Chapter 0: Hero and Demon Lord (Hope) V4

The war between humans and demons was older than memory.

Every thousand years—as if summoned by the heartbeat of the world itself—a Demon Lord rose.

Not born.

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.

It was as if the rhythm had broken.

***

The young man, Kyle, exhaled as he looked at his final destination. His breath curled into the air like a ghost trying to escape. The cold bit deeper than armor could block, pressing into his ribs with a weight that felt personal. His cloak snapped in the wind, then clung to his legs like a frightened child.

Yet he didn’t adjust it. He didn’t move.

The legendary weapon, Sunbreaker, hung in his back. Its once-radiant blade now flickering with a sickly, embered glow.

Not dead. Not alive. Just… fading.

On the day he was brought into the world, prophecy had not named him. Not even a divine mark burned on his skin.

He had not been chosen.

Instead he had been summoned—by something that had no name, no shape, no mercy.

He remembered nothing before the summoning.

No childhood. No home.

Just the sterile sting of antiseptic and the hum of fluorescent lights. It was like a memory that wasn’t a memory—just a sensation, like waking from anesthesia and realizing you’d been someone else.

So he closed his eyes.

For a moment, the wind vanished. Replaced by the press of fluid against his skin.

A heartbeat that wasn’t his. A scream muffled by glass.

The young man opened his eyes as the wind returned.

He moved with purpose. He spoke with conviction. He gathered companions—not through fate, but through choice.

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

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

The crunch of his boot against frostbitten stone echoed louder than it should have. He focused on that sound, anchoring himself to the present.

But the wind, thin and sharp, slipped through the broken wall beside him, and for a heartbeat, it sounded like Kokoro’s breath catching in her throat.

He imagined Luna’s quiet prayer, a defiant whisper against the gods who had abandoned them. Masayuki’s blade scraping stone, steady and ritualistic. Kotaro and Kokoro’s shared silence—twins in borrowed bodies, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Each sound a goodbye they hadn’t spoken aloud.

Now Kyle stood alone.

Peace. Ruin. Rebirth.

The world had always looped.

But Kyle wasn’t born to break the cycle.

He was here to finally end it.

***

After two years of crossing kingdoms, slaying monsters, and defying fate, he stood at the edge of the final wound. The Demon Lord’s Domain wasn’t a battlefield. It was a scar—raw, unhealed, and pulsing with memory.

The land itself recoiled beneath his boots, brittle and blackened, as if scorched by something older than fire.

Above it loomed the citadel—a cathedral of bone and ruin, its spires twisted like claws reaching for a sky that no longer wept. Only watched.

Storm clouds churned overhead. Not with thunder. With pressure—like a breath held too long.

The air reeked of ozone, rot, and something deeper. Something ominous that clearly still remembered.

Sunbreaker trembled in Kyle’s grip. Its light—once a clarion blaze—now flickered like a dying star. The Chi within him hissed, thin and bitter, like steam bleeding from a cracked engine. His armor groaned with each movement, not in defiance, but in mourning.

Still he stepped forward.

The air thickened instantly, clinging to his skin like a wet shroud. Every motion dragged. The ground beneath him was cold, fractured stone, but something pulsed beneath it—slow, rhythmic, wrong. As if the world itself had a heartbeat, and now counting down.

“Luna,” he said quietly. “Begin the chant.”

Behind him, a voice rose—soft, trembling, but clear.

“O light that once knew mercy... O flame that once knew warmth… grant us one more breath. One more step. One more chance.”

When the prayer ended, it drifted through the air like a thread of gold. It shimmered faintly, then vanished.

Kyle felt it first. A subtle warmth in his chest, like a hand pressed gently to his heart.

Sunbreaker steadied.

The weight on his shoulders didn’t vanish, but it shifted—shared.

He glanced back, just once.

“Is everyone ready?”

Masayuki stood with his blade drawn, eyes closed in silent discipline. Minami waved back still completely carefree even though she was suppose to be lurking in the covers, hidden from view. Kokoro and Kotaro stood side by side, hands clenched, their mismatched bodies trembling but upright. Renji—still wearing Luna’s form—nodded once, jaw tight before returning control. And Luna, pale and flickering, met Kyle’s gaze with a fragile, defiant smile.

He turned back.

His breath rasped in his throat. His vision narrowed. But he did not stop.

The throne of marrow waited at the heart of the ruin, vast and silent. For a long moment, it sat empty—like an altar without a god.

Then, slowly, deliberately, it pulsed. Once, then twice.

A shape rose—not summoned, not born, but revealed.

A shifting mass of shadow and bone, too vast to be real, too precise to be a nightmare. Its form refused to settle, as if reality itself struggled to contain it. Its presence didn’t radiate heat or cold. It radiated stillness—a silence so complete it crushed the air, the light, the sound of Kyle’s own heartbeat.

He staggered with his knees to buckle. The sword tip scraped stone as he drove it down to brace himself.

The impact rang out—a bell tolling for the end of something sacred.

The world held its breath.

The Demon Lord did not roar. It did not move. It simply regarded him.

Its voice came not from its mouth, but from the marrow of the throne.

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

The words weren’t a question. They were of a memory. And they struck harder than any blade.

Kyle’s throat seized. No sound escaped.

The voice had weight, and it settled into his bones like regret. This caused Sunbreaker to dim further. Its light curling inward, ashamed of its false divinity.

The Demon Lord tilted its head, as if listening to Kyle’s silence.

“So this is their answer,” it murmured, voice low and vast. “Another hollow blade to break the pact they swore in blood.”

Ash drifted through the broken ceiling. The wind returned—thin, keening, a dirge threading through the ruin.

He knew that he was not the Hero the world had summoned.

He was the one it couldn’t explain.

But even as the silence pressed in, Kyle clung to a single image: Kokoro’s eyes, wide with fear and fury. The memory of children’s trembling hands. The weight of a thousand lives, slaughtered without reason, without mercy.

He would not turn his head away.