"Find the Symbol of Loneliness!"
The command echoed through the shattered remains of the kindergarten, punctuated by the high-pitched, manic laughter of men who had long since traded their humanity for a payday.
"Wahahahaha! Look at this place! It looks like a slaughterhouse!"
"Killed everyone?" one of the shooters asked, wiping a spray of crimson from his cheek with a gloved hand.
He kicked at a small, colorful backpack lying in a pool of thickening blood.
"Heck yeah we did," another responded, his voice muffled by a tactical mask.
He lowered his rifle, looking around the playground where the silence was now absolute and terrifying. "But we ain't got no notification on the trackers. Y'all sure we killed it? The boss said the target was here."
"The 'Wealth Man' promised us a fortune for this," a third man hissed, his eyes darting toward the school entrance. "Don't tell me we got scammed by a fairy tale. If the Symbol isn't dead, we don't get paid."
It had taken only ten minutes and thirty seconds for the world to end.
The screams had died out, replaced by the rhythmic dripping of liquid from the slides and the distant, mocking chirp of a bird.
Everything that remained were the ghosts of the innocent and the men who had created them—men who stood 'proudly' amongst the ruins of a childhood paradise.
Some were disappointed, others upset that the 'event' they were promised hadn't yielded a result.
They thought they had sanitized the area of all life, until a shooter near the doorway squinted through the dust.
"Hey, look at that kid," he called out, pointing a trembling finger. "It's still alive!"
The others gathered, narrowing their eyes as the smoke cleared.
In the center of the carnage sat Narasao.
He was on his knees, surrounded by the bodies of those who had loved him.
"Fucking hell," one of the men barked, a sadistic grin spreading across his face. "I shot that little shit earlier—I saw the bullet hit! Wait... if he's still breathing after a head-shot, that must be it. That must be the freaking Symbol of Loneliness!"
They laughed, a hollow, sinister sound, as they began to approach the boy with ulterior intent.
Narasao didn't move.
He remained on his knees, his expression unreadable, his eyes hidden beneath the jagged fringe of his hair.
He looked like a doll that had been dropped and forgotten.
The shooters drew dangerously close, their heavy boots crunching on glass and bone.
One of them, a man with a jagged scar across his throat, stepped directly in front of the boy.
"Hoy, you dead yet?" he asked, leaning down.
He got no answer.
The silence only served to irritate him, his ego bruised by the child's lack of terror. "Hoy! I'm talking to you, goddammit—"
The man's sentence ended in a wet, sickening crunch.
In a movement that defied the laws of physics, Narasao's right arm had swelled, darkening into a massive, obsidian-clawed limb.
With a single, fluid swing, he obliterated the man.
There was no body left to fall; there was only a mist of red and the sound of something heavy hitting the far wall.
The remaining shooters flinched, their bravado evaporating into pure, primal shock.
The vulnerable child they had intended to harvest was gone.
In his place… stood a demon.
"What the heck?!"
"He already unlocked his Prophelity!" a voice screamed in terror.
"Fall back! Fall back now!"
"That freaking early?! He's only seven!"
Some tried to flee, their boots slipping in the blood of their comrades.
Others raised their weapons in a futile attempt to fight back.
It didn't matter.
They were already caught in the orbit of Narasao's rage.
In the throes of Prophelity Passive known as the Prophelity Auto-Defense Mode, he was no longer a boy; he was a force of nature triggered by an interrupted fate.
.
.
.
.
.
"Whoa, hey... is that a demon child?"
The whisper rippled through the afternoon crowd on the main thoroughfare of Seremban.
"It's not Halloween yet, right...?" a teenager muttered, stopping his bike to stare. "It's way too early for that kind of cosplay."
"Look at his arm," an older woman whispered, pulling her shopping bags closer to her chest.
"There's blood all around it, dripping from the hands to the pavement... I hope to God that's just a prop."
"Heh, I know a few of those autistic brats," a man sneered from a cafe table, though his eyes remained fixed on the boy. "They do this crap for attention because they're so 'lonely.' Probably some viral stunt."
