POV: Sirzechs
To the mighty Sirzechs, also called Satan Lucifer, Chief of Domestic Affairs of the Underworld, it is my very great pleasure to inform you that we have recovered your straying little hummingbird, and that the treasure of Hell is safe in our keeping. We are treating him with all the freedom and honor he would be accorded in his own home…
They have taken my son.
My son.
The strongest being in Hell held the letter in his hand and crushed it slowly, deliberately, until his fingers tore through his own palms. Blood soaked into the pristine white parchment, staining the mockery of courtesy crimson. Before him rested a small box, its lid already open, its contents arranged with deliberate care. Before him lay a small box, its lid already open. Inside were five delicate fingers, unmistakably those of a child.
"Sirzechs," Grafia said, her voice trembling despite her effort to master it. She looked at him with naked fear. "What… what does it say?"
He did not answer. He did not trust himself to speak. He had ensured she had not seen the contents of the box, because he knew, with an absolute certainty that chilled him more than fear ever could, that if she did, she would not stop. Friend or foe would be irrelevant. And he would not stop her. The wrath of his queen would freeze Hell itself, turning its inferno into a mausoleum of ice and annihilation.
"What?" she demanded.
Her voice was calm now. Too calm. The temperature in the room dropped perceptibly. His parents took a step back, instinctively retreating from the pressure of a Satan-class being whose fury had found focus.
"Where are they holding him?" she asked, each word precise and lethal. "Sirzechs. Where is my son?"
"They have him under their protection," he answered curtly.
The audacity of it made his vision blur. To kidnap and imprison his son was an insult beyond measure. Wars had been waged for far less. The letter itself was a mockery, speaking of limited freedom for the boy's own safety, and what enraged him most was that the excuse was not entirely false.
What freedom had his son ever truly known?
He had torn the Underworld apart in civil war so that children would not have to live in fear, so that they could walk freely without being used as leverage or weapons. And yet his own son had been hidden away, sheltered from the malice of the world, because the simple reality was that there were those who would gladly tear the world apart just to wound him.
"The fallen angels prove yet again why they cannot be trusted," Grafia said, her anger finally surfacing. "They betray as easily as breathing, just as they betrayed their own creator. Azazel dines with us, speaks of peace between factions, spins dreams of unity, all while scheming our downfall. Let this be the final time. They must be punished. It is their nature to lie, to conspire, to betray. You know this as well as I. They must die. We must scour these pathetic crows from the land of our birth."
Many believed Grafia to be the calmer of the two, the true administrator of the Underworld, the measured hand guiding Sirzechs' impulsive heart. Some even joked that she ruled while he merely smiled and signed decrees. There was truth in that, insofar as Grafia was rational, precise, and unyielding when matters were abstract.
But those same observers forgot one essential truth.
Grafia Lucifuge loved with the same absolute intensity with which she hated.
They forgot that she had once betrayed her own family during the civil war for love. They forgot that when someone she cherished was threatened, consequence became meaningless. Now that their son was in danger, mercy, diplomacy, and restraint were ashes in her mouth. She would not hear anything short of annihilation.
He had to restrain her from storming into Fallen territory alone and reducing it to ruin.
"Kokabiel does not speak for the whole of the Grigori," he said, forcing his voice into calm. "And you know that. You have spoken with Azazel yourself many times. You know he is not responsible for this. Kokabiel has gone rogue. He is acting on his own agenda."
"And you expect me to believe that?" Grafia snapped. "Azazel? The same Azazel who claimed ignorance when fallen agents infiltrated Kuoh? Who endangered Rias, violated treaty by sending operatives without permission? And now you would have me believe his lies again?"
Of course he had known. He had known from the beginning.
Sirzechs and Azazel had investigated that incident together thoroughly. Officially, Azazel claimed ignorance, but it had been a deliberate misdirection. In truth, he had been conducting his own internal investigation, feeding Sirzechs information as it surfaced.
They had uncovered signs of a traitor within the Grigori, someone actively attempting to provoke another war between the three great factions.
