(Outside - Yuuta Apartment)

The night stretched long across the city, casting shadows that crept up the walls of the apartment building like dark fingers reaching for something they could not quite grasp.

The streetlights hummed their monotonous song, pools of orange light scattered along the sidewalk, and the bench where Fiona sat had grown cold beneath her.

She had not moved.

Not since Erza left.

Not since the dragon queen’s words had settled into her chest like stones dropped into deep water. I will end the demonic era. The declaration echoed in her skull, relentless and unsettling. Fiona had expected negotiation. She had expected conditions, compromises, the careful dance of two parties who needed each other but trusted no one.

Erza had not negotiated.

She had simply stated her intent, cold, absolute, final, as if the demonic era was not centuries of bloodshed and terror but a minor inconvenience she had decided to address. As if the demon king and his generals and his thousands of soldiers were nothing more than insects to be crushed beneath her heel.

Fiona wanted to believe it was delusion. Arrogance. The hollow boasting of someone who had never truly faced the horrors that lurked in the dark corners of this world.

But she could not.

Because every time she thought of Erza, of that silver hair and those violet eyes, of the cold aura that radiated from her skin like heat from a dying star, Fiona felt something she had not felt since she was a child, kneeling before her father’s grave, swearing an oath she had not yet fulfilled.

Certainty.

The night stretched on.

Fiona’s worry grew worse.

The way Erza had spoken, not asking, not suggesting, simply telling, unsettled her more than any threat could have. There was no room for negotiation in Erza’s voice. No space for doubt. It was the voice of someone who had already decided how the story would end and was simply waiting for the world to catch up.

Fiona shifted on the bench, pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders.

The air had grown colder, or perhaps the cold was coming from somewhere else. From the memory of Erza’s aura. From the weight of her words. From the uncomfortable feeling that something had shifted in the world, and she was standing too close to the epicenter.

Her phone buzzed.

The sound was sharp, cutting through the night like a blade.

Fiona reached into her pocket and pulled out two phones, one for normal use, battered and scratched, the case cracked from a drop she had never bothered to fix. The other was pristine, black, unmarked, used only for Agency communication.

The black phone was buzzing.

She flipped it open.

"Yes. This is Fire Squad Wing Captain Phoenix reporting."

The voice on the other end was crisp, professional, stripped of emotion. A message runner, one of the junior agents whose job was to pass information up and down the chain of command.

"Chief urgently summons all captains. Report to headquarters immediately."

Fiona heard it in the background, the shuffle of boots, the clatter of equipment, the low murmur of voices coordinating movement. Something was happening. Something big.

"What’s happened? Why the urgent summons?"

"Can’t say much over this line." The runner’s voice did not change, but there was something beneath it, a tension, a fear that she was trying to hide. "I’ll send a pick-up unit to escort you to headquarters."

Fiona nodded, though the runner could not see her.

"Understood. Phoenix out."

She lowered the phone.

The night felt colder now.

____________

Half an hour later,

The black combat vehicle arrived.

It slid through the streets like a shark through dark water, silent, predatory, purposeful. The headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the empty sidewalk, the sleeping buildings, the lone figure waiting on the bench. Four squad members emerged in perfect synchronization, their movements sharp, their faces hidden behind tactical helmets.

They saluted as one.

"Captain Phoenix. Escort unit at your command."

Fiona nodded, gathering her things, her jacket, her weapon, the small bag she carried for emergencies.

She did not ask questions.

The escort unit would not have answers. They were soldiers, not strategists. They followed orders. They did not question them.

She climbed into the vehicle carefully to not touch her injuries, and the door closed behind her with a heavy thunk.

The city blurred past the windows as the combat vehicle accelerated, weaving through streets that were empty this late at night.

Fiona watched the apartment building shrink in the side mirror, watched the lighted windows grow smaller, smaller, until they were nothing but specks in the distance.

Yuuta was in there. Erza was in there. The child was in there. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

She turned away.

The Libeus Agency headquarters was located underground.

The entrance was hidden behind a bank, a deliberate choice, part of a strategy that had been developed decades ago. The bank served as cover, as security, as a way to track contractors who had sold their souls to demons. Any suspicious financial activity would trigger alerts. Any sudden rise in wealth would be investigated. The Agency had eyes everywhere, and the bank was just one of them.

But tonight, something was different.

When Fiona reached the underground garage, she knew something was wrong.

The combat vehicles were everywhere, lined in rows that stretched beyond the reach of the fluorescent lights, their armored hulls gleaming like the backs of sleeping beasts. She counted twelve. Then eighteen. Then lost count as more came into view, parked at odd angles, as if they had been arranged in haste rather than strategy. The usual quiet hum of the garage had been replaced by the growl of engines and the sharp bark of officers issuing orders.

