Chapter 6: A Hero’s Dark Confession

The laughter faded slowly.

Crumbs slowly scattered across silk sheets, a small, vulnerable act of domesticity against the room's sterile perfection. The fridge hummed in the background, soft and steady. A heartbeat for a house that didn’t sleep.

Their late night chatter soon made everyone hungry as Kyle and the twins decided to look through the snack drawers. Sebastian had said they were “curated for comfort.”

Sweet, sour, salty. It was a palette of nostalgia. The smell of sweet ramune and salty crackers lingered in the air—a scent of cheap, immediate joy.

“Oh, oh... Kokoro, look. They have konpeito,” Kotaro voice cracked with joy.

“Yummy... the ramune taste so good,” Kokoro burped, loud and unrepentant.

Seeing how happy and excited the twins were made Kyle laugh as they opened and tried a bunch of different things. He decided to eat the kaki no tane rice crackers.

But the moment passed.

As moments do.

Then Kokoro looked up, her expression shifting—serious, searching. She saw the dark circles under his eyes, the way his shoulders didn’t quite relax, and the slight tremor in his voice.

“Are you okay, Kyle?” she asked. “After… all of it?”

Kyle didn’t answer right away. The cracker caught in his throat—a small, humiliating physical failure. He swallowed hard.

He felt the weight of her gaze, the trust they placed in him—not as a hero, but as someone who’d stayed. Kokoro looked at him with eyes that had seen their world end—not judging, but holding open a quiet, necessary space for his truth.

Finally he just shook his head. Once. A small, honest confession.

Kokoro didn’t push. She simply moved closer, resting her head gently against his arm. A gesture of shared humanity. Not dependence. Not pity. Just presence.

Kyle exhaled slowly.

“It was… a lot,” Kyle admitted, his voice barely audible. He felt the weight that didn’t have words—a dense, cold metal settling in his voice box. “I didn’t plan to breakdown. The role of a hero, the truth… it just happened. And I… I felt like I broke the thing that made me me.”

Kyle hated that he’d worried them. But he knew the words that escaped sounded profoundly insufficient for the magnitude of his trauma.

Kokoro nodded, her voice soft.

“I think I know what you mean.”

Her gaze fixed on the broken sword hilt on the nightstand.

“Before the earthquake killed our grandparents, we thought we’d die after.”

Her eyes shimmered—not with tears, but with memory. Like stars that remembered the dark.

Kotaro picked up the thread, his voice gaining strength.

“You protected us. You took us in. It was then that we met Renji and Luna, Masayuki, Minami… and all those people who made that world feel like home, even if it was falling apart.”

His smile was wide—wider than the moon outside the window.

But quieter.

Earned.

Kyle felt the memories press against his chest.

Two years of chaos, laughter, battles, and bonds.

Two years of being someone.

Of meaning something.

But it was never always the case. He looked at the cold, dead fracture in the Sunbreaker's hilt...

His first memories ever was waking in a forest that didn’t breathe.

The canopy above was a lattice of blackleaf vines—thick, veined, pulsing faintly with residual mana. The trees were twisted, bark slick with ichor, their roots tangled like limbs reaching for prey. The air was thick, metallic, suffocating—the smell of fresh, unnatural blood and ozone. The soil steamed, alive with decay, and hissed faintly beneath his bare feet.

Without any weapon, armor, or even a name.

Just skin.

Just breath.

Just monsters.

They came fast.

“Argh...” the goblin screamed in pain—a grating, immediate sound of predatory hunger.

Goblin packs charged with bone piercings and rusted blades, their eyes glowing with corrupted Chi.

Kobolds riding fungal wolves, spores trailing behind them like war banners.

Wraiths stitched from shadow and grief, whispering a hollow, echoing silence where his name should have been.

For some reason, his body reacted by itself as he fought off monsters twice as big as him.

No matter if they swarmed at him, used weapons or even magic, Kyle found a way to counter them.

[Chi First Stance: Scattering Sakura Petals]

The words spilled from his mouth like instinct. Mana surged through his limbs—hot, wild, untrained—like electrical wire tearing through his muscles. His body knew what his mind did not.

This was a neverending nightmare. He was in a forest that the villagers mountains far away were told was cursed and to never enter.

Kyle had awakened at its heart.

It was a place where fools went to die.

His fist were stained in the blood of his enemies.

Kyle violently bashed the kobold’s face over and over. Bone cracked. Blood sprayed. The kobold’s face caved beneath his fists. Yet he didn’t stop.

The hoarse whisper of “Die... Die... Die...” was not rage; it was the sound of his mind breaking, trying to find a rhythm to the mechanical slaughter.

This occurred over and over again for three days and three nights.

His movements were almost robotic as he butchered and massacred everything that came at him.

Any rest or attempt of retreat and the monsters would use that opportunity to turn the tides.

By the end of three days and three nights, he slaughtered every monster that appeared before him.

Looking around the forest littered with different monster bodies was enough to break a man.

When he could feel no more chi around his surrounding, Kyle finally let his shoulders slump.

It was then that he decided to move towards a river.

His feet stepped over decaying monster flesh. There was no remorse for the same creatures that tried to take his life countless times. It was basically kill or be killed. Even so, he was still on alert if there were any survivors that managed to avoid him.

It was an eerie feeling, not hearing the screams and cries of the monsters.

He moved towards a river. As he looked at the water’s reflection, he looked at the image in front of him: his eyes were wide and bloodshot, fixed on the water with the vacant intensity of a beast that hadn't slept. His face was streaked with dried ichor and the gore of his own making—more like a feral animal than a human.

“Who am I...”

He screamed out loud.

And yet the forest didn’t answer. It had already forgotten him.

***

They sat in silence for a while. Not empty silence—but shared silence. The kind that holds everything you don’t need to say.

Outside, the koi pond pulsed faintly under moonlight—its surface glassy, its fish slow and deliberate. Somewhere down the hall, a grandfather clock ticked in a rhythm that was perfect, loud, and utterly relentless, a cold heartbeat intruding on their human moment.

Then Kotaro sat up slightly.

“You looked like you were disappearing.”

Kokoro leaned against him, her voice tightening with the fear.

“I was scared that you’d leave us again. That you’d fade away.”

Kyle swallowed hard.

That was the thing he’d feared most.

Not dying.

Not failing.

But fading to obscurity.

Becoming scenery in a world that no longer needed him.

He remembered the moment the Demon Lord fell. The moment the sky had fractured. The Chi that bled upward like reversed gravity. The way of life vanishing—it just… ended in the blink of an eye. It was as if the world didn’t know what to do without its villain.

They had all known the risks of entering the Demon Lord’s domain. They’d prepared. Trained. Sacrificed. But no amount of planning could have braced them for what came after.

The world had lost its core.

And Kyle had helped break it.

Was it right to abandon the world he’d helped destroy?

He didn’t answer. He didn’t know how.

Instead, he reached out—one hand on Kotaro’s shoulder, the other gently rubbing Kokoro’s back. He squeezed them, anchoring himself in their simple, human presence, feeling the warmth of their cotton pajamas against the cold silk of his own loungewear.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle said.

The words were heavy, tasting of ash and guilt.

“I promise never to do that again. I’m not going anywhere.”

No amount of what-ifs could undo the lives lost.

The Demon Lord had been a monster, yes—but also a cog in the cycle of death and rebirth. A rhythm of chaos and balance. Kyle’s action shattered everything, but all he could do now was move forward.

Eventually, the twins curled up beside him, their breathing slow and steady. As Kyle lay back, staring at the ceiling again.

It hadn’t changed.

However, it didn’t feel so empty anymore.