Part one hundred seventy one— What Was Left of Home

　The mist gate opened, and I stepped through expecting the ordinary sounds of Horizoncrest — chatter, trade, Ace's usual complaints about dinner.

　I stopped.

　I didn't react.

　Not yet.

　I just stared.

　Himari's face went completely still beside me. Chloe froze entirely. Nyxara's calm held outwardly, but her eyes had gone somewhere I'd never seen them go before.

　I couldn't speak.

Horizoncrest is gone.

　Every building I could see had been destroyed. Houses still burned in places, smoke thick enough to sting. Stores had collapsed into rubble that used to be someone's livelihood. Bodies lay scattered through the streets, and there was no sound of ordinary life left anywhere — no merchants calling out prices, no children, no one calling to anyone else.

　Just fire.

　I started walking through the ruined streets without deciding to. I don't think I fully understood, yet, what I was actually looking at.

This isn't real.

This can't actually be real.

　Himari and Chloe broke into a run toward the mansion, desperate, hoping for survivors.

　I followed slower, still numb, still unable to properly process the scale of what surrounded me.

　They found Elaine first.

　Chloe dropped to her knees beside her.

　"Elaine—"

　She touched her.

　Nothing answered.

　Elaine was already gone.

　Then the elf elder.

　His wife.

　Their daughter.

　All of them, gone.

　Horizoncrest's own citizens slaughtered in the same silence that had swallowed everything else.

　Himari searched frantically for Ivy, calling her name through the wreckage.

　Instead, she found Eris.

　Pinned against a broken wall.

　A blade through her chest.

　That was the moment I finally saw her too.

　Something inside me cracked.

　I want to describe it properly, because it wasn't rage, not at first.

　It was something quieter.

　And considerably more total.

　A mirror somewhere deep in my own mind, the last held-together piece of whatever composure I'd built over years, finally fracturing.

　One crack.

　Then another.

　Then the whole thing shattered at once.

　My aura changed the same instant — the familiar red-purple bleeding into something black and crimson instead, my hair darkening slowly, strand by strand, into a deep, absolute black.

　Nyxara watched it happen, her own composure holding outwardly steady.

Someone hurt my toy.

　That alone was enough to make her furious in a way she rarely allowed herself to be.

　Himari broke down first, sobbing.

　Chloe followed a moment later.

　I just stood there.

　"Null-Subconsciousness," I said quietly.

　Silence.

　"I'm dreaming, right?"

　Nothing.

　"Tell me I'm dreaming."

　Still nothing.

　"This is a dream," I said, my voice starting to shake. "I'm still dreaming. I just need to wake up."

　Then the memory of the facility arrived, cutting through the numbness — the one place that should have been impossible to breach, Genesis energy protection woven into its very foundation, accessible only to the Kobayashi family itself.

　I ran.

　Everyone followed.

　I threw the door open.

　Survivors.

　A handful, huddled together, alive.

　For the first time since stepping through the mist gate, I felt something like relief.

　It didn't last.

　Ivy wasn't there.

　Enzo wasn't there either.

　A young man stepped forward — one of the survivors, shaken but coherent.

　Nyxara asked him directly what happened.

　His name was Soway.

　He told it plainly, carefully, as though reciting it kept him from falling apart entirely.

　Eris and Enzo had returned from Myrath.

　Ivy, Eris, and Elaine had been preparing food, waiting for them.

　Everything had been ordinary right up until the moment it wasn't.

　Then a massive mana explosion tore through the center of town, and Horizoncrest was gone almost instantly.

　Soldiers began appearing through teleportation magic in the wreckage.

　"Who were they?" I asked.

　"The Shimizu Empire," Soway said. "I remember the symbol on their armor."

　Ivy, Eris, and Enzo had fought back — and for a moment, from what Soway described, it looked like they might actually win.

　Then a massive barrier rose around the entire city, specifically weakening demons and dragons.

　Ivy and Enzo were affected.

