His Return

The Lord enters the school

His Return was Shun Sato's first direct meeting with Ryuji Sato after two years of estrangement. It occurred during a parents' event at the School for Gifted Children, when students, families, teachers, and visiting dignitaries were present.

To the school, the arrival was an invasion by the feared Lord of the Tower. To Shun, it was the final day available to retrieve his firstborn before the Unbreakable Oath executed him for failing to deliver Ryuji to the demon throne.

The debt announced

The living curse on Shun's arm had flared, burned through his sleeve, and announced that Ryuji had reached maturity. Shun confronted his son privately enough to explain that the familiar black mark was not a tattoo but a magical contract imposed by Magnus after the Second Transgression.

The oath required the firstborn of the Lord of the Tower to serve as a Royal Knight under the Demon King. If Shun failed to deliver him, the curse's thorns would enter Shun's heart and kill him. The only route to freedom was for the firstborn son to become stronger than the strongest Royal Knight serving the throne.

Shun persuaded the oath to accept himself as a substitute opponent because his power exceeded that of the current strongest knight. The concession was strict: Shun had to fight with his full, unyielding strength, and Ryuji had to defeat him genuinely. A staged loss or magical tampering would trigger Shun's death.

Confrontation with Nori

Nori Morita stepped between the stranger and Ryuji before he understood their relationship. Shun, racing against the oath's deadline, overwhelmed him with mana and bloodlust rather than negotiating. Ryuji immediately moved to protect his friend.

The exchange revealed that the solitary boy Shun had monitored for two years was no longer alone. Ryuji's willingness to oppose his father for Nori's sake confirmed the success of the friendships Zero had reported, but it also made a quiet removal impossible.

The arena battle

Father and son entered the school arena under the oath's negotiated terms. Ryuji chose swords and mirrored techniques learned in childhood, but he could not overcome the difference in experience, strength, or control. Shun broke him down physically while also testing the people around him.

Inside a cage of silenced air, Shun challenged Ryuji over fighting in an inefficient partial demonic form. Outside it, the crowd saw the Lord beat his own son and formally declare him guilty. The language made the confrontation resemble a public sentence rather than the desperate escape attempt Shun believed he was offering.

Sawano Torafuku and Yuki Hayami joined Ryuji. The oath objected to the additional fighters, but Shun argued that their presence did not change the inevitable result. Nori also intervened from the sidelines and fired a compressed projectile powerful enough to sever Shun's hand. Mimi Sato emerged from his shadow and reattached it.

The old heroes intervene

Reiko Hayami and Kimiko Torafuku entered to protect their children. Their appearance reunited the three heroes of the Demon War for the first time in thirty-nine years.

The reunion did not become an equal battle. Shun neutralized Reiko, used his incubus aura to subdue Kimiko, and deployed shadow puppets against the younger fighters. He was required to fight honestly, but the combined group never forced him to reveal the full extent of his power because they remained far below it.

Sawano continued after the others had fallen. She briefly drove Shun back and nearly reached Ryuji, but the Lord recovered, cast her aside, and took his son into shadow. Her hand closed on the empty space where Ryuji had been.

Return to the Tower

Shun deposited the defeated Ryuji in the Tower's entrance hall and ordered training to resume the next morning. Mimi healed his broken nose and bruises and escorted him to the bedroom preserved throughout his exile.

The return was involuntary. Ryuji had not forgiven Shun for the words exchanged after Yumi's death, and Shun still concealed most of the history explaining the oath. The result therefore restored Ryuji to his childhood home without restoring the family relationship.

Reframing

The Volume I account presents an apparently merciless father arriving before witnesses, defeating his son and everyone who tried to help, then abducting him. Volume II confirms that the violence was real and that Shun caused severe harm. It also reveals the constraints governing the event: the oath's deadline threatened Shun with immediate death, required a genuine contest, and left Ryuji facing lifelong service if no qualifying victory could be achieved.

Shun's motive was not to punish Ryuji for becoming King or forming friendships. He was trying to keep his son out of the Demon Court by manufacturing the only duel the curse would accept on human soil. His secrecy and coercion nevertheless ensured that Ryuji and the school interpreted the act as tyranny.

Later disclosure

After the Climb to the Tower, Shun gave the household and its guests the full history recorded in The Terms Revealed.

Father and son then apologized for their respective failures. The disclosure did not undo the arena violence, but it replaced the belief that Shun had returned solely to control his son with the truth that both were trapped inside the same inherited obligation.