would stand where no faction held dominion.
And already… it was being watched.
One of the younger nobles among the acolytes, a handsome devil with golden lashes and a voice like wind chimes, lingered at the edge of the camp, head tilted as if admiring the cliffs.
He looked harmless.
Pretty, even.
He was also [Compelled].
A Pleasure faction spy had found him half a week ago, wrapped in perfume and promises.
He sent his third report that morning through an enchanted dove, sealed with a communication sigil.
It arrived in the capital just before noon.
Back in the Superbia estate, Lazmer the 22nd Acedia smiled as the message talisman turned warm in his hand.
“Well,” he said, voice dripping with pleased contempt. “So that’s where her little cult is crawling.”
They had been watching the movements of this group closely the second they marched silently from the mountain.
Virelle 15th Superbia accepted the paper and eyed it. “Ragescar. She’s claiming territory.”
“Without announcing it,” Lazmer spoke. “That’s her mistake.”
“And she’s not there,” Virelle added. “She’s at our border meeting. With Baku.”
Lazmer smiled wider.
“Then we kill them while she’s busy playing diplomat.”
Showeuff stood in the doorway, armored and freshly shaved, trembling slightly with controlled anticipation.
“Send Norm,” Virelle said.
“With a detachment,” Lazmer added. “Make it look like a wild purge, a simple cull of frenzied cultists. No witnesses. No mercy.”
“Let’s see,” he continued, rising from his chair, “how she negotiates while her followers bleed.”
~~~
The neutral border camp was a fiction. Tents pitched in balanced symmetry, faction banners arranged in diplomatic hierarchy, and the scent of enchanted meals thick in the air.
Every detail was too perfect.
Too sterile.
Too rehearsed.
It wasn’t a meeting ground.
It was a performance stage.
Hannya moved quietly beside Baku, her presence subdued but unmistakable. She wore a black kimono that whispered with every step, decorated with soft pink rose petals embroidered across the hem and sleeves, like falling blossoms caught on a stormfront.
The path beneath them had been flattened unnaturally, smoothed by magic, not use. Another lie in the form of the ground.
Baku walked ahead by half a step, arms crossed beneath his cloak. His aura was low, simmering just below the skin.
“They’ve polished this too much.” He said, letting out a low scoff.
“They’re trying to make it look like nothing’s happening,” Hannya replied, voice quiet beneath the veil. “Which means something is.”
The two foxes concluded.
A Council envoy approached them, long robes, gilded horns, a scroll tucked under one arm and politeness stitched into every movement.
“Lord Baku. Lady Hannya. ” The devil bowed deeply. “Welcome to our southern post. We’re honored to have you.”
“We weren’t told who issued the summon.” Hannya said directly, voice mild.
“Oh, the request was cross-factional,” the envoy replied with a serene smile. “A procedural audit. The Dream and Pride representatives simply coordinated schedules first. I’m sure the others will arrive soon. Rest assured all attending are within the neutrality of the high council.”
Her eyes narrowed behind the veil.
‘Of course they will, and of course they are.’
Baku said nothing, but the air around him thickened.
The envoy gestured, ignoring the sweat pouring down his back. “We’ve prepared a pavilion for your comfort. The initial review begins within the hour.”
The wind shifted as they walked into the heart of the encampment.
Flags fluttered. Scribes lingered. Faction clerks whispered behind obscuring fans. Everyone pretended to be relaxed.
But everyone was watching them.
Hannya walked with care, each step measured, petals swaying at her feet like a warning.
She caught the oddities immediately. A cracked post bearing a ‘new’ Dream banner, the absence of any Pleasure faction insignia, a delivery cart arriving but not unloading.
Stall tactics, all of them.
‘This isn’t an audit. It’s a distraction.’
Their assigned tent was larger than expected, gold trim, crystal-thread stitching, and a long table already laid out with fruit, scrolls, and cooling tea.
Baku gave it a look of contempt.
“Want me to flip the table now or after they lie to us?”
Hannya ignored the setup. She moved to the window slit, mist curling subtly around her silhouette as she surveyed the outer camp. The veil obscured most of her face, but her tension was visible in the stillness of her hands.
“They’re buying time.” she murmured.
Baku nodded in conformation. “The question is, for what?”
Hannya didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
Her gut already knew.
“Pleasure’s not here yet,” she said. “Dream and Pride showed first. Meaning they’re shielding whoever made the first move.”
