The scroll did not wait for a man.
It waited for rage—pure, unfiltered, catastrophic rage.
In the suffocating depths of Dahana's underground sanctum, amidst the settling dust and the still-warm corpse of Senior Kunto, the scroll pulsed like a silent heart.
The Crimson Scroll of Inner Flame.
The core of Dahana.
Its forbidden legacy.
It did not glow.
It burned—like a coal that had never cooled since the day the first Dahana master poured his fury into it centuries ago.
Jarot staggered backward. Even he—whose blood once carried Dahana's flame—felt the suffocating pressure rolling off it.
"Jin… don't," Jarot rasped, voice cracking like a child witnessing his home burn again. "That scroll… it kills whoever opens it. The elders called it The Inner Flame. No one was ever ready. No one survived its training, not even the masters."
Ajin did not look at him.
He stepped forward.
Heat radiated from the scroll in waves—distorting the air, making the stone beneath it sweat molten droplets. The air warped around Ajin, but his steel-hardened skin only twitched in irritation.
"This scroll," Jarot whispered, "took everything from Dahana. It's a curse, Jin. It will destroy—"
Ajin cut him off with a single quiet breath.
"I have already been destroyed."
His hand rose.
The closer he reached, the hotter the air became—not physical heat, but something spiritual, something that clawed directly into one's emotions.
Jarot covered his ears. The pressure made his heartbeat spike into panic.
But Ajin stepped closer.
He placed one blood-soaked finger an inch from the scroll—
DHUG.
The scroll throbbed violently.
Ajin's breath hitched as something forced its way into his mind.
A whisper.
No—thousands of whispers.
Screams.
Groans.
Wails of the dead.
A mantra made of pain:
"Anger… is the purest teacher…"
The chamber trembled.
When Ajin's palm touched the scroll, the world tore open.
— He was no longer in Dahana.
He stood in Rogo.
The children's dormitory.
Fire everywhere.
The air thick with smoke and burning flesh. Little bodies curled on the ground. The smell of fear. The sound of cracking wood. The screams—
"Guru Ajin! It hurts! HELP US!"
He turned.
Loka was burning.
Bodin's face was half melted.
Their tiny hands reached toward him, skin sloughing off as ash.
"GURU AJIN, YOU LEFT US!"
"WHY DID YOU RUN?!"
"IT HURTS—IT HURTS SO MUCH!"
Ajin fell to his knees.
"No… no, not this again…"
But the illusion refused to break.
It stabbed every wound in his soul, ripping apart the scabs he'd tried to forge into iron.
Then—
"AJIN! COME BACK!"
Jarot's voice.
Faint.
Distant.
Coming from the real world.
Ajin opened his real eyes for a heartbeat—blood poured from both of them, thick and dark. The scroll was scorching his hands, burning his veins from the inside.
Jarot grabbed his shoulders, shaking him wildly.
"LET GO OF IT! Your face—your EYES—Jin, you're bleeding like a fountain! That scroll is going to roast you alive!"
Ajin turned toward Jarot.
His expression was wrong.
Too calm.
Too accepting.
Too broken.
"So what?" he whispered.
Jarot froze.
Ajin's eyes—bleeding, cracked, crimson—locked onto his.
"If I want power… I must face everything."
Then Ajin did the unthinkable.
He embraced the illusion.
He reached out with open arms toward the burning children.
"Yes," he whispered. "Blame me. This was my failure. My weakness. My cowardice."
The illusion surged into him like a tidal wave.
Pain detonated in his chest.
But Ajin held on.
"I won't run anymore."
The scroll responded.
With a sound like tearing flesh and cracking earth—
BRUUUSH!
The scroll unfurled violently in Ajin's hands.
Flames—deep crimson—erupted outward, carving symbols of fire into the air like living creatures.
The text inside was not merely written.
It writhed.
It pulsed.
It crawled like molten veins, climbing Ajin's arms.
Jarot stumbled back, shielding his face.
"WHAT IS THAT—?!"
Ajin's body convulsed.
Something… entered him.
A blaze without heat.
A fury without source.
A soul without mercy.
The scroll's essence poured into his bloodstream, replacing his pain with raw destructive will.
Ajin's scream tore through the chamber.
"AAAAAARRRGGHH—!"
His muscles spasmed. Cracked. Tore.
Then reformed harder.
His veins bulged, glowing red beneath his skin.
His eyes dimmed—then flared again, burning red like embers refusing to die.
The scroll in his hands ignited completely.
But it didn't burn.
It melted into him.
Flowing like liquid fire under his skin.
The chamber shook as if acknowledging a new monster being born within it.
Jarot stared, horrified.
"Jin… what are you becoming?!"
Ajin finally looked up.
His pupils were gone.
In their place were swirling rings of red flame.
Not fire.
Anger.
A living, breathing emotion given form.
Ajin's voice was lower now. Darker. Echoing.
"I'm becoming what they created."
He stood, the final threads of the scroll dissolving into his arms like smoke.
"And I will show them…"
Ajin clenched his fist.
Deep cracks tore across the stone floor just from the pressure.
"…what a disaster truly looks like."