The central palace's destruction shook the participants on both sides of the conflict. When the pieces of the throne room's roof and columns went flying, the momentum of the Dragon's Den's forces faltered, allowing the coalition forces a chance to withdraw.

Inside the palace ruins, Blood River located Brave Dragon's majordomo Specs crawling around in the rubble. The man's immediate surrender set the foundation for a chain of surrenders from the Den's survivors. The bandit's power structure was built on personal strength; the replacement of one pillar with an even stronger one was the natural way of things.

With Brave Dragon's demise and the Den's capitulation out of the way, bringing the coalition to heel was simplicity itself. Very few remained among the living who had caught a glimpse of the World of Blood, and those who had were not inclined to offer themselves up as sacrifices to the devil who could wield such power.

River's delight at the consummation of his vengeance and of dodging the possibility of possession dropped after he returned to the Dragonslayer camp. Celia was nowhere to be found. In the chaos of the battle, none had kept an eye on her whereabouts, and so there were no clues about where she could have vanished to. It occurred to him then that Mister Black's demise and the lack of the ghost's ability to survey had now blinded him.

Setting aside his personal concerns for the sake of his new order, River sat down with the remaining leadership of both sides and laid out the non-negotiable terms for the formation of a new power that would rule the region as overlord. This new organization, the Vermilion Idyll, would be led by none other than himself. A few from both camps poorly hid their displeasure at the arrangement and he made note of each and every one of them. In the following months, they all would go missing or have unfortunate and fatal accidents.

River left the business of administration to Specs and One, laying out his vision for the Vermilion Idyll to be a place of opportunity where the weak could have hope of becoming strong. He did little beyond that, allowing the two former enemy strategists a wide mandate so long as they did not act against that vision. Unfortunately, One's end came all too soon, his lifeforce at its end as he had foreseen, and no successor of comparable skill could be found to counterbalance Specs.

Resolving the problem of the Balar Trading Company's occupation of Aureate Hill was handled with ease. River delivered Brave Dragon's shattered corpse and assurances that his new power would not allow for a repeat of what had happened before. He even offered to let them keep Aureate Hill -- a lucrative connection with the wider world would have many benefits for him -- but they declined full ownership, instead splitting ownership with the Idyll.

Celia was never located. At first, River vowed to search to the very ends of the earth to find her, but as time passed so too did his ardor. The Idyll's subordinate powers were all too eager to jockey for advantage, and so he was inundated with offers from the daughters, granddaughters, and sisters of the various chiefs and elders. He suspected that they'd offer their mothers and grandmothers too if he'd expressed an interest, but his harem grew full enough without such an extension.

Surrounded by more women than he could bother remembering the names of, the memories of the sweet days with Celia faded with time and distraction.

For many of the weak who lived in the Idyll's territory, life did improve. That improvement was not free, though. While Brave Dragon had been a magnanimous man with a retiring nature who restrained his minions, River believed in brutal and direct solutions and had little tolerance for even whispers of rebellion. Blood flowed whenever such talk arose, although it was a poorly kept secret that much of that blood flowed to the Idyll's Lord personally.

River's tastes were also a matter of concern in the higher echelon of the Idyll. Besides his constant rotation through women to satiate his lust, he indulged in other vices with reckless abandon. His moods were unstable, and Specs lost most of his hair from the stress of trying to be the moderating influence to a literal bloodthirsty killer with a taste for the expensive and the exotic.

Seasons turned and the years passed until it was a full decade since the disbanding of the Dragon's Den. Organized and controlled harvesting of the Primeval Forest has provided an unprecedented flow of wealth and resources to the Idyll, but the one person who felt most stymied in this time was the Idyll's Lord himself.

From the day of Brave Dragon's death to the present, River had never managed another meridian opening. Unwilling to expose any weakness, he allowed no one to examine him and thus he never discovered that he had already opened all his natural meridians and some excavated ones besides. With Mister Black's demise, he had also been unable to again conjure any techniques of the Blood Devouring Universe, although nobody knew this and the memory of his "mysterious sacred art" was enough to make anybody think twice about testing it.

River's physique tempering also stagnated. Brave Dragon's remaining blood vitality had been enough for him to reach the fourth-grade Earth Realm. A regimen of hunting in the inner Primeval Forest had eventually supplied enough to fuel a fifth-grade advancement, but for over half a decade now his physique had not budged from that state. This presented a problem as the flow of resources into the Idyll produced a new crop of experts. His reputation would keep them in line for now, but it would only take one ambitious challenger to tear off the mask and usurp the Lordship.

It was today, then, that River embarked on a bold new plan to break his deadlock. He had always wanted to try the Blood Devouring Palm on the beasts of the innermost forest, but those creatures possessed cunning and intelligence enough to give him a wide berth whenever he came looking for them.

River privately deduced a possible solution to this problem. Since he could permit no one else to know of his cultivation difficulties, he was forced to innovate on his own. In his opinion, this new plan was the pinnacle of ingenuity.

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Unattended, River drove a carriage deep into the Primeval Forest's crimson zone, where the beasts he sought should lurk. Opening the carriage, he grabbed a woman from inside and tied her to a nearby tree. Six more times he repeated this process, making a circle of beautiful young women surrounding him. Each of them was a delicate flower of high pedigree and intact virginity. He had obtained them with extortion, blackmail, and outright kidnapping as none would volunteer for this plan.

