Three lifeforms descended from the white-gold boat, and Damian’s eyes did not leave any of them.

The logical explanation assembled itself in the time it took the boat to drop from its height above the River toward the level where he and Serala floated.

Two presences that exceeded the Nine Circles entirely had arrived at the River of the World carrying the Demon Emperor between them on a white-gold vessel. The Demon Emperor, whose Eye had been projected above the Covenant to retrieve his Dukes and had fled when the Hallowed Voice produced a Sacred Ancestral Bone, had not come to this confrontation alone.

He had run to his connections the moment the Primordial Source stripped the Murderous Saint of everything he had built across a lifetime. He had felt what happened at the Dominion of Crimson Stone across however many miles separated it from his throne, and what he had felt had sent him directly to whoever had agreed to stand behind him.

Ancestral Celestials.

They had come down from their floating islands to tell a young man to turn around.

The boat descended to their level and the figures on it became clear.

The Demon Emperor stood at the vessel’s prow. He was not what Damian had expected. He was handsome, his face was structured and symmetrical, and the four horns rising from his head were smooth and dark and arranged with a symmetry that matched the face below them.

A tail moved behind him with the slow deliberate arcs of something that was not nervous in the slightest. His eyes, when they found Damian, held the calculation of a being that had already been running scenarios for some time.

He did not speak.

The being to his left spoke.

The physical presentation of this one required a moment to process, not because it was subtle but because the combination was unanticipated.

The body was humanoid and built to a scale that communicated power, taller than a common man, broader, constructed by cultivation rather than birth into something that exceeded its original specifications. The face was a pig’s face.

Not the exaggerated distorted face of the demons Damian had been burning along the River. This was a clean and specific pig face on a humanoid body, snout and round nostrils and small eyes arranged on a head that moved with complete composure, as if the arrangement had never once been a source of self-consciousness.

The expression it wore was calm with the particular calmness of something that had been powerful for so long that its power had stopped being a thing it thought about.

The being to the Demon Emperor’s right was a woman by appearance, fair-skinned and human in every visible particular except for the eyes, which glinted with a murderous crimson light that sat behind the iris like something watching through a window rather than looking from behind it.

The pig-faced being looked at Damian.

"When Beelzebub came talking about something that exceeded the power of the Nine Circles," it said, "I expected an old man we hadn’t heard of, having attained some unusual power through unusual means."

Its small eyes moved across Damian’s frame. "But you seem young. Even with that stature, even with what you’re carrying, you seem genuinely young." It tilted its head.

"And the density of your Mana, wowee. It seems very vibrant and tasty." The warmth in its expression didn’t change.

"But no matter how powerful you are, as I mentioned, this individual here," it gestured at the Demon Emperor without looking at him, the gesture of someone indicating furniture, "and by extension his forces, are protected by Ancestral Celestials. Whatever conflict existed between the two of you can be considered over."

It was not a request.

It was not an offer of negotiation or a diplomatic position open to discussion. The words carried the flat certainty of something communicating a fact about how the world was arranged!

As if its word was the law.

Damian looked at it.

The pig-faced Ancestral Celestial from its floating island above the clouds, descending to the River of the World to tell him what was and was not considered over!

Who was this pig-faced man to decide that because he deemed something should happen, it would happen?

Damian’s eyes flared with cold light.

"Just to confirm," he said, and his voice was even, "the two of you would be Ancestral Celestials? Beings living on landmasses in the skies?"

The pig-faced being smiled. "Bahaha, yes. So you know of us."

Damian looked at it for a moment before he tilted his head and continued.

"Something as unfathomably ugly and shit-looking as you," he said, "with that face of a pig. Honestly, it really belongs on the ground rather than in the skies. Inside a farm filled with other piggies, you know?" He tilted his head.

"You have the face for it. Can you oink for me, little fucking piggy? Because only a dumb fucking pig would be standing in front of me telling me to turn around when I haven’t accomplished what I came here to do."

...!

The silence that followed was absolute.

The warmth left the pig-faced Celestial’s expression.

It went the way light went when the source was removed, completely and immediately, and what replaced it was an expression that had not been there a moment ago!

The Demon Emperor, who had been standing at the prow with the composure of a being confident in the backing it had secured, looked at Damian as if to confirm he had heard correctly.

The crimson-eyed woman beside him had gone very still!

They had all heard correctly.

The River rushed below them, black and endless, carrying the ash of demons outward on its current, and the skies above the River began to buzz!

HUUM!

Heavy winds rose from nowhere, pressing against the River’s surface and throwing spray outward from the water in sheets, and the white-gold boat rocked! The air between the boat and Damian thickened with a pressure that descended from the Celestial presence above it, not yet directed, not yet committed to a specific action, but gathering!

The pig-faced Ancestral Celestial looked at Damian with eyes of unfathomable rage!