Chapter One

“Mom!”

I took Lily’s backpack from her and winced. Schools made kids carry so much crap. “How was school?”

“Oh. My. God. Mom, you wouldn’t believe what Emmi did. So you know she likes Ethan…”

I listened as she told me all about her best friend’s latest boy troubles while we walked into the apartment building. I pressed the elevator call button, and it opened right away. We stepped inside. Now Lily was talking about her new school. (“Like, just because they’re a year above us, they think they’re so cool. It’s so cringe. I can’t believe people like that even exist.”) I nodded and made small sounds to let her know I was still listening as we approached my apartment. I saw the little shelf with figures I kept outside and stopped, frowning.

“-and would you believe Noah came to school wearing a - oof! What the hell, Mom? Why’d you stop?”

“This isn’t mine,” I said. I squatted down to look at the figures. Instead of the cute pink and blue-haired twins and a bunch of cheap chibi figures, there were several new figures. They were really nice - probably cost more than all mine together - but they were definitely not mine. I looked up at the door number, wondering if we’d gotten off on the wrong floor, but it said 404, as always.

“What’re you talking about? That’s Nero and Luna, right? You’ve always had them.”

“Huh?” I pressed a hand to my temple. Right. Nero and… Luna. I turned to look at Lily.

She looked the same as ever. She smiled at me like I was ridiculous, a look I was well-used to from her. “Jeez, Mom, get it together. Don’t goldfish on me.” She pulled a key out of her backpack and went to open the door.

Alarm filled me. I couldn’t quite think why, but I couldn’t let her open that door. “No! Lily… No, I need you to go to the front office, tell them to come check our apartment, then call your dad. Don’t come back here.”

“What? Why?”

“I mean it, Lily. Go. Now.”

“Mom, you’re scaring me.” The lights went out, plunging the hallway into darkness. “Mom? Mom? Where are you? What’s going on?”

Hands covered my mouth. I fought against them, but I was helpless to stop them as they pulled me backward and down, the darkness somehow deepening until it felt like light had never existed at all. “Wake up, dear servant. You don’t belong there.”

I opened my eyes with a gasp and sat up, panting.

“Are you alright, Luna?” Nero asked sleepily. He peered up at me, then blinked and sat up, too. “Wait, are you crying?”

I touched my cheeks to find them wet. “It was… it was just a dream,” I said, feeling both disappointed and relieved.

“A bad one?” Nero asked.

“...yeah. I had to leave someone I loved.”

Nero frowned, looking uncomfortably uncertain about what to do. “Sorry.”

I shrugged and wiped off my face. “It’s fine.” I crawled out of the tent and joined Justice outside. After taking a moment to breathe, I got started making breakfast. We’d be reaching our home city today. I didn’t need to bring drama into what was already going to be a full day.

“Morning, Luna, Nero,” Heather said as she exited her own tent, followed by Alicia. “Morning, Justice.”

Justice lifted a hand in acknowledgement. He was spread out on his stomach on a flat rock, his wings fully extended on either side of him. He liked to catch the first rays of sunlight each morning. With a small but sweet smile, Heather climbed onto the rock beside him and looked East to share the sunrise.

“Did you sleep alright?” Nero asked Alicia.

She winced. “Not really. Nightmares.”

“Yeah. Luna, too.” Nero’s stomach growled, and he groaned. “I was too hungry to sleep.”

Both Nero and I had Sleepless Night, a passive that let us go without sleep. Normally, it wasn’t too difficult to sleep anyway, but Nero was having trouble because he’d been starving since his evolution to a Nascent Demon Lord.

“I hope the doctors can figure out what’s wrong,” Alicia said. “Even if you don’t need sleep, it can’t be good to do entirely without. And being hungry all the time isn’t normal, I don’t think.”

“I was thinking,” I said as I passed out plates of simple cooked eggs. We ate better while traveling than most adventurers, thanks to my Inventory. “Maybe we can just… you know. Have Nero spent time near the hospital?”

Nero gave me a wide-eyed, owlish look. “Why?”

“Because that’s probably where the most people die in the city, right?” I guessed. “So if you need souls, you’ll be able to absorb some there.”

“I don’t know that I’m okay with intentionally eating people’s souls,” Nero said, turning faintly green.

“God says it’s an honor,” Alicia offered, although the uneasy way she looked away spoke volumes about her own opinion on it.

I sighed. “Well, at the very least, it would let us know whether that’s actually the problem. It’s better to know than not, right?”

“I guess…”

After breakfast, we packed up and headed out. It didn’t take more than another couple of hours before we joined the line of adventurers looking to enter Etrea City.

Our return was made without fanfare. We alerted the guild that we'd returned and that Fay had died, and that was it. It turned out there was a hefty reward for information on the process by which a dungeon ranked up, so that was nice. It wasn't enough compensation to make up for losing Fay, but it was something.

