They came without banners.
No crests. No horns. No drums of war.
Only the sound of marching—slow, patient, and endless—like the ticking of a clock that counted down not to a moment, but to an undoing.
An army of demons, a hundred generals strong, stood on the ridge where the sun refused to rise. Their armor was forged not of metal, but of forgotten fears—shifting, muttering things that clung to their bodies like the regrets of the dead. They did not speak to one another. They had no need to. Each one knew the plan, for each one was the plan.
At their head stood a figure unlike the rest, draped in a cloak that seemed woven from the skin of night itself. No face. No crown. Just a pulsing core of red where a heart might be, beating with the rhythm of conquest. They called it Vorhess, though the name was only a suggestion—like a rumor you couldn't shake from your bones. It was not a king, nor a god, nor a monster.
It was inevitability made flesh.
Behind it, the one hundred generals stood still. Some towered like spires, some slithered low and wide. Some bore wings as thin as paper, others crawled on limbs too many to count. All of them bore a sigil on their chest, glowing faintly like an ember from some great forge long buried beneath the world.
They looked upon the city of Konue—its spires still proud, its people still unknowing.
And though their mouths never moved, something spoke—a voice that did not echo, but simply was.
"The waiting is over."
And so they advanced. One hundred demon generals. A storm of purpose. An army not for battle, but for erasure.
Konue had only a little time left.
The march was steady—so steady it felt mechanical, inevitable. But amidst the unholy silence, beneath the rhythm of armor brushing against armor and clawed feet scraping dry earth, came a sound most unnatural for an army of dread.
Small talk.
Idle chatter.
Banter among horrors.
"Why a hundred?" muttered one, its voice like oil boiling in a kettle. "Two of us could reduce this place to ash by lunch."
"I blinked and leveled a province last week," grumbled another, dragging its tail lazily through the soil. "A hundred feels... extravagant."
"Extravagant?" scoffed a spindly one with limbs too long and a voice like breaking glass. "It's theatrical. We're not an invasion—we're a parade."
"The Demon Lord's getting sentimental again," another chimed in, its voice half-sigh, half-growl. "Wants to send a message. You know how he gets when someone breaks one of his contracts."
"What was the contract this time?" said another, yawning smoke.
"Don't know. Don't care. Maybe someone in Konue whistled on holy ground, maybe someone just sneezed at the wrong eclipse."
"They have good tea," one of them murmured dreamily.
There was a moment of reverent silence.
"Yes," a rumbling voice finally said. "Very good tea."
Another groaned. "I hate city fights. Walls. Screaming. People throwing soup. Always with the soup."
"I like the soup."
"You would."
"Hey—remember that one mortal who tried to solo a demon general with a frying pan?"
"He hit me twice. That was embarrassing."
"You are embarrassing."
"Enough," rumbled one near the front. "We're one day out. Let's burn the place and be done with it."
The army fell quiet again. Not out of fear or reverence—just because they'd run out of complaints for the moment.
A hundred generals.
None of them knew why they were truly there.
But all of them knew what they would do.
The wind shifted.
Dry. Dusty. Ominous.
From the cracked gate of Koneu—a city long proud, now trembling—came a single figure. His steps were slow, not from fear, but from the simple weight of age. Robes frayed at the hem whispered against the earth. His wooden staff tapped the ground gently, each sound deliberate, like punctuation marks on a page of silence.
An old priest.
The army of demons stirred, confused.
A hundred generals—creatures who had turned champions into ink stains, who made volcanoes erupt out of boredom—paused. Not because they saw power. Not because they sensed magic. But because there was something so... out of place about the old man, so vulnerable, so simple.
"What is he doing?" one hissed.
"Is he mad?"
"Is this a trick?"
"Why is he walking?"
Still he came.
Tap. Step. Tap. Step.
Closer now. Past where any sane soul should stand. Past the boundaries where lesser creatures begged for mercy or tried to run.
The priest stopped at the foot of a hill, not ten paces from the front line of the demon host. A hundred generals stared down at him like gods watching a candle on the sea.
He looked up.
His back cracked as he straightened.
Then the old priest did something truly baffling.
He smiled.
No incantations.
No weapons.
Just that gentle, worn smile of a man who had seen too much to be afraid.
The demons didn't know what to say.
The priest's smile deepened into something unreadable—part sorrow, part amusement, and part something else… something ancient.
Then he spoke.
And the sky trembled.
His voice did not match his frail frame. It boomed, echoed, not from his lungs but from somewhere older, deeper, truer. The earth seemed to pause for his words.
"Though I begged the god Coe to erase me from the mirror of the world… though I tore my name from every scripture, shattered every reflection, buried every trace—still, he remembers me."
A murmur rippled through the front lines. Several demon generals leaned closer, sharing glances beneath twisted helms and horned masks.
"The Demon Lord remembers me?"
"Is he serious?"
"This dust-covered relic?"
Then came the laughter.
At first, it was one—a high-pitched, shrieking cackle from a thin, lizard-like general. Then another joined in. And another. Until all one hundred generals were howling with laughter, the kind that shook their armored shoulders and rumbled like thunder over the barren field.
"A hundred of us!" one howled, clutching his stomach.
"To kill a priest!" another bellowed.
"Is this a punishment? What did we do wrong?"
"Maybe the Demon Lord's finally gone mad!"
One leaned on his halberd, snorting, "Did he mistake him for some ancient war god? Maybe this one once scolded him in a dream."
They howled and mocked, voices like cracking glass and roaring beasts. Some wiped fake tears from their eyes. Others knelt dramatically, bowing before the "mighty priest."
Yet, the old man did not flinch.
He stood calmly in their ridicule, the smile never leaving his face.
