“Again? That book?”
In a quiet corner of the library,
the young man’s hand—midway through turning a thick old tome—stopped.
“You’re still obsessed with that legend?”
The man who spoke leaned against a bookshelf and let out an incredulous laugh.
His gaze naturally drifted to the book in front of the young man.
*The End of Demon King Orta.*
A cover yellowed with age.
An ancient document hardly anyone bothered to seek out anymore.
“···No matter how many times I read it, it’s strange.”
Arzen muttered low without lifting his eyes from the page.
“What is?”
“This record. None of it lines up.”
The man dropped into a chair with a thud.
It felt like they’d had this conversation dozens of times.
“How many years have you been staring at that book?
Even the academy already stamped it ‘unreliable.’”
“I know. Most of them did.”
“Orta’s recorded as the Demon King,
the evil that spread calamity across the world.”
Arzen turned a page slowly.
The sentences in the old book slipped quietly into his eyes.
“He donned a black soul
and burned half the world.”
“With his appearance,
all races held their breath.”
“His name itself was fear—Orta.”
“···But some records say Orta was
‘one of the lieutenants who served the Demon King.’
And he never once said, ‘I am the Demon King.’ Not even once.”
“···So?”
Arzen fell silent for a moment.
His pupils trembled slightly.
“I want to know the truth
in this twisted history.”
“···You’re really relentless.”
The man shook his head without another word.
But it wasn’t a scolding so much as a mutter—
something mixed with respect and resignation.
That day, too, Arzen quietly turned the pages.
Within them was recorded the story of Orta—
the one called a Demon King, who shook the world three hundred years ago.
◇
Western continent. Outside the former Kingdom of Erdain.
Followers of the Abyssal Order, the “Black Sun,”
were hiding here.
At the center of the altar,
a silver-haired child lay still.
A boy who looked not even ten.
His entire body was etched with ritual marks and magic circles,
and the face that didn’t so much as twitch
seemed already drained of human warmth.
Above him,
the Black Sun began to awaken in earnest.
The entire space shuddered.
Priests surrounding the altar bowed their heads,
and the cult leader standing at the center
cried out in a low, deep voice.
“Ark Mor Dre-nan··· Orta le Varshe.”
“Belga na Arke. Tal-nar, tal-nar··· Orta Ires.”
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A crimson magic circle swallowed fire,
and the child’s body slowly rose into the air.
The marks carved across him released light all at once,
and the power spilling from the Black Sun’s core
pierced straight through the boy.
One priest clutched his chest with a trembling hand and whispered.
“The Abyss··· answered. At last···”
Another dropped to his knees, tears spilling freely.
“We are··· the chosen witnesses···”
Whispers spread,
and some priests, unable to contain their excitement,
clenched their fists.
The light of the Black Sun
devoured the altar.
The child remained suspended,
and the red marks faded one by one.
A moment later, the light stopped.
The child’s floating body lowered slowly,
and the ritual seemed to come to a calm close.
“···It’s finished.”
The cult leader exhaled.
Among the priests,
relief began to ripple through.
“The soul has taken hold.”
“The descent is··· a success.”
Then, a magitech device beside the altar
clicked—*tik*—and a red light blinked.
“···Huh?”
A priest turned his head.
The rune etched on the device’s surface wavered,
and the mana gauge had stopped below the threshold.
“Something is wrong.”
Another priest stepped closer and peered into the mechanism.
“The reading is far below the standard.
If the descent were normal··· this shouldn’t happen.”
The cult leader’s expression hardened.
“···That can’t be. Everything was perfect.”
“But the mana response is too weak.
Could it be a problem with the vessel···?”
At that moment,
the child’s fingertips trembled faintly.
The ritual had succeeded.
The Black Sun was subsiding,
and the altar sank into a heavy silence.
The child’s body settled down.
The light of the magic circles flowing across his skin faded,
and the closed eyelids opened quietly.
“···So. He’s finally opened his eyes.”
The cult leader murmured low,
looking down at the being.
But there was no ‘will’ inside him—none to be felt.
A vessel with a soul.
He had opened his eyes,
yet there was no pressure, no rage, no weight of existence.
Only a child’s face,
staring blankly into empty space,
remained there.
A priest approached and held a red resonance stone before the boy.
Movements refined to the point of being mechanical.
The rune pattern carved at the stone’s center
flickered in the darkness.
A moment later,
the stone’s core bucked and released a crimson flash.
Pressure strong enough to make even the air tremble.
A definite mana response.
“···This is···”
The priest stepped back,
staring down at the resonance stone.
The first priest reported, hesitating.
“We have the measurement···
By this era’s standards, it’s overwhelming. But···”
He averted his eyes as he added,
“It’s nowhere near the value recorded in the prophecy.
It’s lacking. By a lot.”
Someone swallowed hard.
Another priest continued carefully.
“Still, the mana itself is unmistakably of the demon race.
The flow, however, is unstable.”
“If it were a normal descent,
it would be far stronger than this.”
“Did the vessel fail to endure it···
Or perhaps only part of the power came down.”
The cult leader said nothing, only watched the child.
Eyes that looked as though they weren’t seeing anything at all.
“There is no memory response.
Mental measurements show···
only cognition at the level of an ordinary child.”
The cult leader stared down at him for a moment,
then spoke.
“···Can he be controlled?”
A priest nodded.
“Rather, because of the instability···
we judge it will be easier to inject commands directly through magitech.”
