The silence inside the improvised taydenita dome was absolute. On the other side of the green and translucent crystal, Issei, Rias, and the others continued shouting and hitting the barrier, but their voices were nothing more than a mute echo.
Sona Sitri remained standing next to her frozen desk. Her strategist mind, capable of calculating thousands of political and magical scenarios in fractions of a second, had come to a complete halt in the face of the rawness in the eyes of the man before her.
Yugo did not sit down. He remained standing, like a prisoner in front of his firing squad, willing to strip away his last layer of humanity.
—Ten years ago... I was an ordinary human. I was twenty-one years old —he began, his voice hoarse, devoid of any sarcastic or tactical tone—. I was just trying to live a normal life. Pay the rent, study, exist. And then, by pure accident... I saw the truth behind the veil of this world.
Yugo raised one hand, looking at his own palms as if he could still see the fresh blood on them.
—I discovered demons. Fallen angels. Gods. I realized that all of humanity was just cattle, chess pieces on a board where we didn't even know we were playing. That revelation... broke my mind, Sona. It literally fractured it. Absolute fear and disgust transformed into pure and lethal nihilism. I hated this world with every fiber of my being. And I decided that, if everything was a sick game, I was going to flip the board.
Sona frowned, adjusting her glasses. Her demonic instinct warned her that the story was about to become terrifying. —Flip the board? A human without magic cannot start a war...
—No, he can't. Unless he knows exactly which piece to throw so that the rest falls —Yugo interrupted her, and a hollow and dead smile drew on his face—. My plan was to provoke the definitive war between the three factions so that there would be no possible alliance to stop the apocalypse. I was going to bring the end of the world. I was going to release the Trihexa.
Sona took a step back, her blue eyes widening with genuine terror. The name of the Beast of the Apocalypse, the 666, was a taboo, a primordial fear for any supernatural being. And this man... this high school teacher... had planned to release it.
—And what was the trigger for that war? —asked Sona, her voice trembling for the first and only time in her entire life.
Yugo glanced sideways at the taydenita wall, where the crimson silhouette of Rias Gremory continued hitting the crystal.
—Assassinate the heiress of the Gremory Clan. And blame it on Grigori —replied Yugo, with a chilling coldness—. But I knew that, to kill Rias and face the supernatural, I needed to be a monster. Empathy, guilt, remorse... are weaknesses. If you're going to destroy the world, you have to be dead inside.
The man lowered his gaze, and his voice cracked slightly for the first time in the entire confession.
—So I dedicated ten years to amputating my own soul. Ten years destroying my body to the human limit. But the worst wasn't the training... it was the psychological method. I murdered, Kaichou. I didn't just kill criminals or scum. I killed innocent people. I looked them in the eyes, listened to their pleas, and strangled them, stabbed them, broke their necks with my own hands. One after another, year after year. I forced myself to commit inexplicable atrocities until the act of taking a life stopped hurting. Until I felt absolutely nothing. I became the perfect and silent genocidal.
Sona brought a hand to her chest. The air felt heavy. The man she had become engaged to, the Pawn who had crowned her with ice, was a serial killer on a monstrous scale. He was darkness incarnate.
—So what happened? —whispered Sona—. You're here. Rias is still alive. The world hasn't burned.
—I was a coward in the face of my own plan —Yugo blurted out, a bitter and dry laugh escaping from his throat—. After ten years of sinking into blood, the moment came to execute the massacre. But... along the way, I had taken this stupid job as a teacher to maintain my cover. I started teaching classes. I met my students. And when I closed my eyes to give the order that would start the end of the world... I saw their faces. I realized that if I released the Trihexa, those normal girls who greeted me every morning were going to burn alive. And I couldn't do it. My empathy wasn't dead. It was just buried under a mountain of useless corpses.
Yugo walked slowly toward the office window, turning his back to Sona.
—Ten years of atrocities for nothing. Everything I had done, the innocents I sacrificed, my own sanity... it was all in vain. I was left without purpose. I was so disgusted with my own existence that I decided the only tactical way out was to erase myself from the map. I tried to end my own life, Sona.
Sona looked up, feeling a strange and twisted pang of sadness for the abyss in which that human had lived.
—But you didn't die.
—No. My students found me. They saved me —Yugo turned to look at her, and for an instant, a tiny spark of light shone in those dead eyes—. They didn't know the monster I am. They only saw their teacher bleeding. They gave me an incredibly selfish reason not to pull the trigger against my own temple: to live for myself. To try to be happy. To try to have a mundane life after having walked through hell.