As the laughter still danced on the tongues of the one hundred generals, and the stomp of a million hooves and claws signaled the demon army's march toward the unsuspecting city of Koneu, the old priest gently raised his hand.
Not to command.
Not to strike.
But to whisper.
It was a sound too soft for mortal ears. A breath, a note, a syllable untouched by time.
"Garden of Genesis: Tengoku."
It was not a spell.
It was not a weapon.
It was truth, spoken in the tongue of those who had given everything to a god—not merely their faith, but their entire being. A word so steeped in divinity that only one who had cast aside their name, their face, and their past could speak it without being obliterated.
And the world... shifted.
Like a page turning itself.
The wind stilled.
The earth vanished beneath them.
The sun blinked out—and replaced itself with light that bloomed instead of burned.
The entire demon host—millions strong, along with the hundred generals—vanished from the battlefield.
Suddenly, they stood in silence.
A hush fell like snow.
Before them, beneath them, all around them, stretched a boundless garden—an endless field of glass flowers. Each one unique. Some as small as teardrops, others as large as towers. Their translucent petals shimmered with internal light, glowing faintly like captured stars. The sky above was no longer a sky, but an ever-shifting aurora, twinkling with colors unknown to language.
The air carried no scent, yet each breath stirred memories long forgotten. Joy, loss, first light, final dusk—every petal was a memory, and every memory could cut like crystal if touched.
The demons looked around—confused. Nervous.
"What is this…?"
"Where is the battlefield?"
"Where's the city? The priest?"
"What… is this place?"
The hundred generals stood still, stunned for the first time in centuries.
The mood was no longer laughter.
It was awe.
And dread.
For the glass flowers did not move, yet somehow, they watched.
And somewhere in the center of this divine garden—spanning a space as vast as a country—stood the old priest, small as ever.
The wind within the Garden of Genesis stilled completely—no rustling, no sway of the countless crystalline blossoms. Only silence.
And then the old priest's voice returned. Not as a whisper this time. Not as a thunderclap either. But as something deeper. Like a note played from the heart of the world itself. Every word rang with ancient gravity, folding through space, echoing within the bones of every demon present.
"With all that remains of me… I can hold him back… for ten seconds."
A murmur swept across the demon generals—not from the wind, but from within themselves. Unease bloomed in their chests, thick and slow like ink in water.
"Ten seconds?" one muttered.
"He speaks of the demon lord, doesn't he?"
"That's… That's impossible."
"Even the Archons of flame and thunder fell in four."
"Ten seconds isn't time… It's a miracle."
The hundred demon generals, seasoned and smug, found no smile between them now.
Because every one of them knew:
Ten seconds against him—the Demon Lord, ruler of the Unborn, breaker of nations, a being whose mere presence could reduce an army to ash—was not a feat. It was legend.
To resist him at all… to delay him… for even the breath between a blink…
It meant you stood on the same line as deity.
The glass flowers pulsed gently beneath their feet. A shimmer spread across the garden like a ripple through stars. The air grew thick, like every molecule of reality was preparing to tremble.
The priest remained motionless, robes gently fluttering in the divine breeze.
Ten seconds.
No more.
No less.
Enough time for something.
Or everything.
From the stillness of the Garden of Genesis, the priest moved.
First, a step—light, deliberate. Then another—this one left a tremor in the glass field beneath him. Then he rose, without sound, as though the world itself had agreed to let him defy its gravity.
And from his back unfurled wings—each feather sharp and translucent, shaped from the purest celestial glass. They reflected no light, and yet shimmered with every color seen and unseen. The garden responded. Petals lifted. Stems twisted in reverence. The sky itself dimmed.
In his right hand bloomed a sword of glass, long and slender, its blade filled with spiraling constellations.
In his left hand formed a spear, jagged at the edge, etched with forgotten verses of Coe—the god of duality, identity, and reflection.
And the priest descended.
Not as a falling man—
But as judgment incarnate.
He struck the first demon with such velocity the beast simply shattered. Not bled. Not burned. Shattered. Like a mirror remembering a truth too late.
A second fell to the spear, skewered clean through, and before its body could hit the glassy ground, it had already turned into a crystal statue, echoing its final expression: terror.
He turned, swift as storm wind, and the wings sliced through the next row.
No wasted motion. No hesitation.
Only precision.
Only purpose.
And then—he whispered again. But this time, not to the world. This time, to himself.
"To hold back ruin... I must become a storm of selves."
And suddenly—he split.
Not an illusion.
Not a trick.
But multiplication of soul and form.
One became two.
Two became ten.
Ten became one hundred.
A hundred old priests, each identical, each wielding divine glass, stood across the mirrored landscape of Genesis. Each one radiating the power of a lifetime devoted to divinity. Each one born not of ambition, but conviction.
The demon generals froze, their laughter now hollow memory. Before each of them stood a priest. Quiet. Glowing.
The glass garden echoed with silence now—though it teetered on the edge of a cataclysm to come. A hundred battles began all at once, yet in this suspended breath before the chaos, the true priest—the first one, the one who still held the thread of divinity most tightly—raised his head to the unseen heavens.
The wind bent gently around him, as though even the divine was listening.
His wings shimmered, folding slightly, and from his lips came not a war cry, nor a chant, but a quiet benediction—carried not to the demons before him, but far beyond the garden, toward the world outside.
"May each of them grow," he whispered,
"not as heroes written by fate,
but as souls walking crooked paths in their own time.
Let them stumble. Let them rise.
Let them rage, rest, wonder—
and may none of them forget that they are allowed to choose.
Even against the will of gods."
And then he closed his eyes.
Glass hummed.
Steel sang.
And the garden bloomed with war.