"What... is this?" Sarai whispered, covering her mouth. "Is this... the beginning of a war? An invasion?"
"I don't know..." Lylon said, barely audible. "But I've met the Demon King in person—and whatever that thing is pretending to be human... he carries the same weight. We have to get out of here."
"No, wait!" Drac grabbed his arm. "We haven't gathered enough data yet. Let's record a bit more before we fall back. We're two miles away—they can't possibly—!"
A sharp gasp escaped his lips.
On the screen... a single wolf had looked away from the devil.
It stared directly into the sky.
Its eyes were an icy, piercing blue.
And it was looking straight at them.
A cold shiver slid down his spine.
Then, after a breathless moment, the wolf looked away.
"T-That... That had to be a fluke," he stammered.
Lylon didn't answer immediately. His gaze shifted toward Kiara, concern heavy in his eyes.
She nodded faintly, lips pressed tight.
"Fine," Lylon said, letting out a tense breath. "But we don't stay longer than twenty minutes. I mean it."
They returned their focus to the display, dread crawling up their spines like spiders.
But what they witnessed next stirred their stomachs.
The high-ranking devil and his Principality mount—powerful beings on any other battlefield—were being absolutely dismantled. Torn apart by a nightmare coalition.
And another slightly larger wolf whose command they all seemed to obey.
Each one radiated the presence of a city-level disaster. Beasts that could level entire regions.
And though they were still two miles away, the pressure from their supernatural aura and energy—raw, coiling, and unfiltered—was washing over the watchers like a dark tide.
The screen flickered at intervals, barely able to handle the interference.
Suddenly, the owl-like devil launched itself backward, speeding off at an unimaginable pace—
Only to reappear back where it started.
Right before the presence of his tormentors.
Like reality had blinked and his escape was undone.
"No, no, no, no!!" Lylon clutched at his head. "We have to get out of here! We have to go! That devil—he's as strong as two Arch-demons and he's getting shredded like weak straw!"
"Calm down?!" he barked, cutting off Sarai. "My wife is out here, Sarai! Out here, in this problematic place! And now that I think about it... that Blue-eyed wolf—it saw us. It definitely saw us. We're not safe. Not here. Not anymore—"
Sarai's open palm connected with his face. The sound echoed.
Sarai's jaw clenched, her eyes sharp.
"You think I don't know that?!" she snapped, grabbing his collar. Her voice was low, trembling with fury. "I've got a little brother back home too, Lylon. You think I don't want to see him grow up?"
Lylon stared, stunned as she continued.
"We signed up for this the day we joined the intelligence agency. We swore loyalty to the Demon King, remember? This is the job—gather intel, even if it kills us. So stop panicking and let us do what we came here to do!"
His eyes drifted to her hand, still fisted in his collar. It was shaking.
"You're... trembling," he said quietly.
Sarai let out a breathy, awkward laugh. "Yeah. You bet I am... Did it make me look a little cute?"
"No," he replied flatly. "But... I'm sorry. I just panicked."
She released his collar and patted his shoulder. "It's alright. We're all scared. But we're getting out of this alive. Count on it."
The tension softened between them for just a moment—until Drac's voice cut through the air.
"I... don't think so," he said shakily.
"What do you mean?" Sarai asked, cautious.
Drac was pale, his breathing quick and uneven. His whole body trembled.
"You guys are lucky you didn't see what I did..."
"What? Talk to us," Sarai pressed. "We're in this together!"
Drac's eyes stayed glued to the screen. "While you were all... yapping... the sky changed. Like the hand of God reached down and blotted out the sun. A giant fireball pierced through the clouds—then just vanished. The entire area went blank."
"What?" Lylon squinted at him.
They rushed to the screen.
Nothing was there now—no wolves, no fox, no devil, no destruction. Just an empty stretch of land with jumbles of few trees.
Then the screen flickered—briefly showing a slow-moving comet blazing toward the earth in absolute obliteration.
Then the comet again.
Over and over, the footage twisted between two impossible realities.
"What... does this mean?" Sarai's voice wavered as her eyes began to tremble.
No sound had pierced the air, but something had happened.
Something loud that none of their ears could catch—only their bones.
"RUN!!" Drac screamed, already folding the viewing panel like paper, stuffing it into his pocket with trembling hands.
Lylon scrambled toward the mess of glimmering stones and steel devices behind them, half-assembled, half-humming.
"C'mon, c'mon!" Sarai urged, her voice tight, as panic began etching itself into her features. "Hurry, Lylon, hurry!"
"Shut up! I'm trying...!!"
"WHAT?!" Sarai screamed, voice cracking as a deep, unnatural rumble began to stir beneath their feet.
The ground did not quake like an earthquake—it shuddered, with a slow pulse like something massive was waking up beneath the surface.
Lylon turned to her, eyes hollow. Then to Drac. Then back to the sky.
"...The Device," he whispered, "the space-time device... it's damaged."
"What the hell?" Sarai stumbled backward, nearly falling. "What the hell are you saying?! So we just run for it?!"
Drac dropped to his knees, his voice a whisper trying not to break. "I don't think..."
He raised a trembling hand and pointed.
"...we can outrun that."
The horizon was no longer the horizon.
A mist—black as dried blood and tinged with violet flame—had begun creeping toward them. It stretched wide, impossibly wide, covering the whole span of their vision.
Its height swallowed the heavens, a dark wall nearly four hundred meters high. It didn't roll like fog.
It didn't billow like smoke. It boiled, writhing as if something alive was inside it—something that was peeling through reality like wet loam.
Around the mist, the air shimmered, warped, and bent with heat and unbelievable magic.
Trees wilted into bone-gray stalks, monsters fled only to vanish mid-sprint, and the earth behind it... evaporated. Not burned. Not destroyed.
"Impossible..." Sarai whispered, watching it surge. "It crossed over a mile already?"
She could feel her mind slipping, falling into despair.
The memories of her younger brother, of her home, her dreams—they flashed before her as if her body had already decided she was dead.
Her eyes sharpened. Her knees bent like a soldier readying herself.
"Lylon!" she barked, snapping him out of his frozen stare. "Keep trying! I'll hold off the incoming disaster—whatever it is—for as long as I can."