Golda's morning was wrapped in cold mist. Autumn air flowing down from the Selva Mountains dampened the cobblestones, painting the depths of the alleyways white. The cargo handlers moved early. Transport to the mines began before dawn, and deliveries to the merchant warehouses were finished by afternoon. That had been Valdo's routine for three years. This morning was different. Valdo and Soana stood at the edge of a narrow path leading to Drake's mansion. The estate sat halfway up a hill on the north side of the city. The building belonging to the man who styled himself as both mining office director and tax collector stood out starkly among Golda's stone houses—ostentatiously luxurious. Three stories. An iron gate in the garden. Valdo had always thought it was a mansion built on the backs of common laborers' earnings. Three days ago, he'd begun copying documents. Discrepancies in the ledgers. Gaps between the amount of ore transported and official records. Traces of diversion to other merchants. The evidence was accumulating. "[serious]All that's left is the shipping records from the east warehouse," Valdo spoke quietly, his gaze still fixed into the mist. Soana stood beside him, looking toward the mansion. Her dark purple hair absorbed the fog, falling heavily across her shoulders. "[serious]Can you move today?" "Whether we can depends on the situation," That was when the sound came from the direction of the city's main gate. Not the sound of hoofbeats. Multiple people, their footsteps striking the cobblestones in unison. Trained gait. Synchronized. Not the scattered rhythm of ordinary people walking. Valdo went still. He counted. More than twenty. "[serious]Let's go," He spoke only those words, then turned on his heel. Soana followed. --- They became visible from the market. Black jackets with the Felsesta crest on the sleeves. A laurel crown and sword. Orgrim Agency—the intelligence organization of the Felsesta Kingdom, tasked with hunting down remnants of the demon race and monitoring anti-government elements—operatives. They'd come from Granfors, and normally didn't maintain a permanent presence in a small city like Golda. Yet this morning, more than twenty of them had descended on the place. Each carried a small device in their hands. Metal, about the size of a fist, with a sharp point at the end. Every time they directed it at a resident, the operative confirmed something and moved to the next person. A mana-detection artifact. The moment Valdo saw it, he grasped the gravity of the situation. Nulglass—the eye drops that changed a demon's amber or crimson eyes to human colors—could deceive the eyes. But traces of mana remained in the body. Demons possessed roughly three times the mana capacity of humans, and even without using it, the substance seeped through their bodies. If that artifact was pointed at him, even with the Grave Chain seal blocking over ninety percent of his mana, the remaining traces could trigger a reaction. This was no situation to gamble on chance. The residents of the market had been lined up. Merchants, farmers, women holding children. No one spoke. Valdo had spent three years watching how Golda's residents behaved before the Orgrim Agency. They obeyed in silence. Everyone knew that was how you survived. Valdo shouldered a wooden cargo box and naturally veered into an alley. Just a cargo handler moving to another location during work. No hurry. No reason to stand out. Soana had already entered a different alley. As they'd planned beforehand. The alley continued toward the back where stone warehouses stood in rows. --- Near the dead end, there was a place where rubble had accumulated. A section of an old warehouse wall had partially collapsed, leaving chunks of stone piled at the edge of the path. No one cleaned it up. Officials never came, so no one could demand it. During his three years here, Valdo had confirmed that this alley fell outside the Agency's patrol routes. The shadow of the rubble moved. Valdo stopped. He set the wooden box on the ground. He narrowed his eyes, looking into the rubble's shadow. A human figure. Small. A boy emerged from beyond the rubble. Around fourteen years old. Short crimson hair wet from the mist. His clothes—he couldn't tell if he'd been wearing them for days or weeks—were filthy, with tears at the knees and elbows. His cheeks were hollow. Evidence of hunger. Yet despite his thin frame, his posture held no collapse. Exhausted as he was, his stance was grounded. His eyes were sharp. Amber eyes fixed on Valdo's face. The moment Valdo saw those eyes, he went rigid. Nulglass wasn't being used. The demon's telltale color was exposed as-is. The boy confirmed Valdo's face. Then, without hesitation, he knelt on both knees. On the cobblestones. "[serious]...I've been searching for you all this time. Dark Lord," His voice was low and calm. Emotion seeped into the edges of his words, but he possessed the strength to suppress it. The voice of someone who had moved alone for three years. Valdo immediately checked his surroundings. Both ends of the alley. The top of the warehouse wall. Shadows. No one. Only after confirming that did he look at the boy. Something moved in his chest. Too quiet to be called agitation, yet something that certainly shook the center of his body. For three years, he'd lived without anyone knowing his true identity. This boy had reached that answer alone. And—this small body had survived those three years. "[serious]Stand," He spoke quietly and briefly. This was an alley. Not a place to kneel. The boy—Rigo, as Valdo would learn his name later—rose from his knees. His posture as he stood was steady. His legs trembled from exhaustion, yet his back remained straight. "[serious]Since the night Dorgana burned," Rigo spoke briefly. Everyone in the settlement was killed. The Dorgana Expedition—three years ago, when the human allied forces led by Elios invaded