Yugo pointed with his index finger at the thick alien device on his left wrist.
—And then, fate decided to play one last macabre joke on me. Weeks later, Raynare attacked one of my students with a spear of light. I didn't think. It wasn't an act of heroism, it was pure protective instinct; I threw myself to take the hit. The spear of light pierced my chest. I was dying in that alley. My organs were fried...
Yugo took a step toward the center of the office, approaching Sona.
—And it was at that instant that this watch, which had been completely dormant all this time, awakened. It activated due to an extreme survival protocol so as not to let its host die. It rebuilt me cellularly by transforming me into that same green crystal creature I used to raise this wall.
Yugo stopped in front of Sona, looking at her directly through the reflection of her glasses.
—You were patrolling nearby that night, Sona. That was the first time you saw me. That night when you discovered Diamond. You weren't witnessing the origin of an alien superhero who would save your world. You were seeing how the universe gave the most destructive weapon in the galaxy to a frustrated and suicidal apocalyptic terrorist.
Yugo dropped his arms to his sides, surrendering. The confession was over. There were no more masks of apathy, no jokes about office workers, no tactical evasions. Only the raw and bloody truth of an irredeemable soul.
—That's me, Sona Sitri. I'm not a knight. I'm not a noble mercenary. I'm the biggest piece of trash that has ever set foot in Kuoh —Yugo sentenced, his voice fading until it became an echo—. If you want to dissolve the contract, call Sirzechs and execute me for representing a cataclysmic level danger... I won't resist. You deserve it. You deserve something better than the ruins of a monster. And I won't blame you if you decide to look away from me forever.
The weight of the confession crushed the oxygen inside the taydenita dome.
Sona Sitri, the brightest and most calculating mind of the new generation of demons, remained paralyzed. Through her head passed a thousand scenarios, a thousand laws of the Underworld, a thousand tactics... but none served to deal with the naked and bloody abyss that Yugo had just placed at her feet. Her blue eyes were fixed on the man, processing the horror, the tragedy, and the magnitude of the pain he harbored.
That silence, the product of the President's absolute shock, was interpreted by Yugo's fractured mind as the final sentence. The confirmation that his monstrosity was too great to be forgiven. And, deep down, he felt that it was exactly what he deserved.
Yugo let out a sigh, one that sounded like a final surrender, emptying his lungs of the little warm air he had left. His shoulders fell, losing their military straightness.
—I'm sorry for everything... —murmured the teacher, lowering his gaze to the frozen floor of the office—. If you wish, tell everyone who I really am. Tell them about the blood. About the plan. You have every right to destroy me politically.
Yugo sketched a gloomy, broken smile, a grimace of a man who had tasted a piece of heaven before being returned to his personal hell.
—It was good while it lasted...
Slowly, he turned around, turning his back to Sona and walking toward the immense windows of the Student Council office that overlooked the academy's outer courtyard.
Sona opened her mouth to stop him, to tell him to wait, that her tactical mind needed to process all of that, but her voice refused to come out.
Yugo stopped in front of the glass. His reflection returned his gaze: the dark circles, the dead eyes, the cynicism tattooed on his skin. He hated that face. He hated that man.
Without warning, without using magic or the power of the Omnitrix, Yugo leaned forward and smashed his own forehead directly against the thick tempered glass of the window.
CRASH!
The sound of the crystal exploding into a thousand pieces echoed in the soundproofed room. The force of the purely human impact was such that the window frame splintered.
Sona stifled a scream, taking a step forward.
Yugo did not recoil. He stayed there, with his forehead resting against the jagged edges of the broken glass. A thick, scarlet thread of blood began to sprout from his forehead, sliding down his temple, staining his cheek and dripping onto the window frame and his office shirt.
The physical pain was sharp, blinding, but for him... it was nothing compared to the storm in his head.
Yugo lowered his gaze to the huge sharp pieces of crystal that had fallen on the windowsill. His right hand twitched, moving instinctively toward one of the pointed fragments.
—I'd like to jump... —whispered Yugo, his hoarse voice mixing with the sound of the wind entering through the window gap. His hand stopped inches from the crystal—. To stab a crystal straight into my jugular. Finish the job I started ten years ago. Stop being a time bomb for everyone...
He clenched his teeth, and blood dripped from his chin. The darkness pulled at him with an almost irresistible gravitational force.
—But... —Yugo closed his eyes, and the image of Asia Argento, smiling with pure devotion in the break room, crossed his mind like a saving lightning bolt—. I have my promise.
