The news reached Hell before the sun had even set that same day.
Beelzebub sent it himself, through the black mirror Ravel carried with him everywhere they went.
What he sent was short, only a handful of words, but enough to set half the Hall of Gluttony into motion within hours.
He had found what they were looking for.
And he requested that part of his formal honor guard, no longer disguised seekers but true soldiers, be sent to the surface to accompany him back to that village the following morning.
That night, Beelzebub did not sleep at all.
He sat by the small campfire with Ravel, Korr, and Ilyen, watching the embers slowly die down, replaying every detail of that brief conversation in the field.
He had lived more than four thousand years, had watched kingdoms rise and fall, had stood before creatures capable of leveling mountains with a single blink.
Yet nothing in all that time had prepared him for the feeling that rose in him looking into the eyes of a three-year-old boy planting seeds in his family’s field.
“You’re certain you want to do this tomorrow morning?” Ravel asked, breaking the silence.
“Bringing soldiers straight into that village? The villagers will panic.”
“I know,” Beelzebub answered, calm as always, though his eyes stayed on the fire.
“But if this prophecy is true, and I’m growing more certain by the hour that it is, hiding the truth any longer will only make things harder later. Better the world learn now, on my terms, than later, on terms I can’t control.”
Ilyen studied him for a long moment, then gave a slow nod, though doubt still lingered in her expression.
The next morning, the sky above Yeun was still veiled in a thin mist when the villagers began stepping out of their homes to start the day.
What they saw was no longer four calm strangers walking down the village road.
What they saw were dozens of dark-robed figures emerging from the mist at the end of the road, moving in tight formation, an aura radiating off them so heavy the air around the village itself seemed to shift, colder, sharper, like the moment just before a great storm breaks.
At the front of that line walked the man the villagers had known yesterday only as a friendly merchant who’d complimented their fields.
Beelzebub, no longer wearing any disguise, dressed now in the dark ceremonial robes of Gluttony, marked with its symbols, his face the same as before, but something around him now made it instantly clear to anyone who saw him that this was no longer an ordinary man.
The first scream broke from an old woman near the well, who dropped her bucket entirely and ran for her house, shouting for her children by name.
Within seconds, panic spread like fire through dry straw.
Doors slammed shut.
Children were pulled inside by their parents.
A few men grabbed whatever could pass for a weapon, hoes, sickles, wooden staffs, though everyone in the village knew exactly how useless that resistance would be against the figures now standing on their main road.
Bram, out in the field with Lucifer as usual, heard the screaming and turned at once.
What he saw made his blood run cold.
Dozens of demons stood at the edge of the village, and at the front of them all, the man who had praised his field just yesterday now walked straight toward them, toward his son, unhurried but unstoppable.
“Lucifer,” Bram whispered, his voice shaking, his hand pulling his son close on pure reflex, trying to shield him with his own body even as he understood exactly how meaningless that shield would be.
“Behind me. Now.”
Lucifer didn’t move.
He watched the approaching figure with the same calm he’d shown the day before, even as the entire village collapsed into chaos and fear around him.
Something inside him, far beneath that calm surface, had begun to shift, like puzzle pieces slowly finding their places without needing to be told where they belonged.
Beelzebub stopped a few steps away from them.
And then, before the entire village, watching in horror and disbelief, one of the seven rulers of Hell, a figure whose name made even human kings tremble, knelt.
Not a bow.
A full kneel, one knee pressed into the muddy soil of the field, his head bowed low, like a soldier before a commander long awaited, finally returned from a distant war.
“Your Grace,” Beelzebub said, his voice carrying clearly across the sudden, frozen silence of the village.
“We have come to receive you. The true King.”
Behind him, dozens of other demons followed, kneeling one by one along the muddy village road, forming a line that stretched as far as the eye could see, as if all of Hell had come to witness this moment.
Bram froze completely, his hand still gripping Lucifer’s shoulder, his eyes darting wildly between the kneeling figure and his own son, trying to make sense of something no farmer’s common sense could ever hope to grasp.
Inside Lucifer’s mind, behind a face still as calm as ever, one thought floated clearly, quiet, almost amused, like someone who had finally understood a joke that had been told for a long time without ever getting the punchline.
Why are so many demon kings kneeling in front of me?
