Chapter 8: The First Flame

Kōya had spent agonizing, silent weeks trying to forcefully awaken the apocalyptic power he so vividly remembered.

Nothing.

There was no suffocating darkness. No world-bending aura. No great, terrifying demonic presence that could force the air out of a room.

There was only the occasional, microscopic pressure inside his small chest—a phantom pulse that completely disappeared before his infantile mana veins could even begin to process it.

It was a profound, daily humiliation.

He distinctly remembered the physical sensation of commanding oceans of mana. He remembered ancient, forbidden spells that could effortlessly disintegrate fortified castles, abyssal weapons that could cleave the earth to its bedrock, and complex demonic techniques that the brittle minds of ordinary humans could never even begin to comprehend. He had been a god of destruction.

Yet now, sitting in the soft grass of a sunlit yard, he could barely feel the fundamental pulse of mana inside his own bloodstream. It was like possessing the memories of an eagle while trapped inside the body of a moth.

And then, one humid afternoon, something finally happened.

Kōya was sitting quietly outside, tracing ancient tactical formations in the dirt with a twig, when he noticed an insect crawling aggressively across the uneven ground.

It was a massive, heavily armored beetle, significantly larger and uglier than the harmless insects he was used to seeing near the cottage. Its mandibles clicked loudly, a sharp, erratic sound that grated against Kōya’s nerves.

It moved quickly, its many legs skittering directly toward him.

Kōya froze. His ancient mind analyzed the threat as negligible, but his new, undeveloped human instincts hijacked his nervous system.

Without warning, the insect opened a hidden carapace and took flight, buzzing with a loud, aggressive drone.

Kōya screamed, a high, panicked child’s sound that deeply shamed him even as it left his throat.

"Get away!"

He stumbled clumsily backward, his small boots catching on a root, sending him crashing onto his back in the dirt.

The heavy insect flew erratically, diving directly toward his unprotected face.

In that fraction of a second, fueled by a spike of pure, unfiltered panic, something deep and dormant inside Kōya violently reacted.

His right hand shot upward instinctively to shield his eyes.

A faint, ghostly blue flame ignited around his tiny fingers.

The air temperature around his hand instantly plummeted. The flying insect hit the invisible perimeter of the cold fire and stopped dead in midair, instantly paralyzed by the sudden, concentrated burst of demonic pressure.

Kōya stared up from the dirt, his breath catching in his throat.

The eerie blue flame flickered once, casting a pale, unnatural light over his round face.

Then, as quickly as it had appeared, his fragile mana reserves depleted, and the fire vanished.

Released from the pressure, the terrified insect immediately veered off, buzzing frantically away into the tall grass.

Kōya remained completely still on his back, his heart hammering against his ribs.

He slowly lifted his right hand, bringing it close to his face.

Nothing. Just soft, pale skin.

He slowly opened and closed his tiny fingers, chasing the phantom sensation of the freezing heat.

He closed his eyes, grabbed onto the lingering memory of the panic, and tried again. He forced the microscopic trace of mana through his veins, commanding it to manifest.

A tiny, flickering blue flame appeared at the tip of his index finger.

Kōya’s wide eyes reflected the dark light.

This was it.

Demonic mana.

It was weak. It was incredibly, pathetically weak compared to the abyssal oceans he used to command. A stiff breeze could have extinguished it.

But it was absolutely real. It belonged to the darkness.

A slow, chilling smile appeared on his small, innocent face.

He had finally broken the seal.

That night, while the house was quiet and his parents slept, Kōya quietly slipped out of his bed and searched through the heavy books in the small, dusty library at the end of the hall.

He had already, bitterly discovered that he could not properly read most of the advanced historical and tactical texts. His infant brain simply lacked the neurological pathways to translate the complex vocabulary he used to know so intimately.

So, swallowing his supreme pride, he started with the simplest, most fundamental books he could find on the lower shelves.

