Chapter 2: Entry of Demons
I. The Crimson Prelude
Crimson moonlight draped Zenin City in a blood-red glow, transforming the pristine white stone walls into the color of freshly spilled veins.
The streets lay unnaturally still. No wind stirred the sloping tiled rooftops. No footsteps echoed along the grand stone avenues. Even the nocturnal insects had fallen entirely silent, as if the world itself knew that breathing too loudly would invite disaster.
It wasn't peace. It was a prelude to carnage.
Two figures stepped through the fractured city gates, their silhouettes stretching long and distorted across the courtyard under the crimson moon. Each step they took felt heavy, accompanied by a sickening, oppressive weight that made the surrounding air warp and recoil.
A lone vanguard guard emerged from the gatehouse, his fingers white-knuckled as he tightened his grip around his steel spear. He staggered, the sheer gravity of their auras pressing down on his chest.
"Who… Who goes there?" he demanded, desperately trying to force the tremor out of his voice. "State your names! What is this sinister aura?"
Doumar tilted his head, his sloped shoulders relaxed, looking almost amused by the man's mortal terror.
"Huh," Doumar muttered, his voice dripping with casual disdain. "If you can feel our aura this clearly, human, then you must be weak."
The guard swallowed hard, a drop of cold sweat stinging his eye. He tried to raise his spear into a fighting stance.
Doumar's eyes instantly hardened, turning from lazy amusement to absolute vacancy.
"And the weak," he said, his voice dropping into a flat, chilling register, "don't deserve to exist in this world."
A blur of motion. Space didn't just tear; it dissolved.
Before the guard's brain could even register the movement to scream, a flash of pure, concentrated darkness whipped past his throat. The steel spear snapped cleanly in two. A heartbeat later, the guard's lifeless body collapsed onto the cold stone, a thin scarlet line opening across his neck. He never even saw the strike.
II. Shadow and Silver
High above on the shadowed ridge of a nearby tiled rooftop, two figures crouched, watching the casual slaughter in absolute horror.
Aiken Akabura clenched his fists so hard his leather gloves groaned. His eyes were wide, fixed on the casual cruelty of the invaders.
"This is bad… incredibly bad," Aiken whispered urgently, his teeth grinding. "Go—Silver, run to the inner sanctum and warn the Zenin. This isn't simple vandalism or a rogue beast. These are monsters."
Silver Fangar hesitated, his hand resting on the hilt of his twin daggers, his silver hair catching the bloody moonlight. "But what about you? I can't just leave you to face whatever they are alone."
"I'll buy us time," Aiken replied, his gaze locking tightly onto the two demons as they began to stroll deeper into the city streets. He unstrapped the massive, curved scythe from his back, its black iron catching the crimson light. "I'll hold them off until Lord Zenin arrives. If it comes to it… I'll fight them to my absolute death. Now go!"
Silver bit his lip, nodded sharply, and vanished into the shadows, moving like a streak of moonlight toward the palace.
Down on the cobblestone, the two demons paused. They slowly turned their heads toward the rooftop, their monstrous senses instantly picking up on Aiken's lingering presence.
Darka glanced sideways at her brother, her long, blade-like limbs clicking softly against the stone. "Why do you always kill weaklings without hesitation, Doumar? It's a waste of energy."
Doumar didn't answer right away. His empty eyes stared through Aiken, but his mind drifted backward, pulled by the scent of blood into a memory buried decades deep.
III. The First Battle of Dawn: A Flashback
The memory smelled of ash and iron. The world was burning.
Human and demon corpses littered the shattered plains of Dawn, stacked so high the earth itself seemed to be made of rotting flesh. Black smoke choked the sky, blotting out the sun and carrying the relentless, suffocating stench of death.
Behind a crumbling stone barricade, two demon children hid, trembling, clinging to the tattered fabric of their mother's cloak.
Before them stood two legendary human warriors, their blades dripping with violet demon blood—Yuiki Kurenai and Shin Shizugawa.
