In a different corner of different city, far from Clyde and the forest of broken seals, another story quietly began to unfold.
It started in the outskirts of an industrial city. A place where concrete swallowed the earth and rust stained the edges of everything. Here, in a crumbling apartnt block where the wind always slled like smoke and the sky rarely cleared lived a boy most people barely noticed.
His na was Ray. He was fourteen. Thin, hunched, and quiet.
He walked with his head down always alone and always sowhere in the background. His classmates whispered about him and called him weird, freak, broken.
So of them didn’t whisper. So shoved him in the hallway, spat gum in his locker, or threw his notebooks into puddles. It never stopped even after he beg them to.
He never fought back because he was too weak to do anything.
Until the day he found the weapon few days ago.
It wasn’t supposed to be there. No one knew how it arrived, not even him. But late one night, when he wandered off alone again after another silent dinner in an empty apartnt, he cut through the alley behind the old school fence where the garbage bins overflowed and the lights flickered.
That’s when he saw it. He saw a black case that was half-buried behind broken crates. It oddly clean. No dust or dirt on it. Just sitting there like it had waited for him.
His fingers trembled as he opened it as if his instinct told him that it wasn’t sothing he should’ve touch.
When he opened it, inside it was a blade.
Not a knife.or a sword. Sothing in between. The blade was short and curved, jet-black with glowing red cracks across its surface like veins pulsing with heat. The hilt felt warm the mont his skin touched it. It didn’t feel like tal nor plastic. Sothing else entirely.
He didn’t know it then, but the weapon was sothing that ca from the Demon Realm. One of the tools thrown into this world by the World Master. Scattered across cities and mountains, forests and ruins. Waiting for hands to claim them.
That pieces was co to Ray.
He took it ho that night. Stared at it for hours under the flickering kitchen light.
He didn’t know anything about magic except from the stories he read and watch.
But sothing had already begun to seep into him without him knowing.
He heard a whisper in his head. A prickling behind his eyes. His veins tingled. His skin burned faintly like holding static just beneath the surface.
When he looked at his reflection that night he swore he saw sothing flicker behind him in the glass. Like a shadow with horns.
The weapon hadn’t awakened fully. Its magic hadn’t yet ford until the Selection Stage arrived. But the twisted, hateful, ancient energy within it had started leaking into him.
And Ray didn’t resist.
He didn’t sleep. The next morning, he went to school with the blade hidden deep in his bag. It felt like bis new purpose.
The kids who usually bullied him suddenly made his fists clench. His breath grew short when they laughed. His eyes stung when they looked at him like dirt.
The hate had always been there but its always caged and quiet. But now it had teeth.
The weapon didn’t speak, at least not in words, but it didn’t have to.
It made him feel the power and hatred amplified. That was enough.
Ray didn’t know what he was turning into yet. But sothing had changed.
---
It had been a week since Ray had found the blade and the power it carried, the hatred buried deep within it, had seeped further into his soul with each passing day.
At first, it was just a whisper and a dark impulse. But now, it was a hunger.
The world around him began to rot in his eyes. The buildings looked uglier. The people sounded louder and more annoying.
The sky seed heavier. They pressing down on him like judgnt.
He hated the sound of laughter, hated the way people walked in groups while laughing, hated the way they never looked at him unless it was to mock.
His mind twisted quietly. What little morality he clung to began to fade like the last light in a closing room. It felt distant and aningless now.
He used to just imagine killing his bullies. He used to picture it just to survive the day.
But today was different.
Today, he really wanted to do it.
He found them behind the gym building, hidden in their usual corner where they smoked cheap cigarettes and passed phones back and forth, laughing at so video.
The sll of smoke, sweat, and arrogance hung thick in the air.
There were six of them. The six students who had made his life a living hell for years.
They looked up when they saw him. They blinked. Then laughed.
"Well, well. If it isn’t the freak," one of them said while blowing smoke in Ray’s direction. "You lost?"
Ray didn’t answer at first.
He stepped into the shadows with calm steps and no fear in his eyes. His hand was in his jacket pocket.
"I’m not here to be your toys anymore," Ray said softly.
The tallest bully, a boy nad Harris, raised an eyebrow. "Then what? You finally snapped? You want to give us a lesson?"
"I’m here," Ray said, "because I want to kill you."
They give loud, mocking, and fearless laughed.
"Whoa," said another. "Do you bring a toy knife or sothing?"
Harris stood up, walking closer with the usual smirk. "You know we’re gonna beat the shit outta you for that words only, right?"
"No. I don’t think so," Ray whispered.
He took another step forward and pulled the blade from his pocket.
The short black weapon humd softly in his hand. The red cracks across it pulsed like breathing veins. It didn’t glow bright. It didn’t scream for attention. But it emanated strange feelings. Like it ca from a place where human should never touched.
The boys paused for a second.
Then laughed even harder.
"Is that supposed to scare us?" Harris sneered. "You gonna stab with your little toy? Go on, freak. I dare you."
Ray looked up at him.
And sothing in his face had changed.
There was no rage in his eyes.
Only a hollow calm.
Then he slashed the blade insingle motion.
The blade moved too fast for Harris to react. One second the boy was grinning and the next second, a dark red arc sprayed from his throat.
His body fell backward with a sickening thud. His arms twitching. He was hurgling. His mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Silence.
The other five froze.
For a mont, no one moved.
Ray stood over Harris’ dying body, the blade dripping.
"You dared ," he said coldly.
Then he turned to the rest.
The whispers in his head were louder now, almost joyful.
Ray didn’t blink.
He stepped forward and with one clean motion raised the blade and cut through Harris’s neck..
The scream that followed from the others ca too late.
The head hit the ground with a dull thump, rolling across the ground. The body jerked then stilled in a pool of spreading red.
The five remaining bullies stood frozen. Their cigarettes slipped from their fingers. Their mouths opened but said nothing.
Ray turned his eyes toward them.
Sothing was wrong with his face now.
It wasn’t just blood on his cheek. It was the slight twist to his smile and coldness in his stare
One boy tried to run. Ray was already on his path a mont later.
The blade whistled once through the air, and the boy fell, his back split open like paper.
Another tried to scream and beg but Ray didn’t hear it. The whisper in his mind surged like a choir. The blade sang and his arm moved faster than it should.
Then he send a clean stab through the chest. Blood sprayed his school uniform like black ink.
Three left.
One tackled him in desperation. Ray didn’t resist. He let the boy’s weight knock him down. Then, underneath, he shoved the blade straight through the bottom of the boy’s jaw and into his brain. The boy twitched violently, then slumped.
Two left.
They were crying now.
"P-please... Ray... we’re sorry, okay?!"
Ray stood slowly, his face and hands drenched in blood.
"You laughed when I begged you," he whispered.
The taller of the two tried to charge him out of blind panic. Ray sidestepped and slashed his neck. Then it gushed.
One left.
The last boy fell to his knees.
"I didn’t an it. I didn’t... please..."
Ray walked to him.
He knelt in front of the boy. Touched his face with a bloodied hand.
"I believe you," he said gently.
Then he drove the blade through his heart.
When it was over, Ray stood among the bodies.
Steam rose from the warm blood on the cold pavent.
The whisper in his head had gone quiet now.
---
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