The Yandere Demon Lords & Me-Chapter 25: The World is Watching - 1

Three events happened at the same time.

Far away in a candlelit prayer hall in the capital of Veledrin, a golden mirror cracked.

The monk attending it fainted instantly, his vision flooded with one repeating image:

A boy in white robes, standing beside a woman of light and flame, whispering words he wasn't allowed to understand.

In the west, deep in Asmodra's ruby sanctum, her seer-vines—planted centuries ago across the continent—burned.

The last one to ignite had coiled around an old chapel's ruins, long left to rot.

It screamed one name in her mind before it disintegrated...

Rein.

And beneath the Ivory Tower of Heroes, in a chamber carved from sanctified bone, an artifact began to pulse.

A relic of detection. Pure. Trusted. Forged to glow only when a being "touched by forbidden passion" had affected the world in a way that threatened heaven's order.

It didn't just glow now.

It sang.

The world heard the name before Rein did.

Somewhere else—on a merchant caravan crossing plague-wilted territory—two women in patched armor sat around a fire, hunched over a tattered parchment.

On it, scrawled in hurried hand:

SURVIVOR WITNESS REPORT:

BOY IN WHITE ROBES SEEN FLEEING CATHEDRAL IN FLAMES

WOMAN OF LIGHT IDENTIFIED AS EXILED SERAPHAEL

WITNESS STATED: "SHE CALLED HIM 'HUSBAND.'"

POTENTIAL DIVINE HOST? DEMON HYBRID?

ASCENDED FLAME-LORD?

The older woman squinted.

"Think it's true?"

The younger nodded. "He's got three death cults and a ruined prophecy tied to his face. If it's a lie, it's a really good one."

Elsewhere, in a holy briefing chamber lined with stained glass and steel, Saint Caelus—hero of the Kingdom of Light—read the same report.

He smiled.

"It begins."

Meanwhile...

Rein was eating cold roots under a half-dead tree.

He chewed slowly, then winced as the bark cut his tongue.

Again.

Across from him, Zeraka lay stretched in the mud, one thigh over the other, arms folded behind her head. Her tail flicked lazily.

"You know you're famous now," she said.

Rein looked up. "What?"

She yawned. "I smelled three scouting birds this morning. Tracked one. Punched it out of the sky. Had a name-hex stitched in its feathers."

She reached into her belt pouch and tossed him the scrap.

Rein caught it.

Looked down.

One word burned into the thin hide:

FLAME-WALKER.

He groaned. "Great. I get a title now."

"You also have a bounty."

"How much?"

"Too little to be flattering."

He squinted. "And how do you know all this?"

"I eavesdrop while I hunt."

"You hunt in complete silence."

"I listen while I kill."

She rolled to her side and grinned.

"You're not invisible anymore, flame-boy."

Rein leaned back against the tree, head tipped toward the ashen sky. freēnovelkiss.com

He knew she was right.

He could feel it, too.

The weight in the air.

The way the world had started to tilt slightly toward him.

Somewhere far away, a holy scrying pool whispered,

"He moves again."

And behind it, a shadowed woman in ceremonial armor smiled without warmth.

_____________

The banners of the Hero Party of Light flew high above their caravan.

White silk.

Gold trim.

A sunburst emblem at the center with thirteen swords pointed downward, "peacefully."

The implication wasn't subtle.

Beneath that emblem, monsters died, temples burned, and dissenters were purified in public squares while priests wrote it off as "moral hygiene."

And at the center of it all, leading on horseback like a painting come to life, rode Saint Caelus.

Hair like spun gold.

Eyes like crystal sunlight.

Armor that gleamed without polish.

And a smile that never quite reached his eyes.

He was the kind of man artists prayed to be allowed to paint shirtless, and the kind of man Rein would hate on sight.

At the moment, Caelus rode at the head of his procession through a ravaged hamlet that still smelled faintly of rot and charcoal.

His eyes scanned the ruins like he was searching for ghosts he hadn't yet converted to "martyrdom."

Beside him trotted a knight in pale armor with a ribbon-bound war hammer strapped to her back.

"Still no survivors?" she asked.

Caelus shook his head.

"One. A child. Swore he saw the Cathedral burn from here. Said the sky bled. Said the woman sang." He smiled thoughtfully. "Said a man in white robes ran through the fire and didn't burn."

The knight swallowed.

"You believe it?"

"Oh, I believe the truth is worse."

He gestured ahead, toward a large blackened stone embedded in the scorched earth—a broken altar fragment.

Its surface was charred. But under the soot, lines glowed faintly.

Scripture.

"He touched it," Caelus said, dismounting. "Seraphael's altar. And she called him 'husband.'"

He crouched beside the stone, ran one gloved hand across the glyphs.

His touch didn't ignite them.

That privilege was reserved.

But he didn't need flame to see power.

He could smell it.

"She woke for him. That makes him not just corrupted."

He stood. Looked back at his knights.

"It makes him the conduit."

The knights behind him exchanged glances.

A man with a silver lance spoke. "If she's alive, we'll need to send a cleansing battalion."

Caelus smiled—gently, patiently.

"No."

He pointed forward.

"We follow the boy."

"Capture?"

"Purify."

A hush passed over the group. No one spoke.

Only the soft creaking of saddle leather and the distant call of crows.

Caelus turned toward the rising hills.

"Wherever he walks, the demon-marked follow."

"Wherever they follow, the world breaks."

Far behind them, back at the remains of the village, a single child hiding in a cellar clutched a torn piece of robe.

White fabric. Singed.

Still warm.