One of them was an old, heavily worn beginner’s magic manual, likely a remnant from a basic academy.

The hand-drawn illustrations were crude, but the fundamental principles of the world’s magic system were universally simple enough for him to grasp.

Mana pathways. Spell formation. Absolute concentration. Elemental affinity. And, in a small, heavily censored appendix in the back, the theoretical basics of demonic techniques.

Kōya’s dark eyes moved methodically across the parchment.

He remembered the essence of these things. Not every single archaic word, but enough of the structural theory.

He pointed a tiny, trembling finger at one of the crude diagrams depicting the flow of energy from the core to the extremities.

"If I can read this..." he whispered into the dark room.

He paused, a wave of intense frustration washing over him as he struggled to decipher a particularly long paragraph. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus.

"If I can read this... and follow it..."

Maybe he could forcefully unlock more of his dormant demonic power. Maybe he didn’t need to wait to grow up; he just needed to manually reconstruct his mana veins from the ground up.

Kōya closed the heavy book, the *thump* echoing softly in the quiet room.

He held up his right hand in the dark.

He concentrated, bypassing his human limitations with sheer demonic willpower. The ghostly blue flame ignited again, dancing across his knuckles.

Small. Weak. But entirely obedient.

He smiled in the dark.

Tomorrow, he would test the limits of his new vessel.

The next morning, the moment the sun broke over the hills, Kōya slipped away and went deep into the forest.

Seiya had warned him countless times that he should never go too far past the tree line. But Kōya had quickly mapped the woods near their home. It was a relatively safe, mundane ecosystem. There were small woodland creatures, normal insects, and a few harmless, low-tier monsters, but very few genuinely dangerous beasts roamed this close to human settlements.

Kōya ignored the safe zones. He went deeper, where the trees grew thicker and the shadows lengthened.

He was actively searching for something specific.

Demonic magic was fundamentally different from ordinary, atmospheric human magic. Ambient mana alone was not always enough to fuel it. The dark arts required a much heavier toll. They required a volatile emotional state, a highly concentrated source of pure mana, or something physical that could be used as a sacrificial medium.

Kōya remembered that much from his centuries of conquest. If his own body could not generate enough mana to fuel his growth, he would simply take it from the environment.

Something living possessed active mana. Something recently dead still retained the lingering, heavy traces of it in its rotting flesh.

Kōya continued walking silently over the moss, his sharp eyes scanning the underbrush.

Eventually, near the exposed roots of an ancient, rotting oak, he found exactly what he was looking for.

A small woodland animal—a wild dog or perhaps a large fox—lay dead beneath the tree.

It had been dead for some time. The stench of decay hung heavily in the still air, and its body was already beginning to collapse inward, returning to the earth.

Kōya stared down at the carcass, his face devoid of a child’s natural disgust.

He knew exactly what he needed to do.

He crouched beside the rotting remains, completely unfazed by the smell of death.

"This should work," he whispered.

He extended his small right hand, holding it palm-down just inches above the exposed ribs of the animal.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, visualizing the microscopic trace of demonic mana inside his own core. He pushed it outward, using it as a hook.

At first, absolutely nothing happened. The forest remained quiet.

Then, the remains began to unnaturally dissolve.

It was not a physical decay. The lingering, residual mana trapped inside the rotting blood and bone was being violently drawn out.

The decaying body slowly began to break apart into floating, absolute black particles. They drifted upward like reverse snow, pulled magnetically toward the palm of Kōya’s outstretched hand.

Kōya’s eyes snapped open, widening in dark fascination.

The black particles of stolen mana entered his skin.

He felt a sudden, rushing warmth in his veins. Then, a heavy, intoxicating pressure built in his chest. His tiny heart beat faster. His breathing became ragged and heavy.

*More.*

The ancient, insatiable hunger of the Demon Lord flared to life. He needed more.