Fiona’s footsteps slowed as she approached the entrance of the bank.

The other captains were already there. They stood near the armored vehicles in a loose circle, their expressions grim, their voices low enough that the echoes of the underground garage swallowed most of their conversation.

Even from a distance, Fiona could feel the tension hanging in the air. It was the kind of silence that only appeared before disasters, the kind soldiers learned to recognize long before blood was ever spilled.

The fluorescent lights above flickered occasionally, casting pale shadows across concrete walls stained by years of oil, dust, and old battles no one talked about anymore.

White Wolf noticed her first.

Commander Erika Cross stood with her arms folded tightly across her chest, silver hair tied back into a severe ponytail that sharpened her already cold appearance. Her pale gray eyes carried the same expression they always did, distant, calculating, almost predatory. She commanded the White Wolf Division, the Agency’s rapid-response unit deployed when missions had already spiraled beyond control.

"Phoenix," Erika said coldly. "You’re late."

Fiona’s expression did not change.

"It has nothing to do with you."

Erika’s lips twitched slightly. Not a smile. Something closer to irritation mixed with amusement.

"Arrogant bitch."

Fiona’s eyes narrowed instantly.

"What did you just say?" Her voice rose sharply, the temperature in the garage seeming to drop with it.

Erika tilted her head innocently.

"What?" she asked calmly. "Did I say something?"

"You."

Before the argument could explode further, another voice cut through the air like a blade.

"If you two want to fight," Elga said flatly, "do it somewhere else. I’m not in the mood to listen to barking dogs tonight."

The atmosphere immediately shifted.

Even Erika clicked her tongue and stepped back slightly.

Fiona glanced toward Elga and gave a small nod of acknowledgment.

Out of all the captains, Elga was the strongest in raw combat. People called her the Wild Beast of Lebius, a woman who charged through battlefields like a living monster. Rumors claimed she once crushed over a hundred demons barehanded during the Northern Collapse Incident. Some whispered she was not fully human at all.

Her golden eyes resembled those of a lion, and her wild amber hair only strengthened the image further. Standing near her felt like standing beside a predator barely pretending to be civilized.

"Elga," Fiona greeted.

"Phoenix." Elga’s deep voice rumbled through the garage. "Any idea why we were called here?"

"None."

Their eyes shifted toward the final captain standing slightly apart from the others.

Commander Lily Chen remained near one of the pillars, dressed in a pristine white coat untouched by the dirt surrounding them. She looked far too young to stand among monsters like the others, barely sixteen, with a face more suited for a classroom than a battlefield. Yet everyone in the Agency knew better than to underestimate her.

Lily was the mind behind countless victories. She could read demon movement patterns like other people read books. Entire operations had survived solely because she predicted attacks days before they happened. Some agents even believed her instincts bordered on supernatural.

But tonight... something was wrong.

Her pale eyes looked distant, unfocused, as though she was staring at something invisible standing directly in front of her.

"Lily?" Fiona called carefully.

Lily blinked slowly before turning toward them.

"Something’s wrong," she said quietly.

For some reason, those three simple words made the entire garage feel colder.

"I’ve been reviewing the reports since the summons arrived," Lily continued, her voice unusually tense. "The demon activity patterns don’t make sense anymore. Their movements are changing too rapidly. Entire regions are behaving outside prediction models."

She paused briefly.

Then her expression darkened.

"It feels like they’re reacting to something."

"To what?" Erika asked immediately.

Lily looked at them silently for several seconds.

And for the first time since any of them had known her.

Fear appeared in her eyes.

"I don’t know."

Silence swallowed the garage.

The last time all captains had been summoned together was ten years ago during the Japan Operation, a joint mission created to stop a demonic ritual capable of sacrificing an entire city. They had succeeded, but the victory came soaked in blood. Good soldiers never returned home. Entire squads vanished overnight. Some wounds from that operation had never truly healed.

And now... all captains had been called together again.

Everyone standing there understood what that meant.

The demons were preparing something.

And whatever it was.

It was large enough to make even the Agency afraid.

Soon the captains walked through the bank’s main lobby, their boots echoing on the marble floor. Civilians moved around them, ordinary people depositing checks, withdrawing cash, going about their lives without any idea that the men and women in dark coats were the only thing standing between them and annihilation.

The woman at the counter nodded as they passed, her fingers never pausing on the keyboard. She was Agency too. Everyone in this building was.

