Chapter 1 : Flames of Yemen
I was not born into wealth or power. I was born into despair.
My name is Liam Heart. I dwelt in a forgotten corner of the shattered realm once known as Yemen, now reduced to the forsaken land. Our village clung to life on the edge of nowhere, remote, nameless, untouched by trade routes of imperial glory.
We children were raised on tales of humans with powers stronger than forged steel and nightmarish demons that feasted on the innocent. I used to laugh at those stories. I had never laid eyes on such horrors. Yet every night, when the wind howled through the cracked shutters, their distant cries drifted into our home like poison carried on breeze, each voice laced with something ancient, something hungry.
My father, Erin Heart, stood as the head guard of Yemen's crumbling frontier, a warrior of Gold rank whose name still carried weight among the old soldiers. He was my idol, the towering figure who could split logs with a single stroke and whose laughter shook the rafters. But my heart belonged most fiercely to my mother, a woman of fragile, quiet beauty whose gentle hands wove prayers over my sleeping form each night.
We owned little, a leaking roof, thin blankets, and the scent of millet porridge. Yet in her arms, with Father's stories filling the firelight, we possessed everything worth having. Behind her soft smiles, though, I sometimes glimpsed shadows, burdens she carried in silence, tales too heavy to speak aloud.
Then came the night when the world shattered.
"Forgive me."
The words jolted me awake. My father's voice, low, broken, trembling with something I had never heard in him before. Joy surged through my chest. He had returned! I scrambled from my mat, bare feet slapping the cold dirt floor, racing toward the door.
Before my fingers could touch the latch, the door exploded inward.
Father staggered across the threshold, face ashen, drenched in sweat and something darker. Behind him the night sky burned crimson, as though the heavens themselves had caught fire. In his right hand he clutched a jet-black obsidian sword, it's surface drinking the firelight, giving nothing back.
"Liam!" he roared.
"Father… what is that in your." My question died as he seized me, crushing me against his chest. His entire body shook like a leaf in a storm.
"My boy… forgive this foolish old man," he whispered, voice cracking.
I didn't understand. My gaze locked onto the blade. An indescribable pressure clamped around my heart, heavy, suffocating, ancient. The weapon looked weathered, scarred by centuries, yet it pulsed faintly, as though it breathed. Its silence screamed of rivers of blood and legends long buried.
"What… is this feeling?" I murmured, hand stretching toward it almost against my will.
"There is no time," Father rasped. He shoved me back a single step, offered me that same gentle smile he had given me every night since I could remember, then drove the obsidian sword straight through my chest.
Pain, all-consuming, detonated inside me. My knees buckled. I collapsed, staring up at him in numb disbelief, blood bubbling at my lips.
Mother burst from the kitchen, her scream tearing the night apart. "Ahhh, my baby!" She dropped to her knees, gathering my broken body into her arms. Tears streamed down her face like monsoon rain. "Why did you do this to our boy, you wicked man!"
As she cursed him, the black blade shimmered… then melted into liquid shadow, dissolving into the wound. Mother's fingers clawed desperately at my chest, searching for the weapon that was no longer there.
Father's expression hardened into something resolute and terrible.
"Darling, listen carefully," he said, voice steady despite the tremor in his hands. "Calamity has arrived at Yemen's gates. I will carve a path for you and our son."
Mother did not argue. She scooped my body against her chest and fled into the burning night. Flames painted the sky scarlet.
The streets were littered with the broken bodies of our neighbors, men, women, children, slaughtered without mercy. She froze for a heartbeat, horror rooting her in place, but Father's final roar shattered her paralysis.
"Go east! Run!" he bellowed. "I, Erin Heart, will fall with my head held high!"
He did not speak those words to abandon us. He spoke them because he still believed, against every shred of reason, in miracles.
A spear shrieked through the darkness, aimed to split his skull. Father tilted his head at the last instant; the spearhead grazed past, shearing a lock of his hair. In that same breath, his own short sword ignited with bloody light.
"Blood Fang," he murmured, almost tenderly. "Let us have this last dance."
In the vast continent of Breciline, every super human has two paths.
One was the way of mystic arts: a perilous road of intellect, meditation, and communion with the unseen laws of heaven and earth. Few survived it with their sanity intact; many were devoured by the madness that lurked within forbidden knowledge "Magic".
The other was the path of the blade: raw, brutal, unforgiving. Here, strength wrote destiny, and weakness was erased in blood. True warriors bound their souls to living weapons that thirsted for slaughter, carving their names into history with every life they reaped.
But not all chose their road. Some were chosen.
