There was a long moment of silence. It settled on Aiden and Ted like an itchy blanket, asking for something to be done. Anything.

But there was nothing to be done.

Aiden stood and waited, the orange glow of the burning trees around them still illuminating the night, casting the world with their flickering existence in a chaos of light and dancing shadows.

Around him and Ted, Ted's summoned creatures slowly began evaporating into black mist. Aiden watched the darkness actively crawl away from the light, grow less dark. It was an interesting skill. In his past life, when Ted had risen to the position of [Demon King], it had been a terrifying skill according to witness descriptions.

After a while, Ted lowered himself to the ground and gently sat down.

"Demon king," he muttered like an old man receiving dire news. "I don't… I don't really know what to say?"

Aiden looked behind him, into the distance where Valdan had taken Fjord. They stood far away, watching, waiting. Now that Ted seemed less aggressive, they began walking towards them. With [Weave of Lesser Void Perception] coursing through him, Aiden could make out their expressions from where he stood.

Valdan was unbothered and Fjord was terrified. But they were watching him.

Aiden raised his hand to them, signaling. Valdan placed a hand on Fjord's shoulder, stopping the boy. Aiden's message was clear. They were to remain where they were.

Only when he was sure that they were no longer approaching did he return his attention to Ted.

Ted had a self-deprecating smile on his face.

He had said that he didn't really know what to say, but now that Aiden really thought about it, he didn't know what he had been expecting Ted to say.

Searching within himself, he had no words of consolation. How did you console a person for becoming what they weren't in a life that wasn't?

"The role of [Demon King] is a title," he said in the end, not even sure if he was saying the right thing. "You acquire such things after achieving certain feats."

Ted looked up at him. "I'm a little confused, not heartbroken, brother. You don't have to coddle me."

Aiden sighed. Ted had a point. With that in mind, he asked the question he wanted to ask.

"Do you have the title?"

Ted raised a curious brow. "And if I do?"

"Then we will have to make some adjustments to my plan," Aiden answered. "For one, we might have to ditch Valdan and the kid."

"You'd ditch your bestie?" Ted shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Bestie or not," Aiden said, not arguing the point, "he will definitely not hesitate to take your head off if he finds out that you are the prophesied Anti-christ destined to destroy his world."

Ted looked contemplatively at the ground. "It'll take a lot more than Valdan has to kill me."

Aiden chuckled mirthlessly. "You don't get it, Ted. I don't want you to die. But I also don't want Valdan to die. The both of you are not going to be fighting each other for any reason. Now, do you have the title or not?"

"I don't." Ted shook his head, looking back down at the ground. "I got my manifesting skill. [Gates of Hell]. With that, I put a few pieces together and figured you knew something, considering how quick you were to run away when the palace pretty much sang your praises. I just didn't think… the [Demon King]." He shook his head. "Wow. I expected to be bad. But to be the peak? That's just…" He looked up at Aiden. "What did I do?"

A lot, Aiden thought but left the words unsaid. Instead, he moved to sit beside his brother.

"You aren't taking this well, are you?" he asked.

Ted shook his head. "It's one thing to be a devil worshipper," he said with a dark chuckle. "It's another to be the actual devil. I can laugh one off, but the other…" He shrugged in defeat. He looked at Aiden. "How bad was I?"

You were the worst, Aiden wanted to say jokingly. But he knew better than to do that. There were moments when jokes lightened the mood and moments when they just worsened it. This moment seemed like the latter.

"The popular opinion was not in your favor," he said in the end.

"I don't doubt that," Ted replied. "But what was your opinion?"

Aiden gave it a moment of thought before shaking his head. "I didn't have one. Your armies laid waste as you would expect. People died. Myths were broken. There was a lot of ruining."

"Yet you had no opinion."

"You rarely ever showed up on the battlefield, Ted. You were a rule-from-your-castle kind of king."

Ted paused then gave him a confused look. "You were not by my side?"

"Nope."

"Hold up! Was it because of the Tasha thing? Did I do anything wrong to you before becoming the [Demon King]?"

Aiden cocked a questioning brow at him. "Nope."

