From between the gnarled roots of a twisted ash tree, her footsteps utterly silent against the moss-laced ground, she stepped into the light.
Her hair—wheat-gold and neatly tied—shimmered faintly in the dying sun, the red ribbon bound into her bun fluttering with an almost deliberate grace, like blood against snow. Her clothes were immaculate, regal in structure but practical in form. A blouse, crisp and white, sat perfectly beneath a green corset lined with threads of gold. Her rust-colored skirt swayed gently with her approach, betraying not a hint of urgency.
But what Tatsuya saw in her face was not the friend he knew.
Sora's crystalline blue eyes, once steady and observant, were now sharp with accusation. There was no compassion there. No room for explanation. Only judgment.
"This is where you've been," she said, her tone low, quiet… yet every syllable cut through the air like a blade drawn across skin.
Tatsuya flinched, his heart skipping.
She wasn't surprised to see him.
She was furious.
Her gaze flicked past him, scanning the underbrush, the trees, the shadows behind him.
"Where is Luna?" she asked, not a flicker of worry touching her voice.
Not worry.
Just suspicion.
Her hands moved before he could even respond. A fluid, practiced motion—the kind honed by repetition, not panic. Both hatchets were drawn in the blink of an eye, steel glinting in the fading light like fangs bared in warning.
Tatsuya staggered a step back, stunned by her sudden aggression.
"Sora—? What are you—?!"
"I knew I couldn't trust you," she snapped.
Her voice wasn't raised, but the venom laced in each word was deafening.
Tatsuya's mouth parted, confusion flooding him like ice water. "No, you don't understand—Luna's hurt! I need to—"
"Tell me what you did to her!!" Sora shrieked, her voice cracking with fury.
Tatsuya instinctively took another step back. His arms trembled, palms lifted slightly as if to pacify her. "I didn't do anything to her—!"
A sound ripped through the air.
Not a scream.
Not a word.
But wind. Compressed, focused, sharpened.
BOOM!
An explosion of compressed air erupted behind him. A sharp sting cut across his cheek, warm blood trickling down his skin.
The very wind had turned against him.
He blinked, wide-eyed, as the smoke cleared and Sora stepped forward into the space between them, the air shimmering faintly around her like a veil of energy.
"I knew it," she said, voice trembling—not with fear, but hatred. "I always knew there was something off about you."
Tatsuya felt the words catch in his throat.
Her face—usually calm, reserved—was twisted in disgust. Her fingers clutched her hatchets like she wanted to drive them into his chest. Not in defense.
In judgment.
"Demon cultist," she spat, like the words themselves poisoned her tongue.
Tatsuya's blood ran cold.
What was she saying?
"I can smell it on you," she said, taking another step closer. Her eyes didn't leave his. "That scent. That cursed, rotting stench. Do you really think you've hidden it all this time? Do you think we wouldn't find out? That you could smile and pretend and sneak your way into our lives?"
"I—I don't know what you're talking about," Tatsuya whispered, his voice shaking, retreating step by step.
He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. Feel the blood drying on his cheek. The forest seemed to close in around them.
"Sora… please…" he said, chest rising and falling rapidly. "I didn't do anything… Luna's bleeding—she's hurt—I'm trying to save her—"
"And yet you left her," Sora snarled. "You left her alone. Injured. In the forest."
His breath caught.
That truth struck deeper than any blade.
"You expect me to believe you were trying to save her?" she whispered, her tone dangerous, trembling with a terrible restraint. "You abandoned her. And now you show up with blood on your hands and lies in your mouth."
Her hands tightened on her weapons.
Tatsuya didn't even realize he had fallen to his knees.
Fear.
Not just from her magic.
But the look in her eyes.
She didn't see him as Tatsuya anymore.
She saw something else.
And deep down, part of him began to wonder—if he had made the right choice.
If he had become the very thing she now believed he was.
Demon cultist…. He remembered the little boy, that he saved from getting bullied call him the same thing.
That boy had looked at him like he was a monster, and now Sora looked at him like he was the embodiment of what Sora hated.
No!! No!! Don't hate me…. Tatsuya fell into despair, his hands shook.
He couldn't focus on the image in front of him—Sora, hatchets in hand, her eyes colder than anything he'd ever seen before.
All he could feel was the thunder in his chest.
The rapid, erratic pounding that was no longer a heartbeat, but a war drum. A scream trapped inside his ribcage.
She hates me.
The thought looped in his head like a curse.
She hates me.
She hates me.
He clutched at his own shirt, dragging his fingers down the fabric as if trying to physically tear the thought out of him. But it wouldn't leave. It wouldn't stop. It echoed louder than Sora's footsteps. Louder than the howling wind. Louder than reason.
