The girls sat on the edge of the steps of the seaside hill path on the commute to school.
One was a small girl with her long black hair tied up. Another was a vampire with mysterious golden hair that changed color like a rainbow depending on the angle you looked at it.
Their hair and eye color showed them to be different species, yet their gestures and the atmosphere around them seemed very similar. For some reason, when you saw them side by side, they looked like blood sisters.
Both were holding ice cream cups bought from a stall nearby.
The black-haired girl was eating chocolate. The golden-haired girl held a cup with triple ice cream: strawberry, caramel, and ganache.
The black-haired girl gently gazed at the golden-haired girl stuffing herself with ice cream as she inquired.
“Tasty, Avrora?”
The golden-haired girl seemed a little worked up, ice cream marring the edges of her mouth as she replied with a nod.
“Like the ambrosia of paradise…!”
“Is that so? I’m glad.”
Wiping the face of her happily smiling friend with a handkerchief, the black-haired girl narrowed her eyes with equal amusement.
Then Nagisa Akatsuki’s gaze abruptly fell to Avrora’s left wrist.
Glimmering in the light of day was a black, metallic wristband—a brand-new demon registration bracelet. This recognized the golden-haired vampire as a registered demon of the Demon Sanctuary.
With this island, she’d finally gained a place to call home—
A homeland where she could live with all her friends.
✦ ✦ ✦
A week had passed since Shahryar Ren’s invasion of Nod.
Thanks to the exceptional healing ability of the supposedly unaging, undying Devas, Shahryar Ren had just barely clung to life. He’d been handed over to Holy Grounds Treaty Organization custody and would stand trial along with his younger sister, Ladli, and other terrorist coconspirators.
The sorcerous manufacturing conglomerate MAR had been dissolved, with each individual division announced as a brand-new, freestanding corporation. Anticipating great effects from wiping out a giant multinational concern, competing corporations had begun a bidding war, making competition over the technology and human resources freshly put into circulation, so the situation remained in flux.
On the other hand, the leaders among the Devas known as the Seventeen Clans issued a joint statement of regret the string of incidents their brother Shahryar Ren had caused, along with announcing vast reparations to be paid for the people sacrificed in these events and the undertaking of repairs to the damaged cities.
After this, the Devas restored the damaged Keystone Gate, the harbor area, and other Itogami Island critical infrastructure to their former states in a single night, displaying to the world that the Devas still wielded unfathomable power—but that is another story.