At that very moment, the weary faces of the knights lit with radiant hope. Looking down from the walls, they saw what they had longed for—their lord, alive and unyielding, standing amidst the storm.

Shed lifted his gaze, confirming the walls still held. His violet eyes gleamed sharply in the rain.

“My lord!”

Those who spotted him cried out in triumph, their cheers growing louder as though victory had already been won. Such was the presence of Shed Lester, the undefeated hero who inspired all living beings.

“Keep the walls as they are.”

Shed commanded, cutting through their brief relief with sharp reality.

The enormous leviathan of bone writhed before them, its countless joints clattering in an endless dance. More skeletons rose and closed in around him.

Shed tightened his grip on his sword and charged forward, cleaving through the horde.

With a single, sweeping arc, he tore through the horde as though it were a tidal wave crashing upon the shore. Skeletons collapsed, splintering across the ground. As he landed, he crushed one beneath his boot, shattering its skull with brutal finality.

Then the one-armed leviathan swung its remaining arm down at him.

KWAANG—!

The thunderous impact resounded even through the downpour, shaking the heavens.

“Lord Lester!”

The priests cried out in alarm. But the knights of House Lester did not falter. They continued to cut down the skeletons clawing their way up the walls, their faith in Shed unshakable.

True to their faith, the knights sprang skyward, easily evading the leviathan’s strike. His boots crushed another skull as he ascended into the rain-darkened heavens.

His blade carved a vicious arc from earth to sky.

CRRRAACK!

The blade was as sharp as steel, splitting the leviathan’s monstrous form in two. The sound of wind tearing bone apart echoed like the beast’s death cry.

Shed landed and drove his sword through a skull with another crushing blow. Thunder rolled as the giant cluster collapsed, cascading into a mountain of shattered bone.

“Hah… Even without aura, he remains unchanged.”

Hedric muttered hollowly as he wrenched his blade free from a shattered skull.

If it was Shed Lester, then no catastrophe—not even the ruin of the world itself—seemed too great to overcome.

“Hold fast a little longer! High Priestess Giselle will arrive soon!”

Shed’s voice rang out over the storm to rally his soldiers.

Yes—she was expected today. An unwelcome woman, perhaps, but in this moment, she might be the very one Faradel needed most.

Yet Shed, standing atop the shattered bones, turned his gaze toward the distant watchtower veiled in black miasma.

“Carlisle, Hedrick! Hold the walls.”

He left the remaining undead to his men and charged through the gap in the horde of skeletons. Far ahead, within the crumbling tower, stood Dietrich. To end this death-steeped war, his head had to fall.

But ending the war was merely a pretext. What he truly desired was to kill Dietrich.

🌺⟡───⟡🌺 🌺⟡───⟡🌺

From atop the watchtower, Dietrich watched the approaching storm. Even amid countless undead, his presence stood out unmistakably. Wherever he passed, the dead fell like cut weeds, leaving a carpet of broken bones marking Shed Lester’s path.

“He’s always been distasteful.”

Dietrich muttered under his breath when he saw the man crushing the dead with no sense of reverence. He had disliked Shed ever since his elder brother, Joseph Lester, had taken the grown-up Shed in as an adopted son.

Yes. Joseph Lester. His half-brother. The great man who had been praised by others since his youth.

He was often praised for his ability to judge people accurately. But to Dietrich, he was nothing more than a tyrant who judged others selfishly.

“To name Lupus—someone without a drop of Lester blood—as heir… my brother must have been mad.”

Joseph had chosen Lupus as his son despite knowing about Dietrich’s existence. The truth was that Joseph had never felt affection for his half-brother. His stern features were most often hardened into a look of reproach, and Dietrich had grown up under the weight of that disapproving gaze — cast by someone more than ten years his senior.

Even when Dietrich received the highest honors at the monastery, nothing changed.

“He even ordered me to abandon my studies of black magic…”

Dietrich’s lips twisted faintly at the memory, a recollection long forgotten. Joseph had shouted at him, demanding he stop his research at once.

“Your studies go too far, Dietrich!”

When Dietrich’s work on black magic and ancient tongues finally gained recognition, Joseph had even threatened to burn his research notes.

“Was my success at the monastery truly so intolerable to him?”

Perhaps that was why Joseph had hurried to adopt a son to whom he could pass the title.

“But Lupus… that was too much, wasn’t it?”

Dietrich had never wanted the ducal title. If it had been offered to him, however, he would have surrendered his position as a priest without hesitation. Nevertheless, granting the succession to Lupus, a man who had been raised as a slave, was an insult regardless of Dietrich’s lack of ambition.

A gesture that utterly denied Dietrich’s worth.

