Chapter 0: Hero or Demon Lord (Future)
Part 1
“All right, team. For the last time—hold the line.”
The words didn’t echo. They landed like a final breath the citadel refused to release.
Masayuki nodded—sharp, silent. His grip on the katana trembled, but he didn’t speak. He never did when it mattered most.
Minami flicked her wrist. Each illusions bloomed like glass petals—sharp, beautiful, brittle. One faltered mid-air, refracting light like a broken promise. She didn’t blink.
Renji and Luna steadied their shared body. No banter. No deflection. Just breath—synchronized, silent, strained. Their Saint’s Gown shimmered faintly, as if uncertain whether to hold or unravel.
Kotaro and Kokoro moved as one, blades carving through wraiths with practiced grace. When Kokoro’s footwork faltered for a beat, Kotaro adjusted without thinking. Their synchronicity wasn’t flawless—it was full of openings. But they made it work.
Above them, the Demon Lord loomed—vast, still. It had faced hundreds of heroes.
But this battle felt unscripted. Unstable.
Kyle moved through it all, the broken blade trembling with conviction. His breath came shallow, but his steps were sure. He ducked beneath a claw, rolled past a shockwave, feinted left—then tilted Sunbreaker just so.
The dwarven-forged steel flared—blinding, searing, final.
““This is it.””
The Demon Lord smiled first.
Its jaws split wide, grinning with delight. With one swift motion, it snapped the blade in half.
Sunbreaker—the weapon said to be strong enough to slice the sun—shattered.
The sound wasn’t an explosion. It was a violation. A high-pitched structural failure that tore through the air like a scream denied.
The team froze.
Even the wraiths paused.
Kyle stared at the broken blade in his hand. His fingers trembled. His breath caught.
“Why are you still smiling?”
The fragments tinkled faintly on the bone floor—an agonizingly small sound after the deafening destruction.
He exhaled.
“Are you familiar with acupuncture?” he asked, voice low, cutting through the silence. “Not swordsmanship. Pressure points.”
He looked up, meeting the Demon Lord’s gaze. Calm. Measured.
“The science of acupuncture is the stimulation of specific areas. Depending on where you apply pressure, you can influence the entire body.”
The Demon Lord tilted its head. Confusion replaced contempt.
“Is this the last stage of your breakdown? A philosophical rant?”
Kyle didn’t answer. His gaze traced a line up the Demon Lord’s massive, armored form—searching. Remembering.
“I realized something while fighting you,” he said. “Cutting through your armor is impossible. But if you aim at the nodes…”
Every movement he’d made—every dodge, every feint—hadn’t been random.
It had been calibration.
The Chi he exerted was cold, exacting. Not radiant. Not heroic.
The air stilled as Kyle exhaled again.
Petals—shimmering, unreal—spiraled around the broken blade. Not just beautiful.
Surgical.
[Chi First Stance: Scattering Sakura Petals]
Even with a broken blade, the stance looked like a dance.
Part 2
Every step Kyle took was deliberate—not forceful, but precise. Each motion whispered through the chaos, the fractured edge of Sunbreaker tracing invisible lines in the air. And when it struck, it didn’t cleave.
It unraveled.
Just stillness, like curtains falling before the end of a performance.
The Demon Lord froze—utterly motionless—as if time had paused around it.
“What just happened?”
It stared at its fingers. The tips began to dissolve.
Its body broke down slowly. Black ichor spilled from the wound—but it didn’t splatter. It crystallized midair, fracturing into shards of white light, sharp and unnatural, like corrupted data breaking apart.
“I can’t believe it... a way back to Earth.”
Before them, a rift pulsed—a jagged tear in the fabric of dimensions. A possible return home.
Their awe fractured as Kyle dropped to one knee, breath ragged. His fingers trembled around the broken hilt. The blade beside him lay shattered beyond repair.
“Luna, please—do something!” Kokoro’s voice cracked.
Luna rushed to his side, hands glowing faintly with healing light. She scanned him, frantic.
Though she could regrow limbs, she couldn’t replace what wasn’t there. Still, she searched for wounds—anything the Demon Lord might have left behind.
“I can’t find it,” she cried. “I don’t know what’s wrong. He should be fine. Just broken bones. Some exhaustion but he should be able to sleep it off.”
Above them, the monsters fled. Their master was gone.
The threat was over.
But it didn’t feel like victory.
It felt like silence wearing a mask.
Then came the sound.
A high-pitched frequency vibrated in their teeth, made their bones ache. The citadel shuddered—not like stone cracking, but like something sacred unraveling.
The air tore open with a sound like metal shearing against itself. Behind them, the portal pulsed—jagged, unstable.
It didn’t look like salvation.
It looked like a wound trying to close before the bleeding stopped.
From the collapsing light, the Demon Lord’s final essence coalesced into a static-white visage—no longer monstrous, but eerily human. Its voice echoed through the realm, not with malice, but with something colder.
“I hope you understand what you’ve unleashed.”
Kyle flinched—not from pain, but from recognition.
The words didn’t feel like a curse.
They felt like a warning.
Before anyone could speak, the ground beneath him cracked—not from impact, but from something deeper. Something missing.
He gasped, clutching his chest.
Not in pain.
In absence.
A cold, weightless absence—like the world had exhaled, but forgotten to inhale.
“What even is the point of a hero,” he whispered, voice barely audible.
The others turned, scanning the void for the source of the sound.
Only then did they realize—
The frequency was coming from Kyle.
Part 3
The pupils in his eyes were wide. Unfocused.
