The Heavenly Hero Returns

Chapter 0: A Blade Between Us

The battlefield was silent.

Not the silence of peace, nor the eerie stillness before a storm. This was the silence of the end—a stillness so absolute that even the wind hesitated, as if afraid to disturb what had been done here.

The sky was burning. Fires crackled in the distance, consuming the remnants of a once-proud capital. The scent of ash and iron thickened the air, mingling with the stench of death.

Bodies littered the blackened earth—humans and demons alike, fallen where they stood, their blood soaking into the ground as one. The war that had lasted years, the war that had defined my very existence, had finally reached its conclusion.

And yet, I felt no victory.

Because before me stood him.

The Demon King.

His silver armor was cracked, black blood seeping through its fractured plates. His dark hair, usually immaculate, clung to his sweat-slicked face, strands matted with soot and crimson. His golden eyes—once burning embers of power—were dimming, flickering like a candle in its final moments.

His sword was buried in my chest.

But mine was buried in his.

We stood there, locked together by the weapons that had once defended our people. Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke.

I should have felt something—rage, relief, sorrow—but my mind was numb, my body growing weaker with each passing second.

I had won. I was the hero.

I had slain the Demon King.

…Hadn't I?

A strange, lingering ache gnawed at my chest, deeper than the blade piercing it. I couldn't remember why.

The Demon King's lips moved. A whisper of a voice, hoarse from battle, but I couldn't hear it. The roaring in my ears drowned everything else out.

His hand trembled as it reached toward me—not to strike, not to defend, but to touch.

Something in my mind screamed that this was wrong. That I was forgetting something. That this wasn't how it was supposed to end.

But the darkness was already pulling me under.

The last thing I saw was his face—so close, yet impossibly distant—before the world shattered into nothingness.

I awoke gasping for air.

Pain—searing, twisting—burrowed into my skull like molten steel. My breath hitched, my fingers digging into my chest where the sword had pierced me, but there was nothing. No wound, no blood.

Just a memory.

A dream.

I was alive.

I was a Hero.

And the war… was long over.