“You think Salitha’s behind it?” Baku questioned, he didn’t trust any nobles, especially the ‘innocent’ looking ones.
“No,” Hannya replied. “She seems more of a reactionary than a planner.”
“Then Acedia.”
“Or Superbia,” she said, a little too quickly. “Either way, they wanted us here.”
“So they could move somewhere else.” Baku muttered.
A long silence.
Then Hannya looked westward again, toward the cliffs she’d ordered her acolytes to begin building upon.
“If they strike,” she said quietly, “it won’t be here.”
~~~
The cliffs of Ragescar Valley rose like broken teeth, jagged and pale against the clear sky.
Here, at the hollow’s center, Hannya’s acolytes labored.
The foundation was taking shape, a stone ring traced with sigils and mana-etched mortar. Mirro, stripped to his undershirt with sleeves rolled high and a tool harness slung over one shoulder, swung a hammer against stone, his movements loud and irritated.
“I thought this was going to be a temple, not a damn quarry.”
“Foundation first.” said Nini, crouched beside a shallow trench, tracing lines with a fine glass chisel. “We rush it, it collapses the first time someone dreams too loud.”
“I dream loud all the time.” Mirro grunted.
“Then you’ll be the first to die.”
He snorted, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist with barbaric motion, acting more like a construction worker than a gentleman today. “Fine. But if I get buried under rubble, I’m haunting your bath time.”
Their banter stopped when the air shifted.
The ravine darkened, not from clouds, but from something deeper, more sinister.
Then it happened.
A snap of light, a shimmer in the wardline, and thirty armored figures blinked into place at the northern edge of the valley, their forms solidifying with a blast of vicious aura and malice.
Norm stood at the front.
His armor gleamed with city-forged brilliance, stamped with sigils of authority and command. The Dog of the Capital hadn’t come alone, and he hadn’t come to negotiate.
The teleportation array beneath his feet faded, but not before Nini caught the flicker of the runes on her ward, runes she hadn’t laid.
“Oh no.” she whispered.
“That wasn’t ours.” Mirro said, stepping back.
“No,” Nini confirmed. “That was… injected. Like a parasite spell.”
One of the newer acolytes, young, broad-shouldered, sporting gilded lashes, stood frozen by the rock shelf.
Eyes wide.
Too wide.
Nini turned slowly to look at him.
He didn’t meet her gaze.
Instead, he turned and ran.
Nini cursed and pulled out her sigil communicator, fingers flying as she sent the alert.
~~~
Far away, in the high pavilion near a simple shrine, Noh was adjusting a folded tapestry with gentle care. She would always do this when she had the time, keeping the joyful memory of her brother fresh in her mind.
But soon, she flinched.
Beneath her sleeve, the sigil communicator Hannya had crafted pulsed violet, a warning, this one directly from the source.
The text shimmered in the air before her:
[
Suspicious movements tracked in capital envoy camp.
Possible diversion.
Double-check all flanks. Ragescar may be vulnerable.
]
As she read, a second alert, Nini’s signal, flared bright gold across the same interface.
[
Hostile teleport detected in Ragescar.
Norm confirmed.
Request immediate reinforcements.
]
Noh’s face darkened.
Salitha, lounging nearby on a velvet chair, looked up lazily. “A message?”
Shela, seated near the far window, caught the shift in atmosphere and stood. “What happened?”
“An attack,” Noh said. “Ragescar. Hannya suspected it, and she was right. Norm just arrived with soldiers.”
Shela’s face hardened. “Then I’m going.”
Salitha rose slowly, her expression guarded. “Don’t be rash.”
“We don’t have time.”
“It’s not our fight,” Salitha said firmly. “They’re not part of any official faction. Hannya’s trying to build her forces, but she hasn’t asked us to bleed for it.”
“They don’t have fighters,” Shela replied simply. “They’re builders. Ritualists. Acolytes. They were told they’d be safe.”
“It’s not about safety,” Salitha said. “It’s about commitment. We barely know what Hannya’s even trying to do. You want to charge into that chaos based on a few alerts and a gut feeling?”
Shela fastened her sword to her hip. “It’s not chaos. It’s injustice.”
“It’s reckless,” Salitha said, stepping in her path. “You think running to her defense will prove something? That it makes you loyal or something? What if this is bait? What if they want someone like us to show up? An excuse to target our own faction for stepping in?”
“I don’t care.”
“You should!”
“Why?” Shela snapped. “Just because you’re afraid of what might happen if we finally act without permission?”