That selfish and desperate promise to live for himself. To try to be happy, even if he felt he didn't deserve it. He was not going to betray the girls who had saved him from his own abyss.
Yugo withdrew his hand from the sharp crystal. With a fluid and mechanical movement, he raised his left arm. Blood dripped from his face onto the extraterrestrial device, staining the alien metal.
CLACK!
The emerald flash illuminated the office for the second time, blinding Sona and those watching from the other side of the taydenita wall.
The human figure disappeared, replaced by a humanoid creature with the appearance of a red stingray, with yellow skin folds connecting its arms and legs, and yellow horns extending from its head.
Jetray.
The alien floated a few centimeters off the ground, its membranous wings waving with the air current. It turned its face toward Sona one last time. Its green and alien eyes showed no hostility, only infinite pain and a definitive farewell.
—Goodbye —was the only thing the shrill and robotic voice of Jetray said.
With a sonic burst that broke the few crystals left in the office, Jetray shot out through the broken window. In less than a second, the red stingray broke the sound barrier, becoming a blurry point in the Kuoh sky until it disappeared completely on the horizon.
Sona Sitri was left completely alone in the isolated half of the office.
The wind blew through the shattered window, stirring the papers and documents of the Sitri clan that Yugo had sealed with such efficiency hours before. Sona walked slowly toward the windowsill. Her trembling fingers brushed the splintered wood, stopping right next to the puddle of fresh blood that her fiancé had left behind.
Behind her, on the other side of the indestructible taydenita wall, Rias Gremory continued hitting the crystal, shouting a name that could not be heard, demanding answers to a tragedy of which she still did not know even half.
For what seemed like hours, but were actually just a few minutes, the thick and colossal taydenita barrier remained immovable, dividing the room into two worlds. On one side, the chaos and desperate screams of the Gremory entourage. On the other, Sona Sitri, wrapped in a sepulchral silence, staring fixedly at the fresh blood staining the wood of the windowsill.
The blood of her fiancé. The blood of a repentant genocidal. The blood of a broken man.
Suddenly, a high-frequency buzz began to emanate from inside the alien crystal wall. The taydenita, which minutes before would have resisted the direct impact of a meteorite, began to lose its cohesion. Being kilometers away from its creator, and without the energy of the Omnitrix to sustain its structure in the physical plane, the barrier emitted a dull crack.
The fissures expanded like spiderwebs at lightning speed and, in an instant, the indestructible wall collapsed.
But no heavy blocks of crystal fell that would destroy the building. The taydenita disintegrated in the air, transforming into a cloud of emerald dust and green light particles that floated gently until disappearing completely, leaving the way clear.
Rias Gremory did not wait for the magical dust to dissipate completely. She burst into the middle of the office like a storm of crimson aura, with her fists clenched and her blue eyes burning with fury and anguish.
—Sona! What the hell happened?! —demanded Rias, her voice resonating with the authority of the Princess of Ruin, desperately searching for the figure of the teacher—. Where is he?! What did you tell him for him to raise a wall between us and flee like that?!
Behind the redhead, Issei, Kiba, and Akeno entered in a guard position, tense due to the strange and somber atmosphere that permeated the place. Saji and Tsubaki immediately ran toward their President, alarmed by the unusual vulnerability in her posture.
Sona did not turn around immediately. She continued giving them her back, with her gaze fixed on the sharp broken crystals. Her gloved fingers closed into fists so tight that the silk creaked.
Asia Argento, who had entered timidly behind the group, stopped dead. Her instincts as a healer and her sensitivity to others' pain went off like a deafening alarm. The former nun inhaled sharply and brought both hands to her mouth, stifling a terrified sob.
—It smells... it smells like iron —whispered Asia, her large green eyes filling with tears as she pointed tremblingly toward the window—. There's blood...
Koneko, whose sense of smell was infinitely superior, nodded with an unusually somber expression, clenching her fists at her sides. —It's from him —confirmed the nekomata in a grave whisper—. Human blood. And a lot.
Rias paled instantly. The red aura surrounding her extinguished, replaced by a cold terror that froze her blood. She stumbled toward Sona, dodging the frozen desk, until her eyes could see the scarlet puddle on the splintered wood.
—No... —murmured Rias, feeling the ground disappear under her feet—. He is invulnerable. He is the monster of Kuoh... How...? Sona... What the hell did you do to him?! Answer me!
«If you wish, tell everyone who I really am. You have every right to destroy me politically.»
