[POV Liselotte]

  The Academy’s Grand Library was a byrinth of silence and golden dust, dancing beneath shafts of light that filtered through the tall windows. I was deep in its most secluded section, where book spines were bound in the hides of extinct creatures and pages crackled like dry leaves at the slightest touch. I had spent hours jumping from index to index, searching for a mention, a date—any crack in the heroic narrative the Church of Orestia had drilled into us since the day we set foot in this world.

  “If you keep frowning like that, the runes in those tomes are going to carve themselves into your forehead, Liselotte.”

  I flinched slightly, snapping shut a heavy volume titled The Legions of the Abyss. When I looked up, I found myself facing a woman with a severe appearance but lively eyes, dressed in a deep-blue robe embroidered with silver consteltions. I recognized her instantly. She was one of the high-ranking mages who had burst into the throne room on the day the sky turned to blood—the same one who had announced, with a trembling voice, the awakening of the Demon King.

  “Professor… I didn’t hear you arrive,” I said, trying to regain my composure. “What are you doing in such a… forgotten section?”

  “I teach Advanced Magic and Flow Theory to the senior students, Lotte. To teach the complex, one must sometimes return to the ancient,” she replied, walking toward my table with academic elegance. “But the real question is what the princess’s personal guardian is doing here instead of being out on the training grounds with King William. I’ve heard your morning sessions are… noisy.”

  “The King has more pressing matters to attend to today,” I answered evasively, lowering my gaze to the stack of books. “And I felt that my sword couldn’t give me the answers I need right now.”

  The mage leaned in, reading the titles I had piled up. Her expression shifted, losing its teasing edge and turning somber. “I’ve read every book in this library, Lotte—from botanical treatises to tax records from three centuries ago. I know what someone is searching for when they lock themselves away in this corner. You want the truth, don’t you? You want to know how the sughter between us and them really began.”

  I remained silent, taken aback by her bluntness. Seeing that I didn’t retreat, she sighed and took a seat across from me, resting her slender hands on the dark wooden table.

  “Tell me, Lotte… as a guardian and someone so close to the throne, how much do you truly know about the beginning of the war?”

  “What everyone knows, I suppose,” I replied, trying to organize my thoughts. “I know that hundreds of years ago, the ancient heroes were summoned by the Church to fight the Demon King. They managed to defeat him after legendary battles, though they couldn’t eradicate him completely—only seal him away. The records say those heroes gradually disappeared or died in combat, one by one. Only one of them managed to return to the kingdom to report the final victory and the state of the borders, but shortly afterward he too vanished without a trace, and his fate became a mystery.”

  The mage gave a sad smile, one filled with bitter wisdom.

  “You know a lot, Lotte—but only on the surface. You know the version that looks good in cathedral stained gss,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “The reality is far bloodier and far less poetic. Those heroes didn’t ‘disappear.’ They died in agony. Some fell defending cities that were already doomed. Others were devoured during demon hunts that turned out to be ambushes. And the st of them—the strongest, the one everyone called the pilr of humanity—did not return in triumph. He came back as a shadow of himself. He had burned away every st drop of his life force and soul to seal the Demon King. He died days after delivering his report, consumed by his own power.”

  A chill ran through me. The image of those youths—probably as frightened as Julian or Mizuki—dying in foreign nds struck me deeply.

  “But there is something the Church hides even more jealously than the heroes’ deaths,” the mage continued, locking her eyes onto mine. “The events before the heroes were summoned. The Church cims the heroes appeared because evil was already among us. But the historical truth is that demons were not always our enemies. Before the Demon King’s birth and rise, humans and demons coexisted. In fact, there was a retionship of exchange and mutual respect; in border settlements, there was hardly any distinction between them. They were two sides of the same coin of Lyre.”

  “They coexisted?” I asked, feeling the foundations of everything I thought I knew begin to shake. “Then why did the war begin?”

  “No one knows for certain, but the records suggest that one day, someone appeared. An individual who called himself the Demon King—someone who sought not coexistence, but supremacy. He began gathering followers among the most violent demon cns, provoking fights in pces where peace had once reigned, pnting the idea that humans were weak and should be ruled. He founded his own nation through force, compelling all demons to follow him under threat of death. It was then that the Church, responding to this growing threat, decided the only solution was to bring saviors from another world.”

  The professor stood, casting a wary gnce down the library’s corridors to ensure we were alone.

  “I can’t tell you more, Lotte. What I’ve told you comes from the private records of an archmage who died many years ago. He was a man obsessed with the truth, and all that remains are a few badly damaged diaries, hidden in boxes the Church has not yet managed to confiscate. Much of history has been erased or rewritten by the victors.”

  “But if the Demon King appeared from nowhere and shattered the peace… why would the goddesses allow that?” I murmured, thinking of what Tiara had told me about the game.

  The mage pced a hand on my shoulder, giving it a warning squeeze. “That is a question you could ask the silence of this library for the rest of your life and never receive an answer. Just be careful, Liselotte. If you search for the origin, you may discover that the monster we are trying to kill was created by our own hands—or by the hands of beings who see us as nothing more than ants.”

  The professor walked away, disappearing between the shelves of the alchemy section, leaving me alone with a silence that now felt heavier than before. I looked at the books on the table. The history of Whirikal and the demons was not a struggle of good versus evil, but a tragedy of lost peace and manipution.

  “Someone who called himself the Demon King appeared and shattered the peace…” I repeated in my mind. If that first Demon King had started everything, and now a powerful enemy had awakened at this exact moment… who was he really? And why were the goddesses so eager to see the world burn once more?

  I stood from the table—but not to go to sleep. Now more than ever, I needed to find those archmage’s records. If the war was being accelerated and the King would depart in a month, the time of libraries was over. It was time for the guardian to begin searching for the truth in pces where the Church’s light could not reach.