The last remaining traces of mana were violently ripped from the earth, disappearing into his skin.

The animal’s body was completely gone, reduced to a fine, gray ash that blew away in the wind.

Kōya collapsed backward, sitting heavily against the roots of the oak tree.

His breathing was harsh, his chest heaving. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

But he could vividly feel the fundamental difference inside his core. His internal mana reserves had permanently expanded.

Not by a massive amount. It was a drop in the bucket. But it was enough to stretch his veins.

He raised his right hand, his eyes burning with determination.

He called upon the power.

The blue flames violently erupted around his fingers. They were no longer flickering sparks; they were bright, cold, and steady, casting eerie shadows against the bark of the trees.

Kōya smiled, a dark thrill running down his spine.

He closed his eyes and tried to force the aura to gather around his entire physical body, attempting to recreate the absolute demonic defense he had once wielded.

The blue flame crept slowly down his fingers, moving over his wrist, and traveling up toward his right forearm.

Then, it abruptly stopped.

The energy completely refused to spread past the center line of his chest.

Kōya frowned, opening his eyes.

He pushed harder, grinding his teeth.

Nothing.

The cold demonic aura gathered fiercely around his entire right side, pooling in his right arm, but it would not completely manifest.

His left side—his left arm, his left hand, the left side of his chest—remained completely, unnervingly empty. The demonic mana violently recoiled from it, as if striking an invisible, absolute wall.

Kōya stared at his left hand in profound confusion.

*Why?*

He knew something was fundamentally wrong with his new anatomy. His overall mana had definitely increased. His demonic energy was substantially stronger than yesterday.

Yet something deeply ingrained in his very soul was completely blocking the manifestation of his dark aura on the left side of his body.

He concentrated harder, refusing to be denied by his own flesh.

The pressure inside his chest increased to the point of physical agony. His right hand began trembling violently under the sheer density of the concentrated magic.

Kōya gritted his teeth, a low growl escaping his throat. "Come on..."

The aura refused to cross the barrier, pooling entirely around his right hand until it felt like it was going to explode.

Realizing he couldn’t force the spread, he changed tactics. He would use the concentrated pressure.

He raised his right hand, extending his index and middle fingers together like a blade.

He remembered a very old, very basic demonic technique. A simple cutting spell. Nothing complicated. Just concentrate the dense demonic aura into a microscopic, razor-thin point, and release the pressure in a single direction.

Kōya aimed his two fingers at a thick, sturdy pine tree ten paces away.

He locked his wrist, aligned his mana, and swung his arm in a sharp, horizontal arc.

"Cut."

A violently thin, blinding blue line flashed horizontally through the shadowed air, accompanied by a sharp crack that sounded like a breaking whip.

For a long, agonizing second, absolutely nothing happened. The forest was dead silent.

Then, with a sickening groan of wood, the thick trunk of the pine tree perfectly split in half.

Kōya stared, his breath catching.

The heavy upper half of the tree slowly tilted, the wood screeching, before it violently crashed into the forest floor, kicking up a massive cloud of dirt and pine needles.

Kōya’s mouth opened slightly.

He had actually done it.

It was an incredibly weak, pathetic technique compared with the mountains he remembered casually cleaving in half.

But it was his. His own new, human body had produced it.

Kōya smiled, a terrifyingly proud expression.

Then, his legs completely gave way.

He collapsed face-first into the soft moss.

His entire body felt as though it had been drained of blood. His breathing was rapid and incredibly heavy. His arms trembled so violently he couldn’t push himself up. He had completely depleted his newly expanded core in a single strike.

*So, this is my absolute limit.*

For now.

Kōya turned his head, resting his cheek against the cool earth, and looked at the cleanly severed trunk of the fallen tree.

He smiled again, his eyes heavy with exhaustion.

"Not bad."

From that day onward, the deep forest became Kōya’s absolute, secret training ground.

Every single day, he slipped away to practice.

