Denjiyon Town did not appear on most maps.
It was a mistake carved between two drowned highways, wrapped in forests that swallowed signals and memories alike. During monsoon, the sky did not rain — it leaked. The clouds hung low and bloated, as if something inside them had rotted.
And every year, when the rain turned black for a single night, the carnival arrived.
Regi stood at the broken railway crossing, rain dripping from the brim of his hood. He wasn't a hunter. He wasn't a hero. He was a scout — expendable, silent, forgotten if necessary.
That was the rule.
The Carnival had appeared again in Denjiyon Town.
No posters. No trucks. No announcements.
Yet overnight, rusted rides stood assembled in the abandoned fairground. Ferris wheels creaked though no wind blew. A carousel turned with no horses attached. Yellow bulbs flickered in the downpour like dying stars.
Regi adjusted the silver ring on his finger — his contract mark.
He had paid with his sense of taste.
He could no longer distinguish sweet from poison, blood from water.
In return, his devil granted him Echo Sight — the ability to see residual emotions left behind in spaces.
Right now, the air around the carnival screamed.
Children's laughter echoed in violet threads. Fear clung to the ticket booth in thick, gray coils. Something ancient pulsed beneath the ground in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Regi swallowed.
"Report," crackled the device in his ear.
"It's active," Regi whispered. "Stronger than last year. It's… feeding."
Lightning split the sky.
For half a second, the Ferris wheel stopped moving.
And every cabin door opened at once.
The rain shifted.
Not falling.
Rising.
Droplets lifted from puddles and hovered midair, trembling like beads of mercury.
Regi felt it before he saw it — a pressure inside his skull, like fingers pressing against his thoughts.
Something was observing him.
No.
Dissecting him.
A tent near the center of the carnival glowed faintly — not with light, but with distortion. The fabric sagged inward as if gravity bent toward it.
The "Hall of Mirrors."
Regi's Echo Sight flared painfully.
Inside that tent were no emotional residues.
No fear.
No joy.
No memory.
Just emptiness.
And within that emptiness—
A silhouette.
Tall. Lithe. Not entirely symmetrical.
The Essence Devil.
The first glimpse was not physical — it was conceptual.
Regi saw a figure woven from translucent layers, like overlapping reflections in fractured glass. Its body seemed humanoid but incomplete, as if constantly shedding versions of itself.
Its skin — if it could be called that — resembled liquid crystal mixed with smoke. Veins of pale gold ran through its form, pulsing with something that was neither blood nor light.
Its face shifted every few seconds.
A child.
An old man.
A woman crying.
A faceless blur.
Each expression lasted less than a blink.
And at the center of its chest floated a rotating orb — a dense, swirling core of condensed emotions. Fear, love, rage, despair — all compressed into a luminous sphere that beat like a second heart.
The Essence Devil did not represent one fear.
It represented the extraction of what makes a person themselves.
Essence.
Identity.
Meaning.
Regi staggered back as his Echo Sight overloaded.
His nose began to bleed.
The devil hadn't moved.
But the rain around it froze midair.
Then bent toward it.
Absorbed.
"Regi? Regi respond!"
He couldn't.
Because suddenly he understood.
The carnival was not here to kill.
It was here to harvest.
The rides were extraction devices.
The games were contracts disguised as prizes.
The mirrors did not reflect bodies.
They reflected what you were willing to lose.
And Denjiyon Town — small, forgotten Denjiyon Town — was chosen because no one would notice if its people became hollow.
A figure stumbled past Regi.
A little boy.
Smiling.
Holding a red balloon.
His eyes were empty.
No fear thread.
No joy thread.
Nothing.
Just a moving body.
Regi's breath hitched.
"They've already started," he whispered.
Behind him, the carousel music began to play.
But it wasn't music.
It was layered whispers.
Hundreds of voices overlapping.
Give it to me.
Your regret.
Your guilt.
Your dream.
Your name.
The Hall of Mirrors tent slowly parted at its entrance.
Inviting.
The Essence Devil stepped forward — not walking, but phasing.
Its lower body dissolved into mist, reforming with each movement.
When its gaze fell on Regi, he felt something being peeled away.
Memories flickered.
His mother's voice.
The first day he signed his contract.
The taste of mango — though he could no longer taste it.
The devil tilted its head.
Curious.
Regi realized with cold horror that the Essence Devil did not attack randomly.
It selected those with potential.
Those with something rich inside.
Scouts.
Contractors.
Hunters.
It fed on devils' vessels to strengthen itself.
And then he saw it.
Within the swirling orb in its chest —
Faces.
Hundreds.
Layered.
Pressing against the inside like drowned souls beneath ice.
The Ferris wheel began spinning violently.
Cabins tore loose and crashed into the flooded ground.
Screams echoed from somewhere Regi couldn't see.
Lightning struck the center tent.
And instead of burning, the electricity spiraled into the Essence Devil's core.
It absorbed concepts.
Energy.
Emotion.
Regi forced himself to move.
He had one job.
Scout.
Report.
Survive.
He pressed a small flare capsule from his coat — not for light, but as a signal.
If he fired it, reinforcements would come.
But they would walk into this.
Into a harvesting ground.
The Essence Devil raised one elongated hand.
Its fingers separated into thin, filament-like strands, reaching into the air as if plucking invisible threads.
Regi felt something tug inside his chest.
His ambition.
His fear.
His purpose.
He screamed and fired the flare.
A crimson streak tore through the rain and exploded above Denjiyon Town.
For a moment, the entire carnival froze.
The Essence Devil looked up.
Not angry.
Not amused.
Interested.
Then it did something worse than attack.
It smiled.
Not with a mouth.
But with every stolen face at once.
Regi collapsed to one knee, his Echo Sight fading.
As darkness swallowed his vision, he heard the whispers intensify.
"The Covenant draws near."
"The rain fattens the soil."
"Let them come."
The Ferris wheel slowed.
The carousel stopped.
The Hall of Mirrors sealed shut.
And Denjiyon Town returned to stillness — as if nothing had happened.
Except the rain no longer smelled like water.
It smelled like something being erased.
Far within the tent, unseen by any human eye, the Essence Devil's core pulsed brighter.
It had tasted a scout.
Next time—
It would taste hunters.
( This happened last year. This was also shown by Selene to The Judge on the hearing day inside the court, this incident of Regi convinced Judge to realise that the Essence Devil may comeback this year during Monsoon carnival )...