2 days after the incident
Outskirts of the Human City — Nightfall
The sky hung heavy, streaked with ash and blood-red clouds. Broken buildings stood like jagged teeth, casting long shadows as the sun dipped behind the ruin-stained horizon. The wind tasted like metal and old fire.
The sky sagged low with the weight of storm and ash. Streaks of crimson light bled through bruised clouds, painting the ruins in sickly hues of rust and sorrow. The scent of scorched iron and long-dead fire clung to the wind, like a battlefield refusing to forget.
Perched atop the crooked spine of a half-toppled tower, Sparda stood like a specter of war. His silhouette was sharp against the dying light, coat flaring with every gust, the edges frayed from more than time. Slung across his back, his Yamato thrummed with a dormant hunger — a pulse not unlike a heartbeat, cold and ancient.
He smirked, lips curling with amused disdain.
"So this is what humans call a city?"
"I've seen better-designed graveyards." Below him, shattered remnants of civilization loomed — temples gutted by fire, homes gnarled into twisted husks, and prayer flags fluttering weakly from splintered beams. One of them — pale blue, marked with a sigil of protection — snapped in the wind like it was resisting death itself.
Sparda's gaze lingered on it for a moment. Not quite reverence… not quite scorn. Just memory. Something buried and cracked.
Without a sound, he stepped off the edge.
He fell like a whisper.
Landing with feline grace amid broken stone and glinting glass, his boots didn't even stir the dust. He didn't glance back — not until he heard the hesitant footsteps behind him.
Trish.
The small human girl he'd saved — or spared — two days ago. She moved like a ghost, hugging herself for warmth or courage, maybe both. Her oversized shirt flapped with every movement, and her eyes darted constantly to the shadows, as though demons might slither from the cracks.
She was young, maybe ten. But her eyes were older now.
Sparda kept walking, his stride relaxed, confident — the kind of swagger that only came from surviving centuries of bloodshed and betrayal.
"Look, Trish," he said, glancing back with a sideways smirk. "You live here, right? So where's the town? Because, I gotta say, your navigation skills over the pass few days are about as sharp as a rusted butter knife."
Trish shook her head nervously.
"I... I don't know. Everything's different now."
Sparda raised an eyebrow.
"What, you got amnesia or something? Bumped your head running from demons and forgot which pile of rubble is your bedroom?"
She flinched, but he didn't mean it cruelly — not exactly. His tone had bite, sure, but underneath it was a strange, lazy kind of concern. He wasn't used to speaking gently, so sarcasm was the closest he could manage.
Trish spoke up, softer now. "It used to be normal… before they came. Now I can't even tell what street I'm on."
That made him pause.
Sparda tilted his head slightly, looking out over the blackened horizon. There were no stars. Just smoke and old light.
"Hmph. Figures. Humans always get lost the moment things go sideways."
His tone was colder now. Not mocking — reflective. A man speaking from experience.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he muttered:
"Not like demons ever had much sense of direction either."
He didn't expect Trish to respond. She didn't.
Then they walked in silence for a while, moving through narrow alleyways where wind whispered stories only ruins remembered. Every now and then, Sparda's hand moved toward Yamato, feeling faint traces of demons—just small, lingering signs of their presence.
Eventually, they reached the remains of an old courtyard — circular and cracked, with a collapsed fountain at its center. The moon peeked between clouds now, pale and distant, casting long, mournful shadows across stone.
Sparda stopped, looking up at the sky.
"Let's camp here," he said flatly, sitting on a half-toppled bench that had somehow survived the destruction. "Almost Vesper."
He pronounced the word like it was sacred — or maybe nostalgic. The evening hour of the old world, marked in rituals long abandoned.
Trish nodded and knelt beside the fountain's edge, quietly unpacking the small cloth satchel she'd carried. It held almost nothing — just a cracked canteen, a burnt piece of bread, and a silver locket she never opened.
Sparda leaned back, one hand resting lazily on the hilt of his sword. His gaze drifted skyward.
"The stars used to shine brighter, you know," he said, almost to himself. "Before we came."
He didn't say who "we" was.
Trish didn't ask.
Then — Yamato stirred.
It wasn't sound, not exactly — more like a resonance. A vibration in the bones, an ancient pulse like a tuning fork struck by the hand of fate. The blade shivered subtly in its sheath, the faintest metallic hum bleeding into the air like a warning.