"So, I go [Demon King], and you just turn your back on me?"

Aiden's head tilted very slowly to the side in disbelief. "Are you serious right now?"

"Nope," Ted answered, letting the word pop. "Not really. What kind of big brother would allow his baby brother to follow him into darkness. That's just irresponsible."

"So, that's why you did it," Aiden muttered.

He'd been wondering why Ted had abandoned him for the longest time and hearing this as a possible answer was not satisfying.

"Did what?" Ted asked. "Were we enemies? How many times did we fight?"

Aiden shook his head, looking off in the distance. The sound of burning wood crackled through the air as motes of embers from trees with fires blazing from their hearts danced in the air.

"We weren't enemies, Ted," Aiden said. "We didn't get to fight against each other."

"What of the others?" Ted asked. "Ariadne and the rest?"

"They fought tooth and nail." Aiden looked to the sky. "Sam went full mad scientist trying to stop you. Unsanctioned human experiments on innocent people. Stuff like that."

Ted's face wrinkled at the piece of information. "I guess that explains why you don't like him. Tell me he got caught and punished in the end."

Aiden thought back to his old life. Sam had fought back when he'd found him, the [Alchemist] had given it his all with potions and poisons and all forms of alchemical monstrosities and chimeras.

In the end, it had all paled in the presence of someone who had once been an Order executioner.

"He died," he said simply.

"Sounds anti-climactic," Ted muttered. "If he did anything half as bad as what he did to Anita, he should have suffered."

Aiden remembered ripping one of his arms off when all his defensive buffs from his potions had worn off. It didn't make him smile, but it brought him some level of satisfaction.

"Trust me," he said, still staring at the stars above. "He definitely suffered."

From the corner of his eye he caught Ted giving him a look. It said that Ted had an idea of how Aiden knew that Sam had suffered. The idea was definitely right. All he had to do was ask the question.

He did not. Instead, Ted asked, "What about you? How did you cope? Couldn't have been easy having your brother as the Anti-christ."

Aiden paused to look at Ted. "You've been saying Anti-christ instead of [Demon king]."

"It makes it sound less… real." Ted scratched the back of his neck. "If that makes sense."

Aiden understood it. The Anti-christ did not exist on Nastild, only the [Demon King]. As such, the former wasn't as real--it wasn't as daunting to think about.

"I guess it makes a little sense," he agreed.

"So, what about you?" Ted repeated.

Aiden shrugged. "I survived."

"Survived?" Ted's brows furrowed. "What do you mean by 'survived?"

"Well, when the kingdom found out that you'd gained the title of [Demon King], they kind of lost it." Aiden drew a line in the grass with his finger as his memory took him back to darker days. "Then you left and no one could find you. So, the kingdom captured me. Put me in a cell that I broke out of."

Ted's expression darkened. "Why?"

"I was either in cahoots with my brother or my brother would come for me," Aiden answered simply. "One night, however, I woke up and the cell doors were open. I ran out and the guards were all dead. It was funny, and I never got the answer to who helped me, but everywhere I went until I left the castle, I kept on finding dead guards."

"And when you were gone?"

"I did simple things. Odd jobs here and there. I was a poacher for a while. I apprenticed to an enchanter in Jaul—it's a city far from Bandiv. Didn't last long, though. Got into a bit of a potiphar's wife situation."

"His wife wanted to sleep with you?"

"His daughter, actually," Aiden corrected.

"And that was a problem because?"

"Because I was twenty-two at the time, and she was fifteen."

Ted winced. "That's an oof."

"Yeah, a big oof." Aiden smiled as he remembered how the girl had basically thrown herself at him any chance she got. "Had to leave the enchanter when it got too bad."

"Why didn't you just tell him?"

"Because I wasn't an amazingly talented apprentice," he answered. "If I had told him, he would've gotten to the root of the problem, found out his daughter was at fault and sent me away. Or he would've believed whatever horrible tale his daughter would've told him and who knows what would've happened to me. The bottom line was simple: he would inevitably choose his daughter over me."

"Oh."

"Oh, is right." Aiden chuckled. "Anyway, it wasn't all bad, though. After hopping around and going places and fleeing from Drax and the others, I ended up being a mercenary in a nice kingdom that was out of the way."

