Chapter Text
Act 1
The wasteland did not care if one lived or died.
Makoto stumbled forward, boots torn, cloak little more than rags clinging to his back. Every step scraped bone against willpower. His mouth was dry enough that swallowing felt like dragging glass down his throat. Mana moved inside him—too much of it, far too much—but his body could no longer command it properly. It leaked in uneven pulses, distorting the air around him.
Water…
The thought was weak. Fragmented.
Food. People. Please.
The city appeared at dusk.
Stone walls. Torches. Human voices.
Makoto nearly collapsed at the sight.
He raised a trembling hand as he approached the gate.
“—Stop.”
The word meant nothing to him.
“Hey! You there!”
Makoto took another step forward and tried to speak.
The sound that left his mouth was wrong.
Not because he meant harm— because his throat was cracked, his tongue numb, his voice stripped raw by days of screaming into empty land that never answered. The words came out warped, layered with mana he could no longer suppress.
The guards stiffened.
“What the hell was that?”
“Did you feel that pressure?”
Makoto fell to one knee.
He pressed his palm to the dirt and bowed his head, the universal sign of surrender—of begging. He forced the word out again, clumsy, broken.
“…Wa…ter…”
The torches flared.
Mana reacted to his desperation. The ground beneath him cracked, a shallow fracture racing outward before dying.
“DEVIL!”
Steel rang as blades were drawn.
“No—” Makoto tried again, panic spiking. “Hu…man. I—”
The air screamed.
To the guards, it felt like standing before a storm given flesh.
“To arms!”
A horn sounded.
Makoto looked up, eyes wide—not with rage, but terror.
Why are they afraid?
He tried to pull his mana back, tried to compress it, but exhaustion betrayed him. The effort only made it surge.
“Get it away from the gate!”
A presence cut through the chaos.
Calm. Heavy. Absolute.
Tomoki Iwahashi stepped forward.
Pink und blue eyes reflected the torchlight, sharp and focused. He took in the kneeling figure, the warped mana, the cracked earth.
“A Devil wandered out of the wasteland,” Tomoki said coolly. “That’s what this is.”
Makoto felt the gaze land on him.
And something inside him buckled.
His breath hitched. His thoughts stuttered.
“No… please,” Makoto whispered, though he knew the words wouldn’t reach them. “I just need—”
Tomoki raised a hand.
The Evil Eye opened.
Makoto screamed.
Not in defiance—but in collapse.
His body slammed into the dirt as if gravity had doubled. His mana imploded inward, crushed, bound, rewritten under a foreign will. Every instinct screamed to obey, to submit, to stop existing as a threat.
“Stay down,” Tomoki said.
Makoto’s muscles locked. Tears cut through the grime on his face as his body responded without permission.
“Good,” Tomoki continued. “See? It understands.”
“He’s—he’s not attacking anymore!”
“Because it’s restrained,” Tomoki replied. “Strike now.”
The guards hesitated only a second.
Steel bit into flesh.
Makoto didn’t fight back.
Every blow landed on a body that no longer remembered how to resist. His vision blurred, not from blood loss—but from the Eye, from the command sinking deeper with every second.
I only wanted to live.
The final blow drove him unconscious.
Silence followed.
Torches steadied.
Tomoki exhaled slowly and lowered his hand.
“It’s done,” he said. “The Devil is defeated.”
Cheers broke out—hesitant at first, then swelling.
“Our hero!”
“You saved the city!”
Tomoki looked down at the broken figure in the dirt.
Mana still pulsed—vast, contained, wrong.
“…Interesting,” he murmured.
Chains were brought.
And as Makoto was bound, dragged away, and displayed as proof of victory, the city slept peacefully—never knowing that the “Devil” they feared had come only seeking water, and that the real catastrophe had just begun.