“No, because I don’t want to lose you in some game that isn’t even ours!”
Shela’s voice dropped. “Then stop standing in the way.”
The silence between them thickened.
Salitha’s hand faltered.
Noh looked between them but said nothing.
Then Shela turned and left, her footsteps swift, her eyes cold.
Salitha remained still.
And the shrine suddenly felt colder than it had all year.
~~~
The sun dipped behind the cliffs, casting Ragescar Valley into a broken palette of crimson and amber.
On the northern ridge, Norm stood tall, his thirty soldiers in formation behind him, helms gleaming, sigils glowing along their gauntlets, swords already unsheathed.
No scroll, no offer, and no delay.
Just words like hammers.
“By order of the Capital Council, this site is deemed unlawful. The devils and demons here are unregistered, unsanctioned, and answer to a foreign will. You have been marked enemies of the law and will be purged.”
The builders below froze.
None of them were warriors, most had never held a real blade, let alone faced a capital extermination unit.
Tools hit the ground, dreamstones slipped from trembling fingers. One of the youngest, barely older than a spawn, dropped to his knees and whispered, “We’re dead… We’re already dead…”
But then…
Mirro stepped forward.
Golden light flared across his chest and shoulders, glowing through his undershirt as if it were nothing but thin fog. His skin shimmered with swirling lines, etched into muscle and bone like they’d been burned into him by something older than flame itself.
Not a tattoo, nor a blessing.
A Physique.
The [Primal Sigil Vessel].
One of the rarest bodies known to devilkind. A mythical trait that allowed the bearer to summon or reconstruct any known beast or construct, regardless of lineage, age, or bloodline. So long as it’s ‘cataloged’ and they could supply the mana.
Such a gift, even in a six-star devil, was legendary.
For a one-star like Mirro, it should have been impossible.
Even now, what he could summon was only a shadow of its true potential.
But he wasn’t alone.
Nini stepped beside him, her hands already glowing with a faint rainbow shimmer, strands of ambient mana curling toward her like mist pulled by gravity. Her mana pulsed, clean, dense, gravitational.
The builders watched in awe as the air veiled around her, thick with invisible force. She reached into it like an artist would clay, molding something unseen.
The [Mana World Body] activated.
A physique that granted her natural control over ambient mana in the air, far greater than [mana flow], ten times more than even the average devil could command. Where others scraped for scraps, she stood in a storm. She didn’t absorb mana nor did she filter it.
She moved it.
Together, they formed a rare pairing. A body of boundless creation, and a source to feed it.
But even with their power, they weren’t confident.
They were afraid, barely trained and unprepared.
And the world had always told them they didn’t matter.
In the original version of the novel, Mirro had grown up a wasteland orphan and joined the Broken Thirteen, a group of defeated demon lords who ruled the shattered west. He’d been their servant, their summon-boy, their tool, until the day he turned on them and fled to Neel.
Nini had been captured by the Acedia family, strapped to a pillar deep beneath the Dream Archives, her Mana World Body exploited as a living battery to power the faction’s dream experiments. She didn’t survive.
But that was then.
That was the novel.
This was now.
And in this timeline, Hannya had found them first.
Mirro turned slightly, his grin ragged. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“If it’s ‘we’re gonna die lookin awesome’, then yes.” Nini replied, brow furrowed, mana flaring wider.
He smirked. “I was hoping more like, ‘we hold until help shows up.’”
“That one too.” she muttered.
With Nini drawing from the thick bands of world-charged mana overhead, Mirro raised his hands and began flicking his wrist. Sigils burst into the air as if they slid from his sleeve. One, three, seven in sequence, each glowing with golden precision.
He winced as the strain hit.
“Don’t you dare drop!” Nini snapped.
“I’m good.” he lied.
“Yeah right, you’re about to drop like a puppet with its strings cut.”
“Stop saying that every time, it’s tasteless.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just finish.”
The energy poured into his glyphs, and the circle ignited.
The ground cracked, and two forms erupted from the summoning circle:
First: a defensive construct, eight feet tall, forged from brass and reinforced with shock-absorbing sigils. It landed on all fours with a metallic thud, immediately activating a layered barrier array over the workers.
Second: a ‘named’ creature. A dream beast.
Yharox, the Split-Winged Howler.
It formed with a rippling hiss, wings folding backward in mismatched halves, one feathered and spectral, the other gnarled and chitinous. Its serpentine body undulated over the summoning ring, eyes glowing red and mouth already pulled back in a teeth-baring snarl.
