It had been four days since Zevion left for England, and a day since Kiba disappeared.
And the thin thread of control I'd been clutching was fraying faster than I liked to admit.
I'd already sent out search teams—every reliable pair of eyes in my peerage, every friend who could be trusted to look—but the town felt different now: the same Kuoh, just softened, vulnerable, like paper left out in a sudden rain.
Rias and the others were searching, too, sweeping streets and alleys with that fierce, focused look I always respect.
Still, the tension threaded through the air like static; you could feel it in the way conversations cut off mid-sentence, in the way people kept their heads down.
Last night, Irina and Xenovia had come to me with faces like thunder.
The name they brought lodged in my throat like a stone: Kokabiel.
Hearing it made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Cadre-class.
Dangerous.
Calculating.
Not the sort to play small.
If he was involved, the whole thing had graduated from "bad" to "cataclysmic."
Pride argued against calling in the family.
I didn't want to drag my elder sister into this unless I absolutely had to.
But principle yields to pragmatism when people's lives are on the line; I'd told her everything.
She'd said she'd be here in minutes.
Kiba had slipped away quietly the day before—gone like a shadow with a purpose I could not name.
Why would a being like Kokabiel pick Kuoh Academy anyway?
There were no vaults of relics here, no hidden arsenals.
The suspicion tightened like a vice around my ribs until it hurt: what if the target wasn't the place at all?
What if the target was us, Rias, and me?
The thought barely finished forming when the room answered with violence.
An explosion tore through the office like a fist wrapped in thunder.
Plaster dust rained from the ceiling; a lamp shattered and speared shards of glass across the floor.
The shockwave shoved me back, but instinct moved faster: my fingers flared, forming a thin barrier that tasted of ice and ozone.
It bought me a heartbeat—just enough to stop the worst of the concussion—but the world still smelled of burnt fabric and copper.
Pain followed: a hard, blunt impact driving the air out of me.
I coughed; hot copper flooded my mouth.
Before I could right myself, iron fingers closed around my throat and lifted me clear off the floor.
The world tilted.
My legs flailed uselessly.
He leaned in as if savoring a conversation.
His scent was street smoke threaded with something cold and clinical I couldn't name. Behind him, dark feathers fanned like knives.
"Oh ho," he purred, amused and silk-smooth.
"So you sent your familiar to inform others? Talented, sister of Leviathan. Teleporting under pressure—quite impressive."
He tilted his head, and the crimson orb of destruction missed him enough to pick out his feathers like dark blades.
"Looks like the game of hide-and-seek is over."
My throat was a clenched fist; my mind crawled through molasses.
Water and wind spells tried to form at the edge of my will, but my voice was a whisper swallowed by his hand.
Then Rias cut through the chaos—a red voice like drawn steel.
"Unhand Sona! Kokabiel—do you even know what you're doing?"
Her presence hit the room like a hammer; fatigue and fear were shoved aside by raw authority.
Kokabiel turned with the calm of someone who'd expected thunder and was delighted to see lightning.
He smiled, polite and venomous.
"We have never met, have we, daughter of the Gremorys? My name is Kokabiel."
The smile never reached his eyes.
Rias did not indulge him.
She advanced, aura coiling like a live wire.
"Unhand her. Now. This is your last warning."
He chuckled.
The sound split the air.
"What a beautiful crimson hair. You look like Sirzechs himself."
He sidestepped Rias's strike with the disdain of a dancer avoiding an awkward partner.
"Do not be so hurried. A conversation first, perhaps?"
Rias's voice fell like ice.
"Unhand her now, before I tear you to less than dust."
He laughed—brittle and dangerous.
"Hahaha! A little girl threatens me. How delightful."
He cocked his head, amusement curling at the edges of his words.
"Whether you can kill me is quite another matter."
Rias answered with an orb of destruction: raw, roaring energy that cracked plaster and sent a pressure wave down the hallway.
Kokabiel passed through it as if stepping between stitches; the blast filled the empty air where his body had been supposed to be.
He turned back to us as if examining trophies.
"Perfect. You are exactly my targets: Sister of Lucifer, Rias Gremory, and Sister of Leviathan, Sona Sitri. Kuoh Academy is saturated with magical energy—it's the ideal stage to start a war."
His hand flicked as if conducting an orchestra.
The door behind him banged open, and a disheveled priest staggered in, dragging an unmoving form.
Time snapped with the sight: Kiba, limp and pale, slumped in that ragged shadow like something discarded.
"Kiba!"
The name ripped out of me—a sound smaller than the relief and rage that broke through my bones.
Kokabiel set the fallen boy at our feet with the air of someone presenting a gift.
"Here is your present."
He then leaned forward, voice lowered to a whisper that rolled through the room like a curse.
"And one more thing before the show begins. For those who pray—listen."
He spoke the words slowly, savoring each syllable, as if tasting iron.
"God is dead."
Silence slammed the room shut.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the tick of a clock somewhere down the corridor.
Then Asia's breath hitched; Xenovia and Irina went white as ash.
Even Rias's composure frayed at the edges—the color draining from her face, the breath in her chest quick and sharp.
"No… that can't be," Asia whispered, voice cracking.
"Don't lie—"
Kokabiel continued, clinical and cruel.
"No new angels are born. Prayers go unanswered—or answered only by other angels. The Last Great War took everything: All four original Satans died, high-class devils perished, and countless angels vanished. Pure angels cannot reproduce; pure-blooded devils are nearly extinct. All three factions came to rely on humanity to survive. Their leaders concealed God's death to preserve human faith—and thus, the fragile order persisted. Pathetic, isn't it?"
The words spread and soaked the room.
Xenovia's knuckles whitened on her sword hilt.
Irina's fingers trembled on the hilt of her own blade.
Asia's lips moved in prayer that no longer seemed to have an anchor.
Rias's pupils narrowed; anger and something else—calculation, perhaps—flew across her face.
My brain tried to file the reactions: denial, grief, the slow yawning of reason that seeks to rope a lie into logic.
But there was a gravity to Kokabiel's tone, a lack of malice toward falsehood that made it feel less like provocation and more like revelation.
"Why tell us this?"
I rasped.
The question tasted like ash on my tongue.
He smiled, as if pleased by the question.
"Because faith is a binding. And I want to break the binding and watch the world fray."
He spread his hands.
"The angels, the fallen, the devils—teetering now. One nudge, and they fall. Azazel and Shemhaza refused to set the world alight again, but I am not so patient. I will start the fire myself."
The priest behind him shrank, hands shaking.
Kokabiel's grin widened into something savage.
Around us, the academy's lights flickered as if the building itself drew breath.
Kiba stirred—shallow, ragged breaths.
He wasn't dead.
He was bait: a hook to drag our wrists into the flames.
The realization coiled inside me—fury bright and cold—then sharpened into a rawer edge: Kokabiel wanted us to react.
Our retaliation would be his match struck; our fury would dance to his tune.
Rias stepped forward, her aura compressing into lethal focus.
"We do not dance to your provocations. Leave—now. Take your puppets and go."
Kokabiel's eyes glittered with triumph, as if he'd already measured the trembling strings he'd set in motion.
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