Chapter 0: Hero and Demon Lord (Hope)

The war between humans and demons was older than memory.

It pulsed beneath the soil, echoed in the bones of mountains, whispered through the bloodlines of kings. Every thousand years, as if summoned by the heartbeat of the world itself, a Demon Lord rose—not born, but remembered. A grotesque of ancient malice, forged from the hatred of forgotten gods.

And always—always—in the hour of deepest despair, a Hero emerged.

But not this time.

Kyle’s breath fogged in the cold. The wind clawed at his cloak, tugging like a child who didn’t want him to go. His fingers trembled on the hilt of Sunbreaker, the blade that once sang with divine light. Now it flickered weakly, like a dying ember in a hearth long abandoned.

No prophecy had named him. No divine mark adorned his skin. He had arrived not by fate, but by accident—or something worse.

The rhythm had broken.

Cities still burned. Oceans still boiled. The sky still wept fire. But the Hero did not rise from bloodline or scripture. He was summoned—not by gods, but by something else. Something that had no name, no shape, no mercy.

Kyle remembered nothing before the summoning. No childhood. No home. Just fragments—half-dreams of a world with gene splicing and human experimentation. Half-instincts of battles he’d never fought. And yet, he moved with purpose. He spoke with conviction. He gathered companions not through destiny, but through choice.

They had followed him through kingdoms and chaos. Misfits. Survivors. Friends.

He didn’t look back. But he felt them.

Kokoro’s breath catching. Luna’s quiet prayer. The scrape of Masayuki’s blade against stone. Each sound a goodbye they didn’t say.

Now, they waited—scattered across the battlefield, ready to face the end.

Kyle stood alone.

The Chi inside him, once a wine-red torrent, now hissed like steam from a cracked engine. His armor creaked—not with power, but with confession. The sword in his hand trembled—not with strength, but with doubt.

Peace. Ruin. Rebirth.

The world had always looped. But Kyle wasn’t born to break the cycle.

He was here to end it.

***

After two years of crossing kingdoms, slaying monsters, and defying fate, Kyle stood at the edge of the final wound.

The Demon Lord’s Domain was not a battlefield—it was a scar. A place where the world had bled too long and stopped healing. The citadel loomed above it, a cathedral of bone and ruin, pulsing with miasma. Storm clouds churned like a curse refusing to die. The air reeked of ozone, rot, and something older—something that remembered.

Sunbreaker trembled in his grip. Once radiant, its glow now flickered like a dying star. The Chi inside him hissed, thin and broken, like steam escaping a cracked engine. His armor creaked—not with power, but with weight. Every breath felt borrowed.

He stepped forward.

The throne of marrow pulsed once—then the Demon Lord rose.

A shifting mass of shadow and bone, its form too vast to be real, too precise to be imagined. Its aura crushed the light. Kyle staggered beneath it, knees buckling, heart stuttering.

The world held its breath.

“Do the Gods truly wish to break their pact?”

The voice didn’t echo. It vibrated—through the stone, through Kyle’s ribs, through the memory of every battle he couldn’t remember.

The words weren’t lies.

They felt like memories.

Kyle didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The sword in his hand dimmed further, as if ashamed. The wind howled through the broken citadel, carrying ash and silence.

He was not the Hero the world had summoned.

He was the one it couldn’t explain.

But even so, he couldn’t turn his head away against the millions of lives butchered and slaughtered by the Demon Lord’s whims.

Author's Note: Thank you for coming here to read. I have been trying different attempts to write different versions. I am currently at Version 3 and releasing everything again but with a different lens. I hope that you will show your love by liking and commenting.