Chapter 0: Demon Lord and Hero (Despair)

His mind fractured.

Not like glass—like corrupted code, overwritten mid-execution.

A weightless pressure wrapped around him. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, sterile and unblinking. The air reeked of antiseptic and something colder—like memory stripped of meaning.

“Where am I?”

The thought didn’t reach his lips. It echoed inside his skull, muffled by static. Core parameters shutting down. Identity slipping.

A voice behind glass.

Clinical.

Detached.

Then—

Lightning cracked. The sound wasn’t just loud—it ripped.

The battlefield slammed back into focus. The citadel groaned beneath him, its walls pulsing like a dying heart. The floor was no longer stone, but a lattice of bone-threaded metal and congealed gore. The air hissed—not wind, but something mechanical, like a ventilator struggling to breathe.

Masayuki darted forward, a blur of focused motion in a child’s frame. His blade sang with lightning, carving a desperate pocket of safety through a swarm of wraiths. The impact sent a shockwave through the bone-laced floor.

“Kyle!” he shouted, voice taut with effort. “Your spirit is still yours!”

Kyle blinked, but his body didn't respond. He saw the wraiths reforming, but his body refused to move.

The sterile light returned. A phantom pressure bloomed in his arm—where a needle had once pierced. A flatline echoed in his ears. For a moment, he felt the absence of his own heartbeat.

He blinked again as the cries of war swallowed the battlefield. The transition was agonizing, like tearing two magnets apart.

To the left, Renji and Luna staggered in their shared body. Their Saint’s Gown sparked like frayed wires holding up a failing circuit grid. Renji’s debuffs swirled like smoke, while Luna’s healing light pulsed in strained defiance.

“Hurry... Just cast the damn thing!” Renji barked, voice frayed.

“Not with your posture!” Luna snapped back. “You’re slouching like a goblin! Do you want us to fail?!”

Their ritual of denial—their familiar bickering—forced an enemy spell to misfire. A fireball veered off course, exploding against a pillar.

“Honestly, you two are ruining my final battle aesthetic.”

Minami, perched on a floating shard of debris, sighed with dramatic exhaustion. Her gyaru nails shimmered like enchanted glass.

“Where is the dramatic tension demanded of every final showdown?”

Kotaro and Kokoro moved in eerie synchronicity, their soul-swapped bodies reacting as one. Kotaro deflected a cursed spear with his feline grace. Kokoro lunged forward, Salamander roaring behind her.

She faltered when Kyle stumbled, dragging himself upright.

“Kyle!” she cried, reaching out as the Demon Lord seized its moment. Her voice cut through the static—clear, raw, real.

Acid breath surged toward them—hissing, corrosive, like death liquefied.

Kyle braced for impact—but Kokoro’s fire flared, shielding him. The heat was blinding. The roar, deafening. Through the haze, their eyes met.

She didn’t speak. But the look—raw, desperate—held the weight of being seen. It was the single, warm anchor that prevented him from drifting away.

Then the warmth thinned—pulled away like ink in water.

White light.

Needles.

The voice behind glass returned, sterile and merciless.

“Subject KL-3 responding to mythic imprinting. Begin phase three.”

The words weren’t spoken. They echoed inside his skull, overriding the battlefield’s chaos.

“Subject KL-3’s body is resisting all attempts of forced bonding.”

He gasped. Copper flooded his mouth—not just blood, but his lungs burned.

The Demon Lord’s claw had torn through his stomach. The pain wasn't just physical; it was the sudden, absolute lack of resonance. A gaping hole where his soul should have been.

“I see,” the Demon Lord hissed, voice like grinding glass. “You were never chosen. Nothing more than an artificial hero.”

Kyle screamed—not from the wound, but from the truth. The sound was swallowed by the citadel’s groan—a groan that now felt like a lie being exposed.

The battlefield blurred.

He was strapped to a cold, smooth table. His body convulsed, violently, rhythmically. The sterile air smelled of betrayal.

“If this continues, Subject KL-3 will die.”

“If it is, there was nothing more that could have been done.”

Not real. Not mine. Not me.

The desperate mantra was a whisper against the roaring fear.

