Shade looked again at the pages in the Demon's hand. His guess that The Puppeteer's Script was affecting the people around him and the Unicorns had not been wrong. He had merely guessed wrong about who was using the relic.
Shade's first reaction was that The All-Number-One Society had actually cooperated with a Demon to deal with him. Last year, in Randall River Valley, the cultists who worshipped the Stone Heart Demon had done something similar.
But he soon realized that things could not be that simple. The bloodstains on the pages in the Demon's hand seemed to indicate something:
"Did you steal these pages? What did you do to The All-Number-One Society?"
Of course, no one would answer Shade's question. It was only much later that Shade learned that the "Father" whom Luvia, Emilia, and Miss Sabelle had jointly knocked down Snow Mountain on the first night of the Ten Thousand Spirits Festival had encountered the Demon hiding there while injured.
Even a Candidate had to pay a price for rashly using a relic. That was Destiny's rule, especially since he had tried to use "The Puppeteer's Script" to influence the fate of the Time Chosen Ones.
The Demon's hand touched the Flesh Wall, and black spread across flesh tones and blood red. The ground beneath their feet trembled slightly, and ripples appeared in the Blood Pool in the room. That Deep and Serene darkness did not completely alter the surrounding colors. Instead, two seconds later, the walls of the core room suddenly erupted with dazzling Red Light.
Within that light, the Doppelganger opposite the Blood Pool took a deep breath and closed its eyes. The flesh all over its body rapidly peeled away and reassembled, while Shade saw that the mass of flesh inside it was actually beginning