The demon who had survived the massacre on the roof fled in despair, his bloodied hands pressing his own guts against his open abdomen to prevent them from falling out. The trail of black blood he left behind was the only evidence of his terror. As he leapt into the shadows, the last thing he heard coming from that inn was the piercing cry of a child, a small voice calling for its father in a scene where death had already taken hold.
He forced what remained of the Red Core's power to propel his legs forward. Cold sweat mixed with the corrosive heat of the Dao that still remained within him. In the distance, the lights of the inns came on and armed figures began to appear in the streets. They were the adventurers, trained mercenaries who were already pointing at the rooftops when they spotted silhouettes. Without the strength to fight, the inferior one descended to the ground and disappeared into the maze of alleys, running and crying like a wounded animal.
Meanwhile, deep inside the cave, the atmosphere was one of macabre euphoria. The demons returned from the surrounding area with their prey, animals, peasants, and captured travelers, and indulged in a feast, some fighting each other for pieces of meat. But the main topic of conversation was not food; it was the hunt for the ebony man.
Lord Takamura remained motionless on his throne, but his sensory horns vibrated with restrained anxiety. At his side, Tara moved frantically. She consulted ancient scrolls and books on the 7 Specialties, her blue flames flickering as she searched for any record of a dark-skinned man. She paced back and forth behind the throne, muttering about lost bloodlines and biological anomalies, but the records were clear: there had never been a "Special" with that description.
The Lord's silence was absolute, but the smoke coming from his face grew thicker by the minute. He waited for the outcome of the bet he had made with the Red Core.
The inferior one did not stop. He crossed the forest like an agonizing shadow, his human pupils fading as the Red Dao drained from his system. The moment he crossed the cave entrance, the camouflaged energy extinguished completely and he collapsed abruptly onto the damp ground.
Silence fell over the flock. Dozens of eyes turned to the fallen creature, but the shock was not at his defeat, but at what they saw: the open wounds on his back and abdomen were not closing. He could not regenerate.
Before the other demons could advance on the failure, Takamura's metallic voice cut through the cave:
"Come, child."
An invisible force, coming from the command of the blood pact, dragged the inferior's body across the floor to the foot of the throne. Tara, realizing the urgency, wasted no time. With a quick gesture, she grabbed a thin, half-dead human from a pile of prisoners and threw him in front of the wounded one.
The inferior, driven by biological desperation, threw himself on the human, chewing the flesh with the ferocity of a rabid dog. Around them, the other demons watched indignantly; some drooled with envy, seeing a subordinate receive an entire human effortlessly and all to himself, a rare privilege under Takamura's command.
As it consumed the prisoner's life, the demon's biology finally began to respond. Where once there had been dead, stagnant flesh, fibers began to pulse, trying to expel the residue that prevented healing. It took a deep breath, human blood dripping from the corners of its mouth, and looked at the Lord with eyes dilated with terror.
After devouring the human, the lesser demon finally caught his breath. His chest rose and fell violently as he tried to organize the dread in his mind.
"That being... is a demon! It can't be human!" he exclaimed, looking at his own hands, which were still shaking. "Even though... it looked like one, it's something that has escaped all the adventurers in that village so far."
Tara stepped forward, the blue flames in her hair flickering with her agitation.
"Speak calmly, worm. Tell me everything," she ordered, her voice cold as steel.
The inferior reported the massacre on the roof. He told how his companions had been torn apart like paper and how he himself had felt the ebony man's teeth in his flesh.
"He was going to devour me. If I hadn't had the Red Aura to camouflage my scent and give me that final push, I'd be gone... I tried to regenerate as soon as I got out of there, I swear I tried, but the flesh wouldn't obey. It was dead."
Tara approached and knelt beside the demon. She examined the deep gashes on his chest and shoulders. Her expression hardened.
"He has scars," she said, her voice thick with contained shock. "And they're not marks from swords or human metal."
A murmur of confusion spread through the cave. A novice demon leaned toward a veteran and whispered,
"What does that mean? We don't have scars, our skin always closes..."
"It means the end of our immortality," interrupted the deep voice of Takamura, who had risen from his throne.
The Lord approached, his shadow covering the wounded demon.
"Only Divine Dust can leave permanent scars on a demon's body," Takamura explained. "And only Divine Dust has the property of nullifying our natural regeneration. In order to heal, a demon touched by this dust is forced to taste human flesh immediately, or it will rot alive."
The silence in the cave became absolute.
Tara stood up, her eyes fixed on the Lord, her mind processing the anomaly.
"Lord, it doesn't add up," she said, her voice trembling with uncertainty. "You yourself explained: demons do not regenerate from cuts caused by weapons bathed in Divine Dust. If they survive, they are left with eternal scars, because the Dust nullifies our healing. But Divine Dust is absolute poison. If a demon touches it, it burns. If a human holds it for too long with their bare hands, their flesh is corroded to the bone. It is a substance that no being should be able to contain in their own biology."
She pointed to the lower one. "This worm was cut by the claws and teeth of that being. It wasn't a sword dipped in powder..."
Tara and Takamura looked at each other, and the name escaped their lips almost simultaneously:
"The Seven Flowers of the Sun."
Tara took a step back, the blue flames in her hair fluttering violently.
"Lord... Look at the harvest calendar. The Blue Festival begins tomorrow. The biomass density in that village is at its peak. Thousands of humans, Dao-filled adventurers, mercenaries... If he is one of the Flowers, he did not choose that place to rest. He chose it to process everything and everyone as fuel."
Takamura stood motionless, his shadow looming over the lesser demons like an oil slick. He absorbed Tara's idea and took it further, analyzing the anomaly.
"Perhaps that explains his condition," growled the Lord, his horns vibrating with the logic of the hunt. "You wonder why he seems so weak, why he drags himself down the road like a dying man. Perhaps that is one of his conditions for walking in the sun."
Tara looked at him, confused. Takamura continued:
"I think that for a being of that magnitude to walk in direct sunlight, he has to pay a biological price. He has to suppress his demon side, his core of pure energy, so as not to spontaneously combust. He enters a state of Forced Starvation. To inhabit the day, he becomes an empty shell, a dry stomach screaming for food. He arrives at the village exhausted not because he is sick, but because his body has consumed everything it had just to pass through the light."
Takamura gripped the hilt of his sword, the final understanding illuminating his instinct.
"The Blue Festival is the banquet he has prepared for himself. He will devour the village to regain his full power. And we, Tara... we are just the appetizer that had the misfortune of encountering him before his time."
The Lord let out a dark laugh that echoed off the stone walls. Takamura knew that if the ebony was a Sunflower in its feeding phase, an isolated band would be nothing more than a snack. Strength lies not only in muscle, but in risk management.
"If he is hungry, he is vulnerable," Takamura growled. "But an empty stomach cannot be sated with one or two inferiors. He will devour perhaps the province if we let him reach fullness.
The Lord gestured with two of his massive arms. "You," he pointed to the messenger who had seen the Afro in the sun, "and you," he pointed to the inferior who had almost been killed by the Afro. "Go ahead. You are my living proof."
Takamura decided that tonight would not be just about hunting, but about predatory politics. He would not face the Eighth Specialty alone if he could use the other packs as cannon fodder or temporary allies. He needed to alert the other lords of the night: what was in the village was not prey, it was a biological vacuum that would consume them all.
"Let's show the other packs what really walks among humans," Takamura said, finally leaving the cave. The cold night air hit his armor, and the smoke from his face mingled with the forest fog. "Let's see if the others have the stomach to face an ebony sun."