"Hold up," Ted said, stopping him. "How many years did you live before you met the Time Mage?"

"About eleven years."

"You're old," Ted blurted out. "Like, real old."

Aiden pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Thirty isn't old, Ted. Thirty's just thirty."

Ted shook his head. "No. Thirty is old. Wait, how long was I the Anti-christ?"

"five years, give or take."

"So you ran from the kingdom and apprenticed under an enchanter and ran from a horny minor and became a poacher and a mercenary. All in five years?"

"Not really five years," Aiden corrected.

"You said five, though."

Taking a deep breath, Aiden shook his head. "Alright, here's the thing. I don't know when exactly you gained the title and ran away. And I don't know exactly how old I was when everything was happening. I could've been twenty-two or twenty-three. I just know that a lot of things happened in between. Good things and nasty things. Some of them are things I don't want to remember."

The smell of burning flesh filled his nose, his own burning flesh. There was the pain of losing fingers. Torture in a prison he didn't really remember how he'd gotten into.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"That's three or four years from now," Ted mused.

"All I can say for sure," Aiden continued, "is that the running stopped when I was twenty-five."

"That's quite specific."

The flames from the trees were dying now. Embers and motes still licked the air and the night was probably still warm. Darkness was regaining its glory but there was still enough light to see with. In the distance, Fjord was sitting on the ground while Valdan stood watch behind him.

"What happened when you were twenty-five?" Ted asked.

"I did a job as a mercenary for a guy," he answered. "Almost died at the end of it, but I got the job done."

"You almost died for the job?"

Aiden nodded. "Kinda needed the money."

"You could've turned back and gotten another job."

"Maybe. But I was a mercenary. A proper one. A proper mercenary gets the job they've been paid for done, no matter what. It was just the way with things."

"So what happened after that?"

"I was saved by some random guy who died two years later," Aiden smiled sadly. It was funny how he didn't really know anything about the man apart from his name. "Janp. That was his name."

"How did he die?" Ted asked.

"No idea. He went on a mission and only his head was recovered." Aiden shrugged. "I asked if I could complete the mission and I was denied. So, I tried to—"

"Wait, I missed something at some point," Ted said, interrupting him. "What do you mean by mission? I thought they call them quests here. And why was the guy that saved you on a mission you decided to go on, and who told you no."

Aiden smiled. He couldn't help it. In the blink of an eye, Ted had forgotten the melancholy of finding out that he was the [Demon King] and was engrossed in the life Aiden had lived.

"Okay, I'll start slow," he said. "The guy that saved me, Janp, was who I was paid to kill as a mercenary."

Ted paused. "You better have a good reason for becoming a hitman for hire."

"He'd committed a lot of murders. I think he was at number fifteen when I found him."

Ted's eyes widened in shock. "Then why did he save you? Was he innocent?"

Aiden laughed. "Gods no. Dude was as guilty as sin. He just had a reason. Anyway, I tried to kill him and failed. Rather than let me die, he treated me and took me away. When I woke up, I was somewhere completely unknown."

"Where was that?"

Aiden looked into the distance. "A place called the Order."

…

Fenebat scaled the castle walls easily. There were enchantments inscribed into the wall then covered in some kind of coating so that no one would notice it, but he noticed it. No matter what role you played in the Order, you were taught, if not how to break traps, then how to at least spot them.

Dropping soundlessly on the other side of the wall, his gaze shot around him. Quietly, he picked out all the nearest guards and the nearest threats.

There were neither guards nor threats on this side of the wall.

Good.

Fenebat wasn't sure he wanted to get into a fight just yet. Defeat was not the reason—he doubted there was anyone present outside the actual palace that would give him a befitting fight. He just didn't want to go killing anybody that he didn't have to kill.

Turning to the side, he made his way for an entrance into the palace that was not the front door.

He had done his research, paid all the necessary attention—bribes as well. There was an apothecary within the castle walls who had a grudge with the palace because they had rescinded his license for a few months for selling an enchantment that was not yet officially banned in the kingdom.

