Prologue

The estate was ablaze.

Flickering crimson flames devoured the very home where Kuro had grown up.

The Watarase residence, his home for as long as he could remember, was crumbling into ash. Several adults had rushed over trying to douse the fire, only to end up sprawling on the ground, pooling in their own blood.

A raging inferno coupled with a gruesome slaughter—who would ever believe that such horrific violence was the work of a single child?

To eight-year-old Kuro, it was completely beyond comprehension.

"Why... Why are you doing this?" Kuro whimpered, his voice shaking.

His childhood home was burning to the ground. The people who had smiled at him every single day were lying broken and bleeding.

And every bit of it was the handiwork of a young girl barely a year older than him.

"Is it... because I pushed you? Because I hurt you?" he stammered, desperate for a reason. "Are you... doing all this just to get back at me?"

Why would anyone do something so terrible?

As Kuro desperately searched for any motive, assuming he must somehow be to blame, the girl simply shook her head with a sunny smile.

"No, no, no," she purred smoothly. "I'm burning this place down simply because we have no use for it anymore."

Drenched in blood, the girl offered him a blithe smile and extended her hand toward him.

"So come along, Kuro-san. Let's go together."

By all rights, a girl her age was just a child to be protected. But looking into those gleefully burning crimson eyes, who could possibly see her as someone needing protection?

"You... No, Anata-sama harbors a power far beyond my wildest imagination. That is precisely why we must break free. Let us discard a place like this—a place that exists solely to seal away our gifts and keep us caged."

She was completely unrecognizable from the girl he had known just days before. Both her voice and the gaze she locked onto Kuro radiated a hypnotic euphoria intense enough to warp reality itself.

"The Watarase house is most certainly not where we belong."

Kuro couldn't move. Her eyes, her voice, her fluid gestures—every detail paralyzed him with an uncontrollable tremor. Bound tight by sheer terror, he couldn't even stand.

"Now, now, now! Kuro-san—"

Just as her outstretched hand reached for him, a cold blade thrust into the space between them, pointed right at her face.

"G-Get away from him...!" a girl's voice screamed out.

It was Karane. She had brought out the heavy katana normally kept by her grandmother, brandishing the steel toward the girl cornering Kuro. Though her stance was awkward and unrefined, her strict swordsmanship training kept the blade steady enough to look convincing.

"Oh, my, my," the girl cooed smoothly.

She peered intently at the tip of the steel hovering before her eyes.

Then, her brow furrowed in deep distaste.

"So you drew it," she hissed, her voice dropping into cold contempt. "That dreadful, foolish blade."

Karane flinched under the weight of that venomous glare.

Yet the stifling pressure that had filled the air moments ago was rapidly vanishing. The gem embedded in the hilt of Karane's katana was suppressing the very source of her terrifying aura.

Without it, she was nothing more than a small child—just as she appeared on the surface.

Yet the frantic, unhinged intensity of her spirit remained entirely intact.

"Go on then," the girl taunted, stepping closer. "Strike me if you dare."

"Eek!"

Karane let out a squeal of fright as the girl took a step forward, completely heedless of the sharp steel in front of her.

The edge bit into her forehead, slicing open the partially healed cut from when Kuro had pushed her, sending fresh crimson trickling down her face. I actually hurt someone... The realization overwhelmed Karane, leaving her on the verge of tears.

"—aren't in here, are you!? Karane-chan! Kuro-kun!"

"Hey! Where are you kids!?" a young man's loud voice boomed through the smoke. "Don't tell me you're trapped in the flames!"

"H-Here! We're right here! Hurry!" Karane screamed back.

Ringing shouts echoed through the smoke—an older girl and boy from the Watarase branch family, both several years their senior. At Karane's desperate plea, their pounding footsteps hurried toward them.

"...How vexing," the girl spat softly, clicking her tongue. "It cannot be helped for today. But mark my words."

She turned on her heel, completely indifferent to the blood running down her forehead and staining her kimono deep red.

"One day, without fail... Kuro-san will transcend ordinary mortals and cast the Watarase clan aside."

Framed against the backdrop of the blaze she had set, her words sounded like a solemn prophecy—

—abruptly cut off by the shrill blare of his smartphone alarm, snapping Kuro back to reality.

"...Ngh?" Kuro groaned.

Recognizing the electronic tone etched into his brain as his cue to wake up, he squinted his eyes open. Drowsy as he was, the morning sunlight filtering through the window spurred his mind awake, prompting Asahino Kuro to reach out and silence the ringing phone.

Reflected in the dark screen of his phone, his face wore a deep scowl—even setting aside the fact that he had only just woken up.

"...Why am I dreaming about that now?" he grumbled to himself.

Even as he grumbled, he knew why that old memory had resurfaced in his sleep. It was because of the incident at Branch 107. Battling that monster must have unconsciously stirred up his long-buried past.

Specifically, that fateful day when the abnormal user kept sealed by the Watarase clan had gone out of control.

She was an abnormal user—an anomaly just like him—whom Kuro had met back in Japan. What was her name again? They had only crossed paths a few times as young children. He remembered her vividly as the girl who had picked on Karane, and as the person he had accidentally injured when his own powers awakened. Yet despite those stark impressions, concrete details about her remained hazy in his mind.

"I wonder if Karane remembers..." he murmured aloud.

Stretching his arms high overhead, he gave a deep yawn to finally shake off the last lingering drowsiness.

"Alright!" he pumped himself up. "Pina and the others should be up by now. I'd better get out there and see if I can help with the morning prep!"

This was Royal Tritonis Academy, one of the many schools scattered across the Academy Archipelago.

To kick off the school life he had promised those three girls, Kuro fired himself up for the day ahead.

ToC