Chapter 37: The Demon King's Obsession With Co-existence

The moment they stepped past the tree line into the city proper, both of them stopped walking.

Everything had turned to gold. It looked like an entire civilization had been dipped in metal and left to dry mid motion. People stood frozen wherever they'd been standing, birds hung suspended in flight overhead, trees kept their leaves stiff and glinting, and the buildings themselves had become solid, gleaming metal. Off to the side a lake sat perfectly still, its surface no longer water but something hard and reflective, catching the light like a giant mirror laid flat.

"Okay," Subaru said slowly, "this is a lot."

The streets had gone gold too, every cobblestone shining under a sky that seemed almost embarrassed to shine down on something this strange. A handful of animals dotted the road, a dog mid bark, a cat mid stretch, all locked into whatever pose they'd held when the disaster happened.

A smell hung in the air, faint but persistent, not quite metallic and not quite fresh, the kind that made the back of your throat itch for no obvious reason.

They reached the large gates marking the entrance to the main city, tall and imposing and, unfortunately, closed.

"We could fly over," Übel suggested, already summoning her staff.

"Yeah, that works." Subaru simply lifted off the ground, no staff or wings required, the perks of being a demon finally paying off for something practical instead of just terrifying.

Übel followed a beat later, flying with the help of her staff, and together they cleared the top of the gate and drifted down into the city on the other side.

Inside, it got worse.

Golden people lined the streets in every direction, frozen mid stride, mid conversation, mid laugh, their faces locked on whatever emotion had crossed them the instant it happened. Even the fountains had turned to gold, water and all, caught in glittering arcs that would never fall.

The stillness was so complete it pressed against Subaru's chest like a physical thing. The place felt hollow in a way that had nothing to do with sound, an absence under the golden surface like rot under polished wood.

They walked further in, neither saying much, both scanning the frozen crowd for anything that might explain what had happened.

That was when Subaru saw her.

A woman, clearly pregnant, one hand resting over her belly, her expression caught between surprise and fear, frozen solid in gold at the side of the street. Subaru's stomach twisted at the sight, something ugly and sharp lodging behind her ribs.

Übel glanced at the statue with mild curiosity and nothing more, tilting her head like she was looking at an interesting rock instead of a person.

"That's messed up," Subaru said quietly.

"Is it?" Übel shrugged. "She's not in pain. Doesn't look like it hurt."

"We don't know that."

Subaru stared at the frozen woman a moment longer, trying to make sense of the sick feeling in her gut. Why would a demon do this? For fun? For sport, the way Revolte had described hunting back in that clearing? That explanation didn't fit. There was no violence here, no blood, no mess. Just stillness and gold. Whatever had done this didn't seem to be aiming at killing anyone, maybe it was something looking for an audience it never bothered to collect.

An extremely fast arm cut through the air toward them, and both Subaru and Übel dodged on instinct, Übel a half second faster. Subaru leaped backward into a hover and summoned a gun: the SCAR, in one smooth motion, leveling the barrel at the source of the attack.

The figure before them was extremely tall, with long slicked back hair somewhere between burgundy and magenta, and tired blue eyes that looked like they hadn't slept properly in centuries. Two long curved horns rose from his temples. He wore a high collared dark green shirt that stopped just past his knees, paired with red gloves, and a large blue coat hung over his left shoulder alone, an oddly specific choice that made him look more unsettling instead of fashionable.

He moved again, aiming straight for Übel at a speed that would have ended her if Subaru hadn't already pulled the trigger.

The shot connected, and the figure yanked his coat up in front of himself just in time, the fabric shimmering and hardening into solid gold as it took the impact.

Subaru kept firing for a full minute while the coat held against every shot, then lowered the weapon slowly, breathing hard.

The man lowered his coat too, studying her with more curiosity than hostility.

"A demon traveling with a human," he said, calm despite the last minute of chaos. "Strange."

"Yeah," Subaru snapped, still hovering, weapon still raised. "But that does NOT mean you get to attack people like some kind of lunatic!"

"My apologies. I was merely protecting the city."

Subaru lowered herself until her boots touched the golden cobblestones with a soft click. Übel drifted down beside her, staff gripped tight, her eyes narrowed with wary curiosity rather than fear.

"Who are you?" Subaru demanded.

"My name is Macht." He inclined his head, studying her with those tired blue eyes, something thoughtful crossing his face. "And who might you be, radiating a miasma like that?"

───✧───

Übel still couldn't process what had happened in the last twenty minutes of her life.

When Subaru first told her they needed to go to Weise Region because she had questions that required answers, Übel had pictured something manageable. A moderately dangerous demon, maybe. Something they could handle with a bit of teamwork and a lot of improvisation, the way they handled everything. She had not pictured standing face to face with one of the Seven Sages of Destruction, the strongest demons in the recorded history of their kind.