“Kyle’s been seriously injured!” Kokoro’s voice pierced the haze—thin, warped, as if heard from underwater.

Masayuki surged forward, katana slicing—not to strike the Demon Lord, but to clear a safe space. He moved with the precise, practiced grace of a guardian, stabilizing Kyle with one arm.

His hand tightened on Kyle's shoulder—warm, heavy, and real.

“Calm yourself, my friend,” Masayuki said, voice low and steady. “Your strength is still needed.”

Kyle blinked.

His vision focused on the veins standing out in Masayuki’s neck, pulsing with effort. The sterile light faded.

The others rallied, yet their battle cry was slowly being swallowed by despair.

The battlefield returned—blurred at the edges, like a dream unraveling mid-thought.

Renji and Luna’s bickering paused as their shared body rushed over.

“Kyle, you reckless bastard!” Renji dropped to their knees, pressing down with desperate chest compressions. “Who told you to feint on an armor rating of five or higher?!”

His voice cracked. Not from anger. From fear.

Luna’s hands hovered over Kyle’s chest, trembling. “How dare you call him an idiot when all you do is nitpick!” she snapped, casting healing magic with those same trembling hands.

The light barely held. Even their Saint’s Gown seemed to know this was a losing fight.

A gust of wind knocked back a skeletal fiend. Kotaro’s voice followed, thin and hoarse: “My magic’s almost gone.”

“No potions left,” Minami muttered, staring into her empty bag. “Inventory management on this arc is a disaster.”

She smiled—tight, practiced. It didn’t reach her eyes.

Magic flared. Steel clashed. The ground cracked beneath them, bleeding light and shadow.

Six fragile sparks against a tidal wave of darkness.

Kokoro knelt beside Kyle.

She didn’t speak at first. Just looked at him. Her flame dimmed—but her eyes didn’t.

“Please,” she whispered, voice raw. “We need you.”

Tears streaked her cheeks. Her voice cut through the static—clear, trembling, alive. The only frequency he could still register.

For the first time since the claw, he felt something real.

Not prophecy.

Not programming.

Just her.

Across the throne room, the Demon Lord’s final guard assembled: twisted knights in black iron, gibbering wraiths that peeled the skin from the air, grotesque flesh-shapers. The air itself seemed to crackle under the pressure of their vast, flawless numbers.

Thousands of them.

The last defense.

Kyle looked at his companions—bloodied, scorched, exhausted. Their faces were ghosts beneath the grime. No spells left. No potions. No fallback plan.

Just each other.

And Kyle—broken, bleeding, artificial—gripped Sunbreaker.

The blade flickered once. Then dimmed. It was failing him.

“I commend you for your bravery, fake hero,” the Demon Lord said, voice smooth with delight. “Fighting to your very last breath.”

Kyle’s body felt hollow. His will, scattered like ash.

But he didn’t let go.

He clenched his jaw. Not in defiance—but in choice. He gathered the heat, the pain, the flickers of self still burning beneath the wreckage. He chose this world—the chaotic, messy, agonizing realness of it—over the cold, clean lie of his creation.

The blade in his hand—Sunbreaker—glowed.

Not with divine light.

But with the unstable, beautiful surge of an overloaded system choosing to burn itself out.

> “I don’t care what I was,” he rasped, using the hilt as a crutch. “I know who I chose to be.”

The fear didn’t vanish. But he anchored it. Let it settle like sediment in a storm.

The citadel pulsed around him—walls groaning, floor trembling—like a dying heart refusing to quit.

He looked at them.

Masayuki—bruised, steady, watching him like a sentinel.

Minami—illusions flickering, but her gaze sharp, unflinching.

Kotaro and Kokoro—shoulder to shoulder, breath synced, blades ready.

Renji and Luna—still bickering, even now, even as they held him up.

They argued. They laughed. They bled.

They stayed.

Kyle exhaled.

A breath that felt like a beginning.

“Thank you,” he whispered—to no one, to everyone.

Then louder, voice raw and cracked:

“All right, team.”

A pause.

Not for drama. For gravity.

“For the last time—hold the line.”

The words didn’t echo.

They landed.