Another priest added,
“I agree. Control shouldn’t be a problem.”
The cult leader gave a short laugh.
It wasn’t relief, and it wasn’t joy.
Only satisfaction—at a calculated result.
“Then we simply make him move
in the direction we want.”
The moment his words fell,
the priests began to move quietly.
No hesitation. No pity.
In their hands
were tools already prepared.
The child simply stood there.
His small shoulders didn’t shake,
and his eyes kept staring blankly into nothing.
Soon,
cold metal equipment was fitted to him, one by one.
A mental suppression seal around his head.
A control plate on his back to carve command sigils.
Arms and legs,
and around the heart—
restraint devices to monitor and regulate mana flow
locked into precise positions.
*Clack.*
Cold metal meeting skin.
The child said nothing,
showed no reaction.
He only blinked once
with vacant eyes.
“···Does this kid really not understand anything···?”
There was something hesitant in the priest’s voice.
The priest beside him replied in a low tone.
“Don’t attach useless feelings.
He only looks like a child···
what’s inside is the Demon King’s remnant.”
As the gear was mounted one by one,
the child’s form was gradually buried
inside a pure-white full-body suit of armor.
The armor was white, but
the existence inside it
could never be called pure.
From the outside, it was clean and refined—
almost like a guardian of a holy sanctuary.
In truth, it was nothing more than a shell
where a ruinous soul had settled, unstable.
An expressionless helm.
Limbs sealed tight.
No ornamentation on the plate,
and only a mechanically altered voice
could ever leak out.
It looked like
a slaughtering weapon disguised as justice.
No one would imagine it.
That inside it,
was a boy barely ten years old.
The cult leader slowly shifted his gaze and said,
“This child is not a failure.
The ritual succeeded,
and he carries enough mana to subjugate this world.”
A priest added cautiously,
“Any lack of mana can be supplemented with living energy.”
Another priest nodded.
The cult leader concluded,
“Good.
Until a new vessel is prepared,
until then, with this imperfect form···
we will ready ourselves to fulfill the prophecy.”
When he finished,
the cult leader turned away in silence.
The priests lowered their heads
and began to leave the altar.
And then—
From within the armor, the silent being
murmured··· in a voice so small it was almost unheard.
“···It’s suffocating.”
That was, unmistakably,
no will,
no sense of mission···
Only the voice of a child.
Neither demon king nor weapon.
A small life, trapped inside an unfamiliar body,
muttering without understanding.
And so, “Orta”—
failing to achieve a complete resurrection,
was thrown into this world
as a hollow shell without a will.
◇
Three years later. Somewhere in a ruined city in the southern continent.
Once, this had been a lively port trade city by the sea.
Laughter of merchants drifted through the harbor,
and at night, tavern lanterns never seemed to go out.
But now—
A space drowned in shadows and rubble.
A dead land where only the memory of blood remained.
At its center, a figure in white full plate
walked slowly toward someone.
“No··· no··· please··· spare me···!”
A middle-aged man hiding between buildings
dragged himself out, clutching a leg pierced by shattered glass.
Behind him, a woman holding a child soaked in blood
screamed as she sobbed.
“Just this child··· please··· please···!”
Their cries scattered like echoes,
and there was no one left to save them.
Screams had already become familiar noise in the streets,
and pain had fallen to the level of material
for new mana.
Most residents were gone, but
the Black Sun’s agents
were using even the remaining ones as resources for their purpose.
And at the center of it—
Orta stood there.
A helmet sealed tight.
The breath leaking from within was thin and ragged.
“I want to stop···
I don’t want to do this anymore···”
The voice that slipped out was unmistakably a child’s.
But the power pouring out beyond the armor
was the overwhelming aura of a demon.
When the magitech responded,
the boy’s killing instinct was forcibly activated,
and when an order came down···
he couldn’t disobey.
“Proceed. Harvest their lives.”
A high-ranking priest shouted.
At once, the mind-interference device mounted beside Orta’s helm
reacted.
Thin blue circuits lit up,
and the implanted control sigils began to awaken.
“I don’t want to··· I don’t want to kill···
I··· I···.”
But the device offered no mercy.
The boy’s feelings were ignored,
and his will was snapped in an instant.
And so Orta, once again,
lost himself.
At that moment.
From beyond the ruins, quiet footsteps continued.
Boots crunching sand and broken stone,
a few armed figures cautiously revealed themselves.
Crimson cloaks fluttering in the wind.
Dust caked over faded armor.
They didn’t lower their guard,
carefully scanning the ruins.
“Uh··· it’s worse than I thought.”
“Isn’t everyone already dead?”
Someone else muttered low.
“More importantly··· the rumor said mana spiked around here, right?”
One of them climbed onto the roof of a crumbling building
and took out a small scrying stone.
Pale violet mana slowly swirled,
and a distant ruined plaza appeared on its surface.
A moment later,
his pupils narrowed.
“···Something’s there. Over there··· central plaza.
Turn your head that way. There—white··· armor?”
The entire party of adventurers turned to look.
In the heart of the ruins,
on a stone floor streaked with blue mana traces,
a being in white full plate stood in silence.
“At a glance, it looks human, but···.”
“You feel that mana? What kind of monster is that?”
They fell quiet,
as if something about it was wrong.
The being didn’t speak, didn’t move.
It simply stood there,
at the center of the ruins.
“This is··· kind of unsettling.”