Dorgana and the capital Tornia fell—the aftermath reached the northern settlements without distinction between adult and child. Only Rigo had burrowed beneath the mountain of corpses and remained motionless through the night. When morning came, he crawled out, and from then on, he wandered through human cities. When he could obtain Nulglass, he used it; when it ran out, he hid. He'd continued this for three years while pursuing Valdo's whereabouts. "[serious]Why me?" "[serious]I thought if the Dark Lord was alive, I wouldn't have to give up," Valdo let the weight of those words fall into his chest once. He didn't answer. He had no words to return. They needed to move immediately. "[serious]How much Nulglass do you have left?" "...I used it this morning. There's none left," Valdo's eyes narrowed for a moment. This was bad. --- There was only one route through the alley. Past the warehouse cluster to the north, emerging behind the Ash-Covered Inn. From there, there was a place to rendezvous with Soana. Valdo urged Rigo forward, and they began moving through the alley. Rigo made no sound. He knew how to move his feet. A technique learned over three years. As they turned the corner of the alley. A person came from the front. Black jacket. Crest on the sleeve. A single Orgrim Agency operative, deviating from patrol routes, heading toward them. Young. Early twenties perhaps. The mana artifact hung at his side. The operative's eyes turned toward Valdo—then toward Rigo. He began to raise the artifact. That was the moment. Sunlight broke through the mist, streaming into the alley. Morning light illuminated Rigo's face directly from the front. Amber eyes floated distinctly in the sunlight. The operative's movement stopped. Before he could point the artifact, he saw it with his naked eyes. Valdo was already moving. Five steps to the operative. Close the distance. Seize the right arm. Control the joint. Apply pressure to the neck before he could cry out—but footsteps came from the alley entrance. Multiple. Running in. Two more operatives entered the alley. They'd noticed their patrol partner had disappeared and came searching. The first operative, as he fell, grabbed something at his waist. A thin metal tube. A whistle. He blew it. The sound pierced the alley. High, sharp, an alarm that echoed through the city. Valdo engaged the remaining two. Soana came running from the opposite side of the alley. Her dark purple hair was disheveled, the scar on her left cheek gleaming with sweat. No words were needed. The two of them subdued the three in less than thirty seconds. But the whistle's sound didn't stop. From Golda's north gate, something moved. Then the east. The south. The west. The sound of Golda's four gates closing, one by one. "[scared]We're sealed in," Emotion seeped into Soana's voice. Valdo didn't answer. She was right. Events that unfolded in mere minutes had ended three years of concealment. --- On the night chaos began to engulf the city, something else happened at the Ash-Covered Inn. Soana returned, breathing hard. To the abandoned building at the city's south end where the three of them were hiding. Anger and urgency mixed in her eyes. "[angry]They got into the inn. Drake's men," There had been someone relaying messages. Part of the thin information network Valdo had maintained. The innkeeper Malen had silently allowed the door to be opened. He was in no position to resist. Six of Drake's men entered Valdo's room. Drake's preemptive move to protect himself. Report that a demon was present, divert the Agency's attention from his own crimes—that was the calculation. On the wall of the room was a map of Dorgana carved over three years. The internal layout of the royal palace in the capital Tornia, the positions of settlements across the land, supply routes. Knowledge no ordinary demon could possess. Information only the Dark Lord held. Drake's men froze upon seeing the wall. They immediately sent a messenger to the Agency. Furthermore, copies of documents hidden beneath the floorboards—evidence of Drake's crimes—were discovered. Three weeks of gathered evidence, all taken away. Valdo listened to this account with his back against the abandoned building's wall. His expression didn't change. There was no need. His consciousness was devoted to assessing the damage and considering the next move. Everything from three years was gone tonight. The disguise as a cargo handler. The accumulated evidence. The map carved into the wall. What remained was only the three of them here. "[serious]What's our way out?" "[serious]All four gates are sealed. From the number of torches, there's probably four or five people stationed at each gate," "[serious]As night deepens, foot traffic will disappear. We can't go through the front," Rigo sat against the wall. His body was near its limit—you could tell from his posture. His shoulders trembled faintly from cold and exhaustion. Yet only his eyes moved. Observing the room's structure. Listening to their conversation. Trying to process the situation. "[serious]There's a drainage route," Rigo spoke. Valdo and Soana turned toward him simultaneously. "[serious]At the southwest corner of the city, there's a drainage outlet beneath old stone foundations. It's wide enough for a child to pass through. I confirmed it three days after arriving in Golda," Three days. He'd investigated that in the three days since arriving in this city. Valdo traced his memory. The city's structure, the water route layout, the position of the drainage pipe running beneath the outer wall—there. It remained in the original design from when the city was built, an old flow channel. Valdo had also memorized it during his three years of information gathering. The assessment that it was "wide enough for a child" meant Rigo had actually verified it himself. "[serious]You'll be moving through mud. Rigo, can you manage?" "[serious]I can,"