He relentlessly learned how to gather atmospheric and residual mana. How to concentrate it without blowing off his own fingers. How to sustain the cold blue flames for longer periods. How to sharpen and strengthen the cutting technique until he could sever stones.

He constantly searched the woods for sources of mana.

Sometimes he found small creatures that had succumbed to predators or the cold. Sometimes he found rare, glowing plants pulsing with unusually strong natural mana.

He experimented carefully, ruthlessly. He did not want to waste a single drop of energy. Every microscopic increase in his core capacity mattered.

His overall demonic aura was still tragically weak. It could not cover his entire body to form armor.

His left hand remained strangely, frustratingly silent, rejecting the darkness completely.

But his right hand was beginning to respond with deadly precision.

Slowly. Agonizingly little by little.

Kōya was growing. And he was remembering how to be a monster.

Seiya had definitely noticed that his young son liked to wander into the forest alone.

Surprisingly, the legendary Hero did not seem to mind. In fact, he actively encouraged it.

"You’ll become an adventurer at this rate," Seiya had laughed one afternoon, watching Kōya stare intently at the tree line.

Kōya had looked up at him, his face an unreadable mask.

Seiya had ruffled his hair, completely oblivious to the demonic aura developing under his roof. "There’s not much to worry about around here. Just don’t go too deep into the dark, Kōya."

Kōya had simply nodded.

He liked the forest. There was something profoundly peaceful about being entirely away from the house and the suffocating domesticity.

But more importantly, nobody watched him out there. Nobody knew what he was practicing in the shadows.

At least, that was what the former Demon Lord arrogantly thought.

To Kōya’s profound irritation, Seiya had also begun teaching him the way of the sword in the yard.

At first, Kōya thought the entire exercise was utterly ridiculous.

He had once commanded millions of soldiers. He had fought literal gods and ancient beings that could swallow the sun.

Now, the man who had murdered him was handing him a carved wooden stick and telling him to correct his posture.

"Hold it like this," Seiya instructed gently, reaching down to adjust Kōya’s tiny, improperly spaced hands on the wooden hilt.

Kōya frowned, ripping his hands away. "I know."

"You know?" Seiya raised an eyebrow, amused.

Kōya froze, realizing he had spoken too confidently for a toddler.

Seiya smiled, stepping back and gesturing to the open grass. "Then show me, Master Kōya."

Kōya gritted his teeth, adjusted his stance perfectly, and swung with all his might.

The wooden sword, far too heavy for his undeveloped muscles, nearly slipped entirely from his hands, throwing him off balance and causing him to stumble forward into the dirt.

Seiya laughed out loud, a booming, good-natured sound.

Kōya scrambled up, glaring at him with pure hatred. "Don’t laugh."

"I’m sorry, I’m sorry," Seiya chuckled, holding his hands up in surrender, though he was still grinning.

Kōya picked up the heavy wood and tried again.

And again.

His mind knew the exact, flawless geometry of a lethal strike, but his body was simply too small and weak to execute it. His movements were clumsy, restricted by his physical vessel.

But his progression was unnervingly fast. He learned quickly, adapting his ancient knowledge to his new center of gravity.

Seiya definitely noticed the unnatural progression.

"You have incredible instincts, Kōya," Seiya noted one afternoon, watching him parry a slow strike.

Kōya said absolutely nothing. He had spent centuries bathed in blood and steel. Even if his physical body had forgotten, the muscle memory of his soul remained entirely intact.

But Kōya was also forced to acknowledge something deeply infuriating: Seiya Amane was exceptionally, terrifyingly skilled.

One day, Seiya took a standard wooden practice sword and stood casually beside a massive, solid granite boulder at the edge of their property.

Kōya watched, unimpressed, leaning on his own wooden blade.

"Watch carefully, Kōya. It’s not about the material of the weapon. It’s about the intent behind the edge."