Macht was tall enough to make the ceiling feel closer than it should, and his calm sat wrong on him in a way Übel couldn't name. Most powerful things she'd met gave off tension, coiled energy waiting for an excuse. Macht gave off nothing. He simply existed, still and patient, and her skin prickled every time she looked at him.

That calm was the first shock of the afternoon. The second was their surroundings.

They sat in a room made entirely of gold, every surface gleaming under soft light that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. The couch pressed hard against her thighs, metal making a poor imitation of cushions, and Übel kept shifting her weight trying to find a position that didn't feel like sitting on a very expensive rock. A low golden table stood in front of them with a golden teapot and two golden cups, one already poured and set before her.

"I was not aware that you had already arrived," Macht said, voice smooth and unbothered.

"It's been a few months," Subaru replied, equally calm, like they were discussing the weather and not her presence in an ancient demon's golden fever dream of a city.

"Ah, I see."

That exchange alone left Übel's mind spinning, but the third shock unsettled her more than the golden furniture or the Sage's stillness, and it was simpler and stranger. Macht treated Subaru with something close to deference, careful and measured, and ignored Übel completely. He hadn't looked at her once since they entered the room. He had poured her tea without a word and slid the cup toward her with the mechanical politeness he might extend to furniture.

Übel drank it anyway, because refusing tea poured by a Sage of Destruction seemed like an unnecessarily bold way to die, and because it tasted excellent.

"I suppose you are heading toward the Castle," Macht said, folding his hands in his lap.

"Ende," Subaru confirmed. "That's where I'm going."

"The Castle, then." His expression shifted, subtle and hard to read. "An unexpected development. I never paid much attention to what Schlacht used to say, and yet here I find myself, once again, considering his words."

Subaru sat up a little straighter. "I keep hearing that name. Schlacht. Is he actually dead?"

"He was killed by the Hero of the South," Macht said, in the same flat tone he'd used for everything so far. “I too, almost died.”

"So it's true!" Subaru shifted and glanced sideways at Übel with something careful in her face. "I have some questions for him. Alone, if that's okay." Her eyes flicked toward Übel. "Could you give us some space?"

Übel blinked, caught off guard, but recovered fast and offered a smile that came easier than she expected.

"Sure."

She rose from the couch, grateful to escape it, and made her way to the wide balcony doors. Outside, the golden city spread beneath her in every direction, rooftops and streets and frozen figures catching the light in a way that would have been beautiful under any other circumstances.

Instead it just felt wrong.

Übel leaned on the railing and thought about everything she'd seen since the gates. Subaru had questions for a Sage of Destruction, and that Sage had greeted her with a familiarity that suggested history between them, or at least expectation. That told Übel something. Subaru had to be demon royalty, no ordinary demon wandering the continent with a convenient knack for pulling weapons out of thin air. Nothing else explained how Macht spoke to her, the deference under his calm, the way he'd assumed at once that she was heading to Ende and the throne waiting there.

But did Macht know the rest? Did he know that under all that borrowed power and mimicked confidence sat a human mind, dropped into this body from somewhere else, still figuring out how any of it worked? Probably, Übel decided. Subaru had said months without any hesitation, an obvious reference to time spent elsewhere, some earlier meeting Übel hadn't been part of, and Macht hadn't reacted. No surprise, no confusion, nothing to suggest the idea was new to him.

That told Übel what she needed to know. Whatever Subaru was, whatever strange, contradictory thing she'd become, Macht already understood it and had decided it deserved respect rather than suspicion.

This was going to be a fascinating chapter of whatever story Übel had wandered into.

And oddly, learning that Subaru carried a human mind in a demon's body hadn't pushed Übel away the way it might have pushed anyone else. It had done the opposite and made the whole strange partnership make sense. The awkward mannerisms, the odd references nobody else understood, the flashes of fear and grief that felt too raw and specific to belong to an ordinary demon. All of it fit once Übel had the missing piece, and the clarity was comforting, like finding the answer to a puzzle she hadn't known she was working on.

She stared out over the golden rooftops, watching the light scatter across the frozen figures below, people locked in whatever moment had claimed them, never to move again unless something changed that.

Very soon, Übel thought, something is going to change here.

She smirked.

───✧───

"Tell me everything you know about me," she said. "Or anything you know."

Macht regarded her for a long moment, expression unreadable, and folded his hands in his lap.

"I am a demon of freedom," he said. "I never enjoyed being ordered around by anyone. Not Schlacht, and certainly not the Demon King himself. Because of that, I never made much effort to learn what he was doing with his time. Most of it passed me by."

Subaru's sighed. "So you know nothing? That's it?"

"I did not say nothing." Macht's tone stayed level despite the sharpness in her voice. "I know fragments. Pieces gathered secondhand, overheard in passing, nothing I sought out."

"Then… tell me the fragments."

