"G-get out! Get out!! Help!!! There's a demon in my house!"
The scream ripped through the small, airless hallway of the house.
Narasao had only just pushed the front door open, his small frame trembling with the effort of dragging his monstrous arm across the threshold.
He had expected the smell of incense and the soft, wrinkled hands of the woman who had blessed him only hours before.
Instead, he found Miss Idila cowering against the kitchen counter.
She had fallen to her knees, clutching a silver kitchen knife.
Onion particles still clung to the blade, a domestic, mundane detail that made the terror in her eyes feel even more jagged.
"Auntie, it's me… it's Narasao!"
His voice was a small, fragile thing, barely audible over the raspy, rhythmic breathing of the demon mask fused to his face.
"St-stay back! Don't come any closer!"
The old woman scrambled backward on her heels, the knife shaking so violently it tapped a frantic rhythm against the cabinets.
She knew the boy.
She knew the family.
But as she looked at the obsidian limb dripping with gore and the violet light burning in his eye, the child she cherished vanished.
All she saw was the Scripture's warning made flesh.
"Auntie… please…"
Narasao took a hesitant step forward, tears finally spilling from his human eye and carving clean tracks through the 'ketchup' on his face.
He extended his small, human left hand, desperately reaching for the warm embrace he had known his entire life.
He just wanted to be held until the world made sense again.
But Miss Idila lunged further into the shadows of her kitchen, her face contorted in a mask of righteous loathing.
"Don't you dare call me by that name! I only know one child who calls me that, a sweet boy who is beloved by the Lord! You are not him!"
She brandished the knife, her knuckles white.
"I will not be fooled by an abomination crawled out from the pit! Depart from me, worker of iniquity, for I never knew you!"
She glared at him, her religious fervor blinding her to the sobbing child beneath the scales.
To her, this was the ultimate test—the devil wearing the face of innocence to rot her soul.
With a shriek of terror that she mistook for divine confidence, she charged.
She ran toward the danger that was never there.
She ran toward a boy who only wanted to be loved.
Narasao froze.
He saw the glint of the blade.
He saw the 'ketchup' on her hands from the onions and the 'ketchup' on his own hands from the school, and for a second, it was all the same.
He didn't want to move.
He didn't want to hurt her.
But his Prophelity didn't care about his heart.
Sensing a threat, the massive demonic arm moved on its own.
It swung with the force of a falling mountain, a reflex of the Auto-Defense Mode designed to keep the Symbol of Loneliness alive at any cost.
Narasao watched, a passenger in his own body, as his arm whistled through the air toward the woman who had blessed him.
.
.
.
.
.
"Should God really bless someone like me?"
.
.
.
.
.
He left the house minutes later.
The door swung loosely on its hinges behind him.
His demonic arm was heavier now, trailing a fresh, dark river of red across the porch and down the street.
The rumors had reached their peak.
The "Demon" was no longer a theory; he was a walking disaster.
"What just happened? I don't feel clean. I still feel so heavy."
Narasao's thoughts were slow, like honey in winter.
"I thought Auntie Idila would take this mask off me. It's so heavy. My hands feel wetter and more sore than before… I think I know the way home now. I just want to go home."
It took nineteen minutes of agonizing, slow-motion walking to reach his front door.
Every step felt like wading through deep water.
His body was screaming at him to stop, a backlash of fatigue from the power he had unleashed.
He reached the door of his family home and pushed it open.
The house was a cavern of shadows.
He had expected a warm light, the smell of his mother's cooking, and the chaotic noise of his sister's music.
But the silence was absolute.
Nobody was home.
He stepped into the living room, and as his feet touched the familiar rug, the demonic armor finally began to hiss and steam.
It melted away into black mist, the Prophelity deactivating now that its host was 'safe.'
He looked around the room.
The family pictures mocked him from the walls.
In the frames, they were all together.
In the room, he was a singular point in a void.
"I'm back."
The words felt wrong.
Usually, he shouted them the second his foot crossed the threshold, his voice filled with the sweat of a day's play and a bright, tired smile.
Now, he said them a full minute after entering, his voice a flat, hollow echo.
It was too early for a seven-year-old to know depression, but the world had decided he was old enough for despair.
He walked to the kitchen, his small feet dragging.
He grabbed a heavy wooden chair, scraping it across the floor—a sound that seemed deafening in the empty house.
He climbed onto it, standing before the sink to wash the 'ketchup' away.
"Lalala… dirty, dirty hands go wash away… wash the red down the hole…"
He hummed a nursery rhyme his mother used to sing, his small hands scrubbing fiercely under the cold water.
Outside, the distant wail of police sirens cut through the evening.
The blue and red lights flickered against the kitchen window for a moment before fading away, heading toward the school, toward the hospital, toward the nightmare he had left behind.
He jumped down from the chair, his knees buckling as he almost slipped on the wet floor.
He pouted, his lower lip trembling, and walked over to the refrigerator.
"What should I eat today? Mommy left us some spare pancakes. Big sister told me they were all hers… but she isn't here to stop me now."
She wasn't here.
Not anymore.
Without a word of instruction, the boy became independent.
He was an observant child; he had spent years watching his workaholic mother maintain the gears of their lives.
He knew how to drag a stool to reach the microwave.
He knew how to find the syrup.
He spent the next hour cleaning the house.
It was a struggle for a seven-year-old—the broom was too tall, the rags too heavy—but he worked with a mechanical, eerie focus.
He hummed his cozy songs, trying to drown out the memory of the school.
For dinner, he managed to cook a few hotdogs on the stove.
He ate them with rice, dousing them in real ketchup this time.
He ate with a ravenous, empty-stomached intensity.
It was his favorite meal, but it tasted like nothing.
When he was finished, he let out a loud, sudden burp that echoed through the dining room.
He giggled to himself, a tiny flash of the old Narasao appearing for a fleeting second.
He left the kitchen, leaving the stove burner slightly warm, and climbed the stairs.
He entered his sister's bedroom.
"Mommy said she hid the gummy bears in here…"
The room was bathed in cold moonlight.
It was silent—a sharp contrast to the usual thumping bass of his sister's pop music.
He rummaged through her closet, tossing aside stuffed animals and school books.
He couldn't find the snacks.
She was a master of hiding things.
He sighed, a long, shaky sound of disappointment.
Through the bedroom window, he could see shadows moving on the street below.
There were many of them—neighbors, strangers, flashlights.
They were being loud, their voices raised in a frantic, panicked pitch.
"A festival?" he wondered.
He didn't want to join them.
He felt too heavy for a festival.
He left the room and went to his own bed.
It was 8:00 PM.
His mother's bedtime.
He didn't want to get scolded when she finally came home.
He crawled under the covers, clutching his pillow to his chest, missing the weight of his mother's hand on his back.
He tried to convince himself that the voices outside were his family.
That they were just sleeping with their eyes open at the school, and they would wake up soon and come home to tuck him in.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to forget the scary way their voices had sounded at the end.
"I wanna see fireworks," he whispered into the dark.
And as if the universe were answering him, the voices of the mob outside grew into a roar, and the first torch hit the front porch.