“Ryuuki… h-he’s coming…” Yumiko whispered, her voice trembling as she instinctively clutched Ryuuki’s arm. Her grip was firm, almost desperate, betraying the raw edge of fear that colored her usually calm demeanor.
It wasn’t just her, though; their classmates, those less seasoned in combat or lacking in confidence, also recoiled, taking a collective step backward as if trying to distance themselves from the overwhelming presence drawing near.
Even Yusuke, usually brimming with an unwavering sense of superiority—whether in the world they once knew or in this strange, new realm—found himself uncharacteristically silent. His eyes, which had often held a confident gleam, now flickered uncertainly as they avoided Samael’s gaze.
Yusuke had always believed himself to be above others, endowed with strength, wealth, and the privileges those brought. He had used these gifts to assert his dominance, to trample those he deemed beneath him. But now, in the presence of Samael, he encountered something wholly unfamiliar.
He fought the creeping sensation that gnawed at the edges of his mind, a feeling he refused to acknowledge as fear.
“There’s no way!” he thought furiously, clenching his teeth in defiance, his glare fixed on Samael in an attempt to deny the truth of what he was experiencing.
“Rena-sama! Stay back!” one of Rena’s yokai urged, their voice betraying an unusual nervousness that contrasted starkly with their usual composed demeanor.
“We will protect you!” another yokai echoed, their tone equally strained, as if the words were more for their own reassurance than hers.
“What are you saying, you two?” Rena responded, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion. Despite the tension in the air, she remained outwardly unperturbed, her usual composure intact. However, the urgency in her yokai’s voices did not escape her notice, and it unsettled her more than she cared to admit.
“No, run away…” The final yokai, usually the one who would unhesitatingly charge into battle and kill for her without a second thought, spoke in a tone so grave and serious that it sent a chill down Rena’s spine. She turned to him, her eyes widening slightly in shock at the sight of his troubled expression—something she had never seen before in all the time they had fought together.
She had known these yokai for a year, and yet, in this moment, they were strangers to her, gripped by a fear she couldn’t comprehend.
“Sister…” Ayaka’s voice broke through the tense silence, her grip tightening on the hilt of her white katana. But her hand was trembling, a faint but telling sign of the dread that had taken hold of her.
“I know, Ayaka… don’t be reckless…” Akane, her twin, responded, her usually cold and emotionless expression twisted in a rare display of concern as she clutched her own katana. For the first time, both of them felt a crushing sense of inadequacy, an overwhelming certainty that they were outmatched. It felt futile even to consider fighting back.
“Lord Commander!”
“Lord Samael!”
“Hero of Darkness!”
“My lord!”
The demons parted before him like a dark tide, creating a path as Nathan walked forward, his presence commanding their attention without effort. They cheered for him, but he seemed oblivious, his focus entirely elsewhere. His gaze was icy, devoid of emotion, as he stopped a few meters away from Ryuuki. A heavy silence settled over the scene, thick with anticipation.
Ryuuki finally stepped forward, breaking the stillness with a forced, yet polite smile. “Pleased to meet you. Are you really the Hero summoned by Tenebria? The Hero of Darkness?” he asked, doing his utmost to maintain a friendly demeanor despite the tension that hung in the air.
Nathan didn’t respond immediately. His eyes continued to scan the group, observing them with a detached curiosity. His gaze finally settled on two figures, and his expression seemed to harden, a subtle but noticeable shift.
The Arima Twins.
Arima Ayaka.
Arima Akane.
Nathan’s gaze narrowed slightly, his single eye focusing intently on the twins. That minute shift in his expression was enough to make both Ayaka and Akane instinctively adopt defensive stances, their hands tightening around the hilts of their katanas.
But Nathan wasn’t simply examining them out of idle curiosity; there was something more profound, something deeper that stirred within him as he looked upon them.
“Are you kidding me?” He thought, a cold wave of realization crashing over him.
He couldn’t mistake them. How could he? These were faces etched into a part of his past that he had buried deep within his memory, a chapter he had long sought to forget.
After his mother’s death, Nathan’s father had remarried several times. Among these marriages, there was Sienna and Siara’s mother, a more recent addition to the fractured family. But before her, there had been another woman—a beautiful Japanese woman from a wealthy, noble family.
Nathan never truly understood why or how his father had chosen to marry this woman, but he did, and with that marriage came two daughters, his first step sisters, Ayaka and Akane.
Nathan had spent five long, turbulent years growing up alongside these girls. It was a period in his life he wished to erase, a time steeped in sorrow and darkness. It all began after Phoebe’s departure, a loss that seemed to tip him and consequently his father over the edge. The man’s obsession with shaping Nathan into a reflection of himself became more intense, more desperate.
This obsession soon extended to his twin step-sisters. The woman, their mother, who had initially appeared grateful for the marriage, quickly grew horrified as she saw the true nature of the man she had married. She attempted to shield her daughters from his growing madness, but her resistance was short-lived; a few months later, she died in what was conveniently labeled an accident.
The twins were taken back into the care of their grandmother, who whisked them away to Japan, severing their ties to Nathan’s world.
Nathan never heard from them again. It was a part of his life he was content to forget, a painful memory he had locked away. Yet, now, standing before him were those very same girls—no longer the children he once knew, but women, standing as Heroes of Kastoria.
“It can’t be just a coincidence,” he mused, his thoughts a tangled web of disbelief and reluctant recognition.
Years had passed since he last saw them, yet there was no mistaking who they were. Time had changed them, but it had also refined them, revealing the extraordinary beauty they had grown into—beauty that bore a striking resemblance to Aisha, yet with an aura all their own.
Nathan couldn’t help but wonder if part of his affection for Aisha stemmed from a subconscious connection to these twins, a fondness that had briefly bloomed during their shared childhood. But that happiness had been shattered when their father had, in Nathan’s mind, clearly orchestrated their mother’s death.
And then there was the darkness that had begun to consume Nathan himself during that time, driving a wedge between him and the only siblings he had ever cared for.
‘You are a monster!’
‘Don’t approach us… please.’
The echo of Ayaka’s and Akane’s last words to him reverberated in his mind, their voices as clear and painful as if they had spoken them just moments ago.
“Is Samael your name? From which world are you from?” Ryuuki’s voice cut through the memories, snapping Nathan back to the present.
Nathan’s gaze shifted from the twins to Ryuuki, and then slowly swept across the entire group. He noticed something he hadn’t fully registered before—these were all Japanese students, likely from the same class, probably studying together before they were summoned here.
“A Japanese class…” Nathan murmured under his breath, piecing together the likelihood that they had been brought here together in some kind of group summoning. The idea was almost absurdly ironic.
Ryuuki, having caught Nathan’s murmur, latched onto it eagerly. “You’re from Earth, right?!” he asked, a broad smile spreading across his face as if this common ground was something to celebrate.
Nathan’s expression twisted in disgust. How could this boy smile like that, here and now, when they were clearly on opposite sides? There was nothing to be happy about, nothing to be celebrated in this twisted reality.
“Get the hell out of here,” Nathan said coldly.
“Eh?” Ryuuki’s smile faltered, replaced by confusion as he tried to process the abrupt hostility.
Nathan’s golden eye began to glow with a dark, ominous light, his patience quickly unraveling.
“Or else I’ll kill all of you.”