"We capture Umbra," Yuiki said, his voice entirely devoid of mercy as he raised his glowing sword. "If she is taken alive, their matriarch falls, and the war is ours."
Shin Shizugawa smirked, a cruel, bloodthirsty glint in his eyes as he flicked the gore off his blade. "Then I'll slaughter the children. Leave no remnants."
"No," Yuiki replied coldly. "The children can wait. Find Xaphan's other offspring first. Ensure the bloodline is broken."
Steel clashed like thunder.
Umbra, the ancient demon matriarch, fought desperately. Her massive scythe screamed through the smoke, carving paths of dark energy to protect her young. But exhaustion crept into her limbs; her movements grew sluggish, weighted down by a dozen bleeding wounds.
Yuiki lunged—not at her, but pivoting mid-air to plunge his blade directly toward the trembling, terrified face of young Doumar.
Umbra moved without a single thought for her own life.
Thrust.
The human sword pierced straight through her chest, the tip bursting out of her back in a spray of dark blood. Yet, she didn't fall. Trembling hands gripping her scythe, she forced herself upright, using her own body to lock Yuiki's blade in place.
"Run…" she gasped, blood bubbling from her lips as she looked back at her terrified children.
Then, she screamed with every shred of soul she had left—a roar that shook the very foundations of the battlefield.
"Run, Darka! Doumar! Darka, take your brother's hand and live! No matter what cruelty you face—live!"
Yuiki drove his sword deeper, twisting the metal.
As young Darka, tears streaming down her face, violently dragged her catatonic brother away into the thick smoke, Doumar's raw, agonizing scream tore through the carnage.
"M—Mom!"
IV. The Call to Arms
Present day. Zenin City.
Doumar's eyes remained completely empty, the memory fading back into the dark recesses of his mind.
Mother died because she was weak.
Father lost the ancient war because he was weak.
And back then, we were entirely powerless.
To be weak was a sin. To be powerless was unforgivable.
"That's all," Doumar said quietly, his voice hollow as he brought himself back to the present. "It's just… manners. Killing the weak is an act of mercy."
Aiken leaped from the rooftop, landing heavily on the cobblestones across from them. He swung his massive scythe in a wide arc, settling into a low, defensive stance.
"Who are you beasts?" Aiken demanded, his voice echoing in the dead street. "What do you want with our city?"
Darka laughed softly, a melodic yet deeply unsettling sound that sent shivers down Aiken's spine. "How pitiful. You live in a cage of false safety, and you don't even recognize the hands that built the world outside it."
Her gaze sharpened, her eyes glowing a vicious, predatory crimson under the moon. "Tell me, human… do you even possess the strength required to ask our names?"
"I asked you a question!" Aiken roared, his inner energy flaring around his weapon, trying to push back against their suffocating pressure. "Who are you?!"
Darka smiled coldly, her blade-like limbs extending with a sickening click of bone and steel.
"We are the children of the primordial catastrophe. We are the offspring of the ancient demon—Xaphan."
Aiken's breath caught squarely in his throat. His blood ran instantly cold. "Xaphan…? That's impossible. That name was sealed in the legends of the first age—"
He never finished the sentence.
Darka's blade-like limb extended across the distance in a fraction of a millisecond. Aiken barely managed to raise his scythe, channeling his energy into the iron.
CLANG!
Sparks erupted into the dark night air like a dying star as metal screamed against bone. The sheer force of her casual strike drove Aiken's knees inches into the dirt.
She smirked down at him, completely unbothered by his resistance. She looked over her shoulder. "Little brother. Go on ahead toward the inner sanctum. I'll play with this one for a little while."
"Yeah, yeah," Doumar replied lazily, turning his back on the fight and walking forward toward the forest outskirts, completely ignoring Aiken as if the human didn't even exist. "Do as you please. Don't take too long."
Darka turned her full, terrifying attention back to Aiken, her eyes glinting maliciously under the blood-red moon.
"Now, little guardian," she whispered softly, her aura expanding until it crushed the remaining stones beneath their feet.
"Shall we begin?"
—END OF CHAPTER 2—