The night had begun with a hollow sort of peace, but it was a peace that felt more like a physical weight than a comfort.
There was no one to cuddle him into the mattress, no one to whisper tall tales of heroes and magic into his ear until his eyes grew heavy.
The nightly ritual of a kiss on the forehead—a simple act that usually sealed his world in a bubble of safety—was absent.
The house was silent, save for the settling of the floorboards.
It was hot, too.
Uncomfortably, unnaturally hot.
The temperature in his bedroom seemed to rise in a slow, suffocating crawl, as if an invisible giant were holding a massive torch against the outside of his walls.
Narasao tossed and turned, his small body slick with sweat, his pajamas sticking to his skin.
"Mommy, it's so hot…" he whimpered into his pillow, his voice a dry rasp.
He sought the familiar scent of his mother, some phantom warmth to chase away the growing heat, but he found nothing.
The darkness of the room was absolute.
Then, the silence outside was shredded by a chorus of voices—ragged, angry yells that carried words his seven-year-old mind couldn't quite assemble into a coherent thought.
Suddenly, a violent crash echoed from the first floor.
The sound of the front door being splintered open was so loud it felt like a physical blow.
Narasao bolted upright, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The voices were no longer muffled by the walls; they were inside.
They were a cacophony of snarls and shouts, both male and female, echoing up the stairwell with terrifying clarity.
"Who's here?! Bring the monster out!"
"Where's the damned demon? He killed Idila in cold blood!"
"Typical filth, always aiming for the ones who believe in God! Find him before he vanishes!"
The words hit Narasao like stones.
Terror, sharp and paralyzing, washed over him.
He scrambled out of bed, his legs trembling so violently he nearly fell.
He had to know.
They were talking about him, weren't they?
But the words they were saying... killing Auntie Idila?
He remembered her face, the knife, the swing of his own arm—but his mind refused to connect the red on the floor to the woman he loved.
He rushed to the landing of the stairs and looked down.
The living room was filled with strangers.
They looked like the people from the neighborhood, the ones who usually smiled and offered him candy, but their faces were distorted into masks of vengeance.
They held flickering torches that cast long, dancing shadows across the family photos, and some carried heavy iron bars or hunting rifles.
"W-who are you guys?!" Narasao shrieked, his voice breaking as tears began to stream down his face.
The crowd turned as one, their eyes locking onto the small, trembling figure at the top of the stairs.
The sight of him didn't soften them; it seemed to ignite a fresh wave of fury.
"You! Where's the demon? Where is your family hiding?"
"Wait... isn't that Mr. Tarosono's boy? Where are the others?"
"He is the demon! Don't you see?" a man yelled, stepping forward. "The Tarosono family were all confirmed dead at the school shooting! This thing must have taken his form to mock us!"
Narasao stared down at them, his world spinning.
Dead?
The word didn't make sense.
Mommy was just sleeping.
Daddy was just resting.
He looked at the torches and the angry eyes, and for a moment, he felt like he was back in the playground, watching the 'fireworks.'
"Damn well it is," an old man growled, stepping into the center of the room.
He was a neighbor Narasao had seen a thousand times, but now he was lifting a heavy double-barreled shotgun, aiming the black pits of the muzzles directly at Narasao's chest.
"I saw this child get shot in the head by those gunmen yesterday!" the old man roared, his voice trembling with a mix of grief and religious zeal. "He died like a poor, broken boy! And this devil had the audacity to crawl into his skin? May God forbid the desecration of this child's memory! Get back to hell, Satan!"
The old man's finger began to tighten on the trigger.
In a burst of pure survival instinct, Narasao spun around and bolted back into the darkness of the upstairs hallway.
BOOM.
The shotgun blast shattered the wooden banister exactly where Narasao had been standing a split second before.
Splinters rained down like lethal hail.
"After him! Don't let it escape!"
The heavy thud of many boots hit the stairs.
Narasao ran, his breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps.
He didn't understand.
He hadn't done anything wrong.
Why were they so loud?
Why were they so mean?
He sprinted past his sister's room, his small feet pounding against the carpet.
He looked back over his shoulder and saw the old man leading the pack, his face a contorted map of hatred.
He looked like a monster.
Far more of a monster than anything Narasao felt inside.
The hallway felt like it was stretching, the doors becoming blurred streaks of brown and white.
He tried to double back, to find a window or a crawlspace, but the old man was faster than he looked.
He leveled the shotgun again, his eyes cold and focused.
BANG.
This time, the shot found its mark.
A spray of pellets shredded the back of Narasao's right leg.
The boy let out a horrific, high-pitched scream of agony.
His leg gave way instantly, the bone feeling as if it had been turned to molten lead.
He tumbled forward, his face slamming into the hallway carpet, sliding until he hit the base of the linen closet.