They were called Irregulars humans, souls touched by a divine spark, or bearers of ancient bloodlines that refused to sleep.
Father planted his feet. Blood Fang gleamed hungrily in his grip.
"Erin Heart!" a voice like cracking thunder rolled from the shadows. "How long did you think you could hide?"
A figure emerged into the firelight, tall, clad in gleaming silver armor chased with dark runes. Brown dreadlocks framed a face both handsome and cruel. But it was the emerald-green eyes that burned brightest, cold, pitiless, ancient.
"Blood Devil of the North," the man sneered, voice thick with disappointment, "you truly are pathetic."
Father's pupils contracted. "Lord Dabi of Anarki…"
In an instant his stance changed, every muscle coiled, every breath measured. One mistake now would not only claim his life, but doom his fleeing wife and dying son.
Dabi flicked a casual hand. The spear tore free from the earth and hurtled toward Father's throat. Sparks erupted as Blood Fang met it in a perfect deflection. The spear spun skyward in a lazy arc before snapping back into Dabi's palm as though magnetized, alive with malice.
"Hahaha… Erin, you have truly fallen," Dabi said, voice dripping ice. He lowered the spearpoint until it kissed the air before Father's heart. "Is this how you intend to protect those two fleeing rats? Pathetic. They won't survive the night regardless."
Father's knuckles whitened around the hilt.
"Ha." A bitter laugh escaped him. "It saddens me to see you reduced to a puppet for Tonel and Gabimaru. Very well. I shall embrace my fate tonight. But before the dawn, you will remember why the world once trembled at the name Fang Devil."
His voice dropped to a venomous whisper.
Dabi's lips curled into a cruel smile. Crushing pressure descended,an oppressive platinum-rank aura that scorched the dirt black beneath his boots and made the very air groan.
"You will die tonight," he declared. "Nothing will change that."
Father advanced.
Striding Devil.
Power surged into his legs. Each step struck the earth like a war drum. One step. Two. Then he vanished, nothing but a crimson afterimage.
Dabi stood motionless. He raised his spear skyward.
"Blood Barrier."
The corpses littering the ground spasmed. Rivers of gore ripped free from ruined flesh, converging into a boiling crimson sea. Towering walls of liquid blood rose and solidified, forming an inescapable dome of slaughter. The stench of iron choked every breath; the dome sealed them inside a hell of their own making.
Father did not hesitate.
"Art of Murder, Series One."
Muscles like coiled pythons flexed. Blood Fang carved a serpentine arc through the air, trailing ghostly crimson qi.
"Erin the Blood Devil of the North," Dabi laughed. His spear lashed out.
"Silent Dragon."
Weapons collided in a blinding explosion of sparks and qi. The shockwave cracked the blood walls.
Father staggered back, teeth gritted. "Dabi the Nullification Devil… defense incarnate."
"You truly are a devil," Father spat blood. Crimson aura erupted from Blood Fang like a newborn star.
"Killing Star… Blood Dance!"
He spun, unleashing a violent tempest of scarlet sword-light.
Dabi merely smiled. He drove his spear hilt-first into the earth. The weapon quaked violently as it absorbed the full force of the strike. The collision detonated outward in a deafening roar, shaking the blood dome itself.
Meanwhile, I lay cradled in Mother's arms, strength bleeding from me with every heartbeat.
"Mother…" I rasped.
"Don't speak, my love," she whispered, fingers stroking my hair with desperate tenderness. Her fear cut deeper than the wound in my chest.
I lifted a trembling hand, wiping her tears. Then fresh agony ripped through me. A scream tore from my throat. My black hair bled gray at the roots. My brown eyes burned scarlet.
"Liam!" Mother cried. She tried to hold me down as my body convulsed, but I shoved her away, clawing at my throat as though invisible scorpions burrowed beneath my skin.
In desperation she channeled healing magic, soft golden light poured from her palms, wrapping my trembling form in a protective cocoon.
"You… look so beautiful," I managed, voice faint.
Her tear-streaked face was the last thing I saw clearly.
Then her head slumped forward into my arms.
Warm blood soaked my chest. Her lifeless eyes remained fixed on me, still filled with boundless love.
I screamed until my voice box shattered.
"Shut up, little rat."
A woman's voice sliced through my grief like a blade.
She stood framed by smoke and flame, silver armor gleaming, long blond hair whipping in the hot wind. Her golden eyes regarded me with utter contempt. With casual disdain she wiped my mother's blood from her sword using a pristine white towel, as though cleaning something foul from her blade.
"She was nothing but waste."