Fenebat wasn't exactly sure how that worked, an apothecary selling enchantments, but he didn't argue the case. He paid the bribe and got the information he wanted.

The night was dark, and the air was cool to the touch. Being over level fifty, he couldn't necessarily feel the cold, but he had a passive skill that granted him perfect understanding of temperatures along with other perks.

His feet slapped softly against the soft surface of the castle grounds. Wet blades of grass bent under the weight of him as he moved. His eyes darted about with each step, watching for guards.

Until he got to the underground entry, accessible only through an abandoned well, there were still no guards in sight. It made everything seem so suspicious.

Should I abandon this? He thought to himself, hovering at the edge of the well.

A castle grounds without guards was a castle ground worth worrying about. In the end, he shook his head and threw himself into the abandoned well.

The drop was not long by his standards. When he landed, it was to the soft splashing of water. A brief glance at his feet revealed water that came up to his ankles. The well was abandoned but not empty.

Now where's that secret entrance?

Fenebat turned his attention to the walls around him. The well's interior was made of bricks stacked upon one another. Abandoned, they had begun growing moss and algae and whatever organism gave it the green exterior that stared back at him.

First rock with the dead spider, he told himself, remembering the piece of information, the Order spy who had passed on the instruction for his mission tonight had given him.

It took him a while, looking around and frowning to himself, before he found the brick in question. The dead spider was easy to miss if you were not looking for it. And while it looked very much like a dead spider, touching it revealed that it was nothing more than an artwork, a small painting so good that it looked too lifelike.

Eight rocks down and five rocks to the left. Fenebat traced the rocks as he recalled the information passed to him. Then press hard on the right rock diagonally up to the right.

Placing a palm on the brick in question, he pushed hard. The brick slipped inside and he heard a clicking sound like a mechanism unlocking.

Fenebat winced at the sound. With how old the well looked, there was going to be a lot of noise when whatever was supposed to happen happened.

With a force of will, he injected mana into the rings on both hands and held his hands open. Light fractured in the dark well for a very brief moment. When the light was gone, Fenebat held two short swords in hand.

The noise would draw attention and he would have to fight his way out if the need arose.

However, to his surprise, bricks began parting in front of him. They stacked one atop the other as they parted ways, granting him an entrance like an open door. Through the entire process, not one sound was made, not from the stacking of bricks or the parting of the soil the bricks had been stacked upon.

That's just worrying, he thought.

It begged the question of if the Order had created this entry or if it was the work of the castle. If it was the work of the castle, he had to commend whatever artificers had come together to create it.

The path opened into a tunnel. It smelled of dead things and forgotten dreams. Fenebat closed his nose to the smell as he walked into the tunnel. His footsteps were silent beneath him as his [Stealth] skill continued to muffle the sound of his very existence.

Regicide, he thought to himself as he walked. It was practically the myth of the Order.

A small smile touched his lips as he walked through the tunnel. Only darkness greeted him and the imperceptible resistance of water to each footstep.

As a child, Fenebat had grown up listening to the myth and terrors of the Order. They were the things that motivated you to be a good adult. In those stories, mentions of the Order sent kings into fear and had gods wondering what sins they had committed. The presence of the Order was a very daunting thing to think about.

They wielded wrath in one hand and mystery in the other.

When he'd been recruited into the Order, he had almost died of excitement. Then he'd dedicated himself to becoming the best recruit of his generation. It had proved nothing short of a taxing ordeal, and he hadn't even succeeded in being among the top one hundred.

The Order didn't have a ranking system but when you put a group of people who know each other together, they easily came to an understanding of their hierarchy. Everyone knew who they could and could not beat.

There had been too many people that Fenebat had been unable to beat, even among the recruits that had come after him.

But his displeasure in the Order hadn't come until after they had released him into the world. His work for them had disillusioned him of what he had thought the Order was. Powerful as they were, the world had come to fear them for something entirely different. Where they had once feared the Order as an organization that controlled the world from the shadows, now they took them as nothing more than overpriced information peddlers.

It behooved Fenebat to no end. People did not protect their necks when they heard of the other. Instead, they hid their information as if the Order was nothing more than a den of rumormongers stealing knowledge and eavesdropping.