"Ah! Ah! Ow! Mommy! MOMMY!"
He shrieked her name until his throat burned, his hands clutching at his mangled leg.
Blood, hot and real, began to soak into the floor.
He rolled onto his side, whining like a wounded animal as the mob rounded the corner and slowed their pace.
They approached him like hunters closing in on a cornered wolf.
But as the light of their torches fell upon him, the screams of the crowd died away into a heavy, suffocating silence.
Narasao was no longer just a boy.
In the throes of his agony, the Prophelity had surged to the surface.
Half of his face was now encased in the jagged, ivory-white skull mask, and his right arm had bloated into the obsidian, clawed limb of a nightmare.
The violet fire flickered at his shoulder, casting an eerie glow on the faces of the neighbors.
"By God's name... what is that thing?"
"So that's a devil," a woman whispered, her torch trembling. "It's terrifying... it looks like it crawled out of a nightmare."
"He doesn't look like the kid I used to see playing in the yard anymore," someone muttered.
Narasao didn't hear them.
He was lost in a sea of pain. "It hurts! It hurts so much! Mommy, help me!"
His cries were those of a seven-year-old, pathetic and small, and for a fleeting second, the resolve of the crowd wavered.
Some of the women lowered their clubs, a look of sudden, sharp regret crossing their features as they saw the small, human left hand clutching the monstrous right one.
But the old man stepped forward, his shotgun reloaded and leveled.
"Don't get fooled!" he barked, his voice cutting through the hesitation. "This is how the devil works! It uses the voice of a child to bypass your soul! Remember what it did to Idila! Evil is irreversible! It cannot repent, it can only deceive! Do not let it live!"
The crowd's faces hardened again.
They snapped back to the narrative they had built—a story of a demon that had stolen a boy's face.
***
Downstairs, in the quiet of the dining room, a different kind of tragedy was unfolding.
"Hey, should we really stay down here?" a young man asked, shifting his weight.
He was barely out of his teens, holding a heavy wooden bat while his friend held a sputtering pitch-soaked torch.
"Of course we stay here," the friend replied, leaning against the kitchen counter. "What if the thing jumps off the balcony? We're the ambush team. If it runs for the back door, we're the ones who get the glory."
The first boy sighed, looking toward the ceiling where the screams were echoing. "Fair point. But we could just guard the stairs with the others, right?"
"Directly guarding a demon is suicide, man. They have magic and crap. We stay here, in the kitchen. It's safer."
The young man scoffed, shrugging his shoulders. "Sad... I've always wanted to fight a real monster my whole life. This is boring."
His friend snickered, leaning further back until his shoulder brushed the dials of the stove.
"You're such a kid. Always wanting to be the hero."
Upstairs, the old man was placing the muzzle of the shotgun against Narasao's masked forehead.
Downstairs, the friend with the torch suddenly paused, his nose wrinkling.
"Hey... you smell that?"
The young man raised an eyebrow. "Smell what? The smell of you being a coward?"
"No, shut up. This... it smells like gas."
In his distraction, the friend set his flaming torch down on the corner of the counter.
It was inches away from the stove—the same stove Narasao had accidentally left on after his lonely dinner of hotdogs.
"Gas? No shit, Sherlock, we're in a kitchen," the young man laughed.
"I know that! But it's strong! It's like the whole room is full of it!"
The friend grew frustrated, his temper flaring as he slammed his fist onto the counter to emphasize his point.
The vibration was just enough.
The heavy, flaming torch rolled off the edge of the counter and fell directly onto the open, gas-hissing burner of the stove.
Upstairs, the world had gone quiet for Narasao.
He stared into the dark, circular voids of the shotgun barrels.
He could see the old man's finger beginning to squeeze.
He was cornered, at the mercy of a world that refused to see him.
"Say your last words, demon," the old man hissed. "Before I send you back to the fire."
Narasao didn't speak.
He couldn't.
His fear had reached a level so absolute that it transcended sound.
He looked at the faces of his neighbors, and for a split second, the Prophelity gave him a gift—a moment of clarity.
The world slowed to a crawl.
He felt a vibration beneath his floorboards.
He felt the air in the house expand, a sudden, violent pressure rising from the kitchen below.
He didn't think about his own death anymore.
He looked at the old man, at the women with the torches, and at the people who were about to kill him.
In a final, instinctive act of a boy who still loved his neighbors, Narasao reached out his demonic arm.
Not to strike, but to pull them close—to try and shield them from the fire he felt coming.
Then, the gas found the flame.
The Tarosono house didn't just burn.
It vanished.
A massive, thunderous explosion of orange and white light erased the structure in an instant, turning the wood, the memories, and the people inside into a pillar of fire that could be seen for miles.