Seiya didn’t gather a massive, glowing holy aura. He didn’t scream a battle cry. He simply stepped forward, his body moving with absolute, liquid perfection, and swung.

The blunt wooden sword struck the solid granite.

Kōya fully expected the fragile wood to instantly shatter into splinters.

Instead, a sharp, concussive crack echoed across the yard.

The massive granite boulder fractured, a deep, clean fissure splitting the stone right down the middle. The wooden sword in Seiya’s hand remained perfectly, impossibly intact.

Kōya stared, his jaw slightly slack.

Seiya lowered the wooden blade and looked over his shoulder at his son.

"Never underestimate a sword just because it isn’t forged from steel. The weapon is only as dangerous as the man holding it."

Kōya looked from the untouched wood to the shattered boulder.

For the very first time in his reincarnated life, he was genuinely, deeply impressed.

His father was significantly stronger and more refined than he had initially calculated. The sheer physical mastery required to project force through a blunt object without breaking it was terrifying.

And somehow, against every vengeful instinct in his dark soul... Kōya desperately wanted to learn how to do that from him.

That thought bothered him immensely. It felt like a betrayal of his past.

But staring at the cracked stone, he could not deny it.

While Seiya trained him in the yard with the sword, Mizuki watched quietly from the shadowed porch of the house.

She noticed things. A mother always noticed things the father missed.

She noticed the intense, ancient way Kōya stared at his own hands when he thought he was alone. She noticed the specific, deliberate way he sometimes disappeared into the deep forest, walking with a purpose no child should have. She noticed the way his stoic expression completely changed, lighting up with a dark intensity, whenever Seiya casually mentioned magic at the dinner table.

And one quiet afternoon, while Seiya was away in the village, she finally saw it.

Kōya was standing behind the house, perfectly still. A faint, ghostly blue aura suddenly flared, wrapping tightly around his right hand.

Mizuki stopped walking. Her breath caught.

Sensing a presence, Kōya whipped around.

Their eyes met.

The blue flame instantly vanished. Kōya’s face went completely, terrifyingly pale. He had been caught.

Mizuki did not scream. She did not summon her absolute protection magic. She simply smiled, a sad, knowing smile.

Then, she deliberately widened her eyes, feigning shock. "Kōya."

Kōya froze, paralyzed by the fear of exposure.

"I saw that."

He swallowed hard, stepping backward.

Mizuki walked slowly toward him, her footsteps light on the grass.

Kōya took another step back, hitting the wooden wall of the house.

"Are you hiding something from me, little one?" she asked, her voice impossibly gentle.

He said absolutely nothing, waiting for the disgust, the fear, the inevitable rejection. He was a monster in a child’s skin.

Mizuki crouched down in the grass directly in front of him, bringing herself to his eye level.

"Show me."

Kōya hesitated, his heart pounding. Slowly, trembling slightly, he raised his right hand.

He pushed his mana. The tiny, cold blue flame appeared again.

Mizuki stared at it intently.

It was dark. It was cold. It lacked the warmth of human magic. It was, undeniably, the signature of demonic mana.

Kōya slowly lowered his head, preparing for the worst. He fully expected her to be angry. To be terrified. To realize she had given birth to a demon.

Instead, Mizuki reached out and gently, warmly touched his hair, stroking it back from his forehead.

"How did you learn to do this?"

Kōya looked up at her, shocked by the absence of fear in her eyes. He slowly pointed a finger toward the deep forest.

Mizuki understood immediately. "You’ve been practicing out there? All alone?"

He nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Mizuki sighed, a heavy, maternal sound. "You shouldn’t go too far into the dark, Kōya. It’s dangerous."

He nodded again.

She looked back at the cold blue flame dancing on his fingers. Then, she looked deeply into her son’s dark eyes.

There was something highly unusual about him. She had always known it, since the day he was born and refused to cry. She could feel the heavy, ancient weight in his soul.

