Humans are humans because they have emotions. But what if, just what if there were humans who had none?
Born from human parents, shaped like one, breathing, living… yet empty inside.
No tears when it hurts.
No laughter when it's funny.
No anger, no joy, no fear.
You don't eat because you crave food, you eat because you'll die if you don't.
You don't sleep because you're tired, you sleep because your body demands it.
You live because that's what a human is supposed to do.
Everything you do is imitation, a performance of being alive.
And in that emptiness, the only thing you chase… is the proof that you still are human.
That's the life Grey lives.
His parents died when he was still too young to remember. So he never knew what it felt like to love, nor how it felt to be loved.
He was human on the outside, but hollow inside.
Grey watched others laugh, cry, and rage.
He wondered what those feelings were, tried to imitate them, tried to pretend that he understood.
But no matter how perfect the act, none of it was real. It was just a mask, a fragile disguise so he could exist among those who possessed the one thing he lacked: emotion.
He lived as a shadow among the living, an echo pretending to be a voice.
And then, one day, for the first time, he felt something.
It wasn't love.
It wasn't sadness, or joy, or anger, or grief.
It was empathy.
A fleeting moment, a child about to be struck in front of him. He didn't think, didn't plan.
His body simply moved. He stepped forward and took the blow meant for another.
He didn't even know the child's name. He didn't know if the boy survived. He only knew that for the first time, his heart beat for someone else.
And when the light left his eyes, he felt something else, a hollow ache spreading through his chest.
Loneliness.
He thought that was death.
But when he opened his eyes again,
there was no Heaven, no Hell... only emptiness.
The same emptiness that had always lived inside him. Only now, it answered back.
Grey didn't know how much time had passed there. Days, years, or centuries, it didn't matter. In that place, there was no time, no sound, no light.
But he didn't feel bored.
He didn't even know how to feel bored. All his time in that endless void, he spent pretending... pretending to be someone arrogant, someone who desired something, someone passionate, jealous, greedy, or enraged.
He pretended to laugh.
He pretended to dream.
He even pretended to enjoy himself.
Over and over again, he imitated what humans felt, those things he never truly had.
He created emotions out of nothing, acting them out to an audience that didn't exist.
But in that emptiness, every imitation echoed. Every false smile, every hollow anger, every counterfeit desire, they began to take shape, to whisper, to breathe.
And from those false feelings, something began to awaken.
--------
The world is vast and loud.
Across the endless ocean stretch the islands that make up the Grand Line, where pirates chase dreams, Marines chase pirates, and the winds carry rumors of miracles and monsters alike.
Ancient weapons sleep beneath the waves. Gods and devils are whispered of in taverns. And somewhere between truth and madness, the sea keeps moving, its tides erasing every story until a new one begins.
On one forgotten morning, the tide washed something unusual onto a nameless shore.
A man.
He lay half-buried in sand, the surf crawling over his fingers. Black hair matted against pale skin, grey eyes half-open but empty, as though he were seeing the world for the first time and finding it meaningless.
Beside him rested a strange fruit, its surface spiraled like carved smoke, its color shifted between silver and shadow.
The air around it shimmered faintly, as if the sea itself refused to touch it.
For a long moment, nothing moved, only the rhythm of the waves and the hiss of the wind.
Then the man drew a breath that sounded more like surprise than life.
He remembered nothing, nothing but his name and the emptiness within. Not even his own death.
Only the silence.
When he reached for the fruit, the world seemed to hold its breath with him.
The skin of the fruit was cold, slick, alive, like something breathing beneath its surface.
He didn't know why he brought it to his lips.
Maybe curiosity. Maybe hunger.
Or maybe the faint whisper of habit, the imitation of what a human would do.
The first bite was bitter.
Metallic.
Like swallowing the taste of nothing.
He chewed. Swallowed. And for a heartbeat, the world fell still.
Then it came.
A soundless scream tore through him, not from his mouth but from somewhere deeper, from the hollow place that had never known what it meant to feel.
The sea darkened.
The air trembled.
Something vast stirred within his chest, as if the emptiness he had carried all his life was suddenly forced to remember what it was meant to hold.
And from within that void, the imitations he once practiced in the endless nothing began to move.
---
Pride, the first to wake, a golden lion unfurling behind him, its mane burning with arrogance and self-worth. It roared not to the world, but to him, whispering, "I am"
Greed followed, a serpent of silver hunger coiling around his heart, whispering for more. More life. More power. More feeling.
Lust bloomed next, not desire for flesh, but for connection, a rose made of smoke, petals trembling with longing for what he never had.
Then came Envy, a shade with mirrored eyes, jealous of every heartbeat he had never truly felt. It looked at him and wept, wanting to be him, even though he was hollow.
Gluttony crawled from the sand, a maw of black teeth consuming the light around him, trying to fill the emptiness that was now overflowing.
Then Wrath erupted, flames of crimson emotion tearing at the edges of the sky, burning for every moment he had been empty, unseen, unloved.
And finally, Sloth, a veil of grey mist that wrapped around it all, the softest voice whispering, "Rest now… none of it matters"
---
They circled him, the seven echoes of what he once pretended to be.
And for the first time, the emptiness within him wasn't empty anymore. It was alive. The void had learned from his imitation, and now it returned the favor.
He knelt in the wet sand, breathing heavily as the sea roared and the sky trembled.
And in that storm of creation, a quiet thought passed through his mind: "So this is what it means to feel"
He didn't smile. But the sea did. It rose to meet him, as if the world itself recognized its newest demon.
Grey, The Visceral Demon... was born.