Haruki's massacre of the Fallen in Kuoh had complicated matters, erasing potential evidence, but they had continued regardless. And eventually, all trails led to Kokabiel.
They had planned to use him. His war-mongering nature would serve as a unifying threat, a common enemy to force cooperation and solidify peace under the pretense of shared defense. It had been a calculated gamble.
Then Kokabiel vanished.
Their plans stalled.
What none of them had foreseen, what still felt unreal even now, was Kokabiel's return as a twelve-winged being, a power on par with the Satans themselves. A Seraphim in all but name. An impossibility so profound that Sirzechs had struggled to accept it even after his mother brought him the report.
This was the price of hubris.
He should have killed Kokabiel when he had the chance. He should not have believed that every fire could be guided without burning something precious. His dream had been too large, his faith too generous.
Now his son was paying for that dream.
And no power in Hell felt heavier than that realization.
"That would cause another war," he said. "And though we would win a war against them, the cost would be unbearable. I can't do that to my people. That is my responsibility as their leader. I will not become my namesake reborn."
"Perhaps you should."
"Another tyrant?" Sirzechs replied quietly. "Is that what you propose? Meaningless bloodshed to soothe my wounded pride?"
"The only way to guarantee peace is to make the very idea of war hopeless," Grafia said, her eyes burning red with unrestrained fury.
He felt it then, the violent fluctuation of her demonic energy, thickening the air until it pressed down on the lungs like a physical weight. His parents were forced to their knees, unable to withstand the pressure of a Satan-class being pushed to the brink.
"I understand your anger, Grafia," he said, his voice steady despite the storm around them. "But we can't wipe out an entire race for the actions of a single rogue. That is precisely what he wants. We are standing on the edge of something extraordinary. A world where Milcas and Rias, and all those we cherish, can live without fear. That future is within reach. There will always be figures like Kokabiel who exist solely to ruin such things. If we act in haste now, we condemn our people to yet another great war."
"Is that peace of yours more precious to you than your son?" Grafia asked, venom sharp in every syllable.
She could be vicious when she wished to be. He had married a tigress, and he had never once regretted it.
He did not answer.
"I'm sorry," she said after a breath, startled by her own words. "That was unbecoming of me. It's just… it is our son. My Milcas. Who knows what those monsters are doing to him."
"I understand," he said softly, stepping forward and pulling her into his arms. "I strive for peace precisely because I don't want my son to experience what I endured. How could I allow someone so precious, so innocent, to be dragged through that? What kind of father would that make me? Yet another war is not the answer. Not now. Not when we are more fractured than ever."
That, if anything, was an understatement.
House Barbatos and House Astaroth, along with their respective allies, were already locked in open conflict, with more Houses choosing sides by the day. The truth about the King Piece had been dragged into the light, a dangerous artifact created by his closest friend in their earlier years.
Because Rating Games were inseparably tied to politics and economics, the Old Devils of the Great King Faction had long manipulated them from the shadows. By secretly bestowing King Pieces upon select pure-blooded devils of the Seventy-Two Pillars, names like Roygun Belphegor and Bedeze Abaddon, they fixed outcomes, controlled popularity, and secured commercial rights through bribery and backroom contracts.
The reason the highest-ranked contestants rarely shifted in rank was a planned orchestration. A carefully managed tug-of-war designed to maximize profit.
Meron Naberius had exposed this system, and the revelation had ignited fury among the lower classes, who responded with rebellion and indiscriminate destruction.
Reincarnated devils were now gathering armies, openly declaring war against the system, demanding equality and justice under the law. Cultists and malevolent actors exploited the chaos, spilling blood for their own twisted agendas. And through it all, Sirzechs found himself unable to address any of it, because his son had been taken, and somewhere in the shadows lurked a force capable of elevating Ultimate-class beings into Satan-class threats.
This was not a problem he could solve with raw power. This was the sickness beneath the skin of their society finally breaking through, reopening old wounds and carving new ones. Someone had once described the Underworld as a powder keg waiting for a single spark to ignite it all. That spark had been struck.