He couldn't breathe.
Air. He needed air. His chest rose sharply, then fell short. He gasped, but his lungs refused to open. Each breath only fed the fire. His vision spun, warped around the edges with black static, and his fingers grew numb.
Why is this happening? Why now? Why can't I explain?
He wanted to speak.
He wanted to cry out.
But his throat had closed, constricting like a noose.
If I just explain, maybe she'll understand. Maybe she'll believe me. Maybe she'll—
But then he saw her eyes again.
That look.
That look of betrayal—not pain, not fear, not even confusion. Just rage. Hatred. Conviction.
She had already decided.
And to her, Tatsuya was the villain.
"No… no, no, no…" he whispered, fingers digging into the dirt as his knees buckled again. His shoulders shook violently, as if his body was trying to collapse inward—trying to vanish.
His mouth parted, but no words came out. Only broken, breathless gasps.
He couldn't stop the flood inside his mind:
Sora hates me.
Luna begged me not to leave.
I left her anyway.
I'm a coward.
Everyone will hate me.
I deserve it.
His heart clenched, his muscles locking like stone. Every nerve in his body screamed for escape.
Yeah, escape… he thought. I need to get out of here.
He ran.
There was no decision to make—no time to think, no moment to weigh reason against fear. His body moved before his mind could form words.
Sora's scream followed him, shrill and angry, tearing through the trees like a hunting blade.
"Get back here, you coward!!"
The wind howled behind him—not the natural breath of the forest, but magic being shaped, twisted, turned into a weapon. Tatsuya didn't dare look back. His legs pounded against the forest floor, heart thundering in his chest as he dodged low branches and leapt over gnarled roots.
His breaths came ragged. Each inhale seared his lungs. The pain in his legs screamed at him to stop. But he couldn't.
He couldn't stop.
Not now.
Luna… please be okay…
The trees grew thinner. The soil beneath his feet changed—less dense, crumbling in places. And then—
His foot hit empty air.
His body lurched forward as he barely caught himself, arms flailing as he skidded to a halt.
The forest abruptly ended.
Before him stretched open sky and a sharp drop.
He stood there, panting, staring into the void.
Behind him, he could hear her footsteps closing in. Not running—but walking. Slowly. Methodically.
Like a predator approaching its wounded prey.
Tatsuya's legs buckled. He dropped to his knees at the cliff's edge, the coarse dirt sliding beneath his fingertips.
I can't fight her. I can't talk to her. I can't explain.
His mind spiraled in panic. Every thought was a knife.
She doesn't believe me.
She thinks I hurt Luna.
She hates me.
He gritted his teeth, his breath hitching.
He remembered Luna's blood. The trembling in her voice.
And he'd left her.
"I'm such a fucking idiot…" he muttered under his breath, the words breaking like glass as they left his lips.
He clenched his fists so tightly his nails bit into his palms.
Why couldn't he have just carried her?
Why didn't he fight harder to stay?
He'd thought he was making a calculated choice—a cold but necessary one. But now that choice was chasing him with blades in her hands and rage in her eyes.
He had no allies here.
No safety.
Only this precipice.
And the open sky.
"Trapped…"
He felt the wind brush his cheek again, light and cold.
Not Sora's magic.
The real wind.
The honest kind.
For a moment, he considered what it would be like to let go. To lean forward just slightly, to stop running. To end it all before Sora could.
But then—his eyes widened.
A soft rustle from the trees behind him.
Bootsteps, fast now.
And then—
"There you are."
The voice was cold.
Clear.
Sora's.
And this time, it was closer than ever.
Tatsuya turned his head slowly.
She stood at the treeline, her hatchets glinting in the waning light. Her silhouette framed by the forest like a living nightmare.
There was no hesitation in her stance.
No question in her eyes.
He was the enemy.
And she was the executioner.
Part 2
"Before I kill you," Sora said flatly, her voice void of warmth, "I need to get some information out of you."
Her tone was controlled, deliberate—but behind it, there burned a cold rage, white-hot beneath a frozen surface.
"I don't like getting my hands dirty," she continued, drawing closer, hatchets glinting in each hand. "So give me what I want, and it will be painless."
Tatsuya didn't answer.
He couldn't.
His mouth opened, but no sound came. His thoughts were still too slow, his breath still too fast. His chest ached with every beat of his heart, like something was clawing from the inside.
the wind stung his cheek, the pain was real, the cold in her eyes was real—and the distance between them had already vanished.
"I… I don't know anything about the Cult," he forced out, his voice cracking like thin ice.
Gah!
