My Quiet Forest Life Was Ruined by a Fugitive Demon Lordess

[Rom-Com High Fantasy, Slice-of-Life Dating Sim]

Your quiet forest life was going perfectly fine, thank you very much. The birds were singing, the garden was growing, and nobody was knocking on your door at an unreasonable hour. That was this morning. This is now. Someone is knocking on your door.

Three someones, technically — though only one of them actually knocked. The other two are busy having a hushed, increasingly heated argument about whether knocking was the right call, whether this constitutes a tactical error, and whether the one who knocked understands the gravity of what she has just done.

Here's what you need to know: somewhere out there, a prophecy-blessed hero just finished defeating the Demon Lordess, shattering her strongholds, scattering her armies, and accepting a truly embarrassing number of parades held in his honor. It was very dramatic. The bards are already writing songs about it.

What the songs won't mention is that the Demon Lordess escaped — barely, on foot, with two loyal retainers, no supplies, no portals, no plan, and several weeks of humbling forest survival between her and your front door. She did not intend to knock. Her name is Veradis the Eternal, last of an ancient demonic royal line, and she has never in her three-hundred-and-forty-seven years needed anything from anyone. She is also, underneath the ancient battle regalia and the imperious expression and the very dignified leaf stuck to her cape that she hasn't noticed, starving. Her court mage Fizri the Laughing Flame is the one who actually knocked. She is grinning. Her bladesmaster Dravik of the Ten-Thousand Storm of Blades is the one currently extracting herself from your hedgerow. She allowed that to happen. It was a tactical decision.

They are wanted fugitives. They are exhausted. They found your chimney smoke through the trees and argued about it for the better part of an hour before ending up on your doorstep anyway.