But this, he thought as he turned down a path and up a flight of stairs. This is true Order work.

And he could not mess it up.

There were already existing rumors going through members of the Order of the Master walking into one of Torat's classes and interrupting the instructor's lesson to talk about something a king had done wrong.

If it was in some other place, Fenebat would have questioned the information. But the Order was not like most places. Rumors did not live long in the Order, and they certainly never got out of it. What the world called rumors, within the Order, they were nothing but incomplete pieces of information.

For example, nobody could remember what crime the Master of the Order had accused the king of. Nobody remembered the details, only that a king had been accused of a crime.

Then Fenebat had been given this mission.

"All targets must know the reason for their death," the spy that had passed the mission along had said.

"And what is the reason for the death of this king?" he had asked the man.

"Abuse of the authority of sight-bound."

Fenebat wasn't really sure what that had meant. From the little he knew, the sight-bound decree was not abusable. The monarch used it and that was that. Had the king used it on too many people, perchance?

Making his way to the top of the stairs he heard a sound. He hugged the wall quickly, waiting in silence. His breath grew slower until he breathed no more. Time seemed to slow down even as it passed, and he listened to the sound of gauntleted footsteps as a guard made his rounds.

Not here for the guards, he reminded himself as he waited.

If the Master had his attention on this mission, then he had to carry it out perfectly, no matter how difficult the person that had passed it on to him claimed it was. Killing a king was no easy feat, after all.

It took almost five minutes before the guard moved to a location far enough that Fenebat could pass without being noticed. He watched his steps even with [Stealth] active and paid attention to his surroundings.

The walls around were brown and simple with orbs that let out soft sun-colored lights illuminating the entire place. The only darkness in the room was in the shadows, and even those weren't dark enough.

As Fenebat moved, he worked his way through hallways, following a mental image of a map he had committed to memory before entering the castle. If he remembered correctly—and he did—there was a part of the map that was completely blacked out. It simply read: No entry.

He wasn't sure what it was. And while his curiosity or annoyance would usually guide him to doing something to endanger the mission like going to find out or killing a guard that wasted too much time in clearing an area, Fenebat kept himself in check.

Once this mission was done, he could go back to allowing his eccentricities to do whatever they wanted. He could steal into a maiden's room unnoticed and toss it around so that she could wake up the next morning terrified out of her mind or place suspicious items in the rooms of spouses that would lead to commotions and problems when the sun came up.

Just thinking about these things made him smile. The Order had fallen far from what it was supposed to be, but he would be lying if he said that he did not have fun every now and again.

"Halt!"

Fenebat spun at the sound of the voice and lunged forward without halting. His shortsword clashed against the steel length of a spear. He turned the weapon, changing the grip and propelled himself past the guard.

"INTRUDER!" the guard roared, rounding on him with graceful speed.

Fenebat scowled as he parried a spear thrust and countered with a sweeping blow to the side of the man's head. The blow missed as the man weaved under it and shoved him back with the butt of his spear.

Darting to the side, Fenebat tried to go around him.

The guard covered his exit immediately.

Fuck out of my way, you fool, Fenebat swore. You're not the one that's supposed to die tonight.

Fenebat paled as the sound of footsteps echoed through the entire room. Frowning, he leapt for the guard. In two cuts, he cut a nasty gash under the man's arm, rendering his ability to fight properly with a spear useless.

The guard staggered back, groaning in pain as he tried to hold his spear in his one good hand. Fenebat could commend him for his determination.

He would respect that determination by killing him.

He leapt forward, intending on killing the man in one blow when he was forced to throw himself to the side. A small blast erupted against the wall on the other side, threading a path through where his head would've been.

Fenebat scowled as he watched a group of soldiers bar his path from in front and behind. Three wielded bows, one of them having shot the blast he had just escaped.

"Fred, are you alright?" one of the new arrivals called out.

The guard he had been fighting, Fred, pulled himself back slowly. Fenebat wasn't sure if it was just to save himself or to prevent himself from becoming a hostage. Whichever option it was, it didn't matter.

