Side Story – The One Behind It All Was Satisfied

A holy night, with snow falling thick and silent.

He was born, formed by the powerful grudge of a host.

All of it, to cast aside a decaying body and obtain a new vessel.

A substitute, brazenly wearing a look of pity, dared to draw near.

He felt the host's hatred swell even further.

The substitute—nothing more than a tool—had developed a will of its own. Worse yet, it had defied the host. A loathsome being.

Because it was made as a mirror image, he had long harbored hatred and disgust toward the sight of it walking a path he could never choose—forever in a youthful form.

But to him, the host’s sentiments didn’t matter in the slightest.

All that mattered was whether it showed compatibility. That alone was the deciding factor.

Fortunately, the substitute was his reflection. There should be no concern.

Once its self-awareness was stripped away, there’d be no issue at all.

With a dark thrill, he became a magic bullet and charged forward—so it should have gone.

But before he realized it, he had been absorbed by an unplanned presence.

The silver magical girl, Silver Witch Luna. Though enhanced, she had once been nothing more than a human.

And at her core, she belonged to the side of light.

If anything, she should have rejected him outright. There was no way she could accept his existence.

He was consumed by dismay.

At this rate, the new host would disappear along with him, and he too would vanish into nothingness.

That was the one outcome he had to avoid at all costs.

However, in the world—something he had never anticipated was unfolding.

The sacred beasts were doing everything in their power to anchor the new host to the living world.

The same was true of the substitute and the traitors—they were all joining forces.

The new host slowly began to stabilize.

Yet to the world, her very existence was an aberration.

She would be accepted by no one. That loneliness would surely crush her.

Fearing that outcome, the sacred beasts chose to rewrite the world itself.

A gentle cradle, one that accepted her as herself, and yet also as who she once had been.

Contradictory though it was, no one questioned it. A world warped with warmth.

To repay their debt, the sacred beasts sang their blessings—even if their own existence would fade away.

To him, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The only thing he feared was the purifying power of Silver Witch Luna.

Ironically, she had obtained a new vessel—one suited to become a host—through her rebirth by the sacred beasts.

That said, as long as even a fragment of a sacred beast remained, a new Silver Witch Luna could be born. In fact, someone worthy of that title was already nearby.

Then the answer was simple: eliminate the sacred beasts with his own hands.

So heavily invested in the world's alteration, the sacred beasts had become astonishingly defenseless.

He struck without warning and attacked them one-sidedly.

To his surprise, the sacred beasts vanished with ease.

But it didn’t end there. He intervened in the remaining blessings, twisted them at will, and rewrote them with malice.

Though the outer shell was already complete, there was still enough blank space to drown it all in curses.

—It became a world where everyone could only define her as her.

Her existence was denied at the root. Even traces of her past were torn away.

The stage was set to trap her into believing she was all alone.

If he could make her taste despair—then even the once-gentle boy she had been would crumble to her knees before loneliness and pour her hatred upon the world.

In essence, a wicked time bomb.

Ironically, the more others cared for her, the faster the clock would tick.

Once that happened, no one would be able to purify him.

With a dark laugh, he chose to watch the fate of the world unfold.

---

The situation progressed just as he had hoped.

Her family, with blissful ignorance, tore at her heart without realizing it.

Even her close friends only saw her as a distant, different person.

Bit by bit, the darkness seeped into her soul, staining it pitch-black.

At this rate, her heart would fall into the shadows just as her body had.

But then—someone appeared to halt that fall.

—The substitute.

To him, it was nothing more than a failed vessel, a worthless existence.

What could a man who lingered in a false form possibly do? He looked down on him with ease.

But this was where his miscalculation began.

—Only the substitute had not forgotten everything.

Because, at their core, he was still someone from this side.

More than that, he affirmed her memories, calling her his childhood friend—and swore he would never forget.

—But that, too, was supposed to be nothing more than a comforting lie.

Or so he believed.

Even if the substitute accepted her, the denial from the entire world tormented her heart.

In fact, he had already claimed nearly eighty percent of it.

It was only a matter of time now.

He would protect her from external threats. But wounds of the heart were different. He would stir them further, push her deeper into the abyss.

Planting hatred for her first love had been a spectacle beyond satisfying.

He had embedded that hostility as a safeguard, fearing she might awaken as a new Silver Witch Luna under some unforeseen trigger. And it had borne an unexpected bonus.

The innocent love she once held was now twisted into anger and frustration.

Without realizing it was an external influence, she was crushed by self-loathing.

No matter how much the substitute acted, it was useless. She would never return to what she once was.

Every time he watched the pathetic struggle, joy surged through him.

He waited eagerly, laughing, for the moment her heart would finally crack.

But then, one day—

The substitute brought a ray of hope to her heart.

Like the sun casting light upon the moon, he shone upon her.

That was the beginning of the plan’s collapse.

---

She began to pay close attention to Amurtāt’s every move.

Her heart would flutter before he even spoke, and her chest would tighten with his acts of devotion.

That image—like that of a maiden in love—was nothing short of revolting to him.

—And yet, there was nothing he could do.

As his power waned, the false veil that had once shrouded the world was peeled away with frightening ease.

A world the sacred beasts had desired—a world that welcomed her along with her past memories.

As that world began to take shape, her heart rapidly regained peace.

What’s more, she came to accept her own feelings—and even embraced being a woman.

Bit by bit, his presence faded.

Anxiety. Fear.

Emotions he should have been inflicting… yet now they turned back on him, reversing the roles entirely.

No matter what he tried, nothing could stop it.

Just like the previous host, he inevitably came to feel a deep hatred toward Amurtāt.

But by the time the hatred that had once consumed eighty percent of her heart dipped below twenty—

A miraculous, last-minute opportunity presented itself by pure chance.

---

Amurtāt… and a meeting between her and the one she had once loved.

He didn’t understand what had occurred between them.

But one thing was clear: the very outcome she had feared most had come to pass.

There was no way he would overlook Amurtāt’s blunder—and through the wound it left in her heart, he crept back in.

Her heart was a castle built on sand.

Now that the foundation was broken, what followed was hardly a battle—more like a one-sided beating.

Standing on the cusp of a comeback, his spirit surged.

Though she tried to resist—ever so slightly—it was like twisting the arm of a child. Nothing more.

She used her last ounce of strength to shift her physical body into a reversed space, but it would only buy her a little time. Nothing more.

Even if this led to his own end—he was satisfied.

---

“…Unexpected, but the results exceeded even my hopes. To think I’d manage to take in the Silver Witch, the silver magical girl herself.”

In the twilight gloom, he muttered quietly to himself.

“The interference was a nuisance, but… it’s far too late now.”

A hint of ecstasy in his voice, he cried out loud and clear:

“—Her silver heart has broken. Her wings are now stained with ominous darkness. Let it begin, Amurtāt—the curtain rises on Act Two!”

He was a fragment born from Savaros in his dying moments.

The intense grudge Savaros bore in death—and his hatred toward the substitute, Amurtāt—

Those feelings possessed the Dark Seed and took shape as him.

He’d pushed himself far to drag her—Silver Witch, the magical girl of silver—into despair.

Though the Dark Seed remained, he would not last much longer.

Yet even if he disappeared, the emotions steeped in darkness would continue to fester.

Blood will boil, and flesh will dance in a deadly clash of bitter enemies.

It would be an utterly tragic—and utterly ridiculous—farce of a comedy.

His only regret… was not being able to watch it all unfold from a front-row seat.

And with that thought—he vanished, his power spent.