Akira Fudo is just an ordinary high school student until his childhood friend Ryo Asuka asks him to 'save the world.' Dragged to a demonic rave called a Sabbath, Akira fuses with the powerful demon Amon, becoming Devilman—a hero with a demon's body but a human heart. What follows is a story that explodes with forbidden love.
While Akira fights hidden battles, Ryo's suppressed feelings for him burn like a fever. Ryo has always loved Akira, not just as a friend. But he's forced to watch Akira's k
Devilman: Apocalypse of Love - A Confession of Blood and Tears — The Night Ryo's Love Shakes Amon
The flames were still smoldering.
A residential district in eastern Tokyo. The pre-dawn sky was stained a reddish-black, like burnt cinders. Tiny tongues of fire flickered up from the beams of collapsed houses, and smoke rose from the cracks in the asphalt.
On the street, Asuka Ryo lay fallen.
The blood flowing from his abdomen had formed a dark stain on the gray pavement. His skin, once pale as porcelain, was now smeared with dirt, blood, and soot. His faintly tinted silver hair spread out in the pool of blood, its luster gone.
And yet, Ryo's eyes were open.
Those blue eyes, the color of the deep sea, were growing hazy. Still, they struggled to fix on a single point.
Beyond the flames, a shadow stood.
A humanoid aberration, over two meters tall. A dark blue carapace covering its entire body. Enormous bat-like wings spreading from its back. Two curved horns protruding from its forehead.
Amon.
The demon that had seized the body of Ryo's Akira.
"[cold]...So you're still alive."
The low, resonant voice shook the pre-dawn air. A sound too heavy for human ears, as if reverberating from the very depths of the earth.
Ryo looked at his own stomach. The gaping wound left after Amon's arm had been pulled out. The insides of his body were spilling outside. Every time he breathed, bloody bubbles overflowed from his mouth.
(*Ah. I'm going to die.*)
He understood it clearly. He wasn't afraid.
It just hurt.
More than that—
Ryo stretched his trembling arm forward. His nails scraped the asphalt, his fingers, filthy with blood and dirt, crawled across the ground.
One centimeter. Then another.
Like a dying caterpillar, little by little, bit by bit.
"[whispers]...Aki...ra."
With a hoarse voice, Ryo called his name.
Amon did not turn around. He was spreading his wings, about to take flight into the fiery sky once more. He intended to burn more of this city. To destroy more of this world.
"[whispers]Akira."
Once more. His voice grew even smaller. His throat wouldn't move. His breath wouldn't last.
Even so, Ryo kept calling.
Once, twice, three times.
His voice gradually faded into a rasp. Something—he didn't know if it was tears or blood—trailed down his cheek. It wasn't Ryo's usual voice, polite and composed. It was just the broken crying of a child.
Each time that voice reached him—
Inside Akira's body, under Amon's control, something twitched.
Akira's ego, which should have been completely submerged. Called by Ryo's voice, it trembled at the bottom of the darkness. A tiny tremor, like a newborn light.
Amon instantly crushed that faint movement.
*—Sleep. For eternity.*
Within his mind, he pinned it down with brute force. With the absolute willpower forged over two hundred million years.
But—every time Ryo called, the same thing repeated.
A tremor. Suppression.
Again.
Like an infinite loop.
Irritation flickered in Amon's golden eyes.
Ryo didn't know. He didn't know what his voice was causing deep within Akira's heart. He just crawled, reached out his hand, and called his name.
That finger clanked against something.
Cold. A canned drink.
One spat out by a broken vending machine the previous night was still lying on the street. Ryo, his vision already blurred, stared at the can.
"[whispers]...What's this?"
For a moment, his face went blank. A dying man on a blood-soaked street, clutching a canned drink in one hand. What a ridiculous sight.
Ryo felt like crying, and also like laughing.
But he couldn't laugh.
His body hurt too much, his breathing was too labored—he couldn't do anything.