Sparda's posture changed instantly.
He rose without a word. The lazy, half-lounging warrior was gone — replaced by a sentinel carved from centuries of battle. His blue eyes became a little bit red eye, and narrowed, the gleam behind them no longer amused.
His fingers curled around Yamato's hilt with elegance — like a concert pianist poised above the ivory.
"Behind me. Now."
His voice was low and flat, but it carried an unspoken force, like stone grinding against steel. It wasn't a request. It was survival.
Trish obeyed. Instinct overrode fear. She ducked behind him, eyes wide, breath catching in her throat as the shadows around them shifted.
And then they came.
Sin Scissors. Sin Scythe.
They glided forward from the dark, spectral and silent, as though drawn from nightmares instead of reality. Their bodies were cloaked in veils of oily black mist. Their limbs were thin, segmented like puppets, their blades dragging behind them with the dry scrape of dead leaves on stone.
Porcelain masks covered their faces — expressionless, alien, except for the tiny, grinning cracks that grew as they drew near. The very air around them grew colder, brittle. Even the wind dared not speak.
Time slowed. The ruins held their breath.
Sparda didn't flinch.
He clicked his tongue, almost bored.
"Well, well," he murmured, letting Yamato slide just a breath from its sheath.
The blade caught the dying light — a glint of silver sharp enough to cut dusk in two. A cold gleam danced in his eyes, half anticipation, half disdain.
"I was hoping for something... bigger."
One of the demons — a Sin Scissor — let out a shriek. Its mask split into a wicked grin, jagged and inhuman. In the same instant, it lunged, scythe raised like a butcher's cleaver.
Sparda didn't move. Not yet.
He waited until the precise millisecond.
Then — SHING!
Yamato flashed free. A blur of blue light and polished steel, drawn in a single, perfect arc. It wasn't just fast — it was divine. A movement so sharp it sliced the air itself, the draw strike cracking through the plaza like thunder splitting a stone.
The Sin Scissor froze in mid-air.
For a moment, it looked untouched.
Then — the soundless shatter.
Its body unraveled down the middle — not torn, not broken — erased, cleanly and completely, as if Yamato had cut through space and reality, not just flesh.
Black smoke hissed as the pieces vanished into the wind, dissolving like shadows at dawn.
Sparda let out a breath. Slow. Controlled.
Yamato slid back into its sheath with a satisfying, final clack — the sound of a sentence ending, of death signed and sealed.
"heh," he muttered. "Still too easy."
Suddenly — another emerged.
Then another.
And another.
The shadows twisted, as if the fabric of night were bleeding, and from its folds came more of the creatures — Sin Scissors, gliding like phantoms, followed by towering Sin Scythes, their curved blades dragging furrows in the earth. There was no cry, no trumpet — only the hiss of metal and the thunder of their approach.
The wind turned cold.
The ruins groaned like they remembered war.
Sparda exhaled through his nose and muttered, voice thick with dry disdain:
"Me and my fucking mouth…"
The first Sin Scythe lunged, blade raised in an executioner's arc.
CLANG!
Yamato met it with a flash of silver. But where lesser blades would clash or chip, Yamato sang — slicing through the enemy's weapon and body as if through mist. The demon's face remained expressionless, its mask untouched — but its form split apart, fading into ash.
No time to breathe. More came.
A swarm of darkness.
Trish cried out from behind a shattered altar.
"There are too many!"
Sparda didn't reply.
He simply moved.
Like a phantom in war.
Each step was exact. Each cut divine. Yamato swept through the air, leaving behind lines of pure space, rending the veil between flesh and void. The Sin Scissors collapsed in pairs, split cleanly, their porcelain masks cracking like eggshells. The Sin Scythes fared little better — slower, heavier — they tried to box him in.
He let them.
Then with a single draw of Yamato — a move so swift it barely had form — he cleaved a circle through the space around him. The world shuddered.
When it stilled, five demons fell in perfect silence, halved along planes that did not exist a moment before.
Sparda turned slowly. One last Sin Scythe leapt for him from behind, screeching with unnatural fury.
He didn't flinch.
His hand swept across the air — and the very space between him and the demon cracked, as though the heavens themselves had blinked.
