It started, as all world-ending events do, with tea and a sneeze.
A perfectly innocent, violently inconvenient sneeze.
Rei was back in his room—finally alone—after barely surviving what could generously be described as a "romantic hostage situation" with Lucivella, the Demon Queen, in her private celestial dimension. Imagine a place that looked like a cosmic wedding venue designed by a love-struck deity with a Pinterest addiction and zero concept of restraint: floating starlight petals, gravity-defying rose fountains, and a moon-shaped bed made of crushed velvet and eldritch horror.
Needless to say, he needed a break badly.
So there he sat, disheveled and traumatized, perched at the edge of his stupidly enormous, gold-trimmed bed carved with cherubs in love-heart helmets. His silk robe was slipping off one shoulder, my soul-bond mark still glowed faintly on his chest like a demonic tattoo sticker he couldn't peel off, and he was sipping tea hot enough to smelt dwarven ore.