"What are you going to do then?" his mother asked quietly, her gaze searching his face for reassurance.
Sirzechs clenched the letter once more, read it a final time, and then erased it from existence with his power, leaving nothing behind.
"They have sent me a location where Milcas will be," he said. "I must go alone. If I bring anyone else, they will kill him."
Terror flashed across Grafia's face, mirrored by his parents.
"It is a trap," his father said urgently. "It must be."
"I will go nonetheless," Sirzechs replied. "My son's life is at stake. I will not hesitate."
"Someone has elevated Kokabiel to a Satan-class threat," his mother said grimly. "There is no guarantee the same method cannot be used again. Whoever our enemy is, they are cunning. They know you, your power, how you think. They will have prepared a way to kill you."
"Then they will find their preparations lacking."
"There were at least two Satan-class beings involved," she pressed.
"I have destroyed greater beings."
"Gods from other pantheons may be involved," his father warned.
"Woe to them if they dare."
Sirzechs Lucifer was a being so overwhelming that even his most ardent detractors admitted, through clenched teeth, that he alone was worthy of the title of Lucifer. His birth had reshaped the balance of power in the Underworld and redefined the limits of what a devil could be, surpassing even the most brilliant of Angel who had created the devil race in the first place.
Without question, without equal, he was the only devil who could truly be called the strongest.
POV: Katerea
"He is here," Shalba said, his voice trembling despite the crude armor of bravado he wrapped around it.
Of course he was. He could never not come. Katerea inclined her head, slow and deliberate, and gazed through the half-dimension suspended between the dreaming and the physical world. From that thin veil of unreality, she observed the lone figure standing upon the wasteland below; hair burning red, posture straight, presence saturated with conviction so thick it almost offended the senses.
There he stood. The greatest obstruction to their design. The final wall between the world as it was and the world as it should be. Perhaps the only being alive who could approach her master in raw power, if not in intellect, vision, or cruelty.
Even her master, who loathed praise as weakness, had admitted without shame that Sirzechs Lucifer was the strongest devil to ever live, surpassing him by a grotesque margin. The sheer scale of preparation, the labyrinthine scheming required merely to risk confronting him, only confirmed that truth.
Strength, however, was not sovereignty. Power without the will to use it was little more than ornamentation.
The Underworld was already tearing itself apart. The nobility warred amongst themselves, blind to the fact that their era had ended and that they should have exited the stage with dignity rather than clinging to relevance like parasites.
Beneath them, the lower classes had begun to awaken. They had been told since birth that power was the only law of Hell, that with sufficient strength they could rise, ascend, matter.
Now they had discovered the lie- that the game had been rigged from the beginning, that they existed only as entertainment for their betters, as measuring sticks by which the highborn could reassure themselves of superiority.
The masses had turned cynical, then feral. Rebellion spread, and the very systems that had deceived them were set aflame, reduced to cinders so that something new might rise from the ash.
Fools. If they harbored any delusions of grandeur, they would choke on disappointment soon enough. There were truths in this world that could not be overturned by riot or sentiment. One of them was immutable: the blood of the original Satans was meant to rule. Hell was never designed to be egalitarian. It was designed to be glorious.
The reincarnated devils were gaining momentum as well, day by day, no small part due to her own assistance. Power, resources, direction; she provided what was needed. She found herself curious how far they could go, and she savored the irony.
These creatures, created to preserve the devil race, now repurposed as instruments of its destruction. it was poetry in motion.
In another world, the lower-class devils and the reincarnated ones might have recognized that their goals aligned. They might have forged an alliance. Instead, as expected of beings whose intelligence barely rose above that of apes, they tore at one another's throats.
She suspected Zekram, or one of his obedient vermin, of deliberately sabotaging any attempt at unity, painting each faction as monsters to the other, demonizing, inflaming. The low classes believed the reincarnated devils were the cause of their misery, that their presence had stolen opportunities, made social ascent impossible, polluted the race with impurity.
