The Demon King's Guide To Not Getting Defeated By A Paladin-Chapter 35 - 34 — The Sky With Two Moons

Quinn’s first thought was that the air tasted different.

His second thought was that he wasn’t dead—which, considering the last thing he remembered was a literal god exploding in front of him, came as a surprise.

He groaned, turning over onto his back, the dirt soft and strangely warm beneath him. For a long second, he just lay there, blinking at the sky above.

Blue. Not like Earth’s blue. Not even like Pandora’s endless, storm-torn skies. This blue was crystalline. Sharp. Perfect. And overhead, two moons floated in lazy crescents, silver and pale lavender, casting twin shadows across a landscape that looked... wrong. Like the remains of a broken dream.

Quinn sat up slowly. "Okay... that’s new."

All around him, the land stretched in rippling dunes of cracked, colorless stone. Glass shards jutted from the ground like crystal flowers. Some floated in midair, drifting lazily like leaves on water, catching and scattering the strange light.

It was beautiful. It was terrifying.

And he was very much not alone.

A low groan to his left made him scramble upright, muscles aching. "Lilith?" he called, scanning the strange terrain. "Asami?"

A few feet away, Lilith stirred. She pushed herself up with one hand, the other brushing wild strands of brown hair from her face. Her skin glistened with sweat, dirt streaked across one cheek, but her eyes—those shimmering, unearthly eyes—burned bright.

"I’m gonna kill something," she muttered, coughing once.

"Please don’t let it be me," Quinn said, limping toward her.

She looked up—and gave a tired smirk. "Depends. Did you blow up a deity-sized monster in my face?"

He stopped in front of her, arms crossed. "Technically, I think it exploded on its own."

Asami groaned somewhere off to the side. "Ugh... I think I bit my tongue..."

"Welcome to the apocalypse," Quinn said.

"I don’t think this is the apocalypse," Lilith murmured, looking around, eyes scanning the floating glass, the impossible horizon. "Not exactly."

Quinn followed her gaze. "Then where are we?"

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she stood, brushed dust from her hips, and turned in a slow circle. The air shifted around her, reacting—pulsing.

Quinn felt it too. A thrum, deep in his bones.

Then—Asami stumbled up to join them, hand on her sword, face pale but alert. "Is this..." she hesitated, then blinked up at the moons. "Okay. Nope. This is not Gran’le. This isn’t even near Gran’le. Did we die?"

"If we did," Quinn said, "then the afterlife has great lighting."

Lilith gave a soft snort. "We’re not dead." She tilted her head toward a swirling mass of glass that floated in the air like a jellyfish made of mirrors. "This place... it’s a tear."

"A what now?" Quinn asked.

She stepped closer to one of the floating shards, letting her fingers trail through the air near it. "A tear in space. A broken fold in the veil between realms. Like... stepping into the dream of something ancient."

Quinn rubbed his temples. "That makes no sense."

"Good," Lilith said sweetly. "Because if it did, I’d be worried you were secretly a god too."

Asami swore under her breath. "I don’t care what this place is. I just want to know how to get out."

Quinn stepped beside Lilith, watching the way the light refracted through the air. "Is this your doing?"

Lilith hesitated. "Not entirely." Then, softly, "But I did summon him."

Silence. Just the wind, brushing against glass and dust.

Quinn turned toward her, eyes narrowing. "You summoned that thing? That... that titanic, world-breaking thing?"

Lilith’s jaw tensed. "His name is the Custodian of the Wing. He’s not a thing. He’s a being. An ancient one. Bound to my bloodline."

Asami choked. "Custodian of the Wing? That sounds like a poetic title for a sky demon who eats planets."

Lilith laughed—actually laughed, her voice low and sultry in the strange air. "He’s not that dramatic. He only eats cities."

"Oh, well that’s better," Quinn muttered, eyes wide.

He watched her closely now. Something was different. Her presence felt... larger. More commanding. More her.

"You..." he said slowly. "You weren’t just trying to hold the barrier, were you? You were calling him."

Lilith turned to face him fully now, her eyes glowing faintly, her body relaxed—but there was power in every line of her form.

"I was desperate," she admitted. "I didn’t mean for him to breach. But once I did... this is where we ended up."

Quinn looked around again. "So this is his realm?"

"Not quite," Lilith said. "This is a place between. A reflection of what happens when the Custodian is loosed. His power warps reality... but it also protects."

Asami shook her head. "What does that mean?"

Lilith walked toward the edge of a floating glass field, her fingers trailing along a hovering shard. "It means we were supposed to die. But he caught us. Enfolded us in the Wing. Shielded us from the end."

Quinn stared. "So... he saved us?"

Lilith looked back, one brow raised. "Of course. He’s mine."

That shouldn’t have been hot.

But it was.

The way she said it. Calm. Proud. Absolute.

Quinn’s breath caught. He looked at the strange, broken beauty around them—at the glass floating through the air, refracting twin moons. And he looked at Lilith, standing tall and gorgeous and fierce, hair billowing slightly in the charged air, like some unholy queen who just shrugged off death.

"You’re insane," he murmured.

She smiled. "You like it."

He didn’t deny it.

Asami groaned again. "I feel like I’m third-wheeling a disaster."

"You are," Lilith said sweetly.

Quinn took a step toward Lilith, voice low. "So... what now? Do we just hang out here and wait for a portal to open?"

"We wait for him to finish anchoring us back to the real world," Lilith said. "The Custodian doesn’t just destroy. He... adjusts. Think of him like a god of endings and beginnings."

Quinn tilted his head, studying her. "That’s a lot of power for someone to have."

Lilith’s smile turned wicked. "Scared of me?"

"No," he said truthfully. "Turned on, maybe."

Her eyes glittered. "Good."

Asami rolled her eyes and walked a few steps away. "I’m going to explore and not listen to your foreplay."

Lilith stepped closer to Quinn, breath soft against his skin. "Still amazed?"

He looked into her eyes, then glanced at the hovering glass between them—each shard reflecting fractured pieces of her face, of his own, of the sky and moons. "Yeah," he whispered. "I think I’ll be amazed for a very long time."

And somewhere high above, the twin moons burned brighter—one pale and cool, the other glowing with warm violet fire. The Custodian of the Wing was watching still.

But for now... they were safe.

And Quinn wasn’t sure what terrified him more: That this creature existed or that he wanted to know what else Lilith could summon next.