As if he were staring through the world, not at it.
“The planet’s Chi,” Kyle murmured, barely audible. “It’s unraveling too fast. That must mean the world’s core… it’s completely hollow.”
As if summoned by his words, a tremor split the sky. Thunder cracked sideways. Lava burst from distant mountains, carving molten scars across the horizon. The air itself fractured—like glass under pressure, splintering in slow motion.
Minami landed hard beside them, her face pale, her voice unnaturally calm.
“It was only a theory,” she said, piecing it together aloud. “But I guess it’s true.”
She looked at the void. Then at Kyle.
“The Demon Lord wasn’t a threat. It was the keystone.”
The words didn’t echo. They settled like dust in a collapsing room.
Theologians had argued for centuries: for life to persist, something must be forfeited. If that cycle is broken—if death is denied—then nothing survives.
That is the framework of existence.
Luna’s breath hitched. Her posture crumbled—not from pain, but from realization. Her hands, still glowing faintly with healing light, dropped to her sides.
“No… Father…”
Her voice cracked. Not with grief. With guilt.
“You said you were protecting the realm,” she shouted, locking eyes with Kyle. “I thought you meant from it. Not with it.”
She staggered back, eyes wide, a memory surfacing like a blade through water. The truth struck harder than any spell.
“That’s why Father maintained the pact,” she whispered, staring into the abyss. “By keeping the malice contained… he was holding the world together.”
Time froze—until the citadel groaned again, louder this time.
Not like stone. Like something sacred unraveling.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the floor, splitting like seams in the fabric of reality. The air shimmered with pressure, as if the atmosphere itself were trying to hold its breath.
Kyle forced himself upright, pushing against the weight pressing down on his chest. His body trembled. His breath came in shallow bursts. But his voice—brittle, steady—became a shield against the roaring doubt.
“It’s time for you to return to your world.”
Behind him, the portal pulsed erratically—a ravenous tear, shrieking. Its light wasn’t warm. It was the cold, sterile glare of a closing door.
He turned his back to it, planting his feet firmly on the cracked bone floor, fighting the urge to run.
“Go,” he said quietly. “There’s still something I have to do.”
The words hung in the air like ash.
A terrible silence followed—heavy, suspended, broken only by the shrieking portal and the distant groan of a dying world.
“What are you talking about?” Kokoro stepped forward, her voice trembling.
“Kyle, we made a promise,” Kotaro followed, his tone firm but fraying. “I thought you’re coming home with us.”
Kyle looked at them.
His gaze lingered on Kokoro’s eyes—pure, unselfish, demanding in a way he didn’t deserve. He felt the immense, raw weight of the bond he had chosen.
But his gaze drifted to the horizon— a fractured sky, bleeding light, mountains split like broken ribs.
He was staring at the visible, terminal wound he was choosing to press against.
“The planet needs a new anchor,” he said, voice quiet. “If I leave… this world will truly die.”
He shook his head, as if sealing the decision.
“That world doesn’t need me.”
The group froze.
Their journey’s end was becoming his chosen grave. They had fought for two years—for the chance to return home. And now, Kyle was choosing to stay behind.
Behind him, the portal pulsed—unstable, shrinking. Its light wasn’t warm. It was the cold, sterile glare of a closing door.
Time was running out.
Renji and Luna’s body moved first.
Luna seized control, her voice cracking—not with rage, but with refusal.
“Stop talking hogwash. You’re not the tragic princess,” she snapped, then slapped him across the face. “That role is already filled.”
The sound was sharp, cutting through the high-pitched shriek of the dimensional tear. It wasn’t fury. It was grief in disguise—the ache of someone who’d lost too much, and refused to lose him too.
Kyle touched his cheek, stunned. The pain hurt more than the Demon Lord’s claw. It reminded him he was still human.
Then Renji surged forward, voice raw and unfiltered.
“Let me guess. You remembered your past. Some lab! Some experiment! So now you think you have to die for us?”
He jabbed a delicate finger into Kyle’s chest.
“Newsflash: we all have baggage. You’re not special because you’re broken. You’re special because you got us.”
Kyle looked at them—at all of them.
Masayuki, bruised but steady, his hand already on Kyle’s shoulder, ready to pull.
Minami, her illusions forgotten, gaze locked on the portal’s narrowing light.
Kotaro and Kokoro, shoulder to shoulder, breaths syncing in quiet grief at the so-called ‘hero’.
Renji and Luna, arguing last second over whether they had time to loot the monster corpses.
They fought. They argued. They survived.
They were more than a party to him.
They were his.
It was then that Kokoro stepped forward. Her voice was soft yet unwavering.
“You promised we would all return back to our world,” she said. “So come on. Let’s go home.”
The world cracked again.
A final, wrenching quake split the citadel. Dust rained from the ceiling like ash.
The portal shrieked around them.
Kyle didn’t resist.
His legs felt heavy.
His heart, heavier.
He wanted to scream his final protest—I have to stay! I’m the only one who can!—but the words stayed buried.
Minami grabbed his collar, dragging him toward the portal.
“Listen, protagonist boy—I did NOT survive two years of isekai just to die in the prologue!”
Even if he didn’t want to, they were going to drag him—exhausted and protesting—toward the collapsing light.
“Now!” Masayuki shouted. “Through the portal!”
As they tumbled into the vortex, the last thing Kyle saw was the shattered other half of Sunbreaker, lying forgotten on the jagged floor.
He tried to reach for it—But the light swallowed them.
On that day he left the remaining traces of the hero behind.
