The clouds tear open.
Not with thunder—but with pressure.
The Demon Lord descends alone.
No army. No escort.
Seven star sigils burn behind him, each one a rotating abyss of crimson light. The air bends around his body, mountains groaning as if forced to bow. Every warrior in the Hawk Clan feels it at once—
The difference between strength
and overwhelming existence.
"He's a Seven-Star," an elder whispers, horror-struck. "Why would he come himself?"
"Because this isn't a battle," Mo Shan says quietly.
"It's a harvest."
Feng Lihan is already airborne, wings blazing red-hot as he positions himself between the Demon Lord and the inner peaks. Mo Shan rises beside him, serpentine aura coiling upward, green runes igniting along his arms and spine.
Two Four-Star Lords.
Against a Seven-Star Demon Sovereign.
The Demon Lord's gaze slides between them, amused. "How nostalgic. Hawk fire and Serpent venom, standing shoulder to shoulder like relics of a braver age."
His eyes shift—piercing, precise.
Straight past them.
Toward the mountain.
Toward Lin Yue.
"You're wasting your strength," Feng Lihan snaps. "You won't reach him."
The Demon Lord smiles wider. "Reach him? No."
The seventh star behind him flares violently.
"I will outgrow you."
The sky screams.
He moves.
Space folds as the Demon Lord appears directly before them, his palm striking outward with casual force. Feng Lihan blocks instinctively—wings crossing—
CRACK.
The impact detonates through his body, hurling him backward like a falling star. He crashes through a cliff face, stone vaporizing on impact.
"Feng Lihan!" Lin Yue's voice echoes from below.
Mo Shan attacks instantly.
His form blurs, lower body transforming mid-strike as a colossal spectral serpent coils through the air, fangs dripping emerald light. Venom sigils explode forward, binding spells layered within strikes meant to paralyze gods.
The Demon Lord catches the serpent's jaw with one hand.
"Still poisonous," he muses. "But you lack mass."
He rips the spell apart.
Mo Shan is thrown aside, slamming into the sky barrier with a grunt, blood streaking from the corner of his mouth. The difference in stars is undeniable—crushing, humiliating.
Seven.
Against four.
Against four.
The Demon Lord floats forward, unhurried. "You see," he says calmly, voice carrying everywhere, "the eighth star does not come from slaughter."
His gaze locks onto the mountain.
"It comes from purity."
Lin Yue freezes as a wave of killing intent locks onto him—not hatred, not rage.
Desire.
"The child you carry," the Demon Lord continues, almost reverent,
"is born of untainted bloodlines—hawk flame, serpent earth, and ancestral dawn."
His lips part.
"One pure sacrifice," he whispers.
"And I ascend."
The world seems to stop.
"No—!" Lin Yue gasps, clutching his abdomen as the bond flares violently, pain ripping through him.
Feng Lihan erupts from the shattered cliff in a blaze of red.
"You will not touch him!"
His fourth star ignites to its limit—burning white at the edges. His wings expand unnaturally, feathers sharpening into blades of living flame. This isn't controlled power.
It's defiance.
Mo Shan rises as well, wiping blood from his mouth, eyes cold and focused. His aura deepens, ancient and suffocating, the ground below responding as massive stone coils rise skyward.
Two Lords.
Broken. Outmatched.
Still standing.
They take position—one above, one below—the sky and earth locking the Demon Lord in between.
Mo Shan speaks first. "If you want the child—"
Feng Lihan finishes it.
"—you go through us."
The Demon Lord laughs.
A sound like bones grinding together.
"How noble," he says. "Then let history record this properly."
The seventh star behind him expands.
Darkness collapses inward.
"This is the difference between protecting a future," he intones,
"and becoming it."
He releases his domain.
The battlefield is swallowed whole.
Inside the collapsing void, Feng Lihan feels his wings burning away star by star.
Mo Shan feels his wards cracking, one by one.
Yet through the pain, through the crushing gravity—
They feel something else.
From the mountain.
From Lin Yue.
A pulse.
Not wild.
Not afraid.
Protective.
The child responds.
Light—golden and green—threads through the collapsing domain, stabilizing it just long enough.
The Demon Lord's eyes widen.
"…Already?"
Feng Lihan roars, forcing himself upright. "You will never reach eight stars."
Mo Shan's voice is steady, lethal. "Because you misunderstand one thing."
They strike together.
Fire and venom fuse.
Not to kill.
But to seal.
The explosion tears the sky apart.
When the light fades, the Demon Lord has been forced back—bleeding, furious, his seventh star dimmed but intact.
He touches the blood at his lip… then smiles.
"Excellent," he murmurs. "Let the child grow."
He retreats into shadow, laughter echoing like a promise.
"This makes the harvest sweeter."
Silence crashes down.
Feng Lihan drops to one knee.
Mo Shan catches himself against stone.
Below them, Lin Yue collapses into the arms of healers, shaking—but alive.
The war is no longer about survival.
It is about time.
And the Demon Lord has chosen his prey.