Ryo didn't throw the can away. He didn't even have the strength to discard it. He just held onto it and lifted his face once more.
"[whispers]...Aki...ra..."
That was when it happened.
Akira's body, under Amon's control, stopped in its tracks.
Slowly, like a broken machine, it turned around. No emotion reflected in those golden eyes. Just an inorganic gleam, looking down at Ryo.
But Ryo understood.
Akira's body had stopped. His voice had reached him.
"[crying]...Akira!"
Ryo tried to hold back his sobs and failed. His usual mask of composure was completely gone. His face was a mess of blood and tears, yet he desperately squeezed out his voice.
"[crying]Listen to me... Please..."
Amon's eyes narrowed.
"[sarcastic]Listen to you? What could a mere insect possibly have to say now—"
"[crying]I'm the one who set the trap for Miki!!"
Ryo's scream shattered the silence of the dawn.
Even as he spat blood, Ryo didn't stop.
"[crying]I sent the anonymous message. I told her Akira was surrounded by demons in the warehouse district. Miki saw it and came running alone."
He was losing the ability to draw breath. Between his words, bloody bubbles spilled from his mouth.
"[crying]I'm the one who guided Gelga there too! I calculated the time Miki would arrive at the warehouse and lured that demon out from the underground waterway! All of it, all of it was me!!"
Amon's movement stopped completely.
His golden eyes stared at Ryo.
"[crying]I watched through binoculars as Akira held himself back because of Miki's smile. And then—I couldn't stand it."
Tears streamed down his face. He spoke rapidly, rattling on as if to himself. That habit of Ryo's, whenever his emotions exploded.
"[crying]It's been that way since we were children. Akira was my only light, but every time someone else noticed him, every time someone got close, it felt like my heart was rotting."
There was no self-justification anywhere.
No excuses, no mitigation of guilt, nothing.
Ryo was simply taking out each piece of his own twistedness, one by one, and laying them out on the ground.
"[crying]I broke Akira. I cornered Miki. The fact that Akira was possessed by Amon—it's all my fault."
His voice trembled. The tears wouldn't stop.
Even so, Ryo kept speaking.
"[crying]But I—I just..."
Crying, he smiled.
He no longer knew himself if he was crying or laughing.
"[crying]I just wanted Akira to smile..."
The moment those words were heard—
An anomaly occurred within Amon's mental world.
At first, it was just a tiny noise. Something like a faint cracking sound, *crk crk crk*...
*—What is this?*
Amon tried to comprehend the phenomenon occurring inside him. The strongest warrior race, having lived for two hundred million years. An absolute intelligence that had analyzed, destroyed, and ridiculed humans, love, self-sacrifice, and every emotion.
Within that database, he searched for a classification matching the event now unfolding.
Calculation.
No.
Fear.
No.
Betrayal.
No.
"[crying]Akira, I never once—"
Ryo squeezed out his final words. There was too much blood; his voice was already growing faint. On the very brink of losing consciousness.
"[whispers]—told you that I love you..."
He had tried to stay close through manipulation and planning.
He had tried to keep them connected through calculation and surveillance.
Crying, exposing himself, Ryo was—for the first time—putting that into words.
He couldn't have said it if it hadn't come to this.
Only now, dying, realizing what he had done to Akira.
"[whispers]Even if this is the end, I'm not afraid..."
*—Unclassifiable.*
Within Amon's mental world, an alarm blared.
Two hundred million years of data all spat out "Error."
*—This action yields no benefit whatsoever.*
*—Selfish elements: zero.*
*—Self-preservation instinct: completely offline.*
*—Masochistic altruistic behavior: indefinable.*
*—Re-searching.*
Amon realized: he had seen this thousands of times, this human thing called "love." Every instance had been fragile, selfish, built on fear and calculation.
But Ryo's confession—
There was nothing in it for him. He admitted to breaking Akira, and that wouldn't get him anything back. He was just going to die, and yet he wouldn't stop.