It wasn’t as large as it should have been.
Its aura flickered where it should have pulsed.
Incomplete.
Mirro’s control faltered, and the summoning ring shook. But Yharox remained, alive, barely stable.
Norm didn’t hesitate.
He pointed his sword forward. “Advance.”
The soldiers charged.
Magic and blades struck the barrier first, energy scattering across the construct’s shield.
Mirro gasped, one knee hitting the dirt.
“Told you.” Nini scoffed, eyes still glowing as she fed more mana into the sigils.
“Not a collapse,” Mirro hissed. “A tactical kneel.”
“Keep channeling. I’ve got the flow stabilized.”
“Do you know how unfair it is that I’m summoning ancient nightmares and you’re just breathing?”
“I’m not breathing,” she growled. “I’m saving your life.”
The second volley came.
Yharox launched itself into the air, hissing and spinning in a corkscrew. It knocked two soldiers off their feet, shrieked again, and lashed its split tail across the formation.
The builders started moving. Some to help. Some to run. But they moved.
Mirro and Nini stood shoulder to shoulder now.
Worn. Wounded. But not broken.
“We only need to hold.” Nini clenched.
“She’ll send aid,” Mirro whispered. “Hannya-sama won’t leave her henchmen behind.”
~~~
The wind tore at her coat. The gravel shredded under her boots.
Shela ran.
No horse. No mount. No spell of flight or movement.
Just her own body, honed in silence, shaped by sheer will and fueled by a promise she hadn’t spoken aloud.
The mountain peaks blurred past her. In every step, she shattered distance.
In every breath, she swallowed fear. But she couldn’t outrun her thoughts.
‘You shouldn’t have fought with her.’
Salitha’s voice echoed in her skull, not in words, but in wounded silence. The way her hand had dropped. The way her shoulders had sagged, not from defeat, but disbelief.
You chose them over me? Salitha’s posture had said.
Shela’s jaw clenched. The wind stung her eyes.
No.
That wasn’t what it had been.
She hadn’t chosen against Salitha.
She had chosen to move. To not stand still. To not watch another failure come and go while waiting for permission.
‘But what if I’m wrong?’
That was the real fear. The one that lodged in her spine like a splinter.
‘What if I get there and they’re already gone? What if it’s already too late, and I made the wrong choice for nothing?’
Her heart hammered harder. Her legs blurred against the earth. Lightning pulsed in her veins, rage and regret combining into momentum.
The cliffs of Ragescar rose like broken fangs ahead.
Shela didn’t slow.
She vaulted over a shattered tree trunk, hit the dirt in a three-point landing, and kept going, feet barely touching the ground. Her cloak whipped behind her like a war-banner.
She could feel it now.
The physical and magical pressure.
The wards around the valley had been disturbed. Summoning residue. Construct interference. She tasted the lingering magic like iron in the back of her throat.
And underneath it, blood.
Shela drew her blade in mid-stride.
Then, at last, the valley opened before her.
Smoke, sigils, a broken barrier barely holding against waves of steel.
A towering brass construct was kneeling now, shielding a group of injured builders with cracked plating. A second summon, some kind of warped beast with mismatched wings, flitted through the air, shrieking in dreamlight as it repelled another strike.
Soldiers surrounded the field.
And at the center, two figures stood alone, one kneeling, breathing hard, the other still upright, channeling energy from the sky as though she were drawing it from her own soul.
Shela’s eyes widened.
‘Mirro and Nini?’
Still alive. And fighting.
She watched, stunned, not just by the fact they were alive, but by what they were doing. She saw the gold-wrought sigils still glowing along Mirro’s body, shimmering like scripture, and the unnatural density of mana that spiraled around Nini like a vortex. Both of them radiated power that no one-star devil should have had.
‘What… what are they?’
She had no name for it. No name for what she was witnessing.
Just awe.
And overwhelming relief.
They were holding. They had held. And no one was dead.
Shela’s breath caught, then steadied.
She didn’t stop running. She drew in air.
“MOVE!” She shouted, her voice cracking like a whip across the battlefield.
Heads turned. A blur passed over the soldiers.
Shela landed with a stomp, boots striking earth like thunder. She stood tall in front of the two devils.
Prepared to protect.
Comments
Wintermelody
Thanks for the chapter
Prent
time to kill a dog
ShadowTycho
Exciting. Also, Slathia, don't fuck this up.