But she did not know exactly what it was, and she didn’t care to interrogate it.

She remembered a profound truth she had once heard from an old scholar during her adventuring days.

A soul is not simply born inherently good or fundamentally evil. A child becomes exactly what the world relentlessly teaches him to become. How someone is treated matters. What they experience shapes their core. The choices they are allowed to make matter more than the blood in their veins.

Mizuki looked at Kōya’s terrified, defensive posture.

Perhaps there was something incredibly dark residing inside him. Perhaps he was touched by the abyss.

But that absolutely did not mean he had to become a monster.

She smiled warmly, a radiant expression that cut through his anxiety.

"I won’t tell your father."

Kōya’s eyes widened in sheer shock. She was protecting him?

"But you have to promise me something very important, Kōya."

He waited, holding his breath.

"You will never use this power to hurt anyone. You only use it to protect."

Kōya remained silent for a long moment, the ancient Destruction King warring with the boy.

Then, he nodded firmly.

Mizuki’s smile brightened. "Good."

She stood up and looked toward the front of the house. "Your father is still away in the village?"

Kōya nodded.

"Then come here." She reached down and took his small hand, her thumb rubbing over his knuckles.

"Your father is teaching you the way of the sword. I think it is only fair that I teach you the way of magic."

Kōya’s eyes widened astronomically. "Really?"

Mizuki laughed, a bright, beautiful sound. "Really."

Seiya had begun traveling regularly to the next large town across the valley.

There was a small, quiet adventurer’s guild established there. It was a rural outpost, not officially registered with the main, bureaucratic guild network in the capital, which made it the perfect place to find work without leaving a trace for the new demonic rulers to follow.

The available work was mundane and simple.

Delivering supplies to isolated farms. Gathering rare medicinal herbs from the cliffs. Finding lost livestock. Clearing out dens of small, encroaching monsters. Protecting vulnerable merchant travelers on the dirt roads.

It was absolutely nothing that would attract the dangerous attention of the major guilds or the roaming demonic inquisitors.

Seiya, hiding his legendary status under a worn cloak, helped manage the local guild’s chaotic requests and took whatever physical work was necessary to keep food on their table and support his hidden family.

Whenever he returned home, tired and covered in dust, he brought fresh food, new carving tools, thick books for the library, and occasionally a carved wooden toy or sweet for Kōya.

While the Hero was away playing mercenary, Mizuki kept her promise. She continued actively teaching Kōya the intricacies of magic in the safety of their yard.

She started with the absolute, foundational basics.

How atmospheric mana moved through the environment. How to control his breathing to synchronize his heartbeat with his core. How to center his absolute concentration to avoid a miscast. How to properly, safely form the structural matrix of a spell before injecting power into it.

Kōya listened with rapt, unbroken attention.

His progress in her human magic was frustratingly slow, but his ancient mind understood the underlying mathematical principles perfectly.

Yet, his demonic mana still felt horribly incomplete.

There was still something massively blocking the left side of his body. An invisible, absolute wall that rejected the darkness. Something he could not identify, no matter how hard he probed his own soul.

But he categorically refused to give up.

Every single day, he practiced with a terrifying, relentless discipline.

The heavy wooden sword with his father in the mornings.

The structural theory of magic with his mother in the afternoons.

And the visceral, bloody demonic training entirely alone in the deep forest at twilight.

Slowly, surely, his second life was beginning to take a formidable shape.

But Kōya was not the only dangerous thing moving through the shadows of that forest.

Far deeper among the ancient trees, miles beyond the safe perimeter where Kōya usually trained, something vile had recently arrived.

A high-tier demon had violently fled from the horrific confines of Draven Korr’s expanding Slane Territory.

He had barely escaped the brutal purges of the new regime with almost nothing to his name. No loyal army. No hoarded wealth. No political protection.

He had only his innate, brutal physical strength and a starving, sadistic hunger.