The demon vanished. No corpse. No scream. Just silence.
The fight ended in breathless calm.
Sparda stood amid dust and blood, Yamato humming softly as he slid it home.
"And that's…. the end of the fight."
...
Meanwhile The sky above Solgarde was painted in soft hues of twilight, the stars beginning to twinkle through the vast expanse of heavens. From the towering walls of the citadel, one could see the peaceful valley below — a canvas of golden crops swaying gently in the breeze, the rivers meandering like silver ribbons, and the bustling villages tucked safely in the distance.
A young man stood at the edge of the citadel, his posture slumped, staring out over the vast, peaceful land. His yellow messy hair ruffled slightly in the evening wind, falling over his brow. His eyes, however, were clouded with something far heavier than the day's fatigue — a sadness that weighed on his soul, a questioning that never seemed to have an answer.
He didn't notice the footsteps behind him at first, too lost in his own thoughts. The delicate hum of celestial energy, the kind that made Solgarde's walls and roads glow faintly, seemed to have no effect on him. There was no peace in this place for him. Not yet.
A voice, soft but firm, broke through his reverie.
"Nero… you still contemplating? Why is that?"
The voice was a woman's — clear, but tinged with concern. Nero turned slightly, his eyes falling on her.
She was older, perhaps 25, with raven-black hair that cascaded down her back like a waterfall, and eyes that gleamed with both experience and an air of mystery. Her armor, though not as heavy as some, still bore the marks of battle. The emblem of the Demon Hunter Order was embroidered into the chestplate — a symbol that marked her as a warrior of the highest caliber.
Her gaze was steady, unwavering. She had seen the sorrow in Nero's eyes before, yet never had she seen it so deep, so rooted. Her name was Althea, one of the elder Demon Hunters, though not of the council. Her role in Solgarde was more... personal. She had been one of the few who understood what Nero had gone through.
Nero didn't answer right away, his eyes drifting back to the children playing in the Starwell Plaza, their laughter filling the air. A small, wistful smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but it was gone in an instant. He shook his head slightly, a sigh escaping his lips.
"I... I should be out there, Althea. On the frontlines. I shouldn't be here... standing idly by. They need me."
Althea's expression softened as she stepped closer, her footsteps quiet against the marble roads. Her gaze remained on him, but her voice was gentle, filled with understanding.
"Nero, you've done enough."
He turned away again, his eyes once more drifting to the children at play in the Starwell Plaza. Their laughter seemed almost foreign to him now, a stark contrast to the screams and chaos he had become so accustomed to. They were living lives he could barely understand anymore — lives untouched by the demons, untouched by the cost of survival.
His jaw tightened, but Althea's words stayed with him. She was right. He had done enough.
"But I'm not done yet, Althea. Not until I've avenged them... until I've… until I've given everything to this fight," Nero muttered, almost to himself, his hands clenching at his sides.
Althea's presence was calming, but it didn't erase the weight he carried. She stepped forward, standing beside him now, her voice soft and knowing.
"You've given everything, Nero. Your soul... your body... you've fought until you had nothing left. And now, Solgarde needs you to rest. Even the strongest warriors fall if they push themselves too far."
Nero's head drooped slightly. She was right. The pain in his chest wasn't just from battle; it was the toll of too many fights, too many battles with no end. The bruises and scars of war had worn him down in ways he hadn't realized. Even though his body had healed from the more visible injuries, there was a weariness deep within, one that couldn't be tended to by the blade or the celestial wards that protected Solgarde.
He nodded, though reluctantly. His fingers unconsciously traced the hilt of his sword, as if to reaffirm that his warrior's spirit still burned inside of him. He would never stop being a soldier. But, for now...
"Maybe you're right," Nero said softly, the words bitter in his mouth. "I've fought so much that I forgot how to rest."
Althea gave him a knowing smile, one that didn't carry the pity many would have for someone in his position. She knew the nature of warriors — the constant need to fight, the fear of losing purpose in peace.
"Rest, Nero. The demons are not going anywhere. They'll still be out there when you're ready. And you'll be ready when the time comes."
Nero exhaled slowly, the tension in his body easing ever so slightly. He looked at Althea, grateful for her quiet wisdom, the quiet strength she always offered without judgment.
To be continue