A gust of wind struck him like a hammer. It didn't just knock him down—it flung him backwards like a discarded ragdoll. His body slammed into the dirt near the cliff's edge, pebbles scattering, the wind ripping at his cloak.
"Don't you play dumb with me!!" Sora's scream rang like a blade drawn across metal. "You reek of it—that stench—head to toe. You carry the same rot that marks every last one of you filth!"
She took a step forward.
Tatsuya scrambled back instinctively. There was nowhere left to run—nothing behind him but air and the jagged rocks far below.
"I don't care what twisted reasons you have for joining," she hissed. "You're all the same. Driven by some unholy thirst, feeding on the suffering of others. You worship it—the devil that brought sin and death into this world."
"Don't you feel shame for what you are?"
Her voice thundered.
"You take pleasure in hurting others. You're monsters who smile as you ruin lives! You think that won't catch up to you?! You'll burn—you'll all burn in the end!"
Her eyes—those deep, crystalline eyes—were filled not with doubt, not with sadness, not even with disappointment.
Only one thing lived in them now
Hatred.
Tatsuya dropped to his knees.
His chest felt tight again—not from fear, not from pain—but from something deeper, something black, a sickness spreading from his heart outward.
I thought I was doing better…
I thought… I was finally making real connections. Real people. People who didn't just look at me and see something wrong. I thought maybe—just maybe—this world was different…
Tatsuya looked at his hands.
Of course not, how could I be so fucking stupid to think that the people here would be different. A new world, new order, new rules. But people will always be the same.
This was all a plan set up against me, wasn't it?
"Did none of our conversations meant anything to you?" Tatsuya cried out desperately, "The laughs we shared, the conversation we had with each other, was it all an act just to gain my trust to eventually kill me?"
Tatsuya broke down, tears streaming down his face.
"Why? Why does nobody care about me?"
"Why am I always getting cast aside?"
"Why does nobody help me?"
He broke down falling to the ground and slamming on it out of frustration.
He thought he escaped it, he thought he had beaten it but he was just being trapped into a lie.
All of the courage, all hopes, all of the trust he had put in them vanished. Like the flame of a candle dying.
He tried to hold on, to lie to himself that that it would be alright. That he somehow could put his faith in them again.
But it was futile.
"The others just pretend, they don't care about a cult member like you. No one will" Sora said. "There is no use in living anymore. You should never have come here."
She took another step.
"So answer my question and we can be done with this."
Her voice was like a guillotine.
"What was your reason for coming here?"
My reason? He questioned to himself.
He came to the mansion because he needed to search for Yatsu Davida to find a way to solve his absence of mana.
That's what he wanted to belief.
It wasn't a lie, Paul had told him to do that but there was another reason why he wanted to stay.
"Ruza's kindness…"
The words spilled from his lips not like a declaration, but like something pulled from the depths of his soul. His voice was quiet—raw and hoarse, nearly drowned out by the wind whipping at the cliff's edge.
"Her unwavering kindness," he said, slowly, every syllable deliberate, like he was placing down truths he'd never spoken before.
"Her unwavering kindness," he said, slowly, every syllable deliberate, like he was placing down truths he'd never spoken before. "Her caring personality… It wasn't forced. It wasn't done with the expectation of praise or repayment. She saved me when I was at my lowest. And she did it just because… because it was me. Not because I was useful. Not because she owed me anything."
His breath hitched, the corners of his lips twitching in a pained smile.
"Just because it was me."
That was it.
That was the center of everything.
His reason for staying.
His reason for surviving.
His reason for believing.
"It's her," he said, voice steadier now, though tears still fell freely. "Only her. Nothing else I care about. Not power, not praise, not some glorious purpose."
He swallowed hard.
"…Because I love her."
The wind carried his words into the open sky, like a prayer too fragile for the world to hold.
For a heartbeat, Sora didn't move. Her eyes widened, flickering for just a second with something unplaceable. But then the light in them hardened again, like glass reforging itself under pressure.
"Don't make me laugh," she said, her voice flat, biting—yet not as sharp as before. "Don't pretend to understand love. You—of all people—don't get to say that."
Tatsuya didn't argue.
He didn't fight back.
He only nodded.
"You're right," he murmured, "I don't understand it."
His voice cracked again, but he didn't stop.
"I don't understand what love is. It was something I didn't got to experience back home."
Not after dad died…
"…But when Ruza came to save me—when she held me while I was breaking down…"
He closed his eyes. His voice dropped to a whisper.
"In that moment… I felt something I never felt before."
The memories surged behind his eyes, vivid and impossible to suppress.
"I felt safe. Like I could finally exhale after holding my breath for years. Like… I didn't have to perform anymore. I didn't have to pretend to be okay."
