"Hey! Put the boy down!"
The voice echoed—but not like before. It didn't just shake the trees. It unstitched them.
Branches, once violent in their fury, slowed—swaying in awe. But the earth... the earth couldn't help itself. It groaned, shifted, and twitched beneath their feet, as if even the soil remembered who was coming.
Everyone knew his name.
But no one dared speak it.
It lived only in thought, behind clenched teeth and stilled tongues.
Parents warned their children never to utter it—not even in whispers. Some were hidden in corners the moment they learned to talk. The stubborn ones—the daring, the defiant—were banished, cast out into the wild for saying it once.
They all knew what he could do.
What he had done.
How he walked the earth like sorrow incarnate.
As he drew near, the air thickened, turning metallic. Iron and ozone. The trees strained backward, as if trying to wrench their roots from the soil and flee.
He wasn't a man.
Not anymore.
He was the true one.
The real demon.
The forgotten god who had walked among them before time dared write itself down.
Yama laughed. A slow, cruel sound.
"Hahaha…"
With a flick of his arm, he tossed Oliver aside like spoiled meat.
Then he turned.
"Who the hell are you to command me?" he sneered.
Another laugh. Deeper. Broken. Glitching with power.
His face was no longer human.
His lips peeled into a grin too wide, too thin. His eyes burned from within, twin lanterns of something wrong. Smoke hissed from his nostrils.
The stranger said nothing.
He just kept walking.
It was like watching two ancient kings meet after a thousand years of exile.
A reckoning.
Yama's voice turned bitter. He raised a trembling hand to his face.
"Remember how you gave me this mark?" he growled.
His palm pressed against his own head, fingers dragging slowly.
Then—he let all but the middle finger curl down, extending it toward the stranger.
But not in defiance.
In accusation.
Pointing.
At something beneath the skin.
At first, no one could see it.
But then—
A moon-shaped scar.
It glowed faintly beneath the bone, pulsing.
Yama's fingers traced it slowly… down… down… until they landed on a straight, jagged mark that split his brow like a blade. It ran between his eyelids, ancient, angry, and alive.
"Hahaha… you won't be lucky this time!"
Yama lunged. No warning, no breath between words. Just motion.
Blinding. Impossible. Inhuman.
He moved faster than sound—faster than thought. The ground erupted behind him. Pebbles, leaves, and even forgotten ash launched into the air, suspended like time itself had been knocked sideways.
The friction alone burned the air. Not fire—heat. Gashing, angry heat that warped light.
But before he reached the man—the one whose name none dared utter—
Yama lifted his arm.
It hovered, flat against the sky like an invocation.
And the earth... answered.
A tremor.
Subtle at first, then violent.
The ground convulsed, buckled, as if trying to vomit out something buried for too long.
Still—the man did not move.
Unshaken. Unflinching.
He stood there like the idea of stillness, carved into the world before motion had been born.
Then—
CRACK.
The earth split open beneath Yama's outstretched palm.
And from it came a thing not made, not forged, not even imagined.
A blade. Or something blade-like.
It shimmered—not with metal, but with memory, with pain, with unwritten futures.
Smooth and crooked at once.
Silken and sharp.
It didn't fall into Yama's hand.
It chose it.
He gripped it.
The hilt hummed.
At the exact moment Yama closed the gap—
The world erupted.
A pulse of light.
Not like lightning.
Like a collapsing star.
A supernova birthed in silence.
It seared the color from everything. Even the shadows flinched.
It could have ended cities.
It could have silenced gods.
But—
When the light finally dimmed—
There he was.
Still standing.
Unmarked.
Untouched.
Something had stopped Yama's blade.
It wasn't a wall.
It wasn't magic.
It wasn't armor.
It was—
A finger.
Small.
Still.
Lifted casually.
One finger held back the strike that should've unmade the sky.
Yama froze.
The sword trembled.
And then—something even stranger happened.
The sword began to scream.
Not in sound.
In sensation.
Everyone around them dropped to their knees, clawing at their ears, their eyes, their teeth—anything to stop the feeling.
It was as if the sword itself recognized what it had touched.
What dared oppose it.
And it wept in terror.
"What! Nothing could have survived that!"
Oliver's breath caught in his throat. His eyes refused to blink, locked on the sword—on how it had risen, how it had been chosen, and how it had been stopped.
Nothing made sense.
"Hww…"
He exhaled.
That's why I felt it… even before his punch froze mid-air.
The realization spread through him like ice: if not for the stranger's finger, he would have died. Not quickly. Not cleanly.
Yama hissed. A sharp pain bloomed in his palm where the sword had cried out.
But he didn't retreat.
Didn't surrender.
Didn't pause.
He kept swinging.
Wild. Furious. Ritualistic.
The blade danced in vicious patterns.
Triangular slices. Circular arcs. Diagonal crashes.
Each one—
met the finger.
One finger.
Still raised.
Still unmoved.
And every time that silent finger met the blade—
The world flinched.
Each block sent out a chilling blow, a ripple that sliced clean through the trees, felling them like brittle paper.
One.
Ten.
Dozens.
It wasn't once.
Or twice.
It was endless—like the finger wasn't just defending but redirecting Yama's fury outward. Toward the forest. Toward the sky.
A finger that bent wrath.
And through the chaos—
Through the collapsing groves, the groaning earth, the weeping sword—
The crowd remained broken.
Most were still on their knees.
Some lay on their sides, twitching from the sword's echo.
But amid them—
One figure did not move.
She hadn't fallen.
Hadn't knelt.
Hadn't flinched.
She sat.
Exactly where she had been when the first scream shattered the trees.
Unmoved.
Untouched.
Unblinking.
In her arms—
She held a small, white-carved object.
Wooden.
Smooth.
Etched with spiral patterns that shimmered faintly, even in the storm of dust and destruction.
Something ancient.
Something waiting.