The real problem was Mathew. We excused ourselves from the others and went to meet with the Guild assistant after he got off work. As predicted, he was ecstatic. "You're both Demons now?" he said in a hushed voice that still somehow managed to sound like he was shouting. He promptly dragged us out to a tavern where he paid for our meals and interrogated us.

"Do you feel any different?" he asked. He had a notebook and pen at the ready, and I was viscerally reminded of Yuulen.

I shook my head. "Other than, you know, not being a cat, I feel the same." I assumed he meant emotionally, and his nod told me that I was correct.

Nero bit at his lip. "I -"

"Please don't feel the need to lie," Mathew interrupted. "I swear that I will tell no one what you've said. I may eventually write a paper about your experiences, but I will consult with you to ensure I don't publish anything you don't wish to have exposed. I'm willing to sign a contract saying as much if you desire."

Nero's shoulders hunched up around his ears, and he looked at me miserably. "I feel like… I just have trouble caring. I’m hungry, and I want to eat, and it’s hard to keep in mind why I shouldn’t. Luna thinks I need souls, but… I keep thinking about…" He stared longingly at Mathew’s throat, watching the man’s pulse throb rhythmically.

"Hmm, reduced concern for human morality and a desire for blood," Mathew mused. "And yet, that doesn't seem to have happened to you, Luna?"

I considered it. "I've always been more pragmatic," I decided. "I wouldn't ever kill someone for fun, and I'd make sure it was necessary before committing to it, but I've always been willing to do it. As for the blood, well… I need it to live, but I don’t need a lot, so I’ve been alright just eating rats and squirrels and such." We had tried feeding Nero the same diet I’d been subsisting off of, but it was like getting a picky toddler to eat Brussels sprouts. He’d do it, but he complained the entire way, often gagging or retching after. It wasn’t enough to determine whether the blood he desired would satisfy his hunger or not.

"I see.... I wonder, perhaps, if that reduced morality is why you were born as a Demon Cat in the first place. Perhaps that's simply an expression of your soul..."

“You do realize how insulting that is, right?” I asked idly. I didn’t really care, but I didn’t want Nero picking up Mathew’s bad habits.

Mathew thought back over his words, then shrugged. “It wasn’t meant to be.” He finished recording his thoughts, then asked, “Off the record, what was that thing you turned into? Can I see the tubes you talked about?” I realized suddenly why he’d been so particular about our seating. We weren’t easily visible to anyone else, letting him ask this without us having a good excuse to refuse.

"It was... my... evolution proceeding, I guess," Nero said uncomfortably. "If... I guess if I'd stayed in it long enough, and if it ate enough people, I'd have become a Demon Lord instead of just whatever the hell I am now." Reluctantly, he stuck his tongue out, and it slowly changed to become the long proboscis-type organ Nero’d obtained.

“That’s what Yuulen, the leader of Witches Five, theorized,” I said while Mathew studied Nero’s new anatomy, because it wouldn’t do to make that canon when it was nothing more than someone else’s guesswork.

"I see... I did know about that energy requirement, but I hadn’t realized it was quite so literal. I wonder if you're still collecting it now or if you've closed off that opportunity by leaving before the transformation finished..." Mathew reached out and grabbed Nero’s tongue, making both of us yelp, Nero in surprise and me in indignation. “Fascinating,” he murmured as the tubule instinctively burrowed into his wrist.

Nero sat frozen as the tubule squeezed and relaxed, sucking in Mathew’s blood while the man in question studied it curiously. At last, Mathew tugged gently, and with a start, Nero was able to retract the proboscis. Mathew examined the wound left behind, going so far as to pull a container from his bag and take a sample of the blood oozing from his wrist. “It appears that you don’t possess any anticoagulative properties,” he noted. “Luna, would you mind?”

“Blessing,” I said flatly.

“Thank you,” Mathew said with what I thought of as his ‘aren’t I so normal and charming’ smile. It didn’t fool me in the slightest.

"Do you know anything about a demon lord called Fyth?" Nero asked suddenly.

Mathew blinked, eyebrows going high. "Legends say he was one of the first Demon Lords and that he managed to ascend before the Hero of his time could vanquish him."

"Ascend?" Nero asked.

I nervously wondered which parts of his identity Fyth found objectionable. It wasn’t as though I’d done anything to encourage this conversation.

Mathew was kind of cute when he got excited. Even though he was a grown man, he practically vibrated with it, fingers tapping rapidly on the table between us and body bouncing in his seat. "So, this is just a myth, mind you, but it's said that evolved humans can leave this plane of existence and enter the space between worlds as something akin to gods should they surpass their maximum level." He looked back at me. "Fyth was said to have achieved this, as was the first Hero, but there aren’t many records of it happening since. Speaking of whom, would you indulge me by letting me know how you became his agent?" he asked me.