Yugo's last words, laden with suicidal desperation, echoed in Sona's mind. He had handed her the weapon to execute him. He had given her permission to reveal that the invincible hero was, in reality, a terrorist who had planned the apocalypse and murdered innocents to kill his own soul. He wanted Rias, Asia, and the others to hate him, because in his shattered mind, that was the only fair punishment for his sins.
Sona closed her eyes behind her glasses. She took a deep breath, swallowing the knot of horror that threatened to paralyze her. She was Sona Sitri. A strategist does not destroy her own pieces, no matter how cracked they are. And a Queen does not allow her King to bleed out in exile, even if he himself was the one who cut himself.
When Sona turned around to face Rias Gremory, the vulnerability had disappeared. Her face was a mask of absolute ice, impenetrable and majestic.
—I didn't do anything to him, Rias —replied Sona, her voice cutting through the air with a coldness and authority that made Issei take a step back—. It was his own hand. He hit himself against the crystal in an attack of... emotional collapse.
—Emotional collapse?! —exploded Issei, losing respect for the ranks—. Sensei doesn't collapse! He taught us to fight until the end! He created a damn sun with his hands, President! Men like him don't break out of nowhere!
Sona fixed her icy gaze on the Red Dragon Emperor, silencing him instantly. —You don't have the slightest idea of the weight that man carries, Hyoudou —replied Sona in a tone so venomous and dark that Akeno had to take a step forward, ready to invoke lightning if things got out of control—. You see him as a military tool. As an indestructible shield. As a trophy or a power fantasy. But beneath that alien watch, he is just a human whom the universe has forced far beyond the breaking point.
Rias stepped forward, her voice trembling between rage and tears. —And what triggered that breaking point, Sona? If you didn't attack him... what did you talk about on the other side of that wall? I demand to know the truth! He fought for me, he's my instructor!
Sona looked at her childhood friend. She saw the unrequited love, the devotion, and the anguish in Rias's eyes. She saw Asia crying silently. She saw the entire Gremory entourage willing to go to the end of the world for the man who, minutes before, had confessed that his original plan was to assassinate them all to start a war.
If Sona opened her mouth and told the truth, if she revealed the ten years of ruthless murders and the Trihexa plan, she would destroy those young people's faith forever. And, what was worse, she would grant Yugo the emotional execution he believed he deserved.
Sona Sitri raised her chin, assuming her role. She was going to carry the abyss.
—What we talked about on the other side of that barrier, Rias Gremory, is a strictly confidential matter between a pillar leader and her official Pawn —declared Sona, lying with terrifying perfection, using the laws of nobility as an impenetrable shield—. He revealed secrets from his past that do not concern your House. Dark, bloody, and painful secrets. Things that are not ready to be heard, and that I do not intend to disclose to satisfy your curiosity.
Rias clenched her teeth, feeling the political slap. —I don't care about politics! He left bleeding! He could be losing his sanity out there!
—And that is why it is my responsibility to bring him back —Sona cut in firmly—. Tsubaki. Saji.
Both members of the Student Council stood at attention instantly, despite being as consternated as the others. —Yes, President! —they responded in unison.
—Cancel all administrative meetings for the week. Suspend the Agares paperwork and close the quarterly budgets immediately —ordered Sona, and for the first time, the fire of determination shone in her eyes—. Deploy a magical search network throughout the city of Kuoh and the surrounding forests. Check the Saturn Minimarket. Get in touch with the surveillance squad.
Sona adjusted her glasses, walking toward the office door, passing through the middle of the Gremory nobility with the invisible cloak of her authority waving behind her.
—No one in this territory, neither fallen angels, nor demons, nor humans, will harm my fiancé. We will find him. And when I do... I will make sure he understands that Sitri contracts have no clauses for suicidal people.
Rias turned, seeing Sona leave the shattered room. She understood, with a bitter taste in her mouth, that this was no longer a school competition for the affection of a stoic teacher. There was a deep and suppurating wound in the heart of that invincible man, and the race to save his soul had just begun.
...
Far from the neon glow of the city, beyond the magical barriers that delimited the territory of the noble families in Kuoh, a mountain range of forgotten mountains rose. It was a hostile place, where the trees grew twisted and the fog clung to the rock like a shroud.
In the bowels of the highest mountain, hidden behind a wall of dry undergrowth, lay a cave.
It was not a refuge. It was a sepulcher.
Ten years ago, when Yugo discovered the truth of the world and decided to become the executioner of humanity, this was the place he chose to forge his own madness.
