Chapter 1 — The End of the Beginning
The world was oddly silent.
Not peaceful.
Not calm.
This was the silence that comes after extinction—when nothing remains alive to beg the heavens for mercy.
The screams had already ended.
Yet their echoes lingered. The dying cries of children and kings clung to the air like wounds carved into reality itself. Between them rang laughter—sharp, delighted, inhuman.
The world had lost.
The Chosen Ones had fallen.
The Monarchs were dead.
Chaos had descended.
The gods had turned their faces away.
Across the ruined land, demons moved freely among corpses that once inspired nations. Saviors. Heroes. Legends. Names that once meant hope—now reduced to torn flesh beneath clawed hands.
These were the beings who once stood at the absolute peak of humanity.
Now they did not even possess whole bodies.
Above them, two crimson moons burned.
Strange numbers crawled across their surfaces like a verdict already delivered. Dark rings circled slowly, staining the heavens blood-red over shattered cities and broken monuments.
Civilization was not dying.
It had been judged.
And at the center of it all—
Stood the reason for this ruin.
The heretic who, against all odds, had defeated humanity by his own hands.
His black suit remained immaculate, untouched by blood or ash, as though the world itself refused to stain him. From his temples curved dark crimson horns—elegant and deliberate. A crown not granted by gods, but taken.
His eyes glowed red.
In one hand, he held a cane crowned with a grinning skull. In the other rested a golden pocket watch.
Tick.
Tick.
Even now, time obeyed him.
Before him Knelt –
Arthur Nicolas Gray.
The Divine Swordsman.
Humanity's last light.
The Fated One
His one arm was gone. Blood streamed from the stump. Yet Arthur remained upright, gripping his blade so tightly his remaining fingers split open.
That sword had split mountains.
It had slain countless demons.
It had never broken.
Until today.
Arthur lifted his head.
Even broken, he looked like something heaven once trusted.
"You finally destroyed everything… haven't you?" he said quietly.
Ash drifted between them.
"You chose this."
The horned man regarded him with calm indifference.
"Chose?" he repeated softly.
Arthur's gaze did not waver.
"We trusted you."
"You could have stood beside us. Helped us build something better."
"You could have been one of us."
A faint smile curved the horned man's lips.
"Ah… starting with the same old hypocrisy."
His red eyes sharpened.
"You made me your shield when it suited you."
"And your sacrifice when it did not."
Arthur's grip tightened.
"We feared what you might become."
"And you proved us right."
The horned man stepped forward.
Slow. Measured.
"You called me traitor from the beginning."
His voice remained calm, but something darker stirred beneath it.
"And when I finally accepted the name…"
A thin smile.
"You called me villain."
Silence stretched between them.
Arthur exhaled through blood.
"We all suffer," he said.
"But we do not all burn the world."
The horned man tilted his head.
"Who betrayed whom?" he asked quietly.
"You already know the answer, my friend."
He glanced toward the ruined horizon.
"If fate gives me the choice again—"
"To die quietly for your righteousness…"
"Or to survive."
His gaze returned to Arthur.
"My answer will not change."
Arthur raised his blade with his remaining hand.Even now, it gleamed faintly.
"We should have killed you when we had the chance."
"Traitor."
The horned man did not blink.
"You already did."
Arthur roared.
With a final scream torn from the last fragments of his soul, he thrust his blade forward—one last strike not to win, but to condemn.
The sword never reached him.
Arthur froze.
White fractures spread across his body like cracks through porcelain.
The horned man glanced at the watch.
Tick.
Arthur shattered.
Light.
Dust.
Nothing.
The strongest man alive vanished without leaving even a shadow.
The horned man stared at the empty space.
"Traitor, huh."
He closed the pocket watch.
Click.
"The world tried to swallow me whole."
His red eyes lifted toward the heavens.
"It simply forgot that some bones don't break."
A soft laugh echoed through drifting ash.
A woman stepped forward.
Long dark-red hair flowed like liquid flame. Two elegant crimson horns curved from her temples. Her face was almost human—beautiful, serene—if not for the faint demonic sigils glowing beneath her pale skin.
"You didn't need to come personally for such a minor execution," she said lightly.
He did not turn.
"I wanted to see heaven's chosen one last time."
A pause.
"I had to say Gods disappointed me again."
Her lips curved faintly.
"The Chosen Ones are dead," she said.
She looked toward the fractured sky.
"And now?"
Around them, countless demons roared—an army waiting to swallow the heavens whole.
The horned man lifted his gaze to the twin crimson moons.
"The world may forget what it did to me… but I never will."
"The era of divinity has ended."
"What remains…"
"…are its ashes."
His voice lowered.
"Let the gods come."
A thin smile.
"And if they don't—"
"We will remind them that even heaven can bleed."
The countless demons looks at the figure in the middle with a hint of madness in their eyes. Countless demons worshipping the Man in black almost as if they are looking at a sacred deity.
The demons roared defeaning the world.
The moons flickered.
For a fraction of a second—
They glitched.
Like corrupted memory.
Darkness swallowed everything.
The monitor flickered.
"Oh shit… not again."
Anthony Parker slumped deeper into his creaking chair as pale light from the screen reflected in his tired blue eyes.
Messy black hair clung to his forehead. Uneven stubble shadowed his jaw.
He was soft in the way men become when effort feels pointless.
His room smelled of stale air, oil, and instant noodles. Clothes lay in heaps. Bottles and cups littered the floor like abandoned ambition.
Anthony leaned forward.
"Bullshit," he muttered. "After all these attempts, and I still can't change the ending?"
No anger.
No panic.
Just fatigue.
As if he already knew—
Some endings were designed to fail.
He leaned back slowly.
"I can't even finish the game I helped design…"
He let out a dry laugh.
"What kind of dogshit luck is this?"
Outside, traffic flowed. Neon lights blinked. People laughed.
The world was normal.
For now.
Anthony stared into the dark monitor.
For a split second—
His reflection's eyes glowed crimson.
Then they returned to blue.
Inside that suffocating room—
Something had begun to remember.