Chapter 3

Synopsis
The chapter opens with the scene of a young man with bloodied fingernails telling someone named "Mana" to run. He then reaches out with the Cross Innocence, showing the young man is Allen. Interspersed between the images, words reveal that someone is begging to be destroyed.

John is still stunned that his friend, Leo, is an Akuma, unable to believe it.

Allen assures him again that Leo is an Akuma, then turns his attention to the Millennium Earl. The two adversaries greet one another politely, though the Earl seems a bit confused. Not giving the Earl any more of his attention for the moment, Allen activates his Innocence and lunges at Leo, preparing to destroy him.

Before he can, John gets in the way and stops Allen, insisting that there is no way Leo can be an Akuma. Just as John is defending him, though, Leo takes the form of a Level One Akuma and aims his guns at a now stunned John, firing.

Allen intercepts, taking the bullets, himself, and getting infected with the Akuma blood virus as a result.

Thinking the Exorcist has been defeated, the Earl begins speaking to John, teasing him slightly before becoming enraged. He explains that Akuma are more than a weapon; that their skins are actually the physical manifestations of the human life it is made of.

In shock, John turns to the Akuma.

At that point, Allen steps in, explaining that "Leo" is not really Leo, but rather Leo's mother, brought back and placed into the Akuma's body when Leo borrowed the Millennium Earl's power in an attempt to bring her back. He also says he can see her, and that she's suffering.

The Millennium Earl becomes incensed at that, demanding Allen explain what he means.

Allen explains that though he is human, he carries his Innocence inside of his body, which enables him to purify the Akuma blood virus. When this purification process darkens his left eye, which stuns both John and the Earl, Allen says his eye has been cursed by the Akuma of someone he loved when he tried to bring them back.

This jolts the Earl's memory, who, now remembering Allen, exclaims he remembers him as the young boy who tried to turn his father into an Akuma.

Though a flashback, a younger Allen is seen sitting sitting in front of a tombstone that reads "Mana Walker", with the Earl standing behind it offering to bring the dead Mana back to life.

"We weren't related by blood. I was born with a deformed arm, and my parents abandoned me. But Mana found me and raised me."

The image then flashes to a mechanical skeleton that speaks to Allen, angry at him for turning him into an Akuma. The Akuma skeleton then slashes Allen across his eye, shouting out that he (Mana) curses him (Allen).

A thick glove the younger Allen is wearing over his left arm bursts, and Allen's Innocence, Cross, activates on its own, attacking Mana. Though Allen begs his arm to stop, the Innocence pulls his body over to the partially destroyed Mana.

Mana tells Allen he loves him and begs him to destroy him, just as Allen's Pentacle Eye activates for the first time. There was a slashing noise, and Allen screams out in pain.

The scene changes and Cross Marian is at Allen's side, explaining that exorcising Mana was the only way to save him, and that Allen is "another soldier doomed by fate".

The flashback ends, and Allen states while he originally thought that Mana hated him, he realized though exorcising Akuma that it is not hatred the Akuma feel, but love for the ones who brought them back that makes them so angry. Allen reveals that that is why he truly became an Exorcist.

Upon hearing this, the Earl decides that he should have killed Allen when he first met him.