"You know who the enemy is. You know what they truly are—liars, deceivers. They will be your end!"
"Shut up!"
The young boy, his hair a striking shade of purple, crouched low in the garden, his hands clutching his head as he screamed in agony. His violet eyes, usually calm, now brimmed with pain and fury.
"KILL THEM! WHILE YOU STILL CAN!"
The voice in his head grew louder, insistent, pushing him closer to the brink of madness.
"STOP! PLEASE! JUST STOP!" he begged, tears streaming down his face.
But it wasn't just the voice.
No.
It was everything.
The images haunted him, vivid and unrelenting.
He saw it.
He saw the betrayal.
The people he loved. The ones who claimed to love him back. They had turned against him.
"No… nooooooo!" he wailed, gripping his head tighter as though to claw the truth out of his skull. He couldn't accept it. He couldn't bring himself to.
But it was all there. All so painfully clear.
It had begun after his awakening—the telltale signs of the demon's manifestation.
At first, he dismissed it as the demon's influence, a ploy to corrupt him. But over time, the line between manipulation and reality blurred.
His engagement was broken. His friends had abandoned him.
And Christina…
Christina, the one he had trusted and loved above all others, was gone.
And then there were the memories.
The memories that didn't belong to him, yet felt as real as his own skin.
He saw it.
He saw himself standing alone, surrounded by the ones he loved—the ones who stood on the side of another man, watching him die. But what cut deeper than the blade in his abdomen was her expression.
Indifference.
Christina's cold, hollow gaze bore into him as though he were nothing more than a pest.
"Chris…tina…" the boy in the memory rasped. But her only response was a swift kick, sending him crashing to the ground.
Why?
Why would they do this to him?
He couldn't comprehend it. His grief mounted, feeding his hatred.
A darkness he had kept buried began to surface—a darkness that came to all those cursed with his bloodline.
The pain was unbearable, tearing at his mind, his sanity slipping away with every passing second.
"DENY IT NO MORE," the voice whispered, relentless and cruel. "THEY BETRAYED YOU. THEY LEFT YOU WHEN YOU NEEDED THEM THE MOST… FOR A STRANGER."
Tears spilled down his cheeks.
"I hate them," he sobbed, his voice trembling with rage and despair. "I hate them all."
"Yes… yes! THAT'S HOW IT SHOULD BE. KILL THEM… KILL THEM ALL BEFORE THEY CAN DO THE SAME TO YOU!"
And in that moment, he decided.
He would not let it end this way. He would kill them all before they had the chance to betray him again.
The memory resurfaced—searing, inescapable.
"I… l-loved you…" the version of himself in the vision had whispered with his dying breath.
But all he saw was Diana's hollow eyes as she drove her blade into his chest.
"Just die already," she had spat, her voice colder than the ground beneath him.
As his vision darkened, he watched her walk away—to him.
To that stranger.
Christina followed, her expression one of pure disgust.
"Let go… he's dead," her voice echoed in his mind, a wound that would never heal.
Those words replayed over and over like a broken record, each repetition slicing deeper into his soul.
Why?
That was the question that haunted him, the question he couldn't escape.
She had been his constant, his light, his everything. Over time, his feelings for her had grown into something he hadn't dared to name. Love.
He loved her.
And yet…
She betrayed him.
A hatred so consuming it threatened to tear him apart took root in his heart.
"I'll make them pay," he whispered, his voice a mixture of sorrow and venom. "All of them."
Laughter erupted from him, harsh and broken, reverberating in the darkness.
"Haha… hahahaha… HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
As the night stretched on, the boy he had once been faded away, replaced by something else entirely.
And with the rising sun, the darkness within him fully awakened.