The interior of the cavern was a museum of pain. The stone floor was stained with overlapping layers of dried and blackened blood, scabs of self-imposed suffering. There were rolls of old and yellowish bandages scattered in the corners, along with rusty and empty first aid kits. Leaning against the rock wall, like tombstones in a cemetery, rested several heavy training swords, nicked and devoured by rust after years of hitting the bare stone until Yugo's hand bones fractured.
But in the center of that tomb of memories, Yugo was sitting on the floor, holding a single object with his trembling and dirt-covered hands.
It was the hilt of a sword of light from the Church. It was broken. The magical core had been shattered, leaving only a fragment of opaque and lifeless crystal.
Yugo, with his forehead still scabbed from the impact against the Student Council window, traced the edge of the broken crystal with his thumb. The cold of the metal sent an electric shock to his memory, dragging him forcefully toward the abyss of his own mind.
He remembered the rain that night. He remembered the empty streets. And he remembered his first murder.
It had not been an arrogant demon or a sadistic fallen angel. It had been a priest. A naive, young boy, recently assigned to the local parish, who had seen Yugo stumble under the torrential rain and had run over, with his face full of genuine concern, offering him his umbrella and a warm smile.
"Are you okay, brother? You seem lost. Let me help you," the priest had said, extending a hand to him.
Yugo closed his eyes tightly in the cave, but he could not stop the avalanche of memory. He remembered how he had taken that extended hand and, with a brutal movement, dragged him into the alley. He remembered the look of pure confusion in the young man's eyes, which transformed into absolute panic when Yugo's bare hands closed around his throat.
The priest did not fight. He only cried, choking, without understanding why that stranger he was trying to help was murdering him.
Yugo remembered how he had squeezed and squeezed until he heard the final crack. He remembered how he had taken the sword of light from the corpse and shattered it against the ground to make it look like a demon's attack. And, above all, he remembered the exact moment when, standing under the rain next to the inert body of a good man, something inside his chest made a dull sound, like a mirror breaking into a billion pieces.
There his sanity died. There his humanity died.
—Monster... —whispered Yugo in the cave, opening his eyes. His voice sounded raspy, as if he had swallowed sand.
He had been hiding there for days. Days since he had fled like a coward from Sona Sitri's office.
Out there, in the civilized world, Kuoh was turned upside down. The search had become a large-scale operation. Tsubaki and Saji led magical patrols that combed every corner of the city. The Saturn Minimarket had been interrogated (with Raynare and the others about to start a war for not knowing where their owner was). And Sona, cold and relentless, had drawn a logical surveillance network throughout the prefecture.
But Yugo did not want to be found. He had turned off. The Omnitrix on his wrist was dark and silent.
Hunger and dehydration had devoured him from the inside with terrifying speed, fueled by the massive post-traumatic stress he was suffering. He was emaciated. His cheekbones protruded under his pale and ashen skin. His eyes were sunken in dark sockets, bloodshot from lack of sleep. His muscles, sculpted by ten years of hell, seemed to have shrunk, leaving him with a skeletal and ghostly appearance.
He was a corpse that had not yet forgotten how to breathe.
Yugo hugged his knees to his chest, squeezing the hilt of the broken sword until his knuckles turned white. He wanted to disappear. He wanted to merge with the rock of the cave and stop being a danger to Asia, to Rias, to Sona.
Suddenly, the sepulchral silence of the cavern was broken.
Plaf... crunch...
The sound of footsteps breaking dry branches and crushing gravel echoed at the entrance of the cave.
Yugo did not try to stand up. He didn't have the strength even to activate the watch. He thought that maybe it was Sona Sitri, who had finally used her brilliant intellect to deduce the whereabouts of his former training ground. He thought she was coming to claim her contract, or perhaps to execute him.
Long and threatening shadows began to project on the stone walls of the cave, stretching until they reached the teacher's bare and dirty feet.
Yugo raised his head very slowly. The effort made his neck crack. His dead and expressionless eyes took a second to focus on the silhouettes outlined against the light at the entrance.
It was not the blue and icy aura of the Sitri Clan.
A crimson red glow softly illuminated the darkness of the cavern.
Rias Gremory was standing at the entrance, with her breathing labored and her school uniform stained with mud after days of searching without rest. At her side and behind her, the figures of Issei, Kiba, Koneko, Akeno, and Asia peered in, with their eyes wide open, frozen by the impression.
The Gremory heiress looked at the emaciated, skeletal man bathed in dried blood who was huddled among rusted swords and memories of torture. The invincible monster, the man who had challenged the gods to save her, was now nothing more than a broken shadow.
The broken crystal of the sword fell from Yugo's hands, tinkling against the stone, while the heaviest silence in the world fell over Rias's nobility.