"But look at his face," a young mother countered, covering her child's eyes. "He looks so gloomy... so depressed. No child at that age can make an expression like that. It's too heavy."
The whispers grew into a cacophony of judgment and confusion.
No one knew what to make of the figure walking down the center of the road.
Half of the boy's face was concealed by a terrifying, bone-like skull mask that seemed to have grown out of his skin.
He moved with a sluggish, rhythmic gait, dragging a massive, monstrously heavy demonic arm that left a thick, dark trail of red on the asphalt.
To some, he was a child confused about the calendar; to others, he was a hallucination made manifest.
They threw glances of disgust and disdain, wanting to believe it was a prank.
But the details were too sharp.
The way the muscle in the demonic arm twitched, the way the mask seemed to pulse with a faint, violet light—it was all too realistic.
Then, the wind shifted.
The metallic, cloying scent of fresh blood hit the onlookers, and the laughter died in their throats.
It wasn't a prop.
"What should I do...?"
Narasao's voice was a hollow rasp, spoken only to himself.
"Everyone is... is... I... I don't know. I don't know what happened to them. They stopped moving. Their faces were too weird, too creepy... and my arm grew big and dark. What do I look like?"
He continued to walk, his bare feet stepping through the blood that dripped from his own hand.
He lived in a different world now—a world where the sun didn't warm him and the voices of the strangers were just white noise.
Behind him, rumors began to spread like a wildfire fueled by gasoline.
News of the kindergarten massacre was just beginning to break on social media.
The dots were being connected by the terrified and the curious alike.
A school shooting.
A demon child on the road.
The shooters found dead, their bodies obliterated beyond recognition.
"My face feels heavy," Narasao whispered, stumbling slightly. "It's like there's something stuck to me. I want Mommy to take it off. I kept calling for her... I wanted her to see, but she didn't follow me out here. Is she still laying on the floor? I hope someone wakes her up soon. I'm so hungry..."
He continued his journey, a tiny, blood-tainted specter.
A few people, driven by a morbid curiosity, tried to approach him, but they stopped several feet away.
A cold, oppressive aura radiated from the boy—a feeling of absolute, crushing isolation that made their skin crawl.
There was something fundamentally wrong with the air around him.
"I feel so lonely... where's Daddy?"
He turned a corner, his eyes searching the horizon for a familiar car, a familiar height.
"I thought he promised he'd come for me if I got lost. I'm lost right now. I forgot the way back to the car, and Mommy said I should rely on him for directions. He would always lift me onto his shoulders so he could do the walking for me... and for my sister."
The rumors crossed from the streets to the houses, from the villages to the heart of the city.
At the local hospital, the reality was setting in.
The victims of the Little Caliphs Kindergarten were arriving, but they weren't patients; they were evidence.
Gunshot wounds, blunt force trauma—and for the attackers, a brutality that left seasoned coroners pale.
Their bodies were fragmented, obliterated by a force that treatment couldn't touch.
Narasao stopped in front of a storefront, his breathing shallow.
He looked down, finally noticing the wetness clinging to his skin.
He slowly lifted his small, human left hand to meet the dark, terrifying right one.
"Ketchup... it's all over my arms. It's on this big hand too."
He brought his hand closer to his face, sniffing the air.
"It doesn't smell like the ketchup from lunch. Ketchup is for fries... why is it covering me like I dipped myself in a giant bowl? It's stinky. It smells like... like the trash bin. I don't like it. I need to get clean. Mommy needs to wash me... or Auntie Idila."
He blinked, a flicker of a memory returning to his traumatized mind.
"Yes... Auntie Idila. Where does she live? Why do I feel so tired...?"
He lifted his head, his wide eyes scanning the rows of houses.
The adrenaline of the Auto-Defense Mode was beginning to wane, leaving him with the crushing weight of a seven-year-old's exhaustion.
He didn't know how he had ended up miles from the school.
He didn't know why everyone was staring at him with such ugly faces.
He just needed to find the house with the garden.
There was a building in the distance—a familiar roofline that seemed to whisper of safety.
Auntie Idila will know what to do, he thought, dragging his heavy limb forward.
She'll pray, and the ketchup will go away, and Mommy will come find me.