Prologue

Tokyo lay in absolute ruins. Towering skyscrapers had toppled like a set of dominoes. The streets were littered with shattered glass and crumbling concrete. Thick black smoke billowed from all directions, rising in dark columns towards the sky. Fires blazed in every corner, devouring what remained of the city.

At the heart of the destruction yawned a massive crater—an open, gaping wound in the earth. It spanned hundreds of metres across, its walls scorched black. The ground around it lay fractured, spreading out in spiderweb cracks for miles.

Lying within the crater was a man in a dreadful state. His once-silver hair hung in a dull, tangled mess, part of it singed away. His sharp blue eyes now dimmed to a fading glimmer. His body was a patchwork of wounds—deep gashes, swollen purple bruises, and charred skin turned black.

But the worst were his limbs. His right arm was gone, leaving only a bloodied stump. His left leg had been severed just below the knee. Each ragged breath rattled in his chest, rising and falling in uneven jolts.

That man was Urotasu—the strongest Kanjo-Gun in Japan. The Kanjo-Gun, sorcerers who wielded supernatural power born from human emotions. And now, this living legend lay dying at the bottom of a crater carved by his own battle.

“Hah...” Urotasu coughed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His lips curved into a lopsided grin. “So this is what it feels like to be the underdog. Not bad...”

Not far from where Urotasu lay, perched on the crater’s edge, sat Anukus. Legs dangling into the pit as if he were lounging beside a pool. Though wounded too, he was in far better shape. His pink hair still gleamed, his emerald eyes glinting with cruelty, and fiery tattoos curled around both arms.

“You know,” Anukus drawled lazily, “this is the first time I’ve had to use more than half my power.”

Urotasu let out a low snort—more of a sarcastic chuckle. “Blimey, I’m flattered. And here I was, throwing in a hundred and ten percent—plus a bit of creative flair for those snazzy final words.”

Anukus floated down with ease, hovering closer. “You’re still cracking jokes in this state?”

“Oi, a sense of humour’s the last thing I’d hand over to you, mate,” Urotasu retorted, flashing a grin even as fresh blood spurted when he coughed again. “Besides, when else am I gonna have a casual chinwag with a celebrity like you? Usually, we just skip straight to the punch-up.”

“You could’ve been stronger,” Anukus said flatly. “If only you’d cast off those chains of hope. Hope’s what’s made you weak.”

“Oh, here we go—another cheap villain monologue.” Urotasu shook his head dramatically. “You know the difference between us? You leech off other people’s emotions like some parasite, and me—I make my own. Quality over quantity, Anukus.”

The power of the Kanjo-Gun was a strange one. They absorbed and wielded human emotions—but there were two ways to do it. Urotasu drew strength from his own—his will to protect, his love for life, his rage at injustice. Every raw, genuine feeling within him fuelled his power.

Anukus was different. He preyed on the emotions of others, stealing what was never his, robbing people of what made them human. For centuries, he’d devoured fear, despair, anger—even joy and love—from his victims. Each stolen emotion fed the monstrous power that earned him the title Kanshoku O—the Eater of Emotions.

“To be honest,” Urotasu went on, eyes lifting to the blood-red sky, “I didn’t think this fight would drag on. Usually, they’re down and out before I have to pull out the big guns.”

For the first time in his life, Urotasu tasted defeat. Strangely enough, it brought with it a weird sense of satisfaction. He’d always won, never once felt what it meant to be truly beaten. It was like finding the last puzzle piece to a life spent fighting.

But Anukus said nothing more. His expression hardened, turned cold and merciless. Flames flickered in his palm—not ordinary fire, but a blaze born of centuries of devoured emotions. A dark purple fire that scorched not just the flesh, but the very soul.

“Goodbye, Urotasu.”

“Oi, oi,” Urotasu raised his remaining hand in mock protest. “No rousing last words? Not even a cheesy evil laugh? You really are hopeless at this dramatic villain thing.”

But the fire was already swelling, forming a colossal ball of searing heat above the crater. With a flick of Anukus’ wrist, it plummeted.

The second explosion hit.

And in that blinding blast, as his body burned, Urotasu felt... warmth. Not pain, but something closer to a long-awaited embrace.

Memories flared within him—faces of comrades long gone. Toge, his best mate who’d died defending a tiny village. Uta, the woman he’d once loved, who’d given her life to stop a monstrous horror. And his students... young souls snatched away too soon by the cruel world of sorcery.

“Well then,” he whispered inwardly, “looks like I’ll be seeing them again.”

Darkness closed over his vision. He was certain—dead certain—this was the end.

Until, quite unexpectedly, Urotasu opened his eyes.

What greeted him wasn’t a sky of smoke and ash, but a carved wooden ceiling with classic patterns—a warm, homely ceiling.

“Oi, am I hallucinating now?” he muttered, trying to sit up. “Or is this some cheap trick of Anukus? Maybe... maybe this is that limbo thing Buddha talks about before you get chucked into your next life?”

He felt different—lighter, but weaker too. Incredibly weak. His body thin, almost frail. The room around him was styled like something straight out of medieval Europe, filled with elegant, old-fashioned furniture.

With wobbly steps, Urotasu made his way to a standing mirror. What he saw nearly knocked him flat.

“Bloody hell! Is this me in the afterlife? I look worse than when I had food poisoning!”

The face staring back was his... only far younger. He was in the body of a scrawny teen with pale skin. The silver hair and blue eyes were still there, but his face bore the look of someone half-dead—sunken cheeks, hollowed eyes, practically a walking corpse.

Yet somehow, his missing limbs were back—his right arm and left leg as whole as if they’d never been torn off.

But one thing stood out. On his forehead, just to the left, was a stitched scar shaped like a lightning bolt, running from his hairline almost down to his brow.

“And when did I get a scar that looks like some knock-off superhero logo?” he muttered, poking at it. “Pretty sure Anukus didn’t whack me there.”

As he stood there, lost in his daze, the door creaked open. A young girl stepped in, carrying a basin of water and a clean cloth. She had neat pink hair tied back and bright amber eyes, dressed in a spotless maid’s uniform.

The moment she spotted Urotasu at the mirror, her eyes widened in shock. The basin slipped from her hands with a loud clatter, water splashing everywhere.

“Master Duncan!” she gasped, covering her mouth with both hands.

And right then, without thinking, Urotasu blurted out a name he had no idea he even knew.

“Phoebe?”

It tumbled from his lips as if he’d known her all his life. Though he was certain he’d never met a girl called Phoebe before.

“Well,” he thought, breaking into a grin, “this definitely isn’t a cheap trick... or the afterlife. This is shaping up to be something a lot more interesting.”

Questions swirled in his head. Who the hell was Duncan? Why did the girl call him that? And how on earth did he know her name?

One thing was certain—his life had just been flipped on its head. And weirdly enough, even in the middle of this utterly bonkers situation, Urotasu felt a strange sense of familiarity. As if a forgotten memory sat quietly in the back of his mind... waiting to be remembered.