“Dietrich!”

While he lingered in his memories, Shed had already reached the watchtower. To cut through that horde and arrive so swiftly—he was, indeed, a monstrous man.

“Shed Lester.”

Dietrich looked down at his nephew. Steam rose faintly from his rain-soaked body. A thin shirt clung to his frame, the fabric plastered against his hard muscles and stained with blood in places. Skeletons shed no blood, and this was not Shed’s blood. Dietrich smiled as he read the blazing fury and hatred burning in his nephew’s eyes.

“…So, you met Luise, didn’t you?”

He guessed whose blood stained Shed’s shirt. Shed gave no answer, only tightened his grip on his sword until the leather creaked.

Dietrich tilted his head, amused at the younger man’s effort to restrain his surging anger.

“So you were the one who tried to break the wards on my laboratory. I wondered who dared touch them—of course, it was you.”

Now it hardly mattered if his research was exposed. Having become a demon, Dietrich no longer cared to hide his crimes. Black mist coiled around his body.

“You truly embraced heresy…”

Shed muttered, watching the seething aura. It was unlike the power he had felt from Pamen, something greater, transcendent. As he had suspected, Dietrich had become a full demon.

“Heresy you say? But what defines it? Isn’t it just a label that the Church attaches to anything it disapproves of? Blind, unquestioning laws only serve to shackle humanity’s progress.”

Dietrich’s voice was smooth, his words flowing with uncharacteristic ease. Shed’s brow furrowed at the change, and Dietrich laughed at his expression.

“Oh? Is it strange to hear me speak without stammering, Shed?”

He burst into laughter, then exaggeratedly mimicked a stutter.

“So that too was an act?”

“Th-that’s right…! If I spoke like this, no one bothered me. They pitied me, thought I was harmless. And all the while… the fools never realized they were the ones being deceived.”

Dietrich casually loosened his collar. Pretending to be inept was the perfect disguise. His stammer earned him sympathy and made people dismiss him as guileless and pitiable. Few suspected that such a clumsy man might be pursuing black magic with such ambition. Awkward answers deflected probing questions, and most people grew tired of pressing him. Few approached him at all, leaving him free to focus on his research. It had served him well.

“Where is Eve?”

Shed raised his sword toward him.

“What, you came running to save a child Luise bore by some other man?”

Dietrich clicked his tongue, sneering at the man glaring down at him.

Yet, despite his taunts, Shed’s gaze did not waver. Dietrich had always despised those eyes.

Although he was born into slavery, he held his head high and stared proudly. He was a man whose bloodline should have been forced to bend the knee and accept shackles, yet he carried himself as though he were born to rule. Arrogant. Steadfast. Cold. To Dietrich, Shed’s very existence was an insult.

A lupus wearing the mantle of a duke — was he not a weed among lilies, pretending to be one of them? He was a mongrel in heat, nothing more. And yet, how dare he stand there so stiff-necked, as though he were worth something? Creatures like Lupus should be kept on a leash and bow in submission, not stride around as though they deserve the blessing of eternity.

“You must learn to yield before death, Shed.”

Dietrich raised his blackened hand, and the dead rose from the earth once more. Those who had been attacking the walls turned and moved towards him as one. Their hollow eyes were fixed solely on him.

With a flick of his finger, Dietrich sent them charging.

Shed ground his teeth. He spun around sharply, spraying water from his hair and wet clothes. His shirt flapped in the storm like a battle standard. His blade flashed white as he cleaved the skull of the first attacker.

“Graaah!”

As he pushed the front ranks aside, a skeleton leapt out from behind them and clawed at his neck.

Crack!

With a single kick, he shattered its hardened bones.

Despite having climbed the fortress to reach the tower, he moved with the fluidity and control of a man merely warming up. Every strike was seamless and precise. One by one, the raging dead fell still, collapsing back into earth and bone. The fragments piled up thickly at his feet.

Dietrich’s eyes narrowed as he watched his army crumble.

“Even in death, worthless.”

A sneer twisted across his lips.

Shed raised his head calmly and unshakably, pulling his sword free from a shattered skull. The path to the tower was clear, with a carpet of broken bones beneath his boots.

Yet Dietrich’s face still showed no sign of unease. He wore the look of a man holding another card, something he trusted would turn the tide.

In that instant, Shed felt it — the cold breath at his nape, sharp as a blade. He pivoted, his sword arcing upwards in a deadly arc. But the strike stopped short, the steel trembling in the rain as it grazed a pale throat.

“…Eve!”

A small body clutching a blade as long as she was tall. Her eyes, once bright with wonder, were now dull and clouded as they stared straight into his.