He studied her a moment longer before continuing. "The Demon King, much like myself, was obsessed with the idea of coexistence between our kind and humanity. Unlike myself, he was willing to go to considerable lengths to achieve it. He conducted experiments."

Something cold settled low in Subaru's stomach.

"I am not fully certain how much of this is accurate," Macht continued, "but from what I gathered, he tried repeatedly to produce a child. Half demon, half human."

Subaru stared at him, unmoving, waiting for the rest.

"Every human woman he used for this gave birth to something entirely demon. No trace of human blood survived. The children, if you could call them that, devoured their mothers from within before either of them drew breath outside the womb."

The words landed flat and heavy in the golden room, and Subaru's stomach twisted harder.

"However," Macht went on, "I once overheard a fellow Sage discussing this with Schlacht. According to that conversation, the Demon King eventually succeeded. He found a way to create something that survived. Half human. Half demon."

A chill crept up Subaru's spine and settled at the base of her skull.

"I never learned whether that success produced a living child," Macht said. "Whether the experiment reached completion, or only proved theoretically possible without ever bearing a result. But seeing you now, radiating an aura no ordinary demon has produced, I draw an obvious conclusion. He succeeded. Though judging by your age, it happened considerably later than the conversation I overheard all those years ago."

Silence stretched through the golden room, thick and suffocating.

"So you're saying," Subaru's voice came out unsteady, thinner than she wanted, "that I'm an experiment? Some kind of lab product? The delusion of a king who wanted something he couldn't have?" Her hands curled into fists on her knees. "I had a life before all this. Before I woke up in this body. Real memories. A real family. That has to mean something!"

Macht's expression didn't change. "I am not knowledgeable enough to speak to that. I have only relayed what I heard."

"Then who would know more?" Subaru leaned forward, desperation cracking through the composure she'd held since they sat down. "Is there a way to reverse this? To undo whatever he did to me? Anyone who might actually have answers instead of fragments?"

Macht held her gaze for a long, deliberate moment, something unreadable passing behind his tired blue eyes.

"Solitär," he said at last.

Subaru's breath caught. "I've heard that name before." Her mind raced to place it, some scrap of overheard conversation or half remembered warning surfacing from the fog of the last several months. "Where can I find them?"

"I do not know."

"Damn it." Subaru sank back against the golden couch, the metal cold and hard beneath her, matching the sudden hollow in her chest.

Macht's gaze lingered on her, something almost like sympathy flickering across his unreadable face before it vanished beneath that same unsettling calm.

"But," he said quietly, "I believe you will see her soon enough."

───✧───

Übel wandered through the golden garden, admiring how even the flowers had turned solid and metallic, their petals frozen mid bloom in a way that felt peaceful despite everything else about the city. Somewhere nearby a golden butterfly hung in midair, wings caught in permanent motion, and she poked it once out of curiosity before Subaru's voice cut through the quiet.

"Hey."

Übel turned and saw Subaru coming down the path with the flat, unreadable look she'd worn since leaving the meeting room.

"So," Übel said, falling into step beside her, "should I start calling you your majesty now? Bow when you enter a room? Announce your arrival with trumpets?"

Subaru elbowed her hard in the ribs.

"Ow." Übel rubbed the spot, unbothered. "You seem like you're in a bad mood. Did he tell you that you're some long lost heir of the old Demon King, destined to end humanity and rule over the ashes of the world?"

Subaru stared at her, disgust plain on her face. "You seriously need to get your head examined."

"I did, actually. They said I was fine."

"They were probably too terrified to say otherwise."

"Yup," Übel agreed cheerfully, not even trying to argue.

Silence settled between them as they reached a golden bench near the center of the garden and sat, the metal cold even through their clothes. Übel stretched her arms above her head and glanced at Subaru's troubled face.

"Well," she said eventually, "if you got your answers, maybe we should..."

Subaru went rigid, nose twitching as she sniffed the air.

Übel paused. "What?"

"I smell blood."

"Oh?" Übel raised an eyebrow. "Definitely not mine, I'm not on my cycle right now. So there's another human here? In a city full of golden statues?"

"Yeah."

"Where's it coming from?"

Subaru stood and scanned the horizon past the edge of the garden, past the shimmering barrier around the city, until her gaze locked on something distant. She raised a hand and pointed at a hill just outside the barrier's reach.

"There."

Übel followed her finger and squinted at the faint shape of the hill, nothing remarkable about it from this far. "So, are we going to check it out?"

"Should we?"

"If it's someone following us, we should probably get rid of them before it becomes a problem."

Subaru crossed both arms in front of her chest in a firm X and shook her head hard.

"No killing!”

Yeah, well, this is a lore arc, full of details from canon. There will be my interpretations regarding demon system and some other stuff.

I recently published a story where Tanya is reborn as a "half-demon", you can check it out if you're interested in a Frieren x Saga of Tanya The Evil crossover.

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