I glanced at Nero, who shrugged and nodded. I waited another moment, wondering if Fyth would object. He was listening. I could tell that much, but I didn’t know whether he cared about the conversation or was simply bored and caught that his name had been mentioned. When no objection came, I said, “I died in another world, and Fyth appeared before me. He said that he would grant me a wish in exchange for my soul. The next thing I knew, I was being summoned into this world as a cat."

Succinct to the point of becoming boring. Are you naturally reticent, or are you trying to appease me? Fyth whispered in my ear. I shivered and tried to pretend I hadn’t heard anything. (And why would that count as appeasing him anyway? Sometimes, Fyth just made no sense.)

Mathew stared, wide-eyed, at me for several moments. Then he snapped his fingers, a motion that made me flinch, given how it reminded me of the very demon we were speaking about. A tiny bird fluttered out of his shadow and perched on his shoulder. "This is my summon. He's a Shadow Sparrow... officially. Unofficially, he's a Demon Sparrow. Will you allow him to accompany you on your travels?" Mathew was beaming at us now, his expression full of manic excitement.

"Um..." Nero seemed confused.

"Please? He won't be any trouble. He'll just reside within your shadow and watch what's happening and share it with me. I want to see everything! I want to record your journey."

What do you think? Nero asked me.

That I want to learn how to do that, I replied, which made Nero snort and give me a pointed look. I sighed and considered it properly. I don't have any objections. If it can communicate with him, it could help if... Well, it could be useful to have another means of communicating if we're separated.

"Alright," Nero said. "That's fine."

"Thank you so much! In return, I'll provide you with information as I can. Anything you need to know, just let me know. I can speak through him, so feel free to just voice your questions." Mathew spoke softly to the bird for a moment, then it dove into Nero’s shadow.

"What's his name?" I asked.

Mathew blinked once, then flushed. "Uh... Matt." He suddenly seemed to find the table exceedingly interesting.

I allowed him his dignity, keeping my amusement hidden behind a politely understanding smile. Nero did no such thing. He burst out in laughter. I thought to jab my elbow into his side and tell him off for being rude, but then I noticed the hysterical tinge to the sound and settled. Nero needed something to laugh about. He was too stressed. It wasn't fair to Mathew, but I cared a million times more about Nero than Mathew, so he would just have to live with it.

Mathew blushed even harder, but maybe he, too, realized that Nero's laughter was only partially about the unfortunately unoriginal name, because he appeared sympathetic.

Once Nero got himself back under control, we made small talk for the rest of our meal. Nero talked a lot about Alicia and how they'd been friends since childhood. “Her mom died when she was really little,” he said, “so she was always over at my place. My mom took care of her.”

I smiled fondly as he spoke. It was clear just how much he cared about Alicia. Mathew and I exchanged amused glances. “Why don’t we visit?” I asked.

Nero grimaced and stared down at the table. “Uh, my mom… and dad…. And probably everyone… didn’t really want us to be adventurers. It’s one thing for Alicia, since she got an SR, but I coulda gone home and… didn’t… so…” His voice had gotten quiet, and he finished in a rush. “They’llprobablybereallypissedthatIwentanyway.”

“They’ll be more pissed that you didn’t visit or write,” I said with the authority of mom-ness. “So you should do that before it gets any worse.”

“...I’ll think about it, okay?”

I resolved to bring the subject up with Alicia. She could motivate Nero, even if I failed.

Just before we were ready to leave, Mathew asked me, "Do you know anything about your new title?"

"New title?" Nero asked. Apparently, he hadn't looked at my Status.

"Ruler," I explained before shaking my head. "I don't know where it came from or what it does. It just appeared during my evolution."

Mathew nodded as though he'd expected that. "Like most titles, we can't say for certain how it's obtained, but it seems to correlate with people who refuse to accept a situation's natural outcome and succeed in overturning that outcome. Those who've had it and come to understand it say 'it's a title that allows one to overturn fate.' I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I'm sure it will come in handy for you."

The power to overturn fate. That wasn't clear, but Mathew was right that it sounded promising. "Thanks," I told him.

Nero and I returned to the room we shared with Alicia. She was there, staring at the ceiling. She spent a lot of time, when she thought no one was looking, staring into space like that. When we entered, she took only a moment to notice and sit up. Her smile was unnatural; there was too much tension to it. "Welcome back," she said. "I was thinking. I'd like to get back to doing quests. We should evolve Justice, and I'd like to hit level seventy so we can get our next summons."

Nero looked uncomfortable. "Are you sure? We can take all the time you -"

"I'm sure." Alicia's voice came out harshly. She winced and amended herself, making an effort to speak more gently. "Sorry. I'm sure, though. I want to get back to normal. Okay?"

"Sure."

“Do you think we could swing by you guys’ home village in the process?” I asked quickly.

Nero groaned, but Alicia brightened. “Yes! That’s a brilliant idea. I’d love to see everyone again.” She smiled so sweetly at me that I felt instantly rewarded, and even Nero looked resigned to the proposal.