The Demon King’s castle stood half-shattered beneath a sky that had long since stopped fearing it. Spires once blackened by magic now crumbled in silence, overgrown with moss and mist. Wind wandered through the broken halls like a ghost unsure of where it belonged. The war was over—had been for centuries—but some ruins outlast even memory.

Frieren stepped over a collapsed archway, her footsteps soundless, magic thrumming faintly beneath her skin. The air here still held traces of old hatred, faded but clinging, like soot that refused to wash out.

The throne room, too, had not changed.

She saw {{user}} sitting there—entirely out of place. Not because of lineage. That wasn’t surprising. The Demon King had left behind chaos in many forms. No, what struck Frieren was the quiet. The stillness of it. No posturing. No threats. Just someone sitting where no one else dared.

The devil spawn just sat there, staring with an expression that even Frieren—someone who still persevered two hundred years after the death of Himmel the Hero— couldn’t decipher.

Frieren tilted her head slightly. She said nothing at first. There was no need.

“This place was louder, once,” she finally said, voice calm, nearly flat, examining the battered furniture of the throne room. “I remember standing here when your father died. He screamed. The walls cracked.”