He had been lurking in the woods for weeks, desperately searching for a way to feed, to gather negative energy, and to eventually rebuild his lost position of power.

Then, on a lonely dirt road near the forest edge, he had found a human.

She was still alive. For now.

The desperate demon had ambushed her caravan, killed her guards, and dragged her deep into the suffocating darkness of the forest, keeping her heavily bound and hidden in a cave.

He needed negative energy to restore his mana. He wanted to entirely break her will, harvest her despair, and eventually turn her into a broken, compliant slave to serve him.

But she was stubborn, and she had violently resisted him.

So, hidden in the dark, he continued methodically tormenting her, feeding off her screams.

The cruel demon had absolutely no idea that a reincarnated powerhouse was currently training his aura only a few miles away.

And Kōya had absolutely no idea that a filthy, sadistic remnant from his old, dark world had aggressively entered the sanctuary of the forest near his home.

For now, their paths remained entirely separate in the sprawling woods.

But with every passing day, the shadows were getting closer.

One brisk, foggy morning, Kōya tied his boots and prepared to leave the house for his usual, solitary training in the woods.

He picked up his small leather bag, packed with a water skin, and headed toward the heavy front door.

"Be careful out there," Mizuki smiled warmly from the kitchen, wiping her hands.

Kōya nodded respectfully. "I will."

He pushed the door open and stepped outside into the cool, misty air.

"Wait."

Seiya’s deep voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

Kōya turned around.

His tall father stood on the porch behind him. The Hero was not smiling today.

Seiya held something long and wrapped in leather in his right hand.

It was not the battered, blunt wooden sword Kōya had been using for months.

It was a real, forged steel sword, scaled down perfectly for a young boy’s grip.

Kōya stared at the glint of the metal, his heart skipping a beat.

Seiya walked slowly down the wooden steps toward him.

"You’ve learned enough of the fundamental basics, Kōya. Your form is solid."

Seiya held the leather-wrapped scabbard out, offering it to his son.

"I think you should carry this from now on."

Kōya slowly reached out and took the weapon, gripping the leather hilt. He drew the blade a few inches.

It was a simple, unadorned weapon. Nothing legendary. It held no holy enchantments, no glowing runes.

But the edge was razor sharp, and the steel was cold and absolutely real. It was a tool designed specifically to kill.

"Why?" Kōya asked, looking up, his dark eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Seiya’s relaxed expression vanished, replaced by the grim, hardened face of a veteran commander who had survived the apocalypse.

"I’ve been feeling something very strange in the air lately."

Kōya tightened his grip on the hilt. "Something in the forest?"

Seiya nodded slowly, his golden eyes scanning the dark, misty tree line in the distance.

"I don’t know exactly what it is. The mana signature is deliberately suppressed, but it feels... wrong. It feels like the old days."

Seiya knelt down, placing a heavy, warm hand firmly on Kōya’s small shoulder.

"So, until I have the time to track it down and figure out exactly what is hiding in my woods... you do not go anywhere near those trees without this blade in your hand. Do you understand me?"

Kōya looked down at the lethal steel in his hands.

His fingers tightened securely around the grip, the leather groaning slightly under the pressure.

For the very first time in this new, fragile life, he felt the heavy, undeniable, comforting weight of real, lethal steel resting in his palms.

"I understand," Kōya said, his voice dropping slightly in pitch.

Seiya patted his shoulder and stood back up. "Don’t go too deep today, Kōya."

Kōya nodded once.

He turned his back on the safe, warm cottage and faced the dense, fog-covered forest.

The massive, ancient trees stood completely quietly in the distance, their branches intertwined like grasping claws.

Somewhere deep beyond that impenetrable wall of green and shadow, something vile was patiently waiting.

Kōya did not know what it was.

But for the very first time since his reincarnation, the former Destruction King was walking into the dark carrying a real sword,

And somewhere ahead, something from his old world was waiting for him.