　My own Null mana, apparently, had blunted the effect on them somewhat, though not enough.

　Then someone appeared.

　Before anyone could react, he took both of them.

　"Who?" I asked.

　"I don't know," Soway said.

　More soldiers kept arriving.

　Eris understood the survivors couldn't stay, and ordered Elaine to take them to the underground facility while she held the line herself.

　Elaine tried to go back for her.

　She never returned.

　I listened to all of it in total silence.

　Then blood began falling from my eyes.

　Not tears.

　Blood.

　I released fifty percent of my Null mana without deciding to, my own body immediately beginning to break down under the strain of it.

　"Kai," Nyxara said sharply.

　"Stop."

　I didn't respond.

　The rage had already taken everything rational away from me.

　She understood, watching my body fail beneath the pressure of my own power, that if she didn't intervene, I was going to destroy myself before anyone else got the chance to.

　She knocked me unconscious.

　She wasn't stopping me because she disagreed with anything I intended to do.

　She simply refused to let her toy destroy himself before he ever got the chance to finish what he'd started.

　I found myself somewhere peaceful, drifting.

　And then I saw them.

　Doran.

　Fenrik.

　Eris.

　Elaine.

　The elf elder, his wife, their daughter.

　Every citizen of Horizoncrest I'd ever come to know.

　I smiled, genuinely relieved.

　"You guys know better than to prank me like that."

　A pause.

　"Alright, enough joking around. Let's go home."

　Eris looked at me and smiled back, gentle.

　"I don't think we'll be able to go home with you, Kai."

　"But know this," Elaine added. "We'll always be with you."

　They began fading.

　I reached for them.

　"Wait—"

　I ran.

　The distance only grew.

　The ground cracked beneath me, and I fell, still reaching, still desperate.

　Two figures caught me instead.

　Something achingly familiar settled around me.

Mom.

Dad.

　Then I woke up.

　I tried to stand immediately.

　Himari stopped me.

　"Don't go outside."

　I insisted anyway.

　The bodies had been arranged properly, in rows, each one covered by a plain white sheet.

　I saw Eris first.

　Then Elaine.

　I knew them both instantly, even covered.

　I reached toward the sheet.

　Chloe caught my hand before I could pull it back.

　I didn't fight her.

　I simply lowered my arm and walked back inside, quiet in a way that felt considerably heavier than anything I'd expressed since first stepping through the mist gate.

　Nyxara was waiting for me, a memory crystal held out in one hand.

　"Kai," she said simply.

　I took it and activated it, watching everything unfold in full for the first time — the explosion, the soldiers pouring through teleportation circles, Ivy and Enzo fighting back with everything they had, the weakening barrier closing in around them.

　Then Skorne appeared.

　And took them both.

　I watched it in complete silence.

　"I was wondering where Skorne went during the meeting," Nyxara said quietly. "So this is what he was actually doing."

　The recording continued.

　The soldiers moved through the wreckage afterward, collecting the weapons and materials I'd developed — Dragonsteel, Voidstone, everything I'd deliberately kept off the open market.

　"Did they really think we'd ask them to trade these?" one soldier said, laughing.

　"Our Goddess doesn't ask for what already belongs to her," another said. "She simply takes it."

　A pause.

　"Soon, we'll control the West."

　Then, finally:

　"A newly born Demon Lord has no right to possess weapons like these."

　I understood, finally, the full shape of what had actually happened.

This wasn't an attack.

This was conquest.

And an attempted theft of everything I built.

And Nao's empire was behind every piece of it.

　The room went entirely silent.

　I stood slowly.

　My aura began leaking outward again — but this time, there was no screaming in it.

　No madness.

　Just absolute, controlled hatred.

　"I'm going to the Shimizu Empire," I said.

　Nyxara looked at me.

　"I'm going to kill Vorath and Skorne."

　My eyes went cold.

　"Nao Shimizu," I said quietly, final.

　"You just picked the wrong person to mess with."