Chapter 1: Before The Kingdom Burned..

Raizen Kurogane was dead.

There was no ambiguity in his final memory.

He vividly remembered the searing heat of the holy sword violently piercing his chest.

He remembered his demonic core crumbling to ash.

He remembered the absolute, undeniable end of his centuries-long reign.

"I am Raizen Kurogane."

The Destruction King.

The Supreme Demon Lord.

That should have been it.

The abyss. The void.

So why was he still conscious?

Why was he trapped in a suffocating darkness, unable to move a single muscle? And why did his new physical vessel feel so incredibly, impossibly small?

Light suddenly flooded his unadjusted vision.

Blinding.

Agonizingly pure.

Two towering figures stood directly above him, silhouetted against a wooden ceiling. A man and a woman.

Raizen’s ancient, tactical mind raced. *Reincarnation.* It was supposed to be a myth. A cosmic joke. Yet, here he was. His soul had somehow survived. But this wasn’t his body.

*Then whose body was this? Where was he?*

The woman reached down. Her warm, incredibly gentle hands slipped beneath him, lifting his tiny body effortlessly into the air. She smiled, her face flushed and streaked with exhausted tears.

"My beautiful little Kōya..." she whispered softly.

Raizen stared blankly up at her. He didn’t immediately recognize the woman. But there was absolutely no fear in her expression. No terror of the Destruction King. There was only radiant, overwhelming love.

*Kōya.*

So that was the name of this body.

Then, the man beside her leaned closer.

The morning sunlight caught his face.

Raizen’s blurry infant vision finally, sharply focused. He saw the strong jawline. He felt the suffocating, sickeningly pure hum of the man’s ambient mana.

He locked eyes with the man. Golden eyes.

Raizen’s blood turned instantly to ice.

His tiny heart seemed to stop beating.

He knew that face. It was the man who had driven a blade of light through his chest.

The man who had slaughtered his generals.

The man who had burned his dark empire to the ground.

*Seiya Amane.*

A violent, apocalyptic surge of demonic fury exploded inside Raizen’s soul. The cosmic irony was so heavy it threatened to crush his fragile new ribs.

He hadn’t just been reincarnated into a random human peasant. He had been reborn as the firstborn son of his own murderer.

Raizen opened his mouth to roar a blood-curdling curse. He commanded the abyss to rise and obliterate the man’s smiling face.

He prepared to scream his absolute, immortal hatred into the heavens. Nothing happened. Instead, a high-pitched, wet, utterly pathetic wail escaped his tiny throat.

*What?!*

The man who had killed him smiled warmly, leaning down to gently stroke Raizen’s chubby cheek with a calloused finger. "He has your lungs, Mizuki," the Hero laughed softly, his eyes shining with pride.

Raizen’s infant nervous system violently short-circuited under the sheer, unadulterated humiliation. He began wailing uncontrollably.

He tried to force his tear ducts to close. He commanded his lungs to stop.

He couldn’t.

The fragile human biology completely overrode his ancient, iron willpower. His tiny fists clenched helplessly against his pristine white swaddling cloth.

And now...

He was weeping uncontrollably, being rocked gently and shushed in the loving arms of the people who had ended his life.

Raizen stared through his humiliating, burning tears directly into the smiling golden eyes of his assassin.

His ancient soul screamed a single, desperate, furious word into the void.

*HERO!*

**Few months earlier...**

The valley below burned in violent hues of crimson and violet, the stench of scorched earth rising toward the hilltop.

Raizen Kurogane stood on a hill within his kingdom, far outside his castle, watching the human army breach the outer defenses with profound boredom.

His crimson eyes bypassed the clashing armies and locked onto two figures carving through the vanguard.

The Hero, Seiya Amane.

And the woman standing behind him, one hand resting protectively over her stomach.

"Are those two dating?"

His four servants fell silent. The general assigned to monitor the Hero had been watching Seiya’s movements for months.

He released a long, exhausted sigh.

"They are married, my Lord. And expecting."

Raizen glanced at him. "And expecting."

He tilted his head, a slow grin spreading across his face.

"And he brought her to a war zone?" He looked back toward the battlefield.

