The skies burned orange.
The air screamed with the agony of the dying land.
Each breath tasted of iron and ash.
The ground beneath them cracked like old bone, and the molten rivers that once slumbered now twisted under the weight of unleashed wrath. The world itself seemed to recoil in horror, as if it could not bear to watch what was coming.
Gomi stood at the center of it all, smoke curling around his ankles, fists trembling as molten light bathed his scarred face. His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin — veins that once pulsed with Oni flame, now streaked with something older, something darker.
Hosogiri crouched behind a fractured ridge, his blade drawn but trembling in his grip. Hoguro was beside him, bloodied, breathing in shallow gasps as he pressed a hand against his wound.
Above them, the sky churned like a wound refusing to close.
And then he descended.
Yatsumiganami Hoko.
Cloaked in flame. Wreathed in smoke.
He hovered inches above the ground, molten light pouring from his eyes like tears that could burn through steel. The air warped around him; even sound seemed to falter, afraid to intrude upon his presence. Lava bled from the cracks beneath his feet, twisting upward into forms of molten despair — disfigured silhouettes of the damned, their faces twisted in endless screams.
The travelers who had perished here were given voices again, not to be saved — but to serve.
"I offer salvation through agony," Hoko declared. His voice reverberated through the valley like thunder trapped beneath the earth. "And yet… all you do is resist."
Gomi's glare hardened. "You think you're some savior? You're just another lunatic who thinks pain makes you divine."
The air convulsed — and the first of Hoko's molten beasts lunged.
The creatures were towering, their bodies dripping molten blood and screaming faces. Hosogiri's hand snapped out, and a slicing gust of wind-flame exploded from his palm, sending the nearest beast crashing backward. Its molten hide hissed, then reformed, crawling toward him again with impossible persistence.
Hoguro staggered forward, summoning the last dregs of his gemlight — the silvery energy burned through his veins like acid. His arms trembled as he lifted them. "Back!" he shouted, sending a pulse of light that shattered two beasts into splinters of glass and flame.
But Hoko wasn't watching them.
His burning eyes were locked on Gomi.
"Your name will mark the beginning," Hoko whispered, voice quivering between reverence and rage. "The first Oni King to fall by divine ash."
A roar of heat split the world.
He lunged.
His right arm twisted mid-motion, skin cracking, bones glowing white-hot until his limb was no longer flesh but molten iron. When it met Gomi's fists, the shockwave vaporized the air between them — stone walls split apart, the ridge behind them turned to dust, and the sky trembled as if the heavens themselves feared to look.
Every blow was an earthquake. Every step, a thunderclap.
This wasn't battle.
It was creation in reverse.
The world was being unmade.
Cinders in the King's Shadow
The orange sky blackened. Lightning carved red veins through the clouds, streaking across the horizon like cracks in reality itself. Ash fell in slow, graceful spirals — snow from the apocalypse.
Gomi and Hoko faced one another across the field of molten ruin.
Hoko's molten armor pulsed like a living furnace. His aura burned so bright it warped his form — he was becoming more flame than flesh. "Your resistance will only birth my new world," he sneered, stepping through his own inferno like a god ascending through hell.
Hosogiri limped toward Gomi, voice hoarse. "He's not just power — he's conviction," he said. "He believes this is holy."
"I don't care what he believes in," Gomi muttered, blood trailing from a gash above his eye. "He's turned his belief into a weapon. And I'll break it."
Hoguro dragged himself closer, his aura flickering erratically. "The lava—it's feeding on the souls of the dead," he rasped. "He's binding them. He's turning pain into fuel."
Gomi's eyes darkened.
Then the ground split.
From the fissure rose a monster the size of a mountain — a creature forged of ash, bone, and fire, its molten heart visible through cracks in its ribs. From its mouth poured not flame, but voices — the wails of thousands begging to be unmade.
"This is my will," Hoko said, his face almost serene. "A kingdom built from despair. You stand beneath the shadow of my crown."
Gomi stepped forward, every muscle in his body quivering. The air rippled as his aura reignited — dark violet flames laced with black streaks, flickering like ghosts in the wind.
"You think you stand above me?" he growled, his voice low, primal. "You're not my shadow. I am the shadow."
And he charged.
The clash shattered everything.