The wind howled softly across the cliff, like the world itself was holding its breath.
"I felt warmth. Not the warmth of a fire or a bath. But warmth that wraps around your chest and settles deep in your bones—like sunlight through a window on a cold morning."
"I felt seen. Like she actually saw me. Not the version I put forward to the world. But the quiet parts. The scared parts. The ugly ones. And she didn't flinch. She didn't turn away. She stayed."
He took in a ragged breath, trying to speak over the lump in his throat.
"I felt… I felt free to be vulnerable. I didn't have to be strong or useful. I didn't have to be anything but myself. And even when I broke down, even when I wasn't okay… she didn't disappear."
He lowered his head.
"So no… I don't know what love is. Not exactly. But if that isn't love… then I'll gladly chase it anyway."
A long silence followed. The air between them tightened.
Sora's hands, still gripping the hatchets, began to tremble.
For the first time since she arrived, her stance faltered. Just slightly. Her breath drew in slow and uneven, like something within her was resisting.
"…It doesn't change the fact that you're a demon cultist," she said, her voice quieter now, though still layered with frost. "I am done with your games."
She stepped forward.
"You've got a big mouth," she said. "You've probably seduced a lot of people with words like that. Spinning your lies, weaving illusions—"
She stopped.
Just a few feet away.
She looked down at him—no longer with fire, but something dimmer, harder to define. A lingering grief behind the hatred.
She closed her eyes.
"I was called to do this," she said, almost like a confession. "I won't speak the name of my master. But my role as gatekeeper of the Davies estate… is one I accepted with my life."
Her eyes opened again.
Sharp.
Unwavering.
"If the things you said are true… then I'm sorry. But I won't falter. Not now. Not ever."
There was no mercy in her eyes.
Not anymore.
Tatsuya was already at the edge. Just one step back, and there would be nothing but air. One slip, and he would vanish into the ravine below.
Sora raised her arm—
But then she stopped.
Her hand moved—not with wrath or precision, but with hesitation.
She placed it against his chest.
It wasn't the calm, righteous touch he expected from someone carrying out a sacred duty.
It was trembling.
Like she, was at war with something inside herself.
Part 2
And then—it moved.
No hesitation. No more trembling.
Just force.
A push.
Soft enough to feel like a mistake, but firm enough that there was no mistaking the intention.
Tatsuya's balance gave way.
The world tilted.
The cliff's edge crumbled under his heel like dry sand, and before he could even cry out, the air stole the sound from his throat.
He was falling.
His body twisted in the air, the world spinning around him in a kaleidoscope of color and chaos. The sky, the trees, the jagged wall of the cliff—everything blurred. His limbs flailed on instinct, as if he could grab the wind itself and anchor himself back to life.
But there was nothing to hold onto.
Nothing to cling to.
Just open sky and the distant surface of water below.
Am I going to die like this?
His thoughts were slow, drifting like leaves in a river. There was no fear left—only a hollow ache where hope had once lived.
That was her answer, wasn't it?
He thought of Sora. Of the fire in her eyes. Of the betrayal etched in every line of her face. The hatred she held in her voice—hatred so sharp it had cut deeper than any wound.
It didn't matter what I said.
It didn't matter that I begged, that I told her the truth.
She didn't believe him.
No one ever did.
The air screamed around him.
The ground came rushing up in a cruel blur of green and blue—and then—
Splash!!!
The surface of the pond shattered as he plunged into it like a stone.
The impact wasn't clean or cinematic. It was brutal.
Water slammed into him like a wall of steel. His ribs screamed, his back felt like it had split open. The cold engulfed him instantly, stealing the breath from his lungs in a single icy grip.
Pain bloomed like fire beneath his skin.
Something tore.
He couldn't tell what.
But he felt it—the unmistakable sensation of something inside him ripping apart.
My side… my leg…
He couldn't move.
Couldn't swim.
His body refused to respond.
And then—warmth.
At first, he thought it was the water adjusting to his body temperature.
But it wasn't warmth.
It was blood.
His blood.
Thick clouds of crimson billowed around him, painting the clear water in lazy ribbons of red.
He was bleeding.
A lot.
This isn't right…
His eyes, barely open, saw the light from the surface above—a flickering, rippling promise of life just out of reach.
But it was getting darker.
His limbs, now limp, floated weightlessly like a marionette with its strings cut.
I tried…
I really did…
I thought… maybe this time… I wouldn't be thrown away.
The cold deepened.
His vision blurred.
His consciousness began to fade.
And as the last bubbles escaped his mouth and floated toward the surface, Tatsuya's final thought before the darkness took him was not of anger… nor fear… nor even sorrow.
It was of her.
Ruza.
I'm sorry.