"What a Hero."

One of the servants covered his mouth.

Raizen’s grin widened.

"With those two as parents, what do you think they’ll give birth to? A goat?"

One of the demon servants snorted.

Raizen pointed toward the Hero.

"Actually... after I kill him, perhaps I’ll take his wife and raise the child myself.

Imagine it.

The Hero’s spawn, raised by the Demon Lord."

The hilltop erupted.

The four demon servants roared with laughter.

Even Raizen laughed.

Down in the ash-choked valley, Seiya Amane suddenly looked up.

The laughter died.

The Hero’s golden eyes locked onto Raizen’s. His grip tightened around his glowing blade.

Raizen offered him a casual, mocking wave.

Seiya did not wave back.

But Raizen’s gaze drifted toward the woman beside the Hero.

Mizuki wasn’t watching the battle.

She was watching her husband.

There was no fear in her expression.

Only absolute, unwavering trust.

The quiet belief that he would bring her home.

Raizen’s smile slowly faded.

His hand drifted instinctively toward the silver band hidden beneath his gauntlet.

Mirei.

The wedding was today.

For centuries, kings had bowed before him in terror.

Armies had fled at the sight of his banners.

But Mirei had never wanted any of that.

She simply wanted him to return. The thought struck him more deeply than he expected.

A home.

A quiet room. Someone waiting for him when the war was over.

Perhaps, one day, small footsteps echoing through the halls of his enormous, empty palace.

"You’re smiling, Lord."

The female servant beside him watched him carefully.

Raizen immediately straightened.

"I’m thinking of killing someone."

Before the lie could settle, a bloodied scout crested the hill, stumbling forward and dropping to one knee.

"My Lord! The Hero..." He struggled for breath.

"He has entered the kingdom. His group breached the outer boundary and is moving toward the capital."

Raizen stared toward the distant fortress.

The wedding. His wedding.

The celebration was already underway within the walls. Mirei was waiting for him.

And the Hero had chosen today.

Raizen’s amusement disappeared completely.

Every Hero eventually came to the Demon Lord with the same purpose.

Kill him.

Save the world.

Repeat the story.

But to have crossed the outer boundary and marched directly toward the capital?

Why today? How did he even know the ceremony was happening?

"We should postpone the ceremony," one of the servants urged.

"No."

The answer came immediately. Raizen’s crimson eyes hardened.

"I’ve postponed enough." He looked toward the fortress. "Tell Mirei I will be back. I’ll deal with the Hero first."

He turned toward the path descending from the hill, intending to investigate the Hero’s sudden arrival. Then, he stopped. Something felt wrong.

It wasn’t the Hero. The Hero’s presence was impossible to mistake—bright, golden, familiar. But as the wind shifted, the air grew unnaturally heavy.

Raizen closed his eyes.

The clash of steel below seemed to dull. The ambient mana in the atmosphere didn’t just shift; it thickened, pressing against his skin like a physical weight. He reached out with his senses.

A faint pressure bled from the East. He opened his eyes slightly. It was distant, but suffocating.

He turned his head.

West.

Another presence.

Different from the first, sharper, heavier.

The temperature suddenly dropped.

A wind swept up from the South, carrying a silence so absolute it erased the sounds of the burning valley.

A third presence.

Then, the earth gasped.

Deep beneath the kingdom, far below the bedrock of his own capital, something pulsed. Once. Slowly. Like a heartbeat.

Raizen froze.

The Demon servants watched him. "My Lord?" He didn’t answer.

Four.

Four separate powers.

He looked across the horizon.

The Hero was approaching from the north.

But these four distinct presences surrounded his kingdom.

They weren’t moving. Not yet.

They were simply waiting in the dark.

None carried the Hero’s blinding light.

None felt human.

And none belonged to anything Raizen recognized.

The Demon Lord drew his blade, the dark steel swallowing the fading sunlight.

Why had the Hero come on the exact day of his wedding?

what were the other four?

Raizen took his first step off the hill. Behind him, the battlefield continued to burn. Ahead, his kingdom waited.

And somewhere beyond the visible horizon, something had begun to move.