Fiona and the other captain followed that nod toward the back of the bank, past the safety deposit boxes and the employees-only door, to where an elevator waited that should not have fit into the building’s blueprints.

But the blueprints were lies, just like the bank’s legitimate business was a lie, just like the entire building was a mask hiding something far larger than any civilian could imagine.

The elevator was big enough to hold a hundred people. Fiona had ridden it many times, but she still felt the familiar lurch in her stomach as the doors closed and the floor began to drop.

A digital screen above the door counted down the floors, B1, B2, B3, until the numbers blurred together and she lost track of how deep they had descended.

The elevator hummed, a deep mechanical vibration that resonated in her chest, and when it finally stopped, the doors opened onto a sight that still took her breath away even after all these years.

The Libeus Agency headquarters stretched for miles beneath the city. It was a subterranean city in its own right, filled with technology that surpassed anything humanity had created on the surface, screens that displayed data from demonic hotspots around the world, labs where scientists studied captured demon tissue, armories filled with weapons forged from aether-infused steel. The ceiling arched high overhead, supported by pillars that had been carved from the bedrock itself, and the air smelled of ozone and antiseptic and the faint, coppery tang of old blood.

But something was wrong.

Fiona saw it immediately, the panic.

People were running, not walking. Documents spilled from overflowing carts as researchers hurried from one lab to another. Lesser squads rushed past in full combat gear, their weapons drawn, their faces tight with the particular kind of tension that came before a battle, not after one. Alerts flashed on every screen, red and urgent, demanding attention that no one had time to give.

"What the hell happened?" Erika muttered under her breath as a team of technicians rushed past them carrying a secured metal case containing hard drives.

The entire Agency headquarters had descended into controlled chaos. Agents moved rapidly through the hallways, screens flashed warning signals, and urgent voices echoed from every direction like the building itself had been thrown into panic.

"Don’t know yet." Elga’s deep voice rolled through the corridor like distant thunder. Her golden eyes slowly swept across the panicking personnel, and instead of concern, something far more dangerous appeared on her face. Excitement. "But I have a feeling that a demon is surely behind it." A grin spread across her lips, sharp and savage. "I suddenly feel a strong urge to kill."

Erika immediately looked disgusted.

"Oh, for the love of god, can you stop thinking with that battle-maniac brain for once?" she snapped. "Not every disaster needs you punching someone’s skull open."

Elga’s head slowly turned toward her.

The movement alone made nearby agents tense up nervously.

"What did you just say?" Elga asked quietly, though the dangerous calmness in her voice made her sound far more threatening than shouting ever could. "Do you want to eat my fucking fist?"

Erika crossed her arms coldly without backing down even slightly.

"What?" she replied flatly. "Did the oversized lioness finally learn how to threaten people properly?"

The atmosphere instantly became dangerous.

Even Fiona could feel the pressure beginning to rise between them. If these two actually started fighting inside headquarters, half the building would probably collapse before security could stop them. Nearby personnel had already started moving away carefully, pretending not to notice the incoming disaster.

Thankfully, before things escalated further, Lily spoke.

"Can both of you stop already?" she said tiredly, adjusting the files in her arms. "Chief Sara is waiting for us."

That single sentence killed the argument immediately.

Elga clicked her tongue and looked away while Erika sighed irritably under her breath. Despite being among the strongest captains in the entire Agency, neither of them wanted to provoke Sara when she was angry. Fighting high-level demons sounded significantly safer.

As the group continued walking through the hallway, Fiona’s thoughts drifted elsewhere entirely. Something Lily had said earlier continued bothering her, a small detail refusing to leave her mind. Slowly, Fiona glanced toward Lily again.

"Lily," Fiona called carefully, "when exactly did the demon activity start increasing?"

Lily blinked in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"The analysis reports," Fiona clarified. "You said there was a sudden spike in movement and sightings. When did it begin exactly?"

Lily slowed her steps slightly as she thought about it. Her brows furrowed while she mentally reviewed the timeline stored inside her near-perfect memory.

After several seconds, she finally answered.

"I’m almost certain it began around 6:30 this evening."

Fiona’s breath caught instantly.

The words echoed violently inside her head.

"I will end the demonic era for you."

Erza had spoken those exact words earlier.

At almost the exact same time.

For a moment, Fiona’s expression stiffened as unease crept through her chest. But almost immediately she pushed the thought aside. No... that was impossible. There was no logical connection between Erza’s declaration and sudden worldwide demon movement. The idea itself sounded ridiculous.

And yet...

For some reason, Fiona could not shake the feeling that the world had changed the moment the Dragon Queen made that promise.

To be continued...