[Arza’s POV]
Arza looked ahead towards the crowd of students gathered.
Her serpentine red eyes were still... unnaturally so, while her snow-white hair moved with the breeze as if they had minds of their own.
She didn’t care about what was happening around her.
She didn’t care how people were staring at her. So in awe while others in fear.
She was the daughter of the demon king. And the one who inherited the Noctharion bloodline in its purest form.
The twin obsidian horns on her head were proof of that. As no demon could have horns.
Only those who had the purest form of high ranking-demon bloodline had them.
Among her thirty siblings only two were born with one—that was proof of how rare they were.
She was one of only two children out of her siblings to be born with obsidian horns.
The others whispered about her.
They called her a future Demon Queen.
They praised her beauty.
They praised her strength.
And yet...
...yet she cared for none of these.
She felt nothing.
The world, in her eyes, had always been grey.
She never saw the colour others spoke of.
She never understood the emotions others spoke off either.
She watched them all, but none of it made sense.
Emotions.
Laughter.
Tears.
And yet...
Even soone like her—soone who didn’t understand them wasn’t completely void of it.
So, she hoped—that maybe, just maybe, if she grew strong enough... she too might one day see the colours they spoke of.
And perhaps, feel the emotions they lived with so easily.
Today was just another day for her.
She didn’t care about the blessed forest of demon bloodline.
She didn’t care about the exam.
Her mother—the principal of this academy—had forced her to enter the academy.
But, she just wanted it to be over.
Reaching into her storage ring, she pulled out a small bar of chocolate and quietly took a bite.
It was sweet.
The only thing that made her feel remotely alive
in this colourless world.
But before she could savor it, sothing crashed behind her and a shoulder bumped lightly into her back, just enough to push her slightly forward.
Her fingers on the chocolate bar loosened slightly.
The chocolate slipped from her hand...
...and fell to the ground.
She stared at it for a minute.
That was the last chocolate she had left. The last one she had hidden from her mother... who’d confiscated the rest, saying she would only return them after Arza passed the exam.
She had been careful, taking just a single bite every few hours, saving it piece by piece until the end of the exam.
And yet... even that small comfort was gone now.
Her expression didn’t change but sowhere in her hollow heart, she felt a tinge of annoyance.
—
[Noah’s POV]
Noah had just arrived in front of the forest where the test was supposed to be taken.
He didn’t care about the test...
...and yet his eyes scanned through each and every student without a miss.
He saw prideful demons looking down on him.
He saw a few arrogant dragons standing at the edges proudly, with their delicate horns.
And finally the weak humans, looking anxious.
He didn’t care about species, he just hoped to find soone strong enough to kill him within this forest.
But, none of them seed strong.
Even those who were ranked higher than him were weak, as Noah could see the countless paths.
The paths to slice their neck off.
Just then, his eyes paused on a girl casually munching on a weird dark coloured bar.
Noah didn’t know what it was.
Is that so kind of mana supplent?
He had learned many books about dicines and yet he never saw sothing similar.
He didn’t care.
She was strong. She barely had any paths.
He knew who she was—his half-sister, Arza Ashen Noctharion.
But before he could say a single word, Sothing crashed right into the space between them.
A human boy with black hair and crimson eyes. He had an unsettling smile on his face.
The boy rose from the ground, dusted his clothes before his eyes locked with Noah.
But, Noah didn’t care.
Sothing else surprised him even more.
The paths.
How can this be?
Since his awakening, Noah had grown used to seeing them, those glowing threads of trajectory, slicing the world into possibilities.
He had seen different paths out of different people.
So arced gently while others stretched straight.
So people had too many... and so strong once barely had any.
But the boy in front of him wasn’t strong.
No. That much was clear.
The sheer number of paths spiraling from his body was proof enough. In Noah’s vision, the weak always had many paths.
And yet... sothing was off.
The paths were strange... far too strange.
Unlike the normal ones—which stayed stable—the paths coming out of this boy were... moving chaotically.
They danced and weaved into each other unpredictably.
Noah blinked.
He could see and feel the boy’s weakness but the strange pattern in paths, amused him.
Still, the boy didn’t seem to notice.
He stood there, brushing invisible dust off his shoulder with the grace of soone completely unaffected by the anomaly swirling around him.
Noah narrowed his eyes.
Who is he?
—
anwhile sowhere else, within a bright white room, a single woman kneeled in reverence.
Her golden hair cascaded down her shoulders like water and her bright blue eyes remained lowered to the ground beneath her.
Twin golden horns curled from her head like a crown.
She did not move nor did she speak. She just waited.
Then, a voice echoed through the empty room. The walls cracked, as a divine pressure was unleashed.
"The ti has co."
The woman’s breathing turned rough yet she didn’t move.
She kept kneeling.
"When the stars forget to burn,
Three shall rise where the world must turn.
One wears wrath behind a smile,
One bears truth that bleeds with guile,
One walks death yet births the while.
Bound by fate, but never free—
They break what was, to forge what will be.
But heed: should all three choose the sa,
The sky will crack, and none shall na..."
As the last verse faded into silence, so did the presence that carried it.
The crushing pressure lifted.
And the golden-haired woman collapsed, darkness threatened to swallow her consciousness.
But before she fell completely unconscious, she pulled out a small artifact from her storage ring.
A communication crystal.
"Inform the Dragon Emperor... the ti has co."
And then, the crystal slipped from her hand as everything went black.
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