On this day, the Lord of the Vermilion Idyll wore an outfit reminiscent of the one he had made his name in. The earnestly sewn cloak from Blue Ripple was replaced by a luxurious crimson fur shawl that left most of his torso bare. His short trousers were of the same quality and material. An ornate sheath belted at his waist held a bronze dagger.

The plan was simple: he would draw the blood of the women and let the scent attract one or more beasts of the innermost forest, who would in turn be his targets. If all went as it did before, the stronger blood would restart his advancement and he would be on his way to another physique breakthrough.

River drew the blade and caressed it reverently. Raising the mirror-polished blade, he gazed into the reflection of his own blood-red eyes. The bound maidens, gagged with strips of cloths, could only sob as he eyed each of them, scratching the tip of his finger on the blade's point as he considered which one to start with. It was a pity that he couldn't indulge with any of them first, but that was part of the experiment.

At that moment, a sharp pain stabbed in his chest. His heart palpitated, a thudding so intense it was audible. Once. Twice. Thrice.

And then his heart stopped beating entirely.

Like a puppet with its strings cut, River dropped to the forest floor, gasping for air as he released the dagger and grabbed at his bare chest. With effort, he willed his blood to continue moving throughout his body as he frantically tried to activate his Mind's Eye to see what was happening.

Laughter echoed through the trees.

"Who's there?" River shouted. "What do you want from me? How did you get here?" He was shaken; every single person in the entire region who could survive this deep into the forest was someone he knew. Had he been betrayed, poisoned? By who? And how?

"My young friend," a voice River hadn't heard in a decade replied, "I've always been here. Weren't you paying any attention?"

River's shadow elongated and rose in the air, assuming the form of his old spectral master. "What? How?"

"Didn't I tell you to remember every single thing I said to you so you could understand your future path?" Mister Black chided in a tone more dark and sinister than anything the seemingly kindly old man had used before.

"What does that have to do with this?" River was consumed by panic now; of all the people he had ever met, this ghost was the one person he had no confidence in facing.

"The first time we met... what did I tell you the price for helping you kill Brave Dragon was?"

Memories flashed in River's mind as he struggled to recall their first meeting by the pond. The answer hit him like a bolt of lightning. "Everything," River whispered.

"So you were paying attention after all! Good, good!" Mister Black clapped his hands in glee.

"So it's time to collect, then," River said, his thoughts growing more sluggish as the effort to keep his blood flowing increased. "Why now?"

"Hm... no, I don't think I'll bother telling you that," the ghost said as he shook his head and sighed. "It is a pity, though. Here you are at your end, the villain of the tale, and no hero showed up to take care of you like I thought might. You've done enough to make Brave Dragon look like a saint, my boy, but it looks like there's no provision for another you to come and break or continue the cycle. I'll have to think about what that means."

"Huh." River was barely articulate as his thoughts wandered back to another time, another place, and another conversation with another old man.

It was Elder Cloud's response about his certainty in reaching the end of his life: Once you've lived long enough to see that you've become that which you hate, that's when you know it's your time.

Thinking of the frightened maidens tied to the trees all around him, and the insane plan that had seemed so genius, he understood those words at last. And then he thought of something else the old man had said. River laughed bitterly at these recollections even as a euphoric calm descended upon him in these final moments.

"Finding some peace at the end, are we?" Mister Black asked.

"So it was you, then. The man in the dreams with the woman. The killer in the temple."

The form of the kindly old man with the stars in his eyes melted, shifting into the man from the dream. The devilish man glanced down at his new form and gave a shrug. "I guess there's no point in pretending otherwise since you've put it together. Yes."

River chuckled. "That's better. You know, an old acquaintance once told me that accepting your death brings with it a kind of lucidity."

"I recall. I was there too."

"I didn't believe old Cloud before, but here at my end... I do. What a shame." River sighed. The light of the world was fading into darkness even as his inner world grew radiant.

"You're dragging this out just to say that, boy?" the ghost questioned.

In that inner world of brightness, River saw an image of the devilish man in black and the beautiful red-haired woman. They were laying under a tree, his head in her lap as she played a harp with strings of blood. He couldn't hear the harp's song, but that didn't matter. He could only think of his regrets in failing Celia so badly. No wonder she had disappeared.

River's eyes blinked even as his throat gave voice to words he knew not the source of. "You know all my secrets, but now I know one of yours. The path you have embarked on is the one most likely to succeed, but you will have to choose what to sacrifice and what to preserve. In that choice comes success or failure. If you are alone at the end, you will fail."

The devilish man stood in silence, making no move to interject or interrupt as River continued to ramble.

"If you try to lay claim to all, you'll end up with nothing. Seven flames extinguished. Seven flames ignited. If you wish to clear the way you'll need them and their words. Every sip of the cup will put them on your lips."

The dark man's eyes narrowed. "Seven, you say?"

"Yes. Thank you for this final gift." Darkness blinded River as the final moment arrived. A strand of something tore out of his heart and through his chest. "This gift... an end... to... illusion." The final words escaped as a whisper, his life spent. His final thought lingered, one last regret: that there was no one for him to share the devil's secret with.

At that moment, amidst an act of depravity to eclipse any the Dragon's Den had ever contemplated, the great tyrant and Lord of the Vermilion Idyll, the Devil of Flowing Water, the man who had dubbed himself Blood River breathed his last, his illusions shattered.

At that moment, at last repenting how far he had strayed from his ideals but finally, for once in his life, accepting the blame himself, a scared child named Strong River let go of his grasp on life and passed from the mortal coil, his soul severed from reincarnation and condemned as fodder for a devil.