Fenebat sighed. In the end, he might just have to kill a lot of people to get to the king. He had inevitably made his own mission harder than it was.

It was always going to be hard.

He'd always assumed that the Order was testing him with this mission. More accurately, he'd been hoping that it was a direct test from the master of the Order. Anyone with half a brain that knew him in the Order knew that stealth was not his best form of operation. Yet, they had still sent him on this one.

He had hoped to prove himself. Now that he had failed, he had no choice but to do it his way.

Pulling his shortswords back into the storage spaces in his rings, he held his hands out in front of him in a combat stance. He was ready to pay the stamina price for what he was about to do.

[You have activated the Fifth Flow of the Fourth Order.]

[You have used Order Technique Conqueror's Wrath]

Fenebat stepped forward and blurred into motion. His hands settled on his first victim over ten strides away. They cradled the man's head and twisted.

But Fenebat was not rewarded with the normal sound of a snapping neck as was usually the case. Instead, his move met no resistance. In an instant, his weight increased, and he felt as if he was being pulled to the ground.

He landed hard, his knees slamming into the floor beneath him.

[Order Technique Conqueror's Wrath has been forcefully interrupted]

[Conqueror's Wrath does not take effect]

What the heck?

"You weren't sent here to go on a rampage, child," a voice echoed through the room despite the presence of so many people.

Fenebat watched most of the guards present stiffen suddenly as if in fear and caution.

All heads turned to the wall, half-bowed in reverence.

Fenebat followed their gaze and watched as a man walked out of the wall as if it was nothing but an illusion.

An old man with a flowing white beard walked into the room. He wore a robe and held his hands behind him, as if out on a leisurely stroll.

He walked up to Fenebat where he was kneeling, unable to move, and looked down at him as if he was nothing more than a curious thing.

"Took them a while to send you," he muttered in a voice so low that no one but the two of them would've heard. "You're late."

Fenebat looked at the old man, wondering.

Is he a part of the Order? He asked himself. Is he here to help?

Dropping his own voice so that he would not be heard by others, he asked, "How can I get to the king?"

The old man moved one hand from his back and pointed in what seemed like a random direction but kept his voice low.

"That way," he said. "Third turn on your right, fifth turn on your left, two stairs up, then through the double doors. He sleeps restlessly with his queen, plagued by failures and the outcomes of decisions made over a month ago."

"What about the guards?" Fenebat asked, hoping he would get help there.

"What about them?" the man asked. "You can dispose of them on your way there. They are ultimately inconsequential. You just need to be quick about it."

Fenebat nodded, then moved in a sudden burst of speed, only to find himself still rooted in place.

The old man gave him a puzzled look. "Have you not realized it yet?"

Fenebat frowned.

"You're not on my side, are you?" he said in realization.

The old man chuckled lightly. "Even a fish could've deduced that from the very beginning. No. What I'm asking is if you have not realized that your owner has sent you here to die."

Fenebat froze. How did the old man know? It wasn't as if he was wearing anything that identified him as a member of the Order in any way.

"Sad," the old man continued. "You must've been a very troubling one if he sent you to me."

"So this was all a ruse?" Fenebat muttered. The betrayal was crushing, to be abandoned by the Order.

"Oh, no." the old man shook his head. "The king has to die for his crime. I reckon another will be sent in your stead, someone actually competent. Until then, the king will live a while longer, while I contemplate on if I want this war to happen."

Fenebat paused. Suddenly, the betrayal didn't seem so important. "War?"

"Oh, you poor child." The old man smiled something dark. "Your owner has an agreement with me. Now, one of us has to break the agreement. It can't be you, so maybe it will be me."

Fenebat opened his mouth to speak, but the old man stepped away from him and was already walking away.

He shook his head slowly as he walked into the wall.

"Time," he muttered, with a touch of worry in his voice, "has not been moving properly for a while now."

He stopped halfway into the wall, as whatever force he had used on Fenebat continued to hold him in place as two soldiers bound his hands behind him.

Finally, the old man looked back. His next words confused Fenebat.

"I wonder if your owner worries now that fate, too, isn't working properly."

Then the wall swallowed him whole.

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