The beast swung its molten arm, the impact sending a tidal wave of lava toward the ridge — Hosogiri threw his body in front of Hoguro, summoning a cyclone that split the fiery surge in two. He screamed as it burned through his shoulder, but didn't move.
Gomi leapt through the storm of heat, his fists striking the creature's jaw — it howled, the sound a choir of suffering. The ground broke open beneath them, glowing veins of magma tearing wider, until it seemed the entire pit was cracking apart.
Hoko raised his hands, molten runes searing themselves into his skin. His voice deepened into something ancient — a tongue that sounded like the earth's own suffering.
"BURN IN DIVINITY."
The creature ignited — every part of it turning white-hot, then gold, then black. It lunged with impossible speed, its body fracturing the horizon.
Gomi met it head-on.
Their collision created a new sun.
When the light faded, Hoko was gone from sight — replaced by a column of rising flame that roared up toward the dead sky.
Furnace of the Broken Will
The battlefield was unrecognizable — rivers of flame now coursed through the shattered land like veins of a dying god. The air itself trembled.
And at the heart of it all, Hoko changed.
He roared, clutching his stomach, and from his body erupted rivers of molten energy. His skin cracked like porcelain — glowing symbols burned through the gaps, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"This is power?" Gomi spat, barely standing.
Hoko's voice answered like thunder: "This is judgment."
The symbols spread — across his neck, his face, his wings. From his back burst jagged wings of obsidian flame. His horns lengthened, curving upward like blackened spears. His teeth turned to shards of volcanic glass.
He was no longer Hoko.
He was something older.
Something the future would misremember as Satan.
And this battle, this fire, this very pit — it was writing history before their eyes.
Centuries from now, when cities rose over these ruins, when Cheri fell and new lands grew from its ashes, humans would tell tales of this night. They would speak of a god of fire and punishment — a fallen angel born from molten rage. They would call him Satan.
But they would never know the truth.
That he was once a being, an Oni, desperate to be loved.
And Gomi — the one who stood against him — would vanish from those stories. The savior would be forgotten, and the villain would become myth.
But not yet.
Not while Gomi still breathed.
Hoko's scream tore open the clouds, raining molten blood across the land. His arms became spears of living plasma.
"I'll carve your death into eternity!" he roared.
Gomi, battered and bleeding, lifted his head. "You killed your parents," he growled, voice low, trembling with fury. "You killed travelers who looked to you for mercy. You called it salvation."
He took a step forward, smoke curling from his burned skin. "But you're no god. You're just a child who wanted to be loved and burned the world when it didn't love you back."
Hoko's eyes widened.
"Burn then," Gomi whispered. "Burn for real."
They collided — and the pit itself screamed.
Hosogiri and Hoguro could do nothing but hold the crumbling ridge, eyes wide, the world melting around them. Every strike between Hoko and Gomi sent shockwaves through the magma field, throwing up plumes of fire miles high.
Each punch tore pieces of history apart. Each scream rewrote legend.
Until finally —
With one impossible, shattering blow —
Gomi's fist met Hoko's gut.
The molten armor cracked.
The world went silent.
Then, it all came apart.
Lava burst upward. The sky split open. Light swallowed everything.
And when it cleared, Hoko was on his knees, his flames fading to embers.
Hellfire Crowned in Silence
The world was quiet.
Only the soft fall of ash remained.
The sky was black again — not from night, but from smoke and ruin.
Hoko's horns cracked, splintering into shards that fell and hissed in the molten dust. His wings crumbled like stone. The fire in his heart dimmed, his molten veins cooling into hardened lines of red-black glass.
He fell to his knees.
Gomi stood a few feet away, shadowed in smoke. His eyes were hollow. His breath ragged.
He walked forward, each step echoing like thunder in the silence.
Hoko tried to lift himself, trembling. "You… you don't understand…"
Gomi didn't speak. His fist connected with Hoko's face, a sound like thunder splitting the sky.
"Weak."
Another blow.
"Pathetic."
Another.
"You tried to kill them. You tried to kill me."
Blood — black, thick — sprayed from Hoko's mouth.
He didn't fight back.
He just stared at Gomi with the empty eyes of a dying god.
"You had a chance," Gomi growled. "I saw it. I almost spared you."