Katerea found it hilarious. Their ease of manipulation would have been admirable if it were not so contemptible. Sympathy was wasted on fools.
Still, Zekram himself required correction. He was too clever by half, too ambitious without permission. He would either be bent to their purpose or erased.
The current Satans were occupied, scrambling to contain crises that could not be solved with a simple application of force, at least not by rulers who prided themselves on civility, enlightenment, and restraint.
And where, she wondered, had that enlightenment brought them?
Her attention returned to the red-haired figure as a portal opened at a distance. From it emerged a being of dark hair and impossible symmetry, twelve black-feathered wings unfurled in arrogant display.
Kokabiel had arrived.
"So it really is true," Sirzechs Gremory said, voice light, almost amused. "Twelve wings? Why, my dear Kokabiel, it seems you've had quite the makeover."
"Well, you know how it is," Kokabiel replied, keeping his distance, tone playful. "We Watchers can't afford to stagnate. We strive, improve, and learn. It's why Yahweh banished us in the first place."
"Really?" Sirzechs said mockingly. "And here I thought you fell because you couldn't keep it in your pants. I suppose I should sue my history teacher."
"If your legal skills are as refined as your banter, you will surely fail," Kokabiel answered smoothly.
Sirzechs smiled. Genuine amusement. Always that infuriating sincerity. "Why are you doing this, Kokabiel?"
"Why not?" Kokabiel shrugged.
"We are on the road to something unprecedented," Sirzechs continued. "To achieve what even the Lord of Angels could not: coexistence between all His children and grandchildren. You were once the Angel of Stars. You were meant to soar, to rise beyond imagining. In a way, we are family. Will you not give peace a chance? It may surprise you."
"Really, Sirzechs?" Kokabiel said with good humor. "Family? That almost convinced me. Almost. But what you dream of is too perfect."
"What is wrong with perfection?" Sirzechs asked casually.
"I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears," Kokabiel laughed. "You mistake this quiet for health, you mistake the absence of screaming for harmony, and you mistake restraint for wisdom, and that collective error is precisely why I find the present age so unbearably dull, because an existence that congratulates itself for merely continuing without catastrophe is already half-dead and simply too timid to lie down and admit it."
He grew more animated, more unhinged, the longer he spoke. Sirzechs listened patiently, as though indulging a child.
"Do you know why I wish to restart the Great War?" Kokabiel demanded.
"I couldn't say."
"I wish to loose the Great War again because it is the only condition under which the universe remembers how to move, how to shed its excess weight of sentimental ideas and soft assumptions, how to grind forward through friction and terror and irreversible decisions. Peace does not advance anything, it merely preserves whatever happened to survive the last catastrophe, and preservation is the laziest form of creation imaginable.
"I assure you, war is not discord, despite what the frightened insist; war is clarity taken to its most honest extreme, a great sorting mechanism that discards the unnecessary, the unadaptable, the sentimental, and replaces them with something leaner, sharper, more interesting, for nothing reveals the architecture of a soul quite like the moment it realizes that survival is no longer guaranteed and meaning must be improvised from blood and noise. I adore that moment, that precise instant when people finally understand that all their virtues were conditional, that their mercy had a budget, that their kindness required safety, and that the innocent (oh, that deliciously naive category) were never protected by goodness at all, only by circumstance, which war so thoughtfully removes. It is so hilarious."
Katerea felt only approval. If these words did not come from her own mouth, they might as well have been carved from her spine. This was truth unsoftened by cowardice, unpolluted by the weakness the modern Satans called wisdom.
"And what would you have us do instead?" Sirzechs asked. "What is so terrible about clinging to made up beliefs if that brings happiness to everyone? Why should we pursue suffering instead?"
His question alone marked him as unworthy. Happiness. As though it were a metric of rulership rather than a narcotic for livestock.
