"Filthy demon!"

It came without any warning.
On a normal day, that phrase took the place of the morning greeting.

"-First, the eye-"

He left the house, walking to the forest as normal.
Called out to his passing neighbors only to be ignored.
The madness occurred right inside the village.
He was surrounded by people he had never even talked to. From then on, he would not return to the village.

"-Leave the left eye-"

The ritual progressed with little emotion.
They said he was a demon.
Hearing that fact, a fact that even he himself had just heard, the villagers wailed, became hateful, and finally enraged, determining his fate.

"-Shut up. I say we crush his throat."

His confusion was larger than his fear.
Why.
Why are they doing this.
Why did this happen.
Why, him of all people.
Just think about it; there hadn't been anything even resembling a reason existing anywhere.

...And, how.

"-Ok. As long as he can still breathe-"

How can they be doing this?

"-Cut the tendons, only the tendons! The body belongs to the whole village, we have to leave it for everybody-"

Several men handled his treatment.
While being spat on by many of those he knew, his arms and legs, with their form intact, stopped working as arms and legs.
Screaming that this was his punishment for robbing them of their prosperity, they gave him treatment matching those crimes, all over his entire body.

"-Cut his tongue too. Don't you dare think we're going to let you die-"
While being sworn at by many of those he knew, he was dirtied in mud, covered with filth.
Screaming that this was his reward for threatening their lives, he answered their unhappiness with his entire body.

"-Serves you right. Filthy demon, how dare you-"

A definite persona ended at this point.
His emotions collapsed from the pain of losing his body.
His sanity collapsed from the grief of having his dignity erased.

I'LL KILL YOU.

And with both gone.
How long had he been squatting?
Without one moan.
The branch, stuck in his throat, decaying.
The tongue, pulled out long ago.
The vocal organs, inflamed after one night of screaming.

WHY.

Both those he didn't know and those he knew came together to shower abuse onto him.
Reasons weren't needed for executing justice.
With their righteous anger and ethics, they scorned the demon exiled on the peak of the mountain.
They laughed that the world would be better without the likes of him.
They continued to laugh, when they wouldn't even kill him.

Hate brings hate.
Transcending both fear and confusion, he finally gains hatred.
But, who should that hatred be directed at?

Why.
Why.
Why.
He lost track of how many times he thought that, how many times he said that.
When his other eye was crushed, when his fingers were being chopped off by a scissor-like something, the voice that was squeezed out from his throat
was "why me".
None of the villagers answered him.

Please stop.
Please, I want to go home.
Please help.
He didn't bother to ask those hopeless wishes.
When the last remaining toe on his left foot was cut off by the thing that had been his father, he accepted his fate.
He now had only one remaining wish.
Why him? That was all he wanted to know, that was his final wish, but no one would tell him.

The world is ruled by monstrous humans.

I'LL KILL YOU.
When he realized that answer, he became a true demon.
I'LL KILL YOU.
There was no reason for him being a demon.
I'LL KILL YOU.
There was no reason for him being chosen as a sacrifice.
I'LL KILL YOU.
The village elder, the ones holding power, haven't even known what he looked like.
Anybody would have sufficed.
It hadn't been that he was gradually hated by somebody for whatever wrongs he committed.
Nor had it been that he gradually alienated himself from any one person for whatever good deeds he accomplished.
As if he was a pawn, he was chosen as a faceless, just another nobody.

...Just for the sake of indulging in one-day luxury, people he never met ended the life of a person they never met.
That was all there was to it.
To fill just one night of greed, a life was crushed.

When he became aware of that, the target of his hatred was decided.

-Angra Mainyu; all the evil of the world.

The celebrated icon thus became a true demon.
An egg that will eternally remain in its shell.
As the hero of sinful salvation, worshiped only in this one small world.

No freedom to struggle from pain.
Severed from the ends.
The only part alive being the heart.
No appendages, no dignity. Only pain still working faithfully, even when he ceased functioning to be a person.

Taking countless hatred.
All the while birthing countless hatred.

The collapsed persona earned a state of order, broken as he was.
He was stone.
Unable to move outside from his stone prison, unable to move his body even slightly.
The eyelids of his remaining eye were anchored. He was not allowed to even close it.
The dried and cracked pupil continued looking outside.
Almost as if he was a man that became a statue, or a statue possessing intent.
Not able to move just one step, he would look at the unchanging landscape for a day, for a year, for tens of years.

He could not shift away his eye nor close it.
A punishment where he would be on the verge of forgetting that he was even alive before his mind could become plagued by boredom, continuing until his death.
What scared him was that this torture, one he had trouble bearing with for even one day, would go on for the rest of his life.
Someone sane would have fallen apart within 7 days.
What helped him withstand that, what protected his soul, was the fact that his sanity had long been shattered.

He wouldn't be broken from watching the same landscape.
Stretched out below his vision was his homeland.
He was allowed a full view of those who called him a demon and turned him into a real demon, the village that was the source of hatred.
An abominable cluster of good will, prospering by feeding on the weak.
As long as he was alive, he would continue to hate.
The inconsistency.
The repulsiveness of a mankind that looked away from it.
The over-tolerant world for accepting it.

Inside the stone prison was only the hatred burned into him.
The persona and the body that had once been his was not to be found here.
The soul inside his body was destroyed long ago.
That thing was now something completely different.
The spite born from him continued to smolder throughout his body-

continuation