Incomprehensible.
Forced Reset.
Unable to process Ryo's confession.
A demon who had lived for two hundred million years could not understand the tearful confession of a seventeen-year-old high school student. That fact, for the first time, generated a violent dissonance within Amon's very mental structure.
Disturbance.
In the outside world, nothing changed.
Ryo lay collapsed on the street. Akira's body looked down at him with golden eyes. Just that.
But inside—
A fissure was spreading.
Beyond the flickering noise, a slight slackening occurred in the pressure of Amon's mental domination.
From that gap—
Ryo's voice stopped.
He had lost too much blood; his consciousness was growing dim. His face was a mess of dirt and blood, his eyes already half-closed. Even so, Ryo kept his eyes open, looking up at Akira's body.
In those eyes, there was no fear, no regret.
Only his raw feelings for Akira remained.
Just pure affection, having shed all that warped armor of possessiveness and jealousy.
Akira's body, under Amon's control, stared back into those eyes.
Golden eyes and blue eyes quietly intersected.
*—Ryo.*
The deepest part of the mental world.
Akira's ego, which had been completely broken, reduced to mere cinders, began rapidly regaining its contours through the gap of the fissure.
At first, a faint voice.
*—Ryo. I'm... here.*
Then, a voice that rang out clearly.
"[angry]You brat...!!"
Amon's roar shook the mental world. Instantly, he moved to suppress it with full force. Until now, that had been enough. Akira's heart had been wounded, full of openings.
But now—it was different.
Akira's ego was biting into the crack opened by Ryo's confession.
Against the pressure of the will trying to suppress it, a will to pry it open pushed back.
"[angry]You worthless insect!!"
"[angry]Ugh... Uooooooh!!!"
The outside world.
Before Ryo's eyes, Akira's body collapsed.
It fell to its knees, pressing its forehead against the pavement. As if unable to bear the battle within its own body. A massive tremor ran through the ground, and the scattered rubble around them bounced and clattered.
"[whispers]...Akira."
Ryo stretched out a trembling hand.
Those slender fingers reached from within his own pool of blood, toward Akira's body, slowly, slowly—
But they couldn't reach. He had no strength left.
Ryo's consciousness sank into deep darkness.
The last thing that floated into his mind was a memory from childhood.
Higashimurayama Central Park.
That day they had sat side by side, watching the sky. Akira had been smiling next to him, so Ryo hadn't been lonely then.
That memory remained at the end of Ryo's consciousness.
"[whispers]...Aki."
His voice vanished.
A red sea of blood spread across the street. In the middle of it, Ryo quietly closed his eyes. The blood flowing from his abdomen still hadn't stopped; if he remained like this, he would undoubtedly die. He was merely unconscious, in a dying state.
Beside him, Akira's body, having collapsed forward, continued to tremble.
In the deepest part of the mental world, Akira's ego had begun the final battle against Amon.
Meanwhile, one of the scattered canned drinks burst with a small pop from the heat of the still-smoldering fire.
A fiery street, empty of people.
Ryo, on the verge of death, and Akira, fighting to reclaim his own self.
Only the two of them were left behind in the pre-dawn city.
On the other hand, there was a girl watching this scene through the small screen of her smartphone.
Makimura Miki.
Miki, who had been watching the live stream with trembling hands, bolted from her room the moment she confirmed Ryo's collapsed form on the street.
(*Asuka-kun is collapsed.*)
(*Akira is collapsed too.*)
(*I—it's because of me—*)
Miki stopped blaming herself and just desperately moved her legs.
She raced through the pre-dawn streets of Higashimurayama on her bicycle. The trains weren't running. If so, she had no choice but to go under her own power.
Tears blurred her vision. Her breathing was painful.
Even so, Miki kept pedaling.
Heading toward the scene.
What she would see when she arrived—no one yet knew.
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.