"Suffering," said Kokabiel, "contrary to the whimpering protests of priests and philosophers, is not a tragic side effect of war but its most productive instrument, the pressure under which civilizations are refined and identities crystallize. Pain compresses thought into purpose, strips choice down to instinct, and forces beings to discover who they are when all the decorative layers of nonsense have been peeled away, and if some break in the process, well, that too is a form of resolution. You see, bloodshed carries a dignity that words lack, since blood cannot be argued with, reinterpreted, or forgiven retroactively, and when it spills it declares commitment with a clarity a whore reserves only for coin. Every drop marks a choice made without the safety of revision, and I admire anything that forces conviction to abandon subtlety. I have seen people who preach subtlety and they are all cowards!"
Katerea watched him with narrowing eyes. Kokabiel was spewing truths, yes, but with the sloppiness of a creature drunk on its own rhetoric. He lacked discipline. He lacked lineage. He lacked the sacred right to speak of war as destiny rather than indulgence.
His insanity, so evident now, only highlighted the failure of Sirzechs, who had so gravely underestimated just how unhinged this fallen angel truly was.
Still, even madness could be useful.
"You recoil from the chaos only because you prefer arrangements that flatter your sense of control, yet chaos possesses a rigorous honesty of its own, dismantling hierarchies that have grown complacent, redistributing power without apology, and reminding gods and mortals alike that order survives solely by continuous violence, whether acknowledged or politely hidden. I glorify war because it reveals divinity stripped of its ceremonial robes, because it exposes judgment without bureaucracy, because it renders verdicts without consulting intention, and because it transforms existence into a relentless examination where survival itself becomes the only credential worth presenting.
"There is humor in it too, a delightful absurdity in watching creatures swear eternal principles one century and abandon them screaming the next, a cosmic joke in how quickly righteousness adapts once scarcity enters the room. The coming war will feel excessive, it will feel unnecessary, it will feel cruel beyond justification, and that discomfort will be its greatest virtue. Trust me, growth that does not offend sensibility rarely alters reality, and lessons that do not scar are forgotten with embarrassing speed."
Katerea observed Sirzechs closely then. The strongest devil in history stood stunned, red eyes widened with disbelief. For the briefest instant, she almost pitied him. Almost.
The pity was buried at once, crushed beneath contempt. Sirzechs Lucifer, with all his impossible power, remained a fraud at heart. A ruler who flinched from truth. A Satan who feared blood. A king who mistook restraint for virtue and mercy for strength.
"Well then, I suppose there is not much left to discuss," Sirzechs said with resignation.
"Of course not," Kokabiel echoed, bursting into hysterical laughter. He threw his arms toward the sky, and in that instant the purple firmament of the Underworld bloomed with countless pinpricks of light, descending at impossible speed. As they drew nearer, Katerea discerned their true nature.
They were spears of light and other obscene constructs, colossal in scale, the smallest of them no less than fifty meters tall. Each one carried annihilation. Any single strike would have erased even an Ultimate-class devil from existence.
Even I might not emerge unscathed, Katerea assessed coolly.
Alas, the Crimson Satan was neither ordinary nor merely Ultimate-class.
Sirzechs raised his right hand and made a single, elegant motion. The descending lights vanished. Not deflected, not destroyed in spectacle, but simply snuffed out, as though they had never existed at all.
Kokabiel's expression fractured into shock. He noticed too late Sirzechs appearing behind him. Far too slow to respond, Kokabiel was seized by the neck, lifted as one might a chicken.
In that instant, Kokabiel exploded into splinters of light, escaping Sirzechs' grasp. The fragments gathered at a distance, coalescing once more into Kokabiel's humanoid form.
"Still too slow," Sirzechs remarked mildly, already standing behind the newly formed Kokabiel, amusement lacing his voice.
Before Sirzechs could act again at his unhurried pace, Kokabiel suddenly appeared far away, no less than fifty meters distant. Sirzechs scratched his chin, thoughtful.
"Interesting," Sirzechs said. "That was not teleportation. I would have noticed the spatial fluctuation. No, it is as though the distance itself expanded. I see. An ability that manipulates the laws of physics, not unlike Ajuka's."
