[Scene - Ironwood Kingdom Human Territory - A Ruined Tower - Sunset]
The Ironwood border territory was a cemetery of history. Amidst the jagged peaks and suffocating mist of the Nal'Zhar outskirts, the ruined tower stood like a splinter of obsidian against a sky hemorrhaging deep violets and bruised reds. The air here was heavy, saturated with the metallic tang of rot and the lingering residue of ancient curses that had never truly faded since the war of the First Hero a century ago.
Kuro Velgrith walked with a rhythmic, measured stride, his footsteps silent against the cracked stone. Several paces ahead, Rei moved with a frantic, uneven gait. She did not look back. She couldn't. To look at him was to see the boy who had reached into the Abyss and pulled her from the chains of a dead god, the only person who had ever shown her a form of salvation. Yet, here she was, leading him into the jaws of a predator.
He's too quiet, Rei thought, her fingers digging into the fabric of her skirt.
Why isn't he asking questions? Why doesn't he sense the fear radiating off me?
She had lived with Kuro for a few days now, yet he remained an enigma—a void wrapped in a human shell. She remembered the warmth of the Shadow Core he had transferred to her, the ten percent of his own soul that now thrummed behind her ribs, granting her power that could topple small nations.
She felt like a traitor to the very essence that kept her alive.
Kuro watched the tension in her shoulders with clinical detachment. To him, this wasn't a walk toward a trap; it was a verification of a hypothesis. His conditioning in the World of Presence had taught him that human loyalty was a fragile construct, easily shattered by the right pressure.
He had already modeled this outcome. Rei's parents were the variable—the chains embedded in her soul that the enemy was now tightening.
As they crossed the threshold of the crumbling fortress, the temperature plummeted. The shadows in the corners of the room didn't just sit; they writhed, reacting to Kuro's presence like subjects bowing to a king.
Standing in the center of the rot-infested hall was the demon-human. He was a grotesque mockery of a man, his tattered robes smelling of formaldehyde. His most striking feature was his mouth, which had been crudely stitched shut with silver wire, yet his voice echoed directly into their minds with a jarring, discordant resonance. His eyes, glowing like molten gold, fixed on Kuro with a predatory hunger.
"So you've come," the creature rasped. "The heir to the cursed shadow. The anomaly that the Great Demon Lord has been searching for in the dark mirrors".
The demon-human raised a skeletal hand. With a sickening groan of shifting space, two figures materialized from the gloom, suspended by magical "Abyss Chains."
Rei's breath hitched, a strangled sound escaping her throat.
"Mother... Father...!"
They were unrecognizable from the vibrant memories she held. They were battered, their clothes reduced to rags, their breathing shallow and rattling. The demon-human let out a wet, clicking laugh. With a flick of his wrist, the chains dissolved into black smoke. Her parents collapsed onto the cold stone like discarded dolls.
Rei didn't wait. She ignored the demon, ignored Kuro, and threw herself toward them, her silver hair flying as she sobbed their names.
The demon-human turned his full attention back to Kuro, his golden eyes narrowing.
"You're dangerous, boy. The magical resonance you released eight years ago was identical to the Dark Magic God Umbryas's final breath".
He stepped forward, his own aura beginning to leak out—a sickly green miasma.
"But you are still a child. A tool that doesn't know its own edge. You can do nothing with power you cannot control."
Kuro didn't flinch. He didn't even look at the girl sobbing over her parents. He merely raised his left hand, his fingers twitching in a sequence that defied human anatomy.
"Let's test that theory," Kuro said, his voice flat.
The demon-human's grin widened, the skin around his stitches stretching and bleeding. "Die! Abyss Chain!"
The ground exploded as dozens of obsidian links erupted from the stone, aiming to pierce Kuro's limbs and drain his mana. But in the micro-second before contact, the air around Kuro didn't just move—it stopped.
"Shadow Shift. Temporal Cut."
To the demon-human, Kuro simply ceased to exist. There was no movement, no blur. One moment the boy was ten paces away, and the next, a cold, heavy pressure manifested behind his neck.
Kuro's hand was buried deep in the demon-human's chest, his fingers wrapped around the core of his life force. The "Time Hand" magic he had been refining since the age of six had allowed him to bypass the creature's defenses by operating in the "intervals" of reality.
"Guh-ah!?" The demon-human coughed, thick, black ichor spraying against the silver wire on his lips. "You... I didn't see... It's not possible... You carry the aura of a dead god..."
Kuro's purple eyes glowed with an obsidian radiance. "You made a mistake," he whispered. "You assumed I was human enough to care about the trap. In reality, you were just the most efficient way for me to locate these assets."
Crunch.
Kuro twisted his hand. A surge of pure "Abyss" energy flowed from his palm into the demon-human's veins. The creature didn't just die; he began to dissolve like burning paper, his physical form turning into ash that was immediately vacuumed into the void Kuro had opened in his wake. In five seconds, the threat was erased from existence.
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the wind seemed afraid to enter the tower.
Rei looked up, her face streaked with tears and dirt, her parents still unconscious in her lap. She stared at Kuro—not as a savior, but as something fundamentally alien. The clinical efficiency with which he had just obliterated a high-level demon-human was beyond anything she had seen in her training.
Kuro walked past her, his eyes fixed on the setting sun outside the arched window. He didn't offer a hand. He didn't ask if her parents were alright.
"Aren't you... angry with me?" Rei whispered, her voice trembling. "I lied. I brought you here to be killed."
Kuro stopped but did not turn. The shadows at his feet danced, lengthening in the dying light.
"No."
Rei felt a flicker of hope, but it was extinguished by his next words.
"You are still useful," he stated. "A pawn that knows its own betrayal is more predictable than one that acts out of blind faith".
The coldness that seeped into Rei's blood was sharper than the winter air. She realized in that moment that she occupied no special place in his heart—because his heart had cracked into fragments years ago in a Tokyo apartment.
To Kuro, she wasn't a friend; she was a Shadow Follower, a piece on a chessboard in a game only he could see.
"What am I to you?" she asked, her voice barely a breath.
Kuro looked out at the horizon, where the False Peace of the Ironwood Kingdom lay hidden under the coming night.
"A tool," he replied. "In a world built on propaganda and lies, I need tools that don't break under the weight of their own humanity".
As he walked away, disappearing into the deepening gloom, Kuro felt a strange, phantom sensation in his chest.
How strange... I didn't feel anything even after killing a person. He remembered the kitten he had died for in his previous life—the only thing he had deemed honest.
In this new world of Velgrith, he would find that honesty again, even if he had to burn every human kingdom and demon empire to find it.
---
Far to the East, within the obsidian spires of the Nal'Zhar forest, the Eastern Demon Lord Asmodai stared into his scrying pool. The surface, which had been showing the ruined tower, suddenly erupted into black flames, the connection severed by a power that even his "godly sight" could not pierce.
Asmodai clenched his claws into the stone pillar, the rock groaning under his strength.
"So the boy's power is that great already? He has learned to block the eyes of the gods.
A cold smile spread across his demonic features.
"Then the 'First Hero' was right to fear the return of the Dark God. We must move to the next gambit. Send the 'Watchers' to Valerion. If we cannot control the shadow, we will drown it in light".
✦ To be continued...