Welcome Home

A biting gale whipped through the air like an invisible lash.

Striking every stumbling figure in the procession.

This was a silent caravan.

Silent save for labored breaths, the dragging scrape of frost-numbed feet on gravel paths, and the occasional cough wrung forth by the cold.

Their garments hung in tatters.

Many wrapped themselves in filthy, threadbare woolens or hides, bound tight with crude grass ropes.

Yet still they shivered in the wind.

Faces etched with the ravages of frost and endless trek.

Skin roughened, lips cracked and purpled, eyes weaving bewilderment, bone-deep weariness, and a lingering, herd-like panic that no flight could shake.

These were the first batch of returnees “deported” from the Winter Territory.

Around a thousand souls.

Yet they snaked forward like a frost-stiffened, dying serpent.

Crawling slow and arduous toward the city at the horizon’s edge.

The place they would soon call “home.”

Months prior, word of their Demon Lord’s cool defeat at the Hero Lucia’s hands had reached their villages.

Along with hordes of humans.

Crusaders, adventurers, mercenaries, noble private armies…

Without their Demon Lord’s aegis, it was merely a garden laid bare for ravage.

Malice incarnate had swarmed.

The garrison left behind—including the Demon Lord’s former captains—had scattered like chaff in the wind.

After all, bereft of their lord’s protection, lesser commanders stood no chance against those Heroes.

And against the Holy Church’s crusade, an army robbed of unified command crumbled utterly.

“The Demon Lord has fallen!

It’s all over!

Flee for your lives!”

Panic had spread like wildfire.

The Demon Clan comprised myriad tribes and individuals.

United only under the banner of their Demon Lord.

When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter.

All knew: with the Demon Lord defeated, the [Evernight Territory] was no sanctuary.

Thus, in calamity’s grasp, each fled their separate ways.

But other lands offered no sure haven—

This lot, nearest the Winter Territory, had no choice but the snowpeaks.

And over that span, the chill had bitten deep.

So when word came of the Demon Lord of Evernight—Bai An’s—return and the order for repatriation,

Many Demon Clansfolk had even sighed in relief.

But…

Could their former Demon Lord truly welcome them back?

They had forsaken her—and their domain.

Fled to foreign soil—

Though mere months had passed, desertion remained a stain of shame.

The returning refugees harbored thick unease and hesitation.

Yet they trod the road home all the same.

At the caravan’s fore, Winter knights astride frostwolves cleared the path in silence.

Their heavy armor rimed with white hoarfrost.

Breath clouding the air in white plumes.

And at the very vanguard rode an outsized frostwolf behemoth.

The frostwolf’s ice-blue eyes scanned the returning throng ahead.

Then the nearing silhouette of Evernight City.

Its rider’s face held no superfluous expression.

“Almost there—hold on just a bit longer!

Evernight City lies ahead!”

From the column’s midst, a figure—evidently elected temporary head, a minotaur with a broken horn—shouted with forced volume.

Straining to rally the returnees.

But his voice reaped only faint echoes.

And more numbed stares.

Many merely propelled near-lifeless legs by rote.

Eyes vacant, fixed ahead.

The Demon Lord’s decree: return directly to Evernight City.

No straying to ancestral soils.

But what did that portend?

Punishment?

Or conscription as brute labor for the territory’s rebuild?

All harbored dread for their fates.

Moods tangled to extremity.

Faint relief warred with vast terror of the unknown—

And what awaited: hope, or deeper despair and toil?

No one knew.

When the caravan at last reached the crude outer sentry post of Evernight City—cobbled from sharpened stakes and stones—the sky had grayed to dawn.

Pallid light scarcely illuminating the land.

Beyond the post, the sight that met the returnees’ eyes plunged their already leaden, labyrinthine hearts to nadir.

No imagined cheers of welcome.

No cozy campfires.

Only ruins and encampments more ramshackle than the Winter camps.

And atop those ruins, figures toiling like swarming ants.

Shanties stitched into clusters.

Air thick with lingering dust.

And the scent of poorly cooked, subpar fare.

This, their new home?

A vast despondency engulfed the returnees’ hearts in an instant.

At that moment, a figure appeared before the sentry.

She stood not on any dais, merely there in quiet vigil.

Yet she seized every gaze at once.

The Demon Lord of Evernight, Vivian.

No ornate battle armor or regalia of supreme dignity.

Just a relatively plain deep-purple daily garb.

Her skirt hem brushing the scorched earth at her feet.

Vivian’s back stood ramrod straight.

Her crimson demonic eyes, like flames, swept calmly over this first wave of returnees.

Half a pace behind her loomed the head maid, Aria, expression solemn.

Farther back: ad hoc stewards, a handful of order-keeping soldiers, and the little succubus Luna, clutching a ledger board in tense grip.

No grand rite.

Merely the Demon Lord herself and her scant retinue.

Standing in silent wait.

Yet this sufficed to fill every returnee with awe and dread—

They had never dreamed their exalted Demon Lord would deign to greet them personally.

And Vivian’s gaze roved slowly over those frost-bitten, numbed faces.

Over their ragged garb and the blue-purple chill-marks from the Winter Territory.

These were her people.

They had endured war.

Endured exile.

Now, bearing scars aplenty and vast fear of the unknown, they returned to this land likewise scarred.

The column ground to a halt.

A deathly hush blanketed all.

Save the wind’s howl—

The returnees huddled in unease.

Daring not lift eyes to the Demon Lord.

Yet stealing peeks at that purple silhouette.

What faced them now?

The Demon Lord’s scorn?

Her rebuke?

Or… retribution for flight?

Or mercy?

No one knew.

The lead frostwolf advanced at a measured pace.

Halting before Vivian.

Dipping its head faintly:

“Demon Lord of Evernight, the first batch of returnees—totaling one thousand thirty-three—has been escorted.”

“Thank you.”

Vivian nodded to the frostwolf.

Her gaze returning to the silent, fearful throng.

Then she stepped forward.

“People of the Evernight Territory, welcome home.”

She surveyed them all.

Her crimson eyes held no reproach.

No lofty pity.

Only a serene acceptance, like still waters.

And in her voice rang a near-brutal candor.