"He is smart," Katerea observed from the hidden dimension. "Frighteningly so."
"And fast," Shalba added, his voice tight. "I could not follow his movements. I only saw him appear behind Kokabiel."
"That's not all," she replied. "It was not mere speed. He shortened the distance between himself and Kokabiel using his ability. Likely by destroying the space between them, or erasing the concept of distance altogether."
She felt Shalba shudder beside her, goosebumps rippling across his skin. She could not blame him.
Sirzechs Gremory. What kind of monster are you truly?
Another figure appeared beside Kokabiel. It possessed three heads, six horns, and vast draconic wings that dwarfed the battlefield. Its gaze fixed upon Sirzechs with an intensity bordering on obsession.
"Hello there, Azi Dahaka," Sirzechs greeted warmly. "I see your taste in friends remains as rubbish as ever."
"And you remain as talkative as ever, boy," the great dragon replied, eyes gleaming with animalistic glee.
"Well—" Sirzechs began, only to be interrupted as an enormous palace manifested instantly, swallowing him whole.
"It seems he is finished," Shalba said, though tension still sharpened his tone.
The structure that engulfed Sirzechs was the Palace of Indulgence, the second stage of the House of Desire, the core ability of House Asmodeus. Its principle was simple and obscene: desire transformed into law.
The Palace of Indulgence manifested a metaphysical domain shaped by craving itself. Within it, enemies were surrounded by their deepest temptations. Reality bent to reflect longing, ensnaring the target in its own wants.
Any ordinary devil would have been lost within such a domain, especially when wielded by Creusery Asmodeus, a Satan-class being.
Alas, Sirzechs Lucifer was not an ordinary devil.
He was destruction incarnate.
The metaphysical domain collapsed. It simply disappeared. At the center of the ruined ground stood the unharmed figure of the Crimson Satan.
"I see you have been taking steroids, Creusery," Sirzechs said jovially, entirely unbothered. "Didn't your mother tell you how dangerous that is? You should ask Tsufamme."
Katerea felt her blood boil. His casual mockery of her sister ignited something violent within her. That such vermin would dare to ridicule Tsufamme stirred a fury that made her fingers itch for slaughter. She forced herself to stillness. She had a duty, to her people and to her king. She would not fail again.
"A witless fool," Creusery sneered. "Today is your day of reckoning, usurper. You will pay for every insult you have so generously bestowed upon us."
"Took you long enough," Sirzechs replied.
Creusery's face twisted with barely restrained rage, while Kokabiel and Azi Dahaka smiled in open amusement.
"Kill him," Creusery shouted.
"Before you three rush toward your almost certain deaths," Sirzechs said casually, spreading his hands, "as a Satan of diplomacy, I would like to invite you to employ a small measure of common sense. I am sure you have prepared thoroughly, and you may even succeed in subduing me for a short time. But at what cost? Half of you will die in the process. And for what? Some inane vendetta that could be resolved through simple communication instead?"
A stunned silence followed. The sheer audacity of the statement, directed at two Satan-class beings and Azi Dahaka, a dragon of legendary caliber, was staggering.
Katerea felt it then. Against her will, a flicker of admiration.
"Your pride will be your downfall, Gremory," Creusery said coldly. "Do you think such bravado will sway us?"
"Well, it was worth a try," Sirzechs shrugged. "But I suppose that only works when your opponent operates on a compatible wavelength."
The insult landed. Creusery bristled, fury surging anew, though Kokabiel and the three-headed dragon appeared entertained rather than offended.
"So then, gentlemen," Sirzechs said, hands open in invitation. "Shall we?"
AN: Tsufamme was Katerea's sister who fought Ajuka after taking enhancment during the civil war. Also, while Kokabiel and Meron might sound similar in their philosophy, they're different in motives: Meron seeks to cure nihilism through war, whereas Kokabiel does it purely for the love of the game. If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You can read up to four chapters ahead there: patreon/abeltargaryen?