Null never told Haruto the whole truth.
How could an eight-year-old explain to a seven-year-old that their mother and father were lying in pieces on the kitchen floor because of a military hit squad? He didn't mention Ken Carson. He didn't mention the anti-divine blades, the blood-soaked tiles, or the pitch-black entity that had taken over his body to slaughter four men in the yard.
All Null did was hold his younger brother tightly in the dark hallway, covering Haruto's eyes so he wouldn't see the crimson pool at the bottom of the stairs, whispering a single, hollow sentence over and over into his yellow-and-black hair:
*"Mom and Dad are gone, Haruto... They aren't coming back."*
For days, the house remained trapped in a suffocating silence. Haruto cried until his voice rasped into raw, soundless sobs, curling into a ball on their parents' bed and refusing to eat.
Outside, the neighborhood went on as if nothing had happened. The Asura family had always been isolated marked by the military high command as outcasts so when the lights in the house stayed dim and the blinds remained drawn, not a single neighbor came to knock on the door. No one came to check on the two orphan boys. No one cared.
Null didn't have the luxury to break down. As the older brother, he forced himself to adapt.
With numb, steady hands, he cleaned what he could, locked the broken kitchen door, and retrieved his parents' remaining bank cards from his father's desk. In the weeks that followed, eight-year-old Null took complete control of the household. He learned how to cook basic meals, managed the remaining pantry supplies, and walked to the local market alone to buy groceries, making sure Haruto ate full meals even when Null himself couldn't swallow a single bite.
Null poured everything into protecting his brother's innocence. He wanted Haruto to grow up normal, soft-hearted, and untainted by the dark realities of the world.
Driven by a desperate need to build a future where they wouldn't be hunted, Null set his mind on a goal: he would become a scientist. He believed that if he could master science and cosmic architecture, he could unlock the secrets of the Prime Stones, build a safe haven for his brother, and change the cruel world that had destroyed his family.
He attended the local district school, burying his head in heavy physics textbooks and advanced mechanical notes. He focused hard but never too hard. Because every time he closed his eyes in class, the memories of that night recycled behind his eyelids like a violent film loop.
Then, three years passed.
Null was ten years old when the bank card finally ran out of money.
He stood at the automated teller machine outside the market, staring at the flashing red text on the screen: [BALANCE: 0.00].
He inserted the card again, his small fingers trembling, but the result was the same. The money his parents had left behind was completely gone. There was no food in the fridge at home. The utility bills were stacking up. Haruto was starting high school preparatory classes, completely unaware that their lives were hanging by a thread.
Null had no choice.
That night, ten-year-old Null walked down a path from which no one ever returns.
Equipped with nothing more than a rusted, five-inch kitchen knife and a dark hoodie pulled low over his face, Null entered the underbelly of the lower district. He didn't have a stone activated. He didn't have divine energy. He had only the raw, desperate instincts of a child trying to keep his brother from starving.
His first target was a low-level mercenary operating in the back alleys a man with a bounty on his head. Null waited in the shadows for hours, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. When the man passed by, Null lunged, driving the small knife straight into the man's neck from behind.
Blood spilled over his ten-year-old hands warm, sticky, and sickeningly familiar.
Over the next few months, one contract turned into ten. Ten turned into fifty. Before the year was out, Null had taken the lives of more than one hundred souls in the dark alleys and backstreets, collecting blood-stained cash to pay for Haruto's tuition, clothes, and food.
He hated every single second of it.
After every contract, after every life he snuffed out with that small, crude knife, Null would collapse in a hidden alleyway or behind a dumpster, throwing up until his stomach was empty. He would clutch his blood-covered knees, sobbing uncontrollably in the dark, completely unable to process the terrifying weight of ending a human life.
He was terrified of himself. He was terrified of the dark, cold monster he was becoming just to buy bread and pay electricity bills.
His mental state began to fracture. It leaked into everything he did. At night, while Haruto slept safely upstairs, Null sat at his desk writing scientific notes and formulas for his dream of becoming a researcher. But his handwriting was jagged, violent, and erratic the ink pressed so hard into the paper that it tore through the pages. The way his hand moved across the notebook looked less like a boy writing equations and more like a murderer repeatedly stabbing a blade into a body.
He wrote frantically, desperately trying to anchor his mind to his dream of science, holding onto a quiet vow: I will become a scientist. I will sustain us. I will keep Haruto clean. No matter what it takes.
And beneath that dream lay a darker, colder promise a quiet oath that one day, when he was strong enough, he would hunt down Ken Carson and every single person who had ruined his life, and he would erase them from existence.
But despite the blood on his hands, Null was still just Null.
His name literally meant nothing. He was a non-entity. He had no friends at school, spoke to no one, and sat in the back corner of every room like a ghost. He was nobody.
Except for one person.
Amidst the blood, the grief, and the lonely darkness, Null met a boy at school a guy who saw past Null's quiet, stoic wall and treated him like a real human being. He treated Null like an actual brother, pulling him out of the shadows and offering him a sliver of normal, teenage warmth in a world that had given him nothing.
And deep within Null's chest, resting beneath his beating heart and the weight of a hundred dead souls, Umbros lay completely dormant silent, motionless, and waiting for the day the Unwritten King would finally break enough to awaken the dark god within.
End of chapter 107
See you tomorrow!!!!