He lifted Hoko's body by the collar — once again, a mortal in his grip — and slammed him into the earth.
"But you kept going. You turned your pain into hate."
The next punch shattered Hoko's jaw. The next broke the ground.
Hosogiri flinched, tears cutting through the soot on his cheeks. "Gomi!" he shouted. "Stop! He's done!"
But Gomi didn't hear.
Each strike now wasn't anger — it was grief.
It was for the travelers burned alive. For the screams of those lost in the Dusk Region. For the countless who had begged for mercy and received none.
He punched until his hands bled. Until the flames around them went out.
Finally, he stopped.
Breathing heavy, he looked down — Hoko's face was still. Eyes open. Lifeless.
Gomi's voice broke. "Filth," he whispered. "Not because you were born evil… but because you chose to be."
He turned away. Hosogiri approached, hesitant, eyes full of fear and sorrow.
"I gave him a chance," Gomi muttered, voice barely audible. "He didn't take it."
The silence that followed was heavier than any roar.
And then, together, they walked away.
Behind them, Hoko's body began to burn again — not with fire, but with quiet light. A crown of cinders.
"The King of Hell was dead."And yet, his story—warped by rumor, buried beneath centuries of ash—was only just beginning.
Across the molten plains, where the air shimmered with heat and memory alike, a single ember flickered to life. Within that ember lay a vision—an echo ignited by the fusion of Gomi's power and the scorched remnants of his fallen foe. From that spark, the past began to breathe again.
Gomi never noticed the change. To him, the battle was over, the silence final. But to us—the unseen witnesses—something greater was being revealed. Through the haze of fire and shadow, the lost truth of a kingdom long condemned was stirring awake.
This is where the legend of the First Oni King is truly told—not as the world remembers it, but as it truly was. A story of fury, betrayal, and redemption, reborn through the ashes of a forgotten era.
And though Gomi may never grasp the full weight of the truth now rising from the cinders, we will.
For here, and now, the tale begins—the true chronicle of the Oni King. So that we finally understand the truth because in time the end of this Volume may never focus on The First King again...
The First Oni King's Tale
Long before this land had a name, before even the pit existed, there had been another Oni King. The First.
They said he was born from the cry of a person betrayed and murdered by tyrants — a sound so pure with rage that it gave the earth its first pulse. From that scream came life — dark, holy, and misunderstood.
He was not called "King" then. He was called Beast.
Humans hunted him. Feared him. But he did not kill them — not until they forced his hand.
He gathered the broken — the outcast, the cursed, the forgotten — and built a home in the dark beneath the world. It would one day be known as Yagumi, the Land of the Lost.
He was both flame and mercy. A ruler made not by desire but by necessity.
But peace does not last when the surface trembles in fear.
The humans struck first — with poisoned treaties and fire that fell from the sky. They slaughtered the innocent and called it justice.
And the Oni King burned the world in return.
They said the Pit itself was carved by his wrath — its walls seared by his sorrow.
But even the fiercest fire fades.
When his rage cooled, visions came to him — visions of a future he would never see. A kid named Gomi, broken by a world that called him trash, who would rise through agony to hold both hatred and hope in his hands.
He saw Gomi's path, saw the blood and ruin, the heart that refused to stop beating — and he pitied him. Because of fate between his purpose of getting revenge on a surface world that ruined his life but understanding himself in the process only to be betrayed by a friend in time.
And so, the First Oni King gave everything.
His soul. His crown. His fire. All for a kid that he pitied for a fate that he felt so bad for and was willing to change. But not mess with to much.
He tore his essence into a thousand fragments and buried them in the bones of the pit, whispering to the dust:
"One will rise — not to burn the world, but to hold it accountable."
And so he waited.
Through centuries of ruin.
Through the fall of Cheri.
Through silence.
Until the essence found Gomi.
Not by fate — but by recognition.
Because pain always finds its mirror.
And thus, the legacy of the First Oni King burned again — through the being the world called trash, the person who became hell's last hope.
The spirits knew. The pit remembered.
And somewhere, in the deepest hollow of the world, the First Oni King smiled.
"Carry it well, child of sorrow," the wind whispered.
"The crown is heavy, but it is yours."
And the embers glowed on — unseen, unfelt, eternal.
TO BE CONTINUED...