The panic, briefly stilled by that sudden hush, broke open again a few seconds later, this time from a different direction.
One of the demons in the line, a heavily built officer with his face half hidden behind a dark helmet, stepped forward without being asked, his voice loud enough to fill the whole village.
“Your Grace has been found!” he called out, his eyes burning with an excitement tangled up with something far more dangerous.
“Give us your command! This village, this world, all of it will kneel the moment they know Your Grace has risen! Let us show those who doubted—”
“Silence,” Beelzebub cut in, without lifting his head from his kneeling position, though his voice was sharp enough to shut the officer up instantly.
But the damage was already done.
Several other demons further back in the line began shifting restlessly, some exchanging glances in a way that made Bram’s stomach turn cold.
He’d lived long enough to recognize that particular look, the same look he’d once seen on mercenaries passing through the village years ago, not long before another village, far to the south, had been burned to the ground for reasons no one had ever fully explained.
“If this village has been hiding the True King,” one demon in the back muttered, loud enough for others nearby to hear, “wouldn’t it be safer to leave no witnesses behind? Humans talk. Humans betray.”
The whisper spread quickly, demon to demon, like fire creeping silently beneath dry straw, well out of earshot of Beelzebub, who remained kneeling, too absorbed in his own moment to notice what was beginning to stir behind him.
Some of the demons started to move, hands drifting toward weapons, eyes shifting away from Lucifer toward the houses ringing the village, toward the frightened faces peeking out from behind windows and half-closed doors.
Bram saw that movement, and for the first time since the demons had emerged from the mist, he truly believed this was the end.
Not just for himself.
For all of Yeun.
“Lucifer,” he whispered again, his voice nearly breaking, “run. Now. Run for the trees, don’t look back—”
“No.”
That single word, spoken in a small but utterly unshakable voice, seemed to stop time itself for a moment.
Lucifer stepped forward, out from beneath his father’s protective hand, standing alone between his terrified father and Beelzebub still kneeling in the mud.
For the first time since his birth, his small body, usually so still, held itself differently, as if something far larger than three years old was standing just behind it.
“Beelzebub,” he said, his voice still a child’s voice, but every word carrying a weight that voice had no business holding.
“Raise your head.”
Beelzebub slowly lifted his face, looking up at the small figure standing before him with a mixture of reverence and something close to awe.
“Whoever harms a single person in this village,” Lucifer continued, his eyes now fixed on the line of demons growing restless behind Beelzebub, “will die. This isn’t a warning. It’s an order.”
The silence that fell after those words felt far heavier than the silence before it.
The demons who had begun shifting restlessly froze in place, hands halfway to their weapons stopping mid-air.
The officer who had shouted so eagerly a moment before now stood rigid, the excitement draining from his face and leaving it pale behind his helmet.
Beelzebub himself stared at Lucifer for a long moment, and on his face, for the first time since they’d met, something close to a faint smile appeared, a mixture of relief and something deeper than relief.
“As Your Grace commands,” he said, lowering his head again, deeper this time than before.
Behind him, one by one, the demons who had grown restless began kneeling again, hands that had nearly reached for weapons now folded tightly across their chests, heads bowed in a silence entirely different from the panic that had nearly broken loose seconds before.
Bram stood frozen where he was, staring at his son’s small back standing tall among dozens of creatures that had, moments ago, been ready to burn the entire village down, and understood, with a feeling tangled between pride, fear, and something he had no name for at all, that the child he’d always thought was simply quiet and calm had, all along, been carrying something far larger than he could ever have imagined.
Lucifer turned, looking back at his father, and for a moment, the expression on his face softened, becoming, once again, the small child Bram knew.
“Everything’s going to be alright, Dad,” he said, quietly, meant only for Bram to hear.
But behind him, hundreds of eyes from across the village, peering out from behind windows and half-open doors, had just watched a three-year-old farmer’s son command demon kings to kneel, and not one of them was certain those words were true.
Because far beyond the thinning mist, at the far end of the village road, something else was drawing closer, something even Beelzebub himself had never felt before, a presence far older, far more patient, one that had just felt the tremor of what had happened that morning from clear across